Ubisoft Aimed To Break “Tradition” With The Now Cancelled Open-World Adventure Immortals 2

Last month, Ubisoft announced the axing of the in-dev sequel to Immortals Fenyx Rising, Immortals 2, the inside story of which has come forth now after little less than the announcement. The reason behind the cancellation, as stated in the statement by Ubisoft, was that the studio wanted to focus on more established brands as part of their “global strategy.

The behind-the-scenes story of the Immortals 2’s development has reportedly been revealed to the Virginia-based news website, Axios. And the details are very intriguing. As sources told the news site, Immortals 2 was a very ambitious project, developed by Ubisoft’s Quebec subsidiary, that would have seen Ubisoft steer a bit away from its “traditional” identity.

Moreover, Immortals 2 was reportedly supposed to be based in a fictional world built based on the Polynesian archipelago. Ubisoft had its Quebec branch working on it and even hired Polynesian experts to assist with the development. Last year an image leak of the project also showed what appeared like a Hawaiin warrior with traditional Hawaiin weapons in both hands. Now the current claims seem to confirm the authenticity of the leak.

According to sources, Immortals 2 entered the planning phase of development in 2021. Ubisoft had planned it to be the sequel to the Immortals Fenyx Rising. The game entered active development in 2021. Immortals Fenyx Rising took a little over a year to be fully developed, but contrary to that Immortals 2 was taking lots of time and resources because of the game’s scope.

Ubisoft even deliberated whether to “rebrand” the title as the original game instead of being marketed as a sequel. However, the hiccups in the project arose after the costs and manpower needed to develop Immortals kept increasing. The studio was working on other big projects such as Assassin’s Creed Red as well. So they ultimately had to decide whether to continue with it or focus on the Assassin’s Creed game.

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Ubisoft opted for the latter and decided to scrap the Immortals 2 game. The decision took even the developers working on it by surprise. As revealed to Axios, they had managed to program several playable hours in an internal demo. The reason for the axe given by a Ubisoft representative was,

[The studio was] redirecting and reallocating some creative teams and resources within the Quebec studio to other unannounced projects. The expertise and technologies these teams developed will serve as an accelerator for the development of these key projects focused on our biggest brands.”

But that’s not the full picture. Ubisoft has been in the trenches for several years as the revenue has dropped and funds dwindled. At the start of this year, the studio scrapped at least three unannounced games in addition to four already canceled last year last July. The French studio has been looking for a messiah and has decided to bet it on the stealth open-world action-adventure franchise, Assassin’s Creed with Assassin’s Creed Red rumored to be coming out in 2024.