Evolution of Assassin’s Creed, From The Holy Land To Valhalla

With the announcement of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Ubisoft's popular history-based franchise dives into The Viking Age, which occurred between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Funnily enough, that's right before the events of 2007's Assassin's Creed, the game that started this massive franchise in the first place--meaning Ubisoft has almost gone full circle.

Or at least it has in terms of its story. When it comes to gameplay, the franchise as a whole has been a steady evolution. What started as a stealth-driven action game has now become a franchise defined by its massive open worlds and action-focused combat. In the video above, Lucy James details this full transformation, describing how the mechanics and features of Assassin's Creed have changed since 2007.

Full disclosure: the video only covers the mainline entries of Assassin's Creed. That means we skip over handheld titles (like Assassin's Creed Pirates and Assassin's Creed Rebellion) and spin-offs (such as Assassin's Creed III: Liberation and Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China). It's not that those games haven't contributed long-term gameplay traditions or storybeats too, but this video is already over 10 minutes long--it would be a monstrous task to cover all 22 Assassin's Creed games.

Side note: Can you believe that there have been 22 (soon to be 23) Assassin's Creed games in 13 years? Which one was your favorite? Let us know in the comments section below.