Ubisoft has committed to making a new Assassin's Creed every year for the foreseeable future. And while no longer a trilogy, Assassin's Creed 4 game director Ashraf Ismail says the company has an ending in mind for the franchise. He's just not sure when it will happen.

"We have an idea of where the end is, what the end is," Ismail told Eurogamer. "But of course Yves [Guillemot, Ubisoft's overall boss] announced we are a yearly title, we ship one game a year. So depending on the setting, depending on what fans want, we've given ourselves room to fit more in this arc. But there is an end."

It sounds a bit like padding the middle while waiting for the end-point, but Ismail says there are advantages to this approach. Since multiple teams are juggling the games at the same time, they reference each other and drop hints at future titles. "So for example in [AC4] we have Edward, who was seeded in AC3," he said "But there's a lot more stuff in our game that is hinting at other possibilities."

That could mean that AC4 will introduce some element of the next AC game after Black Flag, which we know is featuring some collaboration from Ubisoft Toronto. And then on and on, until Ubisoft decides to unseal the "ending" envelope and put it into action.