Assassin's Creed creative director founding THQ Montreal studio
Patrice Désilets to oversee new Quebecois developer starting next summer; shop's focus will be on new intellectual property.
THQ has been on a bit of an original intellectual property tear as of late. Earlier this year, the American company announced it would publish Devil's Third, the new action game from Japanese bad-boy developer Tomonobu Itagaki. Then, this summer, reports surfaced that Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro was developing on a "Lovecraftian" horror role-playing game for the Santa Monica-based publisher, likely due out in 2013.
Today, THQ announced another pillar in its original IP push. The company has hired Patrice Désilets to help it found a new studio in Montreal, site of his former employer Ubisoft Montreal. There, Désilets garnered acclaim for his work as creative director on Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and the wildly successful Assassin's Creed series. He is also represented by the Creative Artists Agency, a top Hollywood talent agency.
According to THQ, Désilets will begin work next summer at the studio, where his first job will be "the hiring of a new team that will develop new intellectual properties for THQ." The company's vision is to have the new Quebecois shop draw on the large game-development talent pool in Montreal, which is also the site of internal studios of Electronic Arts, its BioWare RPG label, and Square Enix's Eidos label.
For more on Désilets' last Ubisoft project, Assassin's Creed 2, read GameSpot's full review or interview with the man himself.
27 comments
Cant wait, had the pleasure of having a nice chat and more than a few beers with Patrice during the wee hours at the sydney AC2 press meeting. awesome guy - looking to see what happens with AC3 also
@inferno394 Are you gay If so, you have good taste. :D This developer is dat Fi-ya! AC is a GREAT game!
NO!! im glad he is still working on games, but im afraid that assassins creed 3 will be terrible without him!!! they might make it world war II and go against the whole 'use eras in history that havent been used before thing'!
That's never enough money. It stretched more than the quilt and they wonder why they go bankrupt. There is never enough.
1 game every year? they said that they couldn't fit all of the ideas into 2 so they made brotherhood because its bigger than just an expansion. and after that, it will be 2 more years until AC3 which fits in because it will be 2012 like when the game takes place.
@MasterTheHero Most likely (and this is just me speculating based on what I heard at the time) him and Ubisoft did not share the same ideas regarding the future of the franchise he created so he stepped down. I think it has something to do with Ubisoft trying to turn Assassin's Creed into Call of Duty, one game every year.
@IAMTHEVIPQUEEN, to be honest both are very clever people and I've enjoyed both their games.
Kind of feeling sad for Montreal. Yeah you are right, Assassin's Creed is indeed crappy.
GO MONTRÉAL!| GO MONTRÉAL! Je suis très fier d'etre Québecois lorsque je vois l'empleur que les jeux ont dans ma région. J'aurais don du continuer mes études...
THQ are really stepping it up, going for a small publisher to a medium one and soon enough maybe one of the big boys, who knows. Anyway, can't wait to see what Patrice does next.
What? Why did he leave Ubisoft, it's one of the most prestige publishers and he goes to THQ?? But whatever, it's good to have positive news for a change.
Good for him ... though now I'm not sure what'll happen to AC in the future. Looking forward to what he does next.
This is the dude who thought of/made Assassin's Creed. I'm eager to see what he's going to come up with next. I remember him saying, in an interview, how he thinks shooters overcrowd the market and how gaming needs something different. So far, he's been loyal to is words. Glad to know he's from my hometown too.
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Assassin's Creed II
- Publisher(s): Ubisoft
- Developer(s): Ubisoft Montreal
- Genre: Action
- Release:
- ESRB: M
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