Assassin’s Creed creator’s forgotten fantasy game 1666: Amsterdam will finally release this year, over a decade after Ubisoft ripped it from his fingers
Original Assassin’s Creed creative director Patrice Désilets and his team at Panache Digital Games have announced a new version of 1666: Amsterdam, the supernatural history game Désilets once worked on a lifetime ago at THQ Montreal. What’s more, the game now has a 30 minute prologue on Steam and the Epic Games Store, with an early access release coming later this year.
To give you a whistlestop tour of the industry background, Désilets joined THQ Montreal to work on the Amsterdam project way back in 2011. Two years later, however, THQ went bankrupt, placing dozens of videogame projects in jeopardy. Ubisoft bought the Montreal studio during an ensuing publisher feeding frenzy, and promptly got rid of Désilets after failing to agree terms for his continued employment, putting 1666: Amsterdam on hold. Désilets went on to found Panache in 2014, and eventually won back the creative rights to the Amsterdam project in 2016.
Confusing? Just wait till you read the blurb for the game itself. I’m sure the Summer Game Fest fatigue is a contributing factor, but I can’t make head or tail of it. Described as “a dark third-person story-led action-adventure game”, 1666: Amsterdam casts you as Noa Brooklyn, a “Collector” of some kind in a city of entities known as Originals, who “have lived among its people for centuries, granted time, granted power, and the freedom to abuse both.”
There’s another group called the Zaindaris, who I think are on Noa’s side, and some business involving a chap named Aaron, who “sees the world through the eyes of a cat” and is from the year 1999. Another portion of the game unfolds in the present day. “This is where the cycle begins,” the press release breathily concludes, while I sob and bleat swearwords into my cupped hands.
As for the prologue, this sees you stepping “into Noa’s Commencement as she takes on the mantle of the Collector, and begins to understand the role she was born to fulfill”. You will choose a Companion of some kind, and “uncover the foundations of a universe shaped by centuries of unseen influence, where nothing is quite what it seems”.
Oh thank goodness, here’s Désilets with some boilerplate copy on the game’s development. “It’s been a long time coming, and I couldn’t be prouder of our team of nearly 70 talented developers in Montreal,” he enthuses. “For the past six years, we’ve focused on one thing above all else: the game itself. No fake footage, no vertical slices, just a playable experience evolving build after build, day after day.” Regarding the prologue, he describes it as “an amuse-bouche before a nine-course dinner”.
Panache are otherwise known for evolving ape simulator Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, which Brendy (RPS in peace) summarised as “a mish-mash of ideas, some good, many awkward and poorly executed”. Fingers crossed that 1666: Amsterdam proves a little more figured-out. Désilets has certainly had plenty of time to play around with the concept.