In December 2018, ex was of the dragon creative director Mike Laidlaw joined Ubisoft Quebec to work on an unannounced project. A little over a year later, in January 2020, Laidlaw left the position without explanation. According to a report of BloombergJason Schreier, the cause of Laidlaw’s departure was the cancellation of a code-named project Avalon, an ambitious adventure based on Arthurian legend, by former Ubisoft creative director Serge Hascoët.
According to the Bloomberg report, which quotes anonymous former and current Ubisoft employees who are familiar with the project, Avalon It was a “big budget adventure” that revolved around the many heroic stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Unlike Ubisoft games like Assassin’s CreedRooted in true history, Avalon would have set himself in a world of swords and witchcraft, myths and legends. The game would have an online cooperative element, similar to that of Capcom Monster hunter Serie.
While it seems like the perfect setting for an Ubisoft-style open-world adventure, the report indicates that Ubisoft Creative Director Serge Hascoët disagreed. Not a fan of the fantasy genre, Hascoët reportedly set a very high standard for the project, and told the team that he works on Avalon that he needed to be “better than Tolkien”.
Serge Hascoët resigned from Ubisoft in July of this following year weeks of allegations of sexual misconduct. Currently, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot plays the role of creative director. Hascoët’s departure occurred immediately afterward. widespread reports of misconduct at the Toronto-based study that also resulted in the resignation of Ubisoft head of Canadian studios Yannis Mallat, and the company’s global head of human resources, Cécile Cornet.
Unable to meet Hascoët’s high standards, Laidlaw and his team released new settings for the game, including a science fiction theme and one based on Greek mythology, only to be repeatedly knocked down. For fall 2019, the project was canceled. Mike Laidlaw left Ubisoft in January 2020.
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According to BloombergAccording to the report, developers working on the project were surprised to see the Avalon project hindered simply because a man did not like his environment. That is a lot of power for a person, even in a massive game editor like Ubisoft. Hopefully, the ongoing restructuring of Ubisoft will yield blueprints like Avalon more than a fighting opportunity in the future.
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