title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: IPA is popular for transcription by linguists. Some American linguists, however, use a mix of IPA with Americanist phonetic notation or use some nonstandard symbols for various reasons. Authors who employ such nonstandard use are encouraged to include a chart or other explanation of their choices, which is good practice in general, as linguists differ in their understanding of the exact meaning of IPA symbols and common conventions change over time.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Many British dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary and some learner's dictionaries such as the "Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary" and the "Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary", now use the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent the pronunciation of words. However, most American (and some British) volumes use one of a variety of pronunciation respelling systems, intended to be more comfortable for readers of English and to be more acceptable across dialects, without the implication of a preferred pronunciation that the IPA might convey. For example, the respelling systems in many American dictionaries (such as "Merriam-Webster") use for IPA and for IPA , reflecting the usual spelling of those sounds in English.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The IPA is also not universal among dictionaries in languages other than English. Monolingual dictionaries of languages with phonemic orthographies generally do not bother with indicating the pronunciation of most words, and tend to use respelling systems for words with unexpected pronunciations. Dictionaries produced in Israel use the IPA rarely and sometimes use the Hebrew alphabet for transcription of foreign words. Bilingual dictionaries that translate from foreign languages into Russian usually employ the IPA, but monolingual Russian dictionaries occasionally use pronunciation respelling for foreign words. The IPA is more common in bilingual dictionaries, but there are exceptions here too. Mass-market bilingual Czech dictionaries, for instance, tend to use the IPA only for sounds not found in Czech.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: IPA letters have been incorporated into the alphabets of various languages, notably via the Africa Alphabet in many sub-Saharan languages such as Hausa, Fula, Akan, Gbe languages, Manding languages, Lingala, etc. Capital case variants have been created for use in these languages. For example, Kabiyè of northern Togo has Ɖ ɖ, Ŋ ŋ, Ɣ ɣ, Ɔ ɔ, Ɛ ɛ, Ʋ ʋ. These, and others, are supported by Unicode, but appear in Latin ranges other than the IPA extensions.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: In the IPA itself, however, only lower-case letters are used. The 1949 edition of the IPA handbook indicated that an asterisk might be prefixed to indicate that a word was a proper name, but this convention was not included in the 1999 "Handbook", which notes the contrary use of the asterisk as a placeholder for a sound or feature that does not have a symbol.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The IPA has widespread use among classical singers during preparation as they are frequently required to sing in a variety of foreign languages. They are also taught by vocal coaches to perfect diction and improve tone quality and tuning. Opera librettos are authoritatively transcribed in IPA, such as Nico Castel's volumes and Timothy Cheek's book "Singing in Czech". Opera singers' ability to read IPA was used by the site "Visual Thesaurus", which employed several opera singers "to make recordings for the 150,000 words and phrases in VT's lexical database ... for their vocal stamina, attention to the details of enunciation, and most of all, knowledge of IPA".


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The International Phonetic Association organizes the letters of the IPA into three categories: pulmonic consonants, non-pulmonic consonants, and vowels.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Pulmonic consonant letters are arranged singly or in pairs of voiceless (tenuis) and voiced sounds, with these then grouped in columns from front (labial) sounds on the left to back (glottal) sounds on the right. In official publications by the IPA, two columns are omitted to save space, with the letters listed among 'other symbols' even though theoretically they belong in the main chart, and with the remaining consonants arranged in rows from full closure (occlusives: stops and nasals), to brief closure (vibrants: trills and taps), to partial closure (fricatives) and minimal closure (approximants), again with a row left out to save space. In the table below, a slightly different arrangement is made: All pulmonic consonants are included in the pulmonic-consonant table, and the vibrants and laterals are separated out so that the rows reflect the common lenition pathway of "stop → fricative → approximant," as well as the fact that several letters pull double duty as both fricative and approximant; affricates may be created by joining stops and fricatives from adjacent cells. Shaded cells represent articulations that are judged to be impossible.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Vowel letters are also grouped in pairs—of unrounded and rounded vowel sounds—with these pairs also arranged from front on the left to back on the right, and from maximal closure at top to minimal closure at bottom. No vowel letters are omitted from the chart, though in the past some of the mid central vowels were listed among the 'other symbols'.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: A pulmonic consonant is a consonant made by obstructing the glottis (the space between the vocal cords) or oral cavity (the mouth) and either simultaneously or subsequently letting out air from the lungs. Pulmonic consonants make up the majority of consonants in the IPA, as well as in human language. All consonants in English fall into this category.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The pulmonic consonant table, which includes most consonants, is arranged in rows that designate manner of articulation, meaning how the consonant is produced, and columns that designate place of articulation, meaning where in the vocal tract the consonant is produced. The main chart includes only consonants with a single place of articulation.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Non-pulmonic consonants are sounds whose airflow is not dependent on the lungs. These include clicks (found in the Khoisan languages and some neighboring Bantu languages of Africa), implosives (found in languages such as Sindhi, Hausa, Swahili and Vietnamese), and ejectives (found in many Amerindian and Caucasian languages).


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Affricates and co-articulated stops are represented by two letters joined by a tie bar, either above or below the letters with no difference in meaning. Affricates are optionally represented by ligatures (e.g. ), though this is no longer official IPA usage because a great number of ligatures would be required to represent all affricates this way. Alternatively, a superscript notation for a consonant release is sometimes used to transcribe affricates, for example for , paralleling ~ . The letters for the palatal plosives and are often used as a convenience for and or similar affricates, even in official IPA publications, so they must be interpreted with care.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Co-articulated consonants are sounds that involve two simultaneous places of articulation (are pronounced using two parts of the vocal tract). In English, the in "went" is a coarticulated consonant, being pronounced by rounding the lips and raising the back of the tongue. Similar sounds are and . In some languages, plosives can be double-articulated, for example in the name of Laurent Gbagbo.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The IPA defines a vowel as a sound which occurs at a syllable center. Below is a chart depicting the vowels of the IPA. The IPA maps the vowels according to the position of the tongue.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The vertical axis of the chart is mapped by vowel height. Vowels pronounced with the tongue lowered are at the bottom, and vowels pronounced with the tongue raised are at the top. For example, (the first vowel in "father") is at the bottom because the tongue is lowered in this position. (the vowel in "meet") is at the top because the sound is said with the tongue raised to the roof of the mouth.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: In a similar fashion, the horizontal axis of the chart is determined by vowel backness. Vowels with the tongue moved towards the front of the mouth (such as , the vowel in "met") are to the left in the chart, while those in which it is moved to the back (such as , the vowel in "but") are placed to the right in the chart.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: In places where vowels are paired, the right represents a rounded vowel (in which the lips are rounded) while the left is its unrounded counterpart.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Diphthongs are typically specified with a non-syllabic diacritic, as in or , or with a superscript for the on- or off-glide, as in or . Sometimes a tie bar is used: , especially if it is difficult to tell if the diphthong is characterized by an on-glide, an off-glide or is variable.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Diacritics are used for phonetic detail. They are added to IPA letters to indicate a modification or specification of that letter's normal pronunciation.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: By being made superscript, any IPA letter may function as a diacritic, conferring elements of its articulation to the base letter. Those superscript letters listed below are specifically provided for by the IPA "Handbook"; other uses can be illustrated with ( with fricative release), ( with affricate onset), (prenasalized ), ( with breathy voice), (glottalized ), ( with a flavor of , i.e. a voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant), ( with diphthongization), (compressed ). Superscript diacritics placed after a letter are ambiguous between simultaneous modification of the sound and phonetic detail at the end of the sound. For example, labialized may mean either simultaneous and or else with a labialized release. Superscript diacritics placed before a letter, on the other hand, normally indicate a modification of the onset of the sound ( glottalized , with a glottal onset). (See .)


