For five years, Nolan North lent his voice and personality to Desmond Miles, the central figure of Assassin’s Creed’s modern storyline, yet he only discovered that the character’s journey had ended because of a casual question on Twitter. Ubisoft never clearly told him that Desmond’s arc would be wrapped up in Assassin’s Creed III, so he had to find out after the fact, just like the fans, that his work on the series was over.

For many players, Desmond Miles is inseparable from the era when Assassin’s Creed did more than jump between historical timelines. Through him, the games tied Altaïr, Ezio and the other assassins to a present-day conspiracy thriller, and that modern thread owed a lot of its appeal to North’s performance, mixing cynicism with vulnerability. Casting the actor who also brought Nathan Drake to life in Uncharted helped cement Desmond as a fan favorite.

Voice actors regularly work on huge video game productions, but they often record fragmented dialogue without seeing the full narrative arc. That industry reality is exactly what led to North delivering Desmond’s final lines without realizing that he was closing out an entire chapter of the franchise. While the scripts moved on and the internal plans shifted, Ubisoft’s communication with him stayed surprisingly vague, leaving one of the saga’s key performers to piece together his character’s fate from the finished game and the reaction on social media.

Looking back to the beginnings of Assassin’s Creed, alongside Altaïr and Ezio, the other most beloved character in the saga had a name: Desmond Miles. The character, played by Nolan North, known for his iconic role as Nathan Drake in Uncharted, carved a place in the hearts of players as a cornerstone of the saga in modern times, at least until Assassin’s Creed III. However, while it is true that we were all surprised when the character disappeared, there was someone who was even more surprised: North himself, who did not learn of his death until he checked Twitter.

If you recall, Desmond survived the change of two protagonists in the saga’s past. After playing as Altaïr and Ezio in the first four Ubisoft games, Connor’s arrival marked the end for Desmond, who sacrificed himself in the epilogue of Assassin’s Creed III. Although the scene is quite understated and some might interpret it as a cliffhanger, the ending is clear: we see him complete his sacrifice and die as his actions prevent the apocalypse.

Ubisoft Never Told Nolan North About Desmond’s Fate

It was a pivotal moment that Ubisoft has never gone back to change, but it left North speechless at the time. In an interview with YouTube channel Fall Damage, the American actor recalled the character’s last line: “There’s no time left! It’s already started, I have to do it now, get out of here!” While we, as players, understood that line and the scene as a farewell, that was not the case for North. In that moment he had no idea it was Desmond’s final appearance, because as often happens when recording for video games, actors usually do not see the complete scene they are helping to create.

That is why, when the game was released in 2012 and he still had no clue about the character’s fate and, by extension, his own future in the saga, a fan on Twitter asked him what he thought about Desmond’s death. The question caught him completely off guard. “I found out on Twitter. They said, ‘Are you upset that Desmond died?’ And I was like, ‘What?’” he recalled. According to North, there was no official announcement from Ubisoft and no dramatic signals that a main character was about to be written out of the canon.

Although North later contacted the Ubisoft team to get some clarity, the answers he received were far from definitive. The actor says the company told him that Desmond “wasn’t technically dead” and reminded him that the original idea had been to include the character in eight or nine entries in the series. However, changes in the development team and shifts in creative direction made it impossible to continue Desmond’s story, and he remains dead in the canon 13 years later. Despite the disappointment, North still has a special fondness for both the character and the franchise: “I was very sad to leave the role of Desmond, because Assassin’s Creed is one of my favorite stories I’ve been a part of.”

Source: 3djuegos