Assassin’s Creed 3 famously killed the series’ protagonist Desmond Miles in a shock move that still upsets fans to this day. While the decision to kill the modern day hero was made quite early on to stop “lore Nazis from policing everything”, according to game director Alex Hutchinson, the actor behind the character didn’t know he was actually dead.
Speaking on Fall Damage, North explained that he only found out the character was dead from a fan on Twitter. When recording his character’s demise, the actor didn’t know the character was gone for good, which makes sense considering the protagonist had only just come out a coma during the events of Assassin’s Creed Revelations.
“That technically was Desmond’s death scene, and I didn’t know it. I found out on Twitter [from a fan asking] ‘Are you upset Desmond’s dead?’ And I’m thinking, what? Because there’s no ‘Argh!’ There’s nothing that you’d expect from a main character’s death,” the actor said.
However, Nolan North has explained that the “the good people at Ubisoft have told me that he’s not technically dead”, which could lead to a return and a proper modern day Assassin’s Creed game in the future.
This is, technically true, and was explained in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla where the actor voiced a character known as The Reader. Voiced by North, the feature-less humanoid lives within The Grey, a digital world where consciousness can continue to exist. (Like the Forerunner Domain in Halo, if you’ve read any of that series’ extended universe.)
The existence of The Reader has led many to believe that Desmond Miles will return in a future Assassin’s Creed game, which could be very fulfilling to fans of the original games. In the Fall Damage podcast, North explained that Ubisoft originally was going to have “eight or nine games with Desmond”, but this was cut short.
“I was very sad to step away from the role of Desmond, because Assassin’s Creed is one of my favourite stories I’ve ever been part of,” the actor told the podcast.
Right now, Ubisoft is currently undergoing a massive shift-up in regards to the development of Assassin’s Creed. After being handled in-house for decades, the series has moved to a new studio half-owned by Tencent dubbed Vantage Studios. Additionally, the franchise will no longer be helmed by franchise lead Marc-Alexis Cote, who worked on the series for two decades.
“Many of you have expressed surprise that I would choose to leave Assassin’s Creed after so many years, especially given the passion I still hold for it,” the developer told followers, revealing he was pushed out of the studio. “The truth is simple: I did not make that choice.
