A female protagonist was once devised for Assassin's Creed
Early concept art for the original Assassin's Creed game shows off a once-devised female protagonist designed by artist Khai Nguyen, now available on Ubisoft's official Facebook page for the franchise.
Additional discarded concepts include early co-op gameplay, the first iteration of the famed hidden blade and artwork which dates back to the series' origins as a possible Prince of Persia spin-off.
"The little kid on the horse is supposed to be the 'Prince' of Prince of Persia," Nguyen explains in comments on the Assassin's Creed Facebook. "Because we were all under the illusion that we were making a 'POP -Sands of time' spinoff. The assassin was supposed to be the little prince's bodyguard.''
The team also "debated whether or not co-op was going to make it into the first game," and "were not sure how realistic we wanted the setting to be" in the initial stages of development.
Nguyen's work was drawn in 2004 while the first Assassin's Creed title launched in 2007.
Also released today via AllGamesBeta is an Assassin's Creed concept video titled Prince of Persia: Assassins. The short video, originally part of a show reel by audio director Alain Larose, shows in-game footage of the title from when it was still in development as a spin-off to the Prince of Persia series. In it we see the assassin perform a quick first-person kill, as well as an example of the game's physics engine as stacked wood falls around him mid-combat, before he finally escapes on horseback with a fellow assassin.