[STEAM] Assassin's Creed Actor Didn't Realize He'd Recorded Desmond's Death Scene Until Checking Twitter — And Says The Character Is Technically Still Alive

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Desmond's death in

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was ambiguous enough that voice actor Nolan North didn't realize he'd just recorded the character's last gasp — and now, North has said that the series' original modern day protagonist is "technically" still alive.

North played Desmond in five games until the character's big sacrifice at the end of 2012's Assassin's Creed 3. But despite stepping up to save the world — and collapsing in the process — Desmond's death scene apparently only clicked with North after he checked

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following the game's launch.

"That technically was Desmond's death scene, and I didn't know it," North told

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. "I found out on

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. 'Are you upset Desmond's dead?' And I'm thinking, what? Because there's no 'Argh!' There's nothing that you'd expect from a main character's death, although the good people at Ubisoft have told me that he's not technically dead."

Here, North is likely referring to the ending of

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, where the actor returned to the franchise as a mysterious character named The Reader. Valhalla makes it pretty clear that The Reader is Desmond — or his consciousness which now lives on inside the Animus, at least. And, seemingly, Ubisoft has confirmed this to North.

Desmond's death (or his physical body's demise, at any rate) came as a surprise to some fans who'd followed the character since the franchise's origins. But Ubisoft developers have said that as the Assassin's Creed series grew in scope, each game began to struggle to onboard new players. Following the end of Desmond's arc, the series experimented with other ideas for its modern day sections, and currently pushes players directly into the historical action instead.

"I think the original idea was eight or nine games with Desmond," North continued, referencing Ubisoft's ever-changing original plans for the Assassin's Creed series, "but, as it so often goes in the entertainment industry, different developers, different creative directors come in, and they have their own way of continuing the story — and it's done very, very well.

"I was very sad to step away from the role of Desmond," he concluded, "because Assassin's Creed is one of my favorite stories I've ever been part of."

A recent report suggested

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, and bolster the game's historical sections instead.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky

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