FWIW, this one isn’t just jumping on a trend, it has a whole fucking odyssey behind it.

Patrice Desilets (original director of the Assassin’s Creed series) had a falling out with Ubisoft and left the company to begin developing this game with THQ between 2010 and 2012. In 2012, THQ declared bankruptcy, got chopped up into pieces to sell, and their Montreal studio along with the 1666 Amsterdam IP were bought up by Ubisoft.

Ubisoft fired Desilets as a spite move for his earlier departure and canceled the game. The only real evidence that it even existed in tangible form was an early development reel that leaked a few years later. In the interim, there was a whole big lawsuit, and it somehow eventually ended up with Desilets becoming the rightsholder to Amsterdam 1666 again.

So this game has been in something of a development hell for about 15 years now, and it’s pretty cool to see it finally come to light.