Assassin's Creed 3 Twitter fires up with cryptic messaging

Assassin's Creed 3 comes out in late October, but start getting excited now; Ubisoft is, as evidenced by some mysterious happenings on Twitter. Some spoilers of past games through the break.

"He is gone. #16 is no more. And now they begin. To search for one more ," The Assassin's Creed Twitter said today.

"THEY are responsible. Abstergo's to blame. They play with our lives. Like it's only a game. They search for the 'prophet' They’re grasping at straws. Their ill-conceived plans, are riddled with flaws."

The messages were surrounded by sequences of dashes and underscores - morse code is a theme in the games and their marketing - and followed up by a cheerful message from Ubisoft.

"Sorry for the disruption, Assassins. We were experiencing some technical issues, but we're back up to 100% now. Thanks for your patience."

Spoiler time: for those who came in late, Subject 16 was one of Abstergo's captive assassins, subjected to the same forced Animus treatment as Desmond, the current series protagonist. He was killed, but as of Revelations, his mind still existed within the Animus, guiding and protecting Desmond, leaving mysterious puzzles for the player, and possibly sacrificing his fragile hold on sanity to save our hero. Twitter user @m_ath points out that Subject 16's in-game death was today; the Assassin's Creed series has been building towards a 2012 climax.

This isn't the first time Ubisoft marketing has gone a bit bonkers; around the launch of Brotherhood, multiple related Twitter feeds were regularly disrupted by communications from its tie-in Facebook game.

Assassin's Creed 3 arrives on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 30 in the US and October 31 in Europe; a PC launch is expected before the end of the year, with a Wii U release as yet undated.

Thanks, GoNintendo. Twitter links: 1, 2, 3, 4