However, a recent academic paper reveals how this wasn’t always the intended ending. Researcher Lars de Wildt, at the Belgian Catholic research unity KU Leuven, shared a paper that details how it made religion more palatable for a wider audience. This Assassin’s Creed paper contains dev interviews, and as pointed out by Eurogamer, indicates that the original ending would have seen Desmond and Lucy leave on a spaceship.

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Back when the series was planned as a trilogy instead of a series, the original plan for Assassin’s Creed 3 would have been Desmond and Lucy leaving Earth in 2012 to start a new civilization elsewhere as Adam and Eve. Given the number of Adam and Eve references in Ezio’s games, this makes a ton of sense in terms of parallelism, and still, some of that connection remains today. This ending was explained in a lengthy footnote within the paper, where Wildt pieced together the ending via interviews with AC’s original creator Patrice Desilets and AC3’s creative director Alex Hutchinson, although Wildt was unable to contact Corey May.

This original ending was also, according to Wildt’s research, publicly hinted at by Nolan North at Metrocon 2015 and would have seen Desmond defeating Abstergo thanks to skills obtained via Altair and Ezio. But, that doesn’t stop the impending apocalypse and so Desmond and Lucy escape—somehow obtaining a spacecraft, potentially from the Isu cave. Indeed, this “Adam and Eve” storyline also explains why Lucy was so named, that being after the Australopithecus afarensis.

Of course, Assassin’s Creed 3 opted to unleash Juno on the world instead and Lucy died in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (allegedly because Frozen actress Kristen Bell requested royalties for future appearances). The series itself wouldn’t end with Assassin’s Creed 3, and the latest game is entering its second year of DLC, with Dawn of Ragnarok set to launch for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla in just a couple of months.

Assassin’s Creed 3 Remastered is available now on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.

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Source: Eurogamer, TheGamer