1666: Amsterdam documentary: how Assassin’s Creed creator Patrice Désilets revived his game

There is a fitting symmetry in 1666: Amsterdam. Its antagonists, the Originals, are ancient beings who survive by hiding in plain sight among ordinary people, waiting for their moment to stir. The game has lived much the same way. Patrice Désilets, the creative director behind the original Assassin’s Creed, carried the idea through a studio collapse, a dismissal, a lawsuit and an entire other game before it finally surfaced as something people could play. Now his studio, Panache Digital Games, has turned that long survival into a film of its own.

The Road to Early Access is a half-hour documentary that traces the project from its first idea to its launch. It opens with Désilets’ own path, from his early days at Ubisoft to the founding of Panache in Montréal and the making of Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, the studio’s first game, before circling back to how 1666 found its way into production again. Built from behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the developers, it is presented in French with English subtitles, which suits a story so rooted in Québec’s game industry.

1666: Amsterdam — Noa in a white hood walks a crowded canal-side street of 17th-century Amsterdam by day — Image: Panache Digital Games

The outline of that story is familiar to anyone who follows the medium. Désilets left Ubisoft in 2010 and began 1666 at THQ Montreal; when THQ collapsed, Ubisoft bought the studio and its projects in 2013, and he was dismissed within months. He sued, and in 2016 the two sides settled, with Ubisoft handing the rights and assets back to him. What the documentary promises is the less public half: working through lockdown, the development sprints, the decisions that shaped the game and the build-up to its reveal.

It also follows the team through its biggest year: a trip to Amsterdam itself, the game’s appearance at Summer Game Fest, a stop at Gamescom and, finally, the Early Access launch. Members of the studio talk about what they hoped the project would become, the worries they carried into launch and where they think it goes next. In the announcement, Panache frames the film as a chance to hear directly from the people behind the game and to see how it has evolved over the years.

The game they were building is a third-person, story-led action-adventure set in a supernatural version of the Dutch capital. Players control Noa, a witch charged with tracking down the Originals, the powerful entities hiding among the city’s inhabitants, with her feline companion Aaron at her side. The loop splits the city in two: investigate by day, face its demons by night. It is the kind of design Désilets has long favoured, a world whose internal logic, here history braided with the occult, is the argument rather than the backdrop.

1666: Amsterdam — Noa, in her red Collector robes, faces a demonic Original in a chequered courtyard — Image: Panache Digital Games

1666: Amsterdam launched in Early Access on PC on August 25, 2026, through Steam and the Epic Games Store. Panache says the game will keep evolving throughout that phase, with new content planned and player feedback shaping what comes next. The documentary premiered on October 27, 2026, on the studio’s official YouTube channel.

For a game about things that refuse to stay buried, it is a fitting way to mark the moment it finally came up for air.

Tags: 1666: Amsterdam, Panache Digital Games, Patrice Désilets, Summer Game Fest, Assassin's Creed, video game documentaries