Assassin’s Creed Hexe May Be Losing All Its Supernatural Elements — And It’s Already Lost Two Directors

Assassin’s Creed Hexe has been one of the most genuinely intriguing things Ubisoft has had in the pipeline for years. A return to darker, more grounded stealth. A 16th century European witch hunt setting. A female protagonist seeking revenge. Actual supernatural mechanics that set it apart from anything else in the franchise’s history. And now, according to a leaker with a solid track record on AC stuff, all the magic might be getting ripped out before the game even gets shown properly.

This is either great news or terrible news depending on where you land on what Assassin’s Creed should be — and the community is currently very much split on it.

What the Leak Actually Claims

Known Ubisoft insider j0nathan, who correctly called details on Assassin’s Creed Mirage before it was officially announced, posted on X with some behind-the-scenes context on what’s been happening with Hexe. The core claim: since Jean Guesdon was formally put in charge of the Assassin’s Creed brand in February 2026, he has made the decision to strip everything “magical” from Hexe entirely.

j0nathan’s exact words: “Since Jean Guesdon was put in charge of the Assassin’s Creed franchise in February, he’s decided to get rid of everything that was ‘magical’ in Hexe. For example, we were supposed to control a cat, well, ultimately that’s been canceled.”

The cat possession mechanic was one of the most talked-about leaked features going back to mid-2025 reports. The idea was that protagonist Elsa — who is seeking revenge over her mother’s trial and execution on suspicion of witchcraft — would have the ability to possess a cat, using it to distract guards, explore hidden areas, and solve environmental puzzles. For a game literally about witch hunting, it fit the brief perfectly. Now it’s reportedly gone.

j0nathan also suggested this wasn’t necessarily a permanent decision — a return to the feature isn’t “impossible” if development speeds up — but the current direction under Guesdon is decidedly de-mystified. He also noted that the shift in creative vision may actually help push up the release date by simplifying what the team needs to build. And when directly asked about the rumour that Ezio Auditore could make a surprise appearance in Hexe, j0nathan declined to answer, responding only with a smirking face emoji — which is either a tease or a troll depending on how charitable you’re feeling.

Hexe Has Now Lost Two Directors in Two Months

The magic leak doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It arrives in the middle of a genuinely chaotic stretch of leadership turnover on this project, and understanding that context matters.

Back in late February 2026, Ubisoft confirmed that Clint Hocking — the original creative director of Hexe and a genuine industry veteran known for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2 — had departed from the studio. This was his second exit from Ubisoft after previously leaving in 2010. No reason was given by either side. Ubisoft’s statement was clean and corporate: “We sincerely thank him for his vision, creative contributions, and dedication over the years.” Jean Guesdon stepped in as acting creative director following that announcement.

Then, just this week — barely two months after Hocking’s exit — game director Benoit Richer posted on LinkedIn confirming he was also leaving Ubisoft to cofound Servo Games, described as “an indie studio of industry veterans, aligned around a shared vision.” Richer had been on the project since its early days and also previously served as game director on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, as well as directing Batman: Arkham Origins before joining Ubisoft. His departure is Hexe’s second high-profile exit of the year.

Critically, leakers have tied Richer’s exit directly to Guesdon’s creative direction changes — specifically the decision to strip the supernatural elements from the game. The implication being that Richer wasn’t on board with the new vision, and left rather than deliver it. That’s significant. When a game director walks off a flagship project over creative differences with the new head of the franchise, it suggests the changes being made are substantial enough that key people would rather leave than see them through.

There’s also been a third, somewhat quieter departure — level design director Luc Couture also left Ubisoft around the same period, adding another senior loss to an already unsettled project.

assassin over assassin s creed hexe logo

Who Is Jean Guesdon and Should You Be Worried — or Relieved?

This is actually the most interesting part of the whole situation. Because the reaction to Guesdon taking over and reportedly pulling back the supernatural elements isn’t uniformly negative — a pretty significant chunk of the AC fanbase seems cautiously optimistic about it.

Guesdon is not a rookie. He joined Ubisoft Montreal in 2005, was a production coordinator on the original Assassin’s Creed, and most importantly, was the creative director on two of the franchise’s most beloved entries: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and Assassin’s Creed Origins. Both are widely considered to be among the best games in the series. Black Flag in particular is often held up as the template for what AC can be when it’s firing on all cylinders — tight, focused, historically grounded with enough swashbuckling energy to keep it exciting without losing the plot.

So if you’re someone who’s been saying for years that Assassin’s Creed lost its identity by piling on RPG bloat and fantasy elements, having the Black Flag guy come in and strip the witchcraft mechanics out might sound like exactly what the doctor ordered. Getting the franchise “back to its roots” was the most common positive framing in community discussions following the leak.

The counterargument is obvious: Hexe’s supernatural hook was literally the point. The entire identity of the game as originally pitched — what made people excited about it back when it was revealed in 2022 — was that dark, creepy, witchcraft-adjacent tone that made it feel genuinely different from anything else in the franchise. Removing those elements doesn’t just change the gameplay; it potentially removes what made Hexe worth making as a distinct entry in the first place. If you’re not doing anything supernatural with a protagonist accused of witchcraft during the witch trials, you’re just making another AC game with a different historical backdrop.

Where Is Hexe in Development Right Now?

The honest answer is that it’s hard to say with confidence. Hexe has been in development for years — it was revealed alongside a slate of other games during the Ubisoft Forward showcase in September 2022, making it over three years old as a known quantity — but it’s still without a concrete release date. Late 2027 is the currently circulating window, and with Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced (the remake of Black Flag) serving as the brand’s 2026 release, Hexe is clearly being positioned as the big mainline follow-up.

The leadership turbulence and now the reported direction changes make it hard to know how stable the development is behind closed doors. The good news, per j0nathan’s report, is that simplifying the game’s scope by removing the supernatural systems could actually help the team deliver sooner rather than later. The bad news is that two director departures in two months, with one of them apparently tied to creative disagreements, is not typically a sign of smooth sailing.

Ubisoft themselves haven’t addressed any of this publicly. Guesdon did say recently to “expect a unique, darker, narrative-driven Assassin’s Creed experience, set during a pivotal moment in history,” which is vague enough to apply to basically any direction the game goes. And Ubisoft’s current position is that Hexe continues with a “seasoned team,” which is accurate — Guesdon’s credentials are real — but also tells you nothing about what the game actually is now.

The Fan Divide Is Real

Walk through any AC community space right now and you’ll find the debate running hot. On one side: people who think Hexe was always going to be gimmicky with the cat stuff and that a grounded, Mirage-esque stealth game set during the witch trials sounds brilliant. On the other: people who specifically got excited about Hexe because it promised to do something weird and experimental with the formula, and who see this as Ubisoft getting cold feet again and retreating to safe ground.

Both positions are understandable. Assassin’s Creed as a franchise has been through years of identity confusion — the RPG trilogy of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla divided the fanbase hard, Mirage overcorrected too far in the opposite direction and felt slight, and Shadows tried to split the difference with mixed results. Hexe was supposed to be the one that did something genuinely different. Whether “different” still applies without the magic is a matter of taste.

It’s been a wild week for gaming news all round — Insomniac’s Venom game had its own cancellation-or-not chaos going on yesterday, Sony’s PS4/PS5 DRM situation is still unresolved, and if you’re trying to manage gaming costs through all of this, the Game Pass EA Play trick is still one of the better value moves you can make. As for Hexe — fingers crossed the next major update we get is an actual reveal trailer, not another director exit.