For the third year now, Ubisoft is releasing a major Assassin's Creed title per year in addition to the smaller spinoffs, but there is a sound reason behind this accelerated schedule: The development team wanted to conclude the series' story before the world ends in 2012.
To be more precise, the story of Assassin's Creed has adopted a real-life wide-spread belief that the apocalypse will happen on December 21st, 2012 and this is why the development team felt that they should finish the game before passing that date in real-life.
"In Assassin's Creed we set up a timeline with this whole end of the world plot of December 2012," Ubisoft's Alexandre Amacio revealed. "That's fast approaching, and the story we have to tell, we obviously need to do it before we arrive at that point."
"We had such a complex and strong narrative that we ourselves did our best to just try to execute these games before that date," he continued. "It would be stupid of us to be centering a game on a semi-reality and then have that conclusion happen after that date in real life."
The story of Desmond will be wrapped up in this year's Assassin's Creed: Revelations, but this doesn't mean the end of the series. Instead, the game will introduce new protagonists in other interesting points in history. The release schedule will slow down after the release of Revelations though.
"We're already structuring the way we do Assassin's Creed, so it will no longer ever be like that," said Amacio. "Our development approach is changing so our cycles aren't structured the same way -- so it gives us a little bit more development time."