I do believe this is high time we had Chess as the mini-game in the next Assassin's Creed game. This is of course a personal opinion and preference, but as the success of the Queen's Gambit TV series showed, people could really get into chess. I also heard rumours that the next game could be based in India, and what better place for chess as the origins of the game are said to go back 1500 years to ancient India and Iran. Opinions everyone?

@augmentum1 As much as I support this idea, it probably won’t happen. Ubisoft had a chance to make a playable version of Tafl for Valhalla, especially as there are some games set up around England (take a look in between the Jomsviking huts in Ravensthorpe for the most immediate example), and sometimes there are players pretending to play. It’s pretty obvious that Ubisoft didn’t want to put in the time and resources to teach players how to play an uncommon board game, which is odd considering that we learned to do so for AC 3 and IV (I’m a big fan of Fanorona, thanks to being exposed to it in those games).

If Chess was going to be introduced in Valhalla, it could have been done during the expansion in Francia, as the first introduction of Chess in Europe was a gift to Charlemagne from a Muslim country (I forgot which). And, one of the chess sets that Charlemagne had ended up in the Saint-Denis basilica, but it’s a shame we never saw it in the game. Chess as a game though would not have been spread throughout Europe until the late 900s and early 1000s, so if the next game were to be set in that time period of after, it is entirely reasonable to have it then.

I’m all for more mini games and activities, anything to enrich the sense of a living breathing world and economy.

A chess match takes WAY to long for a mini game in an action game. No.

This would be acceptable as long as there is an easy setting to make it checkers for people like me.

@lemmie88 I agree. As was the case with other mini-games in previous Assassin's Creed games, there are usually many different level NPCs around the world map that can challenge you to a game, of course almost all of these mini-games would be optional since a casual player who's not into chess would neither want nor care to practice a lot of chess just to be able to progress a quest. Even if one such occasion were to be present in the game where a game of chess would be required to advance a quest, I imagine the developers would set the difficulty to extremely easy or incorporate an option to skip the game entirely. And as for the rest of the chess games, as I mentioned before, they would be presented as optional challenges, also it wouldn't be fair to tie a trophy to these challenges for obvious reasons.

@kormac67 You are not wrong, however, there are many different time formats for a game of chess, two of which are Blitz and Rapid games that are 3 to 5 minutes and 10 to 15 minutes long respectively. We really can't say previous mini-games have been shorter than 10 minutes per game, right? I mean a decent round of Gwent in the Witcher 3 would last almost as long.

@augmentum1 Fair point, but I guess it's never too late to get a chess mini-game in there, since the franchise is apparently not coming to an end any time soon. The games are constantly jumping back and forth in time with each game, and chess has been around for almost 1500 years, so basically it's been around in the time period of lots of the Assassin's Creed games that have been already released and odds are it'll also be present in many that are yet to come. So statistically speaking we're eventually getting chess in one of the possibly hundreds of Assassin's Creed games (!) that Ubisoft is planning to make, right?

@thenorfolkian I loved the addition of mini games to the series, & I'd never even heard of Fanorona before AC3. It's a great game. I prefer playing board games with a physical board, & a real human opponent, but with Fanorona, the fact that the AI tracks all your moves, & doesn't allow you to move onto a place you've already occupied makes it a great game to play in-game. I like to set-up traps where I can make multiple take out's, & I've got a crap memory, so any calls from a real opponent, saying, "You've already been there" would be a pain in the erse!

@Augmentum1 I think the good thing about all the mini-games so far, is that a game can be played usually within 5-10 mins. I have to admit, that I'm not great at Chess (it depends on who I'm up against). But it's a game that can drag on for a bit, so maybe that's the reason it's not been included so far. However, if Chess is included in an AC game in the future, then surely, Backgammon has to feature. That's a great game! But the way Ubisoft "listen to the fans", & make decisions on their next game based on fan's reaction. I'm not entirely sure how well 'Orlog' went down overall with the player base. Personally speaking, once I sussed it out, I really enjoyed the game. Probably the most vocal, are the players that either hated, disliked, or couldn't understand why it was even in the game! I reckon most players that either loved, liked it, or didn't mind it being included have never said a word. The only real problem with Orlog right now, is the fact that it features in the weekly UBICONNECT community challenges. It's back again this week, & the community as a whole have to win 350,000 games, I've played 7 games since Thursday & it doesn't look like the target will be achieved!

So more mini-games including chess & backgammon!