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Subdiacritics (diacritics normally placed below a letter) may be moved above a letter to avoid conflict with a descender, as in voiceless . The raising and lowering diacritics have optional spacing forms , that avoid descenders.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The state of the glottis can be finely transcribed with diacritics. A series of alveolar plosives ranging from open-glottis to closed-glottis phonation is:


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: These symbols describe the features of a language above the level of individual consonants and vowels, that is, at the level of syllable, word or phrase. These include prosody, pitch, length, stress, intensity, tone and gemination of the sounds of a language, as well as the rhythm and intonation of speech. Various ligatures of pitch/tone letters and diacritics are provided for by the Kiel convention and used in the IPA "Handbook" despite not being found in the summary of the IPA alphabet found on the one-page chart.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Under capital letters below we will see how a carrier letter may be used to indicate suprasegmental features such as labialization or nasalization. Some authors omit the carrier letter, for e.g. suffixed or prefixed , or place a spacing variant of a diacritic such as or at the beginning or end of a word to indicate that it applies to the entire word.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The old staveless tone letters, which are effectively obsolete, include high , mid , low , rising and falling .


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Officially, the stress marks appear before the stressed syllable, and thus mark the syllable boundary as well as stress (though the syllable boundary may still be explicitly marked with a period). Occasionally the stress mark is placed immediately before the nucleus of the syllable, after any consonantal onset. In such transcriptions, the stress mark does not mark a syllable boundary. The primary stress mark may be doubled for extra stress (such as prosodic stress). The secondary stress mark is sometimes seen doubled for extra-weak stress, but this convention has not been adopted by the IPA. Some dictionaries place both stress marks before a syllable, , to indicate that pronunciations with either primary or secondary stress are heard, though this is not IPA usage.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: There are three boundary markers: for a syllable break, for a minor prosodic break and for a major prosodic break. The tags 'minor' and 'major' are intentionally ambiguous. Depending on need, 'minor' may vary from a foot break to a break in list-intonation to a continuing–prosodic unit boundary (equivalent to a comma), and while 'major' is often any intonation break, it may be restricted to a final–prosodic unit boundary (equivalent to a period). The 'major' symbol may also be doubled, , for a stronger break.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Although not part of the IPA, the following additional boundary markers are often used in conjunction with the IPA: for a mora or mora boundary, for a syllable or syllable boundary, for a morpheme boundary, for a word boundary (may be doubled, , for e.g. a breath-group boundary), for a phrase or intermediate boundary and for a prosodic boundary. For example, C# is a word-final consonant, %V a post-pausa vowel, and T% an IU-final tone (edge tone).


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: are defined in the "Handbook" as "upstep" and "downstep", concepts from tonal languages. However, the upstep symbol can also be used for pitch reset, and the IPA "Handbook" uses it for prosody in the illustration for Portuguese, a non-tonal language.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Phonetic pitch and phonemic tone may be indicated by either diacritics placed over the nucleus of the syllable (e.g., high-pitch ) or by Chao tone letters placed either before or after the word or syllable. There are three graphic variants of the tone letters: with or without a stave, and facing left or facing right from the stave. The stave was introduced with the 1989 Kiel Convention, as was the option of placing a staved letter after the word or syllable, while retaining the older conventions. There are therefore six ways to transcribe pitch/tone in the IPA: i.e., , , , , and for a high pitch/tone. Of the tone letters, only left-facing staved letters and a few representative combinations are shown in the summary on the "Chart", and in practice it is currently more common for tone letters to occur after the syllable/word than before, as in the Chao tradition. Placement before the word is a carry-over from the pre-Kiel IPA convention, as is still the case for the stress and upstep/downstep marks. The IPA endorses the Chao tradition of using the left-facing tone letters, , for underlying tone, and the right-facing letters, , for surface tone, as occurs in tone sandhi, and for the intonation of non-tonal languages. In the Portuguese illustration in the 1999 "Handbook", tone letters are placed before a word or syllable to indicate prosodic pitch (equivalent to global rise and global fall, but allowing more precision), and in the Cantonese illustration they are placed after a word/syllable to indicate lexical tone. Theoretically therefore prosodic pitch and lexical tone could be simultaneously transcribed in a single text, though this is not a formalized distinction.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Rising and falling pitch, as in contour tones, are indicated by combining the pitch diacritics and letters in the table, such as grave plus acute for rising and acute plus grave for falling . Only six combinations of two diacritics are supported, and only across three levels (high, mid, low), despite the diacritics supporting five levels of pitch in isolation. The four other explicitly approved rising and falling diacritic combinations are high/mid rising , low rising , high falling , and low/mid falling .


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The Chao tone letters, on the other hand, may be combined in any pattern, and are therefore used for more complex contours and finer distinctions than the diacritics allow, such as mid-rising , extra-high falling , etc. There are 20 such possibilities. However, in Chao's original proposal, which was adopted by the IPA in 1989, he stipulated that the half-high and half-low letters may be combined with each other, but not with the other three tone letters, so as not to create spuriously precise distinctions. With this restriction, there are 8 possibilities.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The old staveless tone letters tend to be more restricted than the staved letters, though not as restricted as the diacritics. Officially, they support as many distinctions as the staved letters, but typically only three pitch levels are distinguished. Unicode supports default or high-pitch and low-pitch . Only a few mid-pitch tones are supported (such as ), and then only accidentally.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Although tone diacritics and tone letters are presented as equivalent on the chart, "this was done only to simplify the layout of the chart. The two sets of symbols are not comparable in this way." Using diacritics, a high tone is and a low tone is ; in tone letters, these are and . One can double the diacritics for extra-high and extra-low ; there is no parallel to this using tone letters. Instead, tone letters have mid-high and mid-low ; again, there is no equivalent among the diacritics.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The correspondence breaks down even further once they start combining. For more complex tones, one may combine three or four tone diacritics in any permutation, though in practice only generic peaking (rising-falling) and dipping (falling-rising) combinations are used. Chao tone letters are required for finer detail (, etc.). Although only 10 peaking and dipping tones were proposed in Chao's original, limited set of tone letters, phoneticians often make finer distinctions, and indeed an example is found on the IPA Chart. The system allows the transcription of 112 peaking and dipping pitch contours, including tones that are level for part of their length.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Chao tone letters generally appear after each syllable, for a language with syllable tone (), or after the phonological word, for a language with word tone (). The IPA gives the option of placing the tone letters before the word or syllable (, ), but this is rare for lexical tone. (And indeed reversed tone letters may be used to clarify that they apply to the following rather than to the preceding syllable: , .) The staveless letters are not directly supported by Unicode, but some fonts allow the stave in Chao tone letters to be suppressed.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: IPA diacritics may be doubled to indicate an extra degree of the feature indicated. This is a productive process, but apart from extra-high and extra-low tones being marked by doubled high- and low-tone diacritics, and the major prosodic break being marked as a double minor break , it is not specifically regulated by the IPA. (Note that transcription marks are similar: double slashes indicate extra (morpho)-phonemic, double square brackets especially precise, and double parentheses especially unintelligible.)


