Assassin's Creed Aztec dreams come true in stunning new open-world RPG

The Assassin’s Creed series has touched a lot of real world history and locations, exploring ancient civilisations and weaving the assassin’s lore into them.

We’ve seen adventures in Greece, France, Egypt and Britain but never anything as ancient as the Aztecs. Unfortunately for Assassin’s Creed, the recently announced Ecumene Azted looks like it’ll be getting there first before Ubisoft’s flagship franchise has the chance.

Ecumene Aztec, is a new first-person survival action-RPG developed by Giantscraft, and it is set to make its debut on PC sometime in 2025. It’s reminiscent of the recent RPG-style Assassin’s Creed games, and follows an Aztec warrior in a Mesoamerican city. The player will have to fend off Spanish inquisitors using a mix of brutal combat, and sneaky stealth techniques.

Giantscraft has promised "a strong narrative, RPG progression with blood sacrifices, gritty combat, stealth gameplay, and crafting." Very little is known about the story as it’s still in pretty early development, but respect to the developers for going where very few developers have gone before.

Players will choose one of three classes, Jaguar Warrior, Eagle Warrior and Snake Warrior, presumably with their own abilities and characteristics, e.g. Jaguar will probably be better in combat, but Snake will be better at stealth. Levels will also be open, with players needing to climb and scale buildings and objects to advance and get the drop on enemies, which is also a gameplay element Assassin’s Creed fans will find familiar.

The developers also revealed that, similar to other RPG games, a wide range of skills will be unlockable by the player, though the criteria for unlocking them is a little different, and a bit disturbing, to what many of us will be used to in games. It turns out you’ll have to sacrifice people in rituals in order to unlock new abilities, which is certainly more interesting than a generic skill-tree to say the least.

Ecumene Azted sounds like it’ll be worth keeping an eye on, but with Ubisoft bolstering their workforce due to several new Assassin’s Creed projects in the works, including the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, the title will have some steep competition.