Assassin's Creed Director Departs Ubisoft Montreal

Ubisoft Montreal's Patrice Desilets, who played a pivotal role in the Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia franchises, has left the company, according to an official statement. The creative director's departure comes as Ubisoft Montreal prepares the release of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, the third main entry for the popular third-person action series Desilets helped build, for later this year. Ubisoft claims the director already completed most of the work it required from him, according to a report from Game Informer: "With his role on project essentially done, Patrice Desilets has decided to take a creative break from the industry and is no longer working on Assassin's Creed Brotherhood." Although Desilets himself has not commented, it appears that he has permanently left the Ubisoft studio -- but no announcement about any new positions have been made. His list of shipped titles, which include all of the primary Assassin's Creed titles and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, would make him an attractive hire for rival developers. Ubisoft Montreal has suffered a couple other top talent losses recently, such as creative director Clint Hocking, who left last month to pursue new opportunities after working nine years at the studio on big games like Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and Far Cry 2. And last August, Jade Raymond, who, as producer of the series, was also instrumental in the Assassin's Creed games' development, left the Montreal studio to head up Ubisoft's new Toronto location. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is scheduled to release for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows on November 16th, 2010.