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: For example, the stress mark may be doubled to indicate an extra degree of stress, such as prosodic stress in English. An example in French, with a single stress mark for normal prosodic stress at the end of each prosodic unit (marked as a minor prosodic break), and a double stress mark for contrastive/emphatic stress: "." Similarly, a doubled secondary stress mark is commonly used for tertiary (extra-light) stress. In a similar vein, the effectively obsolete (though never retired) staveless tone letters were once doubled for an emphatic rising intonation and an emphatic falling intonation .


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Length is commonly extended by repeating the length mark, as in English "shhh!" , or for "overlong" segments in Estonian:


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: (Normally additional degrees of length are handled by the extra-short or half-long diacritic, but the first two words in each of the Estonian examples are analyzed as simply short and long, requiring a different remedy for the final words.)


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: A number of IPA characters are not consistently used for their official values. A distinction between voiced fricatives and approximants is only partially implemented, for example. Even with the relatively recent addition of the palatal fricative and the velar approximant to the alphabet, other letters, though defined as fricatives, are often ambiguous between fricative and approximant. For forward places, and can generally be assumed to be fricatives unless they carry a lowering diacritic. Rearward, however, and are perhaps more commonly intended to be approximants even without a lowering diacritic. and are similarly either fricatives or approximants, depending on the language, or even glottal "transitions", without that often being specified in the transcription.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Another common ambiguity is among the palatal consonants. and are not uncommonly used as a typographic convenience for affricates, typically and , while and are commonly used for palatalized alveolar and . To some extent this may be an effect of analysis, but it is often common for people to match up available letters to the sounds of a language, without overly worrying whether they are phonetically accurate.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: It has been argued that the lower-pharyngeal (epiglottal) fricatives and are better characterized as trills, rather than as fricatives that have incidental trilling. This has the advantage of merging the upper-pharyngeal fricatives together with the epiglottal plosive and trills into a single pharyngeal column in the consonant chart. However, in Shilha Berber the epiglottal fricatives are not trilled. Although they might be transcribed to indicate this, the far more common transcription is , which is therefore ambiguous between languages.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Among vowels, is officially a front vowel, but is more commonly treated as a central vowel. The difference, to the extent it is even possible, is not phonemic in any language.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Three letters are not needed, but are retained due to inertia and would be hard to justify today by the standards of the modern IPA. appears because it is found in English; officially it is a fricative, with terminology dating to the days before 'fricative' and 'approximant' were distinguished. Based on how all other fricatives and approximants are transcribed, one would expect either for a fricative (not how it is actually used) or for an approximant. Indeed, outside of English transcription, that is what is more commonly found in the literature. is another historic remnant. Although a common allophone of [m] in particular It is only phonemically distinct in a single language (Kukuya), a fact that was discovered after it was standardized in the IPA. A number of consonants without dedicated IPA letters are found in many more languages than that; is retained because of its historical use for European languages, where it could easily be normalized to . There have been several votes to retire from the IPA, but so far they have failed. Finally, is officially a simultaneous postalveolar and velar fricative, a realization that does not appear to exist in any language. It is retained because it is convenient for the transcription of Swedish, where it is used for a consonant that has various realizations in different dialects. That is, it is not actually a phonetic character at all, but a phonemic one, which is officially beyond the purview of the IPA alphabet.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: For all phonetic notation, it is good practice for an author to specify exactly what they mean by the symbols that they use.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Superscript IPA letters may be used to indicate secondary articulation, releases and other transitions, shades of sound, epenthetic and incompletely articulated sounds. In 2020, the International Phonetic Association endorsed the encoding of superscript IPA letters in a proposal to the Unicode Commission for broader coverage of the IPA alphabet. The proposal covered all IPA letters that were not yet supported (apart from the tone letters), including the implicit retroflex letters , as well as the two length marks and old-style affricate ligatures. A separate request by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association for an expansion of extIPA coverage endorsed superscript variants of all extIPA fricative letters, specifically for the fricative release of consonants. Unicode placed the new superscript ("modifier") letters in a new Latin Extended-F block.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The Unicode characters for superscript (modifier) IPA and extIPA letters are as follows. Characters for sounds with secondary articulation are set off in parentheses and placed below the base letters:


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The spacing diacritic for ejective consonants, U+2BC, works with superscript letters despite not being superscript itself: . If a distinction needs to be made, the combining apostrophe U+315 may be used: . The spacing diacritic should be used for a baseline letter with a superscript release, such as or , where the scope of the apostrophe includes the non-superscript letter, but the combining apostrophe U+315 might be used to indicate a weakly articulated ejective consonant, where the whole consonant is written as a superscript, or together with U+2BC when separate apostrophes have scope over the base and modifier letters, as in .


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Note that the para-IPA letter for a central reduced vowel, , is supported, but its rounded equivalent, , is not, although in some fonts it might be approximated using the stroke diacritic: .


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The precomposed Unicode rhotic vowel letters are not supported. The rhotic diacritic should be used instead: .


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Superscript length marks can be used for indicating the length of aspiration of a consonant, e.g. . Another option is to double the diacritic: .


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Superscript letters can be meaningfully modified by combining diacritics, just as baseline letters can. For example, a superscript dental nasal is , a superscript voiceless velar nasal is , and labial-velar prenasalization is . Although the diacritic may seem a bit oversized compared to the superscript letter it modifies, e.g. , this can be an aid to legibility, just as it is with the composite superscript c-cedilla and rhotic vowels shown above.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Superscript wildcards are partially supported: e.g. (prenasalized consonant), (prestopped nasal), (fricative release), (epenthetic plosive), (tone-bearing syllable), (liquid or lateral release), (rhotic or resonant release), (off-glide/diphthong), (fleeting vowel). However, superscript for sibilant release and superscript for fleeting/epenthetic click are not supported as of Unicode 16. Other basic Latin superscript wildcards for tone and weak indeterminate sounds, as described below, are mostly supported:


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: A number of IPA letters and diacritics have been retired or replaced over the years. This number includes duplicate symbols, symbols that were replaced due to user preference, and unitary symbols that were rendered with diacritics or digraphs to reduce the inventory of the IPA. The rejected symbols are now considered obsolete, though some are still seen in the literature.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The IPA once had several pairs of duplicate symbols from alternative proposals, but eventually settled on one or the other. An example is the vowel letter , rejected in favor of . Affricates were once transcribed with ligatures, such as (and others not found in Unicode). These have been officially retired but are still used. Letters for specific combinations of primary and secondary articulation have also been mostly retired, with the idea that such features should be indicated with tie bars or diacritics: for is one. In addition, the rare voiceless implosives, , were dropped soon after their introduction and are now usually written . The original set of click letters, , was retired but is still sometimes seen, as the current pipe letters can cause problems with legibility, especially when used with brackets ([ ] or / /), the letter , or the prosodic marks . (For this reason, some publications which use the current IPA pipe letters disallow IPA brackets.)


