Leaked screenshots obtained by Kotaku show an early build of the next Assassin's Creed title, which appears to take place at least partially in 18th-century Paris. Images showing Notre Dame and other Parisian landmarks are giveaways as to the location, and the game is operating under the name Unity, at least for now.
Kotaku cites a source who would like to remain anonymous, but provided multiple screenshots. The source also informed the outlet that Unity is one of two major Assassin's Creed games planned for a 2014 release. Unity will supposedly be available for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, while the other game, code-named Comet, will be released on Xbox 360 and PS3.
The screenshots depict what is clearly an early version of the game, as the UI isn't even finished and the character model looks incomplete. There aren't any NPCs around, and the textures could use improvement. Still, they already look pretty good graphically, but this early in, I would bank on them improving further.
This is especially true if we're seeing the game running on Xbox One or PS4, where it will no longer be held back by last-gen hardware constraints and the franchise tends to be very visually attractive. This is no doubt exciting to fans of the series as graphical fidelity will be taking the next jump up, but some may be tiring of the rate at which they are releasing Assassin's Creed games.
Any future titles will surely sell well regardless, but there has been a major entry in the franchise released every fall since 2009, as Kotaku points out. "In the past five months alone we've seen Black Flag, the mobile game Pirates, the HD remakes of Liberation, and an Assassin's Creed board game called Arena," writes Jason Schreier, observing that Ubisoft may be milking the franchise.
Though the games are released frequently, they are still usually quite good, though Assassin's Creed III wasn't received as warmly. Black Flag was surprisingly great however, and we'll have to see how these new titles pan out before a judgment can be made. Check out the leaked images from Unity below.