Summary
- Immortals Fenyx Rising's canceled sequel aimed for a more realistic and serious tone, influenced by Elden Ring and The Legend of Zelda.
- The game would have deviated significantly from the first, with immersive exploration, animal tracking, and wind traversal.
- Ubisoft Quebec wanted the sequel to be unique, with rich exploration, branching narrative, and player freedom, but it was ultimately canceled.
Immortals Fenyx Rising's shelved sequel is said to have taken influence from Elden Ring, according to leaked gameplay details. A major shift in style and tone was reportedly planned for Ubisoft Quebec's Polynesia-set Immortals follow-up. Not only would the game's graphics grow more realistic, but its tone would grow more serious. Gameplay would lean more toward Elden Ring, though clear inspiration remained from The Legend of Zelda. Yet still the Immortals Fenyx Rising sequel was canceled.
The first Immortals game was unique even among the increasingly saturated open-world action game subgenre. While Ubisoft Quebec confirmed that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was an inspiration for Immortals Fenyx Rising, it deviated in significant ways. Many of Ubisoft's staple open-world guidance systems were included to make exploration faster and simpler. Heavy-handed narration gave the game a less-than-serious tone. Immortals also featured a much more complex combat system with combo-based gameplay.
According to Axios, leaked details regarding the canceled Immortals Fenyx Rising sequel make clear that the new game would be deviating from the first in substantial ways. While still an open-world action game at heart, Ubisoft Quebec planned to leave some Ubisoft trappings behind in favor of an Elden Ring-esque immersive and challenging exploration experience. Players would have to track animals, navigate via constellation, and use the wind for traversal, leaving behind huge quest markers and compass-based guidance.
It's easy to draw comparisons between the canceled sequel and The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, too. Fitting the Polynesian setting and story, the setting of the Immortals sequel would be spread across multiple islands inspired by Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island. Players would travel using wind, as well as other elemental powers and shape-shifting.
Overall, Ubisoft Quebec appears to have wanted the sequel to Immortals Fenyx Rising to be much different than Ubisoft's other open-world games. Rich exploration, branching narrative, and player freedom would differentiate the new game, to a point that Ubisoft Quebec was even considering making it an original release rather than a sequel to Immortals. However, Ubisoft's ambition also made the new game expensive to fully develop, which may have contributed to its cancelation.
With the Immortals sequel shelved, Ubisoft Quebec's development resources are now focused on the Japan-based Assassin's Creed Red and other unannounced projects. Ubisoft is rallying its studios around franchises with more reliable selling power, and Immortals Fenyx Rising appears to have been too risky. Ubisoft Quebec will hopefully be able to take some of those ambitious plans for its Immortals sequel and inject them into Assassin's Creed.
Source: Axios