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Individual non-IPA letters may find their way into publications that otherwise use the standard IPA. This is especially common with:


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: In addition, it is common to see "ad hoc" typewriter substitutions, generally capital letters, for when IPA support is not available, e.g. A for , B for or , D for , or , E for , F or P for , G , I , L , N , O , S , T or , U , V , X , Z , as well as @ for and 7 or ? for . (See also SAMPA and X-SAMPA substitute notation.)


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated "extIPA" and sometimes called "Extended IPA", are symbols whose original purpose was to accurately transcribe disordered speech. At the Kiel Convention in 1989, a group of linguists drew up the initial extensions, which were based on the previous work of the PRDS (Phonetic Representation of Disordered Speech) Group in the early 1980s. The extensions were first published in 1990, then modified, and published again in 1994 in the "Journal of the International Phonetic Association", when they were officially adopted by the ICPLA. While the original purpose was to transcribe disordered speech, linguists have used the extensions to designate a number of sounds within standard communication, such as hushing, gnashing teeth, and smacking lips, as well as regular lexical sounds such as lateral fricatives that do not have standard IPA symbols.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: In addition to the Extensions to the IPA for disordered speech, there are the conventions of the Voice Quality Symbols, which include a number of symbols for additional airstream mechanisms and secondary articulations in what they call "voice quality".


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Capital letters and various characters on the number row of the keyboard are commonly used to extend the alphabet in various ways.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: There are various punctuation-like conventions for linguistic transcription that are commonly used together with IPA. Some of the more common are:


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Full capital letters are not used as IPA symbols, except as typewriter substitutes (e.g. N for , S for , O for – see SAMPA). They are, however, often used in conjunction with the IPA in two cases:


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Wildcards are commonly used in phonology to summarize syllable or word shapes, or to show the evolution of classes of sounds. For example, the possible syllable shapes of Mandarin can be abstracted as ranging from (an atonic vowel) to (a consonant-glide-vowel-nasal syllable with tone), and word-final devoicing may be schematized as → /_#. In speech pathology, capital letters represent indeterminate sounds, and may be superscripted to indicate they are weakly articulated: e.g. is a weak indeterminate alveolar, a weak indeterminate velar.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: There is a degree of variation between authors as to the capital letters used, but for {consonant}, for {vowel} and for {nasal} are ubiquitous in English-language material. Other common conventions are for {tone/accent} (tonicity), for {plosive}, for {fricative}, for {sibilant}, for {glide/semivowel}, for {lateral} or {liquid}, for {rhotic} or {resonant/sonorant}, for {obstruent}, for {click}, for {open, front, back, close, rounded vowel} and for {labial, alveolar, post-alveolar/palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, glottal consonant}, respectively, and for {any sound}. The letters can be modified with IPA diacritics, for example for {ejective}, for {implosive}, or for {prenasalized consonant}, for {nasal vowel}, for {aspirated CV syllable with high tone}, for {voiced sibilant}, for {voiceless nasal}, or for {affricate}, for {palatalized consonant} and for {dental consonant}. , , are also commonly used for high, mid and low tone, with for rising tone and for falling tone, rather than transcribing them overly precisely with IPA tone letters or with ambiguous digits.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Typical examples of archiphonemic use of capital letters are for the Turkish harmonic vowel set }; for the conflated flapped middle consonant of American English "writer" and "rider"; for the homorganic syllable-coda nasal of languages such as Spanish and Japanese (essentially equivalent to the wild-card usage of the letter); and in cases where a phonemic trill and flap are indeterminate, as in Spanish "enrejar" (the "n" is homorganic and the first "r" is a trill but the second is variable). Similar usage is found for "phonemic" analysis, where a language does not distinguish sounds that have separate letters in the IPA. For instance, Castillian Spanish has been analyzed as having phonemes and , which surface as and in voiceless environments and as and in voiced environments (e.g. "hazte" , → , vs "hazme" , → ; or "las manos" , → ).


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: , and have completely different meanings as Voice Quality Symbols, where they stand for "voice" (generally meaning secondary articulation, as in "nasal voice", not phonetic voicing), "falsetto" and "creak". They may also take diacritics that indicate what kind of voice quality an utterance has, and may be used to extract a suprasegmental feature that occurs on all susceptible segments in a stretch of IPA. For instance, the transcription of Scottish Gaelic 'cat' and 'cats' (Islay dialect) can be made more economical by extracting the suprasegmental labialization of the words: and . The usual wildcard X or C might be used instead of V so that the reader does not misinterpret as meaning that only vowels are labialized (i.e. for all segments labialized, for all consonants labialized), or the carrier letter may be omitted altogether (e.g. , or ). (See for other transcription conventions.)


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The blank cells on the IPA chart can be filled without much difficulty if the need arises. The expected retroflex letter forms have appeared in the literature for the retroflex implosive , the retroflex lateral flap and the retroflex clicks ; the first is mentioned in the IPA "Handbook" and the IPA requested Unicode support for superscript variants of all three. The missing voiceless lateral fricatives are provided for by the extIPA. The epiglottal trill is arguably covered by the generally trilled epiglottal "fricatives" . Labiodental plosives appear in some old Bantuist texts. "Ad hoc" near-close central vowels are used in some descriptions of English. Diacritics can duplicate some of these; are now universal for labiodental plosives, are common for the central vowels and is occasionally seen for the lateral flap. Diacritics are able to fill in most of the remainder of the charts. If a sound cannot be transcribed, an asterisk may be used, either as a letter or as a diacritic (as in sometimes seen for the Korean "fortis" velar).


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Representations of consonant sounds outside of the core set are created by adding diacritics to letters with similar sound values. The Spanish bilabial and dental approximants are commonly written as lowered fricatives, and respectively. Similarly, voiced lateral fricatives would be written as raised lateral approximants, ; extIPA provides for the first of these. A few languages such as Banda have a bilabial flap as the preferred allophone of what is elsewhere a labiodental flap. It has been suggested that this be written with the labiodental flap letter and the advanced diacritic, .


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Similarly, a labiodental trill would be written (bilabial trill and the dental sign), and labiodental stops rather than with the "ad hoc" letters sometimes found in the literature. Other taps can be written as extra-short plosives or laterals, e.g. , though in some cases the diacritic would need to be written below the letter. A retroflex trill can be written as a retracted , just as non-subapical retroflex fricatives sometimes are. The remaining consonants – the uvular laterals ( "etc.") and the palatal trill – while not strictly impossible, are very difficult to pronounce and are unlikely to occur even as allophones in the world's languages.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The vowels are similarly manageable by using diacritics for raising, lowering, fronting, backing, centering, and mid-centering. For example, the unrounded equivalent of can be transcribed as mid-centered , and the rounded equivalent of as raised or lowered (though for those who conceive of vowel space as a triangle, simple already is the rounded equivalent of ). True mid vowels are lowered or raised , while centered and (or, less commonly, ) are near-close and open central vowels, respectively. The only known vowels that cannot be represented in this scheme are vowels with unexpected roundedness, which would require a dedicated diacritic, such as protruded and compressed (or protruded and compressed ).


