Assassin's Creed Skips Competitive Multiplayer This Year With Unity and Rogue

Fans of the brand of competitive multiplayer seen in the Assassin's Creed series will be disappointed to learn that neither of this year's Assassin's Creed games, Unity and Rogue, will offer any kind of multiplayer mode that pits you against other players, Joystiq reports.

We already knew Rogue didn't have multiplayer of any kind; the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game is a single-player-only affair that puts players in the shoes of an Assassin-turned-Templar. Unity, which is coming to Xbox One, PS4, and PC, does offer multiplayer, but only in the form of a four-player co-op mode--something which has never been a major focus in past games.

"With Assassin's Creed Unity, the pillars of the franchise have evolved thanks to the potential of new-generation consoles," Ubisoft said in a statement issued to Joystiq. "With that evolution, we wanted to bring a new type of multiplayer experience, which was asked for by fans and which we wanted to explore for a long time: cooperative gameplay.

"Our aim was to have a seamless single-to-multi experience: This is why we are not opposing single player and co-op; we have ancestral missions dealing with Arno's story and Brotherhood missions dealing with Arno's duties towards the Brotherhood."

Multiplayer was introduced to Assassin's Creed with its third game, 2010's Brotherhood, and has been included in each subsequent console/PC game until this year. The multiplayer aspect of these games consisted of a variety of modes, but often they would come down to hunting a target while trying to remain concealed (often because you yourself are being hunted, too).

Assassin's Creed Unity launches on October 28, with Rogue following on November 11. If you think that's one too many for a single year, Ubisoft says you're in the "vocal minority."

Are you unhappy with the absence of competitive multiplayer in either of this year's games, or are you more interested in single-player and co-op? Let us know in the comments.