Assassin's Creed exposed

Wednesday 17 May 2006
Project Assassins teaser movie - September 2005 (WMV, 2.45MB) - right-click to download
Assassin's Creed E3 trailer - May 2006 (WMV, 13.8MB) - right-click to download

Ubisoft's medieval murder game, Assassin's Creed, has been around longer than you think. While officially first unveiled at the beginning of last week's E3, the game was originally revealed under the name Project Assassins at the end of last year, during the Tokyo Game Show - and we've tracked down the original teaser trailer to show you. Just compare the two in the links above.

Strangely, last week at E3 Ubisoft claimed Assassin's Creed had never been shown before. But since then, Ubisoft has confirmed to us that Project Assassin and Assassin's Creed are one and the same. And, given the fascinating end to our Assassin's Creed demo last week, we think we know why Ubisoft is being so elusive.

Towards the end of our demo Altair, the main character, was hacked down by enemy blades. The screen began to flicker violently and blue neon lines (akin to television interference) slashed across the action. Our view of Altair continued to distort and was eventually replaced with a digital readout stating 'System Failure' - not what you'd expect from a game set in 12th century Jerusalem.

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.