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: An IPA symbol is often distinguished from the sound it is intended to represent, since there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between letter and sound in broad transcription, making articulatory descriptions such as "mid front rounded vowel" or "voiced velar stop" unreliable. While the "Handbook of the International Phonetic Association" states that no official names exist for its symbols, it admits the presence of one or two common names for each. The symbols also have nonce names in the Unicode standard. In many cases, the names in Unicode and the IPA "Handbook" differ. For example, the "Handbook" calls "epsilon", while Unicode calls it "small letter open e".


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The traditional names of the Latin and Greek letters are usually used for unmodified letters. Letters which are not directly derived from these alphabets, such as , may have a variety of names, sometimes based on the appearance of the symbol or on the sound that it represents. In Unicode, some of the letters of Greek origin have Latin forms for use in IPA; the others use the characters from the Greek block.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: For diacritics, there are two methods of naming. For traditional diacritics, the IPA notes the name in a well known language; for example, is "e-acute", based on the name of the diacritic in English and French. Non-traditional diacritics are often named after objects they resemble, so is called "d-bridge".


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Geoffrey Pullum and William Ladusaw list a variety of names in use for IPA symbols, both current and retired, in their "Phonetic Symbol Guide"; many of these found their way into Unicode.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Unicode supports nearly all of the IPA alphabet. Apart from basic Latin and Greek and general punctuation, the primary blocks are IPA Extensions, Spacing Modifier Letters and Combining Diacritical Marks, with lesser support from Phonetic Extensions, Phonetic Extensions Supplement, Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement, and scattered characters elsewhere. The extended IPA is supported primarily by those blocks and Latin Extended-G.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: After the Kiel Convention in 1989, most IPA symbols were assigned an identifying number to prevent confusion between similar characters during the printing of manuscripts. The codes were never much used and have been superseded by Unicode.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Many typefaces have support for IPA characters, but good diacritic rendering remains rare. Web browsers generally do not need any configuration to display IPA characters, provided that a typeface capable of doing so is available to the operating system.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: The ubiquitous Arial and Times New Roman fonts include IPA characters, but they are neither complete (especially Arial) nor render diacritics properly. The basic Latin Noto fonts are better, only failing with the more obscure characters. The proprietary Calibri font, which is the default font of Microsoft Office, has nearly complete IPA support with good diacritic rendering.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Typefaces that provide nearly full IPA support and properly render diacritics include Gentium Plus, Charis SIL, Doulos SIL, and Andika.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: In addition to the support found in other fonts, these fonts support the full range of old-style (pre-Kiel) staveless tone letters, which do not have dedicated Unicode support, through an option to suppress the stave of the Chao tone letters.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Several systems have been developed that map the IPA symbols to ASCII characters. Notable systems include SAMPA and X-SAMPA. The usage of mapping systems in on-line text has to some extent been adopted in the context input methods, allowing convenient keying of IPA characters that would be otherwise unavailable on standard keyboard layouts.


title: International Phonetic Alphabet

text: Online IPA keyboard utilities are available, though none of them cover the complete range of IPA symbols and diacritics. In April 2019, Google's Gboard for Android added an IPA keyboard to its platform. For iOS there are multiple free keyboard layouts available, e.g. "IPA Phonetic Keyboard".


