I keep in mind when Mike Laidlaw revealed he had joined Ubisoft Quebec a few years in the past. What a match! The former lead designer for Dragon Age working with the studio that created the good Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. Surprisingly, Laidlaw announced his departure from Ubi only a 12 months later, which a report revealed as we speak was shortly after the game he was engaged on was cancelled. Even worse, we now know what that game may’ve been – an Arthurian fantasy RPG.
According to Bloomberg (be careful, there’s a paywall), the large RPG he was engaged on was code-named Avalon, and would have been set in a fantasy world involving tales about King Arthur and his Round Table. It even would’ve featured cooperative multiplayer akin the Monster Hunter sequence. But, alas, it was struck down by Ubisoft’s former chief inventive officer, Serge Hascoët.
The report says that Hascoët “wasn’t a fan of the fantasy genre”, and advised the Avalon group that in the event that they have been making a fantasy game, it needed to be “better than Tolkien”. Despite this, Bloomberg writes that the individuals who had labored on the game stated it was progressing effectively earlier than it was shut down, they usually have been “shocked to see the project impeded simply because the chief creative officer didn’t like its setting”.
Laidlaw and the Avalon group reportedly tried pitching new themes to Hascoët, altering it to a extra trendy sci-fi setting, and even to a Greek mythology setting. But Hascoët was reportedly having none of it, and cancelled the venture outright final 12 months.
From stories which have come to gentle during the last month or so, it appears Hascoët has allegedly been concerned with shutting down concepts for initiatives for years. Bloomberg revealed in another report that he’s supposedly a big a part of the explanation Ubisoft have been reluctant to present feminine characters equal or major billing within the Assassin’s Creed games.
Hascoët has now resigned from his place on the firm, together with a number of others, following abuse allegations that have come to light over the last month.
