Assassin’s Creed Hexe leaks reportedly showcase protagonist, gameplay details

With Ubisoft being tight-lipped about its plans for future games, details about the next Assassin’s Creed installments are few and far between. Leaked internal footage, however, has pulled back the curtain on Assassin’s Creed: Codename Hexe, which is shaping to be the “darkest” entry in the series yet.

Naturally, these are unconfirmed leaks, so take them with a grain of salt—although their source is a generally reliable one. It’s already known Codename Hexe will take place during the 16th-century witch trials of the Holy Roman Empire, but it hasn’t been quite clear how that setting will impact the game’s story and mechanics until now.

According to Insider Gaming, who reportedly received details on Codename Hexe from a source at Ubisoft, the game will both break recent Assassin’s Creed trends and bring back a few surprising old ones. First and foremost, unlike the previous trilogy of RPG titles, Codename Hexe will focus on a single protagonist, a suspected witch named Elsa who supposedly has magical powers. In leaked footage, Else is described as using these supernatural abilities to possess a cat and use it to disrupt the environment, thus distracting pursuing soldiers. It’s unknown at this time whether this is real magic or just the pseudoscientific Isu trickery that allowed previous protagonists to control eagles. Smart money is on the latter.

Speaking of those pursuing soldiers, they appear to be Landsknecht, the famously colorful German soldiers of fortune. Around the period of this game, they comprised the majority of the Holy Roman Empire’s standing army, fighting for a paycheck rather than loyalty to their nation. Their appearance would indicate Elsa is being hunted by the highest authorities—understandably, since many of the feats Assassin’s Creed protagonists have pulled off across the series’ long history could easily be mistaken for witchcraft.

Finally, the fear system from the Jack the Ripper DLC for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is expected to make a return. In that game, you could use certain items or techniques (such as a longer version of the standard takedown) to strike terror into your enemies, making them attack each other out of panic or even flee the fight altogether. A return and possible retooling of this mechanic would fit perfectly into Codename Hexe‘s spooky, Gothic-inspired world and provide an interesting toolkit to support a story that seems to put its protagonist on the back foot for once.

We’ll see whether any of these rumors hold water when Assassin’s Creed: Codename Hexe launches right onto the Assassin’s Creed Infinity platform. It sounds like it could be the unique take the series so desperately needs—I’m not sure I have the patience for another 100-hour RPG when Assassin’s Creed Red drops.