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: The Book of Boba Fett is an American space Western television series created by Jon Favreau for the streaming service Disney+. It is part of the "Star Wars" franchise and a spin-off from the series "The Mandalorian", taking place in the same timeframe as that series and its other interconnected spin-offs after the events of "Return of the Jedi" (1983). "The Book of Boba Fett" follows bounty hunter Boba Fett from "The Mandalorian" and other "Star Wars" media as he establishes himself as the new crime lord of Jabba the Hutt's former territory.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: Temuera Morrison stars as the title character, with Ming-Na Wen and Pedro Pascal also starring. All reprise their roles from "The Mandalorian" and other "Star Wars" media. A standalone "Star Wars" film centered on Boba Fett was in early development at Lucasfilm before the company began prioritizing streaming series such as "The Mandalorian". A potential spin-off series was first reported in November 2020 and was officially announced in December. Filming had begun by that point, and lasted until June 2021. In addition to Favreau, Dave Filoni, Kathleen Kennedy, and Colin Wilson return from "The Mandalorian" as executive producers and are joined by Robert Rodriguez, who directed three episodes.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: "The Book of Boba Fett" premiered on December 29, 2021, and ran for seven episodes until February 9, 2022. The series has received generally mixed reviews from critics.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: Boba Fett and Fennec Shand attempt to make a name for themselves in the galaxy's underworld by taking over the territory once controlled by Jabba the Hutt.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: Additionally, director Robert Rodriguez voices the Trandoshan crime boss Dokk Strassi (physically portrayed by Stephen Oyoung), and the Ithorian Mayor of Mos Espa, Mok Shaiz. Frank Trigg and Collin Hymes portray the two Gamorrean guards in Fett's service. Mandy Kowalski and Skyler Bible appear as Camie Marstrap and Laze "Fixer" Loneozner, respectively, characters originally portrayed by Koo Stark and Anthony Forrest in a deleted scene from "Star Wars" (1977). Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and Jon Favreau both reprise their "Mandalorian" roles as Captain Carson Teva and the voice of Paz Vizsla, respectively, with Vizsla portrayed by Tait Fletcher. Max Lloyd-Jones, who served as the Luke Skywalker stand-in on "The Mandalorian", appears as Lieutenant Reed. W. Earl Brown also reprises his role as Taanti, the Weequay proprietor in Freetown. Also returning from "The Mandalorian" is the character Grogu, a young Force-sensitive member of Yoda's species who was previously guarded by Djarin. Skywalker's droid R2-D2 also appears.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: Sam Witwer, the voice actor for Darth Maul in previous "Star Wars" media, provides the uncredited voice of a Rodian prisoner, while frequent "Star Wars" voice actor Stephen Stanton provides the uncredited voice of a Pyke traveler with Alfred Hsing performing on set. Phil LaMarr provides the voice for the Pyke and Klatooinian bosses, and Will Kirby makes a cameo appearance as Karales, a former bounty hunter at the Sanctuary.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: In February 2013, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced the development of several "Star Wars" standalone spin-off films. One was reportedly centered on the bounty hunter character Boba Fett, and would either take place between "Star Wars" (1977) and "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) or "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" (1983). The film was also said to explore the other bounty hunters seen in "The Empire Strikes Back". In early 2014, Simon Kinberg approached director Josh Trank about making a "Star Wars" film, and Trank made a pitch for a Boba Fett film to "Star Wars" producer Lucasfilm; he was hired to direct that June. Trank was scheduled to announce the film at "Star Wars" Celebration Anaheim in April 2015, and also reveal a teaser for the project, but this was canceled at the last minute after Lucasfilm became aware of the troubled production on Trank's film "Fantastic Four" (2015). By May 2015, Trank was no longer working on the film. A Boba Fett film was reportedly still being considered by Lucasfilm as of August 2017. Following the financial failure of the film "" (2018), Disney reconsidered their "Star Wars" film output. By October 2018, the Boba Fett film was no longer moving forward, and Lucasfilm was prioritizing the Disney+ streaming series "The Mandalorian" instead.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: Iger said in February 2020 that spin-offs of "The Mandalorian" were being considered, and there was potential to add more characters to the series with the intention of then giving them their own series. In May, Temuera Morrison was set to appear as Boba Fett in the second season of "The Mandalorian". Morrison portrayed Boba's father Jango Fett in "" (2002), and went on to provide the voice of Boba in various "Star Wars" media. Before Morrison's involvement in "The Mandalorian" was confirmed, Fett briefly appeared in the first season episode "" alongside the character Fennec Shand, portrayed by Ming-Na Wen. Morrison has a brief role in the second-season premiere, "", before being fully introduced in "", directed by Robert Rodriguez.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: By early November 2020, production on either the third season of "The Mandalorian" or a potential spin-off series focusing on Boba Fett was believed to be scheduled to begin later that month or in early December. A Boba Fett spin-off series was not announced by Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy at Disney's Investor Day event on December 10, when "The Mandalorian" spin-offs "Rangers of the New Republic" and "Ahsoka" were announced; Kennedy said those series exist within "The Mandalorian"s timeline and were planned to culminate in a "climactic story event". Kennedy did announce that the "next chapter" of "The Mandalorian" story would premiere in December 2021.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: "The Mandalorian"s second-season finale, "", was released later in December 2020. It includes a "surprise end-credit sequence" that revealed "The Book of Boba Fett" was coming December 2021. This led to some confusion and speculation among commentators who believed this was a subtitle for the third season of "The Mandalorian", and that "The Mandalorian" would be switching focus from its title character Din Djarin to Boba Fett with the third season. Jon Favreau, "The Mandalorian"s creator and showrunner, soon clarified that "The Book of Boba Fett" was its own series, separate from the third season of "The Mandalorian". He explained that the spin-off was not announced by Kennedy at the Investor Day event because they did not want to "spoil the surprise" of the reveal at the end of "Chapter 16: The Rescue". He added that production had already begun on the spin-off. It is executive produced by Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Rodriguez, with Favreau writing all seven episodes of the series and co-writing the sixth with Filoni. Like the other spin-offs, "The Book of Boba Fett" is also set within the timeline of "The Mandalorian", and has been described as ""The Mandalorian" season 2.5". The production referred to each episode of "The Book of Boba Fett" as if it was a third season of "The Mandalorian"; for example, the first episode was referred to as "301" rather than the typical "101" for a series' first episode. The series consists of seven episodes.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: When production on the series was first reported, Sophie Thatcher was said to be joining the "Mandalorian" franchise but it was unknown in which series she would appear. With the series' official announcement in December 2020, Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen were confirmed to be reprising their respective roles of Boba Fett and Fennec Shand from "The Mandalorian" and other previous "Star Wars" media. Before then, Wen assumed that she was hired as a series regular for the third season of "The Mandalorian". Jennifer Beals was revealed to have a role in the series in November 2021, and Thatcher was confirmed to be appearing in this series in January 2022. The character Krrsantan, a Wookiee bounty hunter introduced in Marvel Comics' "Star Wars" comic books, also appears in the series, portrayed by Carey Jones, while Corey Burton reprises his role as the voice of Cad Bane from the animated series "" and "" for the character's live-action debut.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: Additional characters from "The Mandalorian" appear, including Pedro Pascal as Din Djarin / The Mandalorian, Emily Swallow as the Armorer, Amy Sedaris as Peli Motto, Favreau as the voice of Paz Vizsla, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Carson Teva, Timothy Olyphant as Cobb Vanth, Grogu, Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano, Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, and W. Earl Brown as the Weequay bartender.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: Filming for the series began by late November 2020, under the working title "Buccaneer", on the StageCraft video wall volume in Los Angeles that is also used for "The Mandalorian". COVID-19 safety guidelines were followed on set, with crew members wearing masks and face shields around actors, rapid testing for COVID-19 every three days, and normal testing for the virus once a week. After two weeks of filming, members of the cast and crew learned that they were making "The Book of Boba Fett" rather than "The Mandalorian" season three. Rodriguez directed three episodes of the series, with Steph Green, Kevin Tancharoen, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Filoni also directing an episode each. Dean Cundey, David Klein, and Paul Hughen served as cinematographers on the series. Filming wrapped by June 8, 2021, with the "Obi-Wan Kenobi" series taking over the Los Angeles soundstages.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: Industrial Light & Magic, Ghost VFX, Important Looking Pirates, Hybride, and SSVFX provide visual effects for the series.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: By late September 2021, scoring sessions for the series had begun with "The Mandalorian" composer Ludwig Göransson returning for "The Book of Boba Fett". Joseph Shirley, who provided additional music on "The Mandalorian", was also involved and was expected to receive composer credit. Göransson is credited as having composed the main themes for the series, with Shirley credited as composer. Walt Disney Records released Göransson's main theme for the series as a digital single on December 28, 2021, and Swedish media commented on the similarity between the theme and Björn Isfält's music for the film "Ronia, the Robber's Daughter" (1984). Shirley's score was released in two volumes: music from "Chapter 1" through "Chapter 4" was released on January 21, 2022, and a second soundtrack for "Chapter 5" through "Chapter 7" was released on February 11.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: The series premiered on Disney+ on December 29, 2021, and consists of seven episodes that were released weekly until February 9, 2022.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: According to Whip Media, "The Book of Boba Fett" was the most anticipated new television series of December 2021. According to Samba TV, 1.7 million US households watched the debut of "The Book of Boba Fett" in its first 5 days following the December 29, 2021, release. The season finale had the highest viewership of a Star Wars Disney+ series to date, with "Deadline Hollywood" reporting that the finale was viewed by 1.5 million, 36% more than "The Mandalorian" season 2 finale. According to Whip Media, "The Book of Boba Fett" was the most watched original series across all platforms in the United States, during the week January 16, 2022, as well and during the week of February 6, 2022. According to the streaming aggregator JustWatch, "The Book of Boba Fett" was the 4th most streamed television series across all platforms in the United States, during the week ending February 13, 2022.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 66% based on 200 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10, with the critical consensus stating: ""The Book of Boba Fett" could never match the adventures that existed in fans' imaginations for decades, but it earns its commission with spectacular set pieces and Temuera Morrison's commanding presence." Metacritic gave the series a weighted average score of 59 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: Daniel D'Addario of "Variety" praised the narrative, visuals, and performances. "Polygon"s David Grossman said that the first episode showed the "desperate side of "Star Wars"". Maggie Lovitt at "Collider" expressed that the second episode "delivered one of the best and most thematically rich episodes of "Star Wars" television to date". Hannah Flint of "IGN" stated that without Morrison portraying Fett the show might have been a total failure, saying, "Morrison's plain-speaking, humane antihero keeps you endeared to Boba's story". "NME"s Jesse Hassenger said the show was really "season 2.5 of "The Mandalorian"" and that it "had a baffling structure, with poorly integrated flashbacks that halted abruptly halfway through the season and an equally sudden swerve away from Boba Fett himself shortly thereafter." Nick Wanserski of "The A.V. Club" said that the show was "very watchable", but that it ended the same way it started: "a mess". "The Ringer" staff opined that excluding Fett from the series' penultimate two episodes negatively impacted the finale, with general praise for the tie-in to "The Mandalorian" (including Grogu's appearance) and Cad Bane's live-action debut (excluding his death); some opined that Fett is better in a supporting role.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: Wanserski also said that the train heist scene was "rad", while Rohan Nahaar of "The Indian Express" criticized it. Flint stated that the decision to kill off the Tuskens was an "obvious and lazy one". The cyborg gang was negatively compared to the Power Rangers. The digitally Luke was considered an improvement from his appearance in "The Mandalorian", but some considered the special effect off-putting.


