Leaked Assassin's Creed Game Set in Qin Dynasty Canceled by Tencent

A leaked Assassin's Creed prototype from Tencent's TiMi studio reveals a canceled major console title set in the Qin Dynasty, featuring Xiang Yu and a female assassin.

Well, this one hurts. A major Assassin's Creed game you'll probably never play just surfaced online, and it sounds genuinely wild.

According to a report from MP1st, Ubisoft and Tencent were quietly working on a second Assassin's Creed project beyond the already-known mobile game Assassin's Creed Jade. This one was a full major entry for current-gen consoles, codenamed Assassin's Creed: Fate, led by Tencent's TiMi Studio Group. Unfortunately, it got the axe early in development.

The leaked material comes from the personal portfolios of multiple developers who worked on the project, with most of it dating back to a February 2025 prototype build. That timing is why MP1st believes the plug was pulled fairly early on.

Here's where it gets interesting. Like Assassin's Creed Jade, Fate was set during the Qin Dynasty, but slightly later. Jade takes place in 215 BC, while Fate was set in 206 BC. The leaked footage mainly shows a female assassin infiltrating a temple besieged by Xiang Yu and his army to snag a mysterious artifact. There's also early boss fight content involving Xiang Yu himself, plus stealth kills, a Leap of Faith, an umbrella-like spinning weapon, ink-wash style skill icons, and a yin-yang emblem interface.

Other animations show a male character using parkour moves to take down enemies. Given the series' history, that could mean a selectable gender option, though it's also possible he was just a temporary test character during development. The leaked assets also include detailed close-ups of weapons seen in the footage, both the player's unique spinning umbrella weapon and enemy gear like Xiang Yu's imposing halberd.

The report notes that a month before prototyping began, TiMi announced a restructuring, splitting the studio into four teams handling different projects. Assassin's Creed: Fate was canceled shortly after. It wasn't alone, either. A Greek mythology-themed third-person action game called Athena was also scrapped, along with Invictus, a stylized cyberpunk open-world game directed by Assassin's Creed veteran Ashraf Ismail at TiMi's Montreal branch. That studio shut down this February, ending Invictus' development.

These cancellations happened against the backdrop of Tencent's strategic shift. According to Reuters via 2024 reporting, Tencent has been gradually moving away from Western franchises with lower profit margins than domestic products, reassigning developers to casual party games. Assassin's Creed Jade was affected too, with reports of hundreds of developers moved to the party game DreamStar.

So yeah, a Qin Dynasty Assassin's Creed with Xiang Yu boss fights and umbrella weapons is now just a what-if. What do you think, would you have played this one?