Rumor: Third DLC for Valhalla Led to New Assassin's Creed Being Shelved

Famous leaker j0nathan has been mentioning rumors on Assassin's Creed: Project Richard for a few months now, but his latest information claims that work on the game was suspended. According to the youtuber, Ubisoft redirected its efforts to the next expansion for Valhalla, temporarily abandoning the creation of the next major installment.

IN A NUTSHELL:

French youtuber j0nathan claims that a new installment of Assassin's Creed - Project Richard - has been temporarily put on hold or even canceled;
According to the leak, Ubisoft has redirected forces to work on the third, as-yet-unannounced expansion for AC: Valhalla;
The new installment of Assassin's Creed is unlikely to be released until 2022.

French youtuber j0nathan, known for leaks and digging up scraps of information from the game files of the Assassin's Creed series, claims that work on the new Assassin's Creed, code-named Project Richard has been put on hold (or even canceled). According to information revealed by the leaker, the team developing the next installment will now deal with another project - the third, still unannounced expansion for Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, currently known as Meteor.

We first heardabout the next DLC for Assassin's Creed: Valhalla almost exactly one month ago. At that time, j0nathan dug up files, the names of which probably refer to the upcoming expansions. Two of them were confirmed in the developers' announcements - Ireland refers to the upcoming Wrath of the Druids, scheduled for next week, while Francia to Siege of Paris, which, according to j0nathan, is scheduled for release this September.

The third codename is Meteor, about which Ubisoft has not said a word so far. According to j0nathan's information, the team previously assigned to Project Richard, which was temporarily suspended or completely canceled, will now work on Meteor. This supposedly happened for two reasons:

Ubisoft's problems related to the pandemic of a certain virus, which effectively prevented the manufacturer from carrying out its ambitious plans;
The desire to stop by Valhalla a little longer and develop the Viking universe, which Ubisoft announced a few weeks ago.

In practice, it means that we shouldn't expect a new installment of Assassin's Creed in the near future. According to j0nathan, Project Richard is unlikely to appear on the market before the end of 2022 or even later. We don't know too much about the game - the French YouTuber claims that it will take us to the period of the Third Crusade (end of the 12th century), during which we will accompany Richard the Lionheart watching the events from the perspective of the English king's guardian. What's interesting, j0nathan claims that we're in for another revolution in the developers' approach to Assassin's Creed - the game is to be more similar in design to Uncharted than to the latest installments. The title would be more linear, and the world divided into semi-open segments.

Although the above rumors sound quite credible, it is worth remembering that these are just rumors. Currently, we can only be sure of the release of the first expansion for Valhalla - Wrath of the Druids - scheduled for May 13, 2021 and The Siege of Paris with an estimated release date this summer. J0nathan also had a few words to say about the aforementioned expansions, which can be summarized by maps of parts of Ireland and France, said to depict the areas of gameplay offered by the upcoming DLCs.

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla has been entertaining (or boring) the players since November, last year, and we can play it on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Google Stadia.