title: The Book of Boba Fett

text: In April 2022, a "Disney Gallery" episode for the series was announced, which was released on May 4, 2022.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: Assassin's Creed is an open-world, action-adventure, and stealth game franchise published by Ubisoft and developed mainly by its studio Ubisoft Montreal using the game engine Anvil and its more advanced derivatives. Created by Patrice Désilets, Jade Raymond, and Corey May, the "Assassin's Creed" video game series depicts a fictional millennia-old struggle between the Order of Assassins, who fight for peace and free will, and the Knights Templar, who desire peace through order and control. The series features historical fiction, science fiction, and fictional characters intertwined with real-world historical events and historical figures. In most games, players control a historical Assassin while also playing as an Assassin Initiate or someone caught in the Assassin–Templar conflict in the present-day framing story. Considered a spiritual successor to the "Prince of Persia" series, "Assassin's Creed" took inspiration from the novel "Alamut" by the Slovenian writer Vladimir Bartol, based on the historical Hashashin sect of the medieval Middle East.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: The first "Assassin's Creed" was released in 2007, and it has featured twelve main games in total, the most recent being "Assassin's Creed Valhalla" in 2020. Main games in the "Assassin's Creed" series are set in an open world and played from the third-person view. Gameplay revolves around combat, stealth, and exploration, including the use of parkour to navigate the environment. The games feature both main and side missions, and some titles also include competitive and cooperative multiplayer game modes.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: A new story and occasionally new time periods are introduced in each entry, with the gameplay elements also evolving. There are three overarching story arcs in the series. The first five main games follow Desmond Miles, a descendant of several important Assassins throughout history, who uses a machine called the Animus to relive his ancestors' memories and find powerful artifacts called Pieces of Eden while also attempting to prevent a catastrophic event, referencing the 2012 phenomenon, said to wipe out humanity by the end of 2012. From "" to "Assassin's Creed Syndicate", Assassin initiates and employees of Abstergo (a company used as a front by the modern-day Templars) record genetic memories using the Helix software, helping the Templars and Assassins find new Pieces of Eden in the modern world. The most recent games, "Assassin's Creed Origins", "Assassin's Creed Odyssey", and "Valhalla", follow ex-Abstergo employee Layla Hassan on her own quest to save humanity from another disaster.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: The main games in the "Assassin's Creed" franchise have received generally positive reviews for their ambition in visuals, game design, and narratives, with criticism for the yearly release cycle and frequent bugs, as well as the prioritising of role-playing mechanics in later titles. The series has received multiple awards and nominations, including multiple Game of the Year awards. It is commercially successful, selling over 200 million copies , becoming Ubisoft's best-selling franchise and one of the highest selling video game franchises of all time. While main titles are produced for major consoles and desktop platforms, multiple spin-off games have been released for consoles, mobiles, and handheld platforms. A series of art books, encyclopedias, comics, novelizations, and novels have been also been published. A live-action film adaptation of the series, titled "Assassin's Creed", was released in 2016.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: While the games in the series have had several narrative arcs, Ubisoft views the series as currently having three periods of development and design philosophy. Phase one, covering up to "Assassin's Creed Syndicate", featured games structured around single-player content, and while centering on open world spaces and several role-playing elements, were more action-adventure and stealth-oriented. Period two, covering from "Assassin's Creed Origins" to "Assassin's Creed Mirage", brought in more role-playing elements and live-service features to increase player engagement. Period three will launch with "Assassin's Creed: Red", using lessons from the second period of development to make engrossing single-player games similar to the original titles but with features to allow players to share achievements and content with others, all to be backed by the "Infinity" hub system.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: The first "Assassin's Creed" game originated out of ideas for a sequel for Ubisoft's video game "", aiming for the seventh generation of video game consoles. The Ubisoft Montreal team decided to take the gameplay from "The Sands of Time" into an open-world approach, taking advantage of the improved processing power to render larger spaces and crowds. Narratively, the team wanted to move away from the Prince being someone next in line for the throne but to have to work for it; combined with research into secret societies led them to focus on the Order of Assassins, based upon the historical Hashashin sect of Ismaili, who were followers of Shia Islam, heavily borrowing from the novel "Alamut". Ubisoft developed a narrative where the player would control an Assassin escorting a non-playable Prince, leading them to call this game "Prince of Persia: Assassin". Ubisoft was apprehensive to a "Prince of Persia" game without the Prince as the playable character, but this led the marketing division to suggest the name "Assassin's Creed", playing off the creed of the Assassins, "nothing is true; everything is permitted". Ubisoft Montreal ran with this in creating a new intellectual property, eliminating the Prince, and basing it around the Assassins and the Knights Templar in the Holy Land during the 12th century. Additionally, in postulating what other assassinations they could account for throughout history, they came onto the idea of genetic memory and created the Animus device and modern storyline elements. This further allowed them to explain certain facets of gameplay, such as accounting for when the player character is killed, similar to "The Sands of Time".


title: Assassin's Creed

text: After "Assassin's Creed" was released in 2007, Ubisoft Montreal said they looked to "rework the global structure" in developing the sequel, "Assassin's Creed II". They felt that parkour was underutilized in the first game and designed the world in the sequel to feature freerun highways to make it easier to enter into parkour moves, for example using rooftops to escape pursuits. The change in setting meant that the game would feature a new cast of characters, including a new protagonist, Ezio Auditore da Firenze. "Assassin's Creed II" also brought in more use of crowds to hide in plain sight that the developers had seen used in "", adding more to the concept of social stealth as a gameplay option. Finally, Ubisoft Montreal completely reworked the repetitive mission structure from the first game through numerous side activities, collectibles, and secrets. These additions became a central part of the series going forward as well as other Ubisoft games like "Watch Dogs", "Far Cry", and "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon". "Assassin's Creed II" was followed by two sequels, "" and "", which also featured Ezio as the main protagonist and introduced the ability for players to recruit NPCs as Assassins and manage them in missions.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Assassin's Creed III" originated from both Ubisoft Montreal, who wanted to progress the series' narrative forward in time, and to an unattached project that had been developed at Ubisoft Singapore and featured naval ship combat. As the main team had settled into the American Revolution period for the game, they found the ship-to-ship combat system fitted with the story and redesigned the setting to incorporate it further. Another major change in "Assassin's Creed III" was transitioning the parkour and freerun systems to work in the natural woodlands of 18th-century Massachusetts and New York. This further allowed the adding of trees and other vegetation within the city areas themselves, not just as part of the parkour systems, but to add more varied environments, which would continue as part of the series' ongoing design.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: For "Assassin's Creed III"s sequel, "", the Ubisoft team built upon the foundation of its predecessor, particularly with regards to the naval gameplay, merging it seamlessly with the land-based gameplay. The team also used the game as a chance to address aspects of the series' storyline. Choosing to focus on an outsider's perspective to the Assassin–Templar conflict, they set the game around the Golden Age of Piracy, with the protagonist, Edward Kenway, initially starting out as a pirate who initially becomes involved in the conflict with the prospect of wealth. Similarly, after the conclusion of Desmond Miles' story arc in "Assassin's Creed III", the modern-day segments put players in the role of a nameless individual. The team chose this approach because they believed it allowed players to more easily identify themselves in their character. This trend would continue in the series until "Assassin's Creed Syndicate".


