If you were expecting Assassin's Creed: Origins to boast cooperative play or any other kind of online multiplayer, then it's time to drop that hope. Assassin's Creed: Origins will be a single-player experience, the game's director Ashraf Ismail confirmed during an E3 panel (via VG 24/7).
And yet, it will feature some online functionality, though the nature of that functionality has yet to be announced. These will simply be enhancements, apparently, and are thus unlikely to resemble Watch Dogs 2's random PvP hackings or anything more conventional. Something along the lines of leaderboards seems more likely.
Online multiplayer has never been a huge component of Assassin's Creed games anyway: the multiplayer stuff in Assassin's Creed 3 and Black Flag was decent enough, but it's unlikely anyone is baying for its return.
In other new Ass Creed developments, the new instalment will be (mercifully?) free of those intimidatingly crowded mini-maps, opting instead for a horizontal guider similar to that found in Skyrim.
The panel – embedded below – also featured some new gameplay, though prepare to squint at offscreen footage. Or you could read James' impressions here.