title: Assassin's Creed

text: Development of "Assassin's Creed Unity" began shortly after the completion of "Brotherhood" in 2010, with the core development team splitting off during the early stages of development on "Assassin's Creed III". As the first game in the series to be released exclusively for the eighth generation of video game consoles, "Unity" featured a graphical and gameplay overhaul. The setting chosen for the game was Paris during the early years of the French Revolution, with players taking control of a new Assassin named Arno Dorian. After "Unity", Ubisoft released "Assassin's Creed Syndicate" in 2015.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: After "Syndicate", Ubisoft recognized that the series needed a major reinvention across both gameplay and narrative. It was decided to make the next game, "Assassin's Creed Origins", closer to a role-playing video game than a stealth-action game, which would also bring a game with many more hours of play than previous titles. Some long-standing features of the series were eliminated for this purpose, such as the social stealth mechanic. This changed how missions were presented — rather than being linearly directed through the Animus, the player character could meet various quest givers in the game's world to receive missions. From the narrative side, Ubisoft placed the game before the formation of the Assassin Brotherhood in Ancient Egypt to make the player character, Bayek of Siwa, a medjay that people would respect and seek the help of. The modern-day storyline also shifted back to a single character, Layla Hassan. The developers limited the number of playable sequences for her character compared to previous games but gave them more meaning, such as allowing the player to explore Layla's laptop with background information on the game's universe.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Origins" was followed in 2018 by "Assassin's Creed Odyssey", which shifted the setting to Classical Greece and followed a similar approach to its predecessor but with more emphasis on the role-playing elements. 2020's "Assassin's Creed Valhalla", set in Medieval England and Norway during the Viking Age, continued the same style as "Origins" and "Odyssey". The developers recognized feedback from the previous two games and brought back the social stealth elements, as well as the concept of a customizable home base that was first introduced in "Assassin's Creed II".


title: Assassin's Creed

text: In 2022, Ubisoft announced several additional games for the series. "Assassin's Creed Infinity" has been described by its executive producer, Marc-Alexis Côté, as a "new design philosophy" for the series, as well as a hub that will provide the releases of future games. The first two games to be included in "Infinity" will be "Assassin's Creed: Red", set in Feudal Japan, and "Assassin's Creed: Hexe", rumoured to be set in Central Europe in the 16th century. Ubisoft also announced "Assassin's Creed Mirage", which is set before the events of "Valhalla" and is intended to bring the series back to its stealth game-oriented roots. The game is expected to release in 2023, and is set in Baghdad twenty years before the events of "Valhalla".


title: Assassin's Creed

text: The "Assassin's Creed" games are centered around one or more fictional members of the Order of the Assassins. Their memories are experienced by an in-game character in the modern-day period through a device called the Animus and its derivations. The Animus allows the user to explore these memories passed down via genetics. Within the context of the game, this provides a diegetic interface to the real-world player of the game, showing them elements like health bars, a mini-map, and target objectives as if presented by the Animus. Additionally, should the player cause the historical character to die or fail a mission, this is rectified as desynchronization of the genetic memory, allowing the player to try the mission again. The Animus also imparts special abilities to the modern-day character that helps them to see their target in a crowd or other unique points of interest.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: While playing as the Assassin characters, the games are generally presented from a third-person view in an open world environment, focusing on stealth and parkour. The games use a mission structure to follow the main story, assigning the player to complete an assassination of public figureheads or a covert mission. Alternatively, several side missions are available, such as mapping out the expansive cities from a high perch followed by performing a leap of faith into a haystack below, collecting treasures hidden across the cities, exploring ruins for relics, building a brotherhood of assassins to perform other tasks, or funding the rebuilding of a city through purchasing and upgrading of shops and other features. At times, the player is in direct control of the modern-day character who, by nature of the Animus use, has learned Assassin techniques through the bleeding effect, as well as their genetic ability of Eagle Vision, which separates friend, foe, and assassination targets by illuminating people in different colors. Through the Animus interface, the player can retry any past mission already completed; for example, in "Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood", the player achieves better synchronization results by performing the mission in a specific manner, such as by only killing the mission's target.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: The games use the concept of active versus passive moves, with active moves, such as running, climbing the sides of buildings, or jumping between rooftops, more likely to alert the attention of nearby guards. When the guards become alerted, the player must either fight them or break their line of sight and locate a hiding place, such as a haystack or a well, and wait until the guards' alert is reduced. The combat system allows for a number of unique weapons, armor, and moves, including the use of a hidden blade set in a bracer on the Assassin's arm, which also can be used to perform surreptitious assassinations.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: The "Assassin's Creed" games primarily revolve around the rivalry and conflict between two ancient secret societies: the Order of Assassins, who represents freedom, and the Knights Templar, who represents order. Versions of these societies have existed for centuries, with the Assassins seeking to stop the Templars from gaining control of Pieces of Eden, artifacts that can override free will to control people.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: These artifacts are remnants of an ancient species pre-dating humanity called the Isu, or Precursors, which created humanity to live in peace alongside them. The Isu ensured humans could not rise against them by creating the Pieces of Eden to control them. When the first hybrid Isu-human beings emerged, named Adam and Eve, they were immune to the effects of the Pieces of Eden. They stole the Pieces of Eden, which led to a great war that ended when a massive solar flare devastated the surface of the Earth. The Isu began to die out while humanity thrived. Three Isu—Minerva, Juno, and Jupiter—attempted to prepare humanity for a solar flare they knew would come centuries later. Minerva and Jupiter prepared vaults from which humanity could activate a protective shield around Earth with the Pieces of Eden and the Eye, a means to communicate how to find and use these vaults; however, Juno saw humanity as a threat and attempted to sabotage Minerva and Jupiter's plan. Minerva and Jupiter were forced to destroy Juno, unaware she had hidden her consciousness to wake upon activation of the Eye. All that remained of the Isu were the traces of their memories in the world's mythologies, and religions, while the Pieces of Eden were lost to time.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: The series takes place in the modern era, in which the Templars have established the mega-corporation Abstergo Industries. Abstergo has developed a device, the Animus, whose user can relive the memories of their ancestors through their genetic material. Abstergo has kidnapped people who are descendants of past Assassins to locate the missing Pieces of Eden via the Animus. A user of the Animus can move about in simulated memories as their ancestor, but performing actions outside the bounds of what their ancestor did can lead to desynchronization of the memory. Extended use of the Animus creates a bleeding effect that gives users some of the skills and capabilities they experienced with their ancestor.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: The first five main games in the series focus on Desmond Miles, a bartender who learns he is a descendant of several important Assassins throughout history, including Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad from the Middle East during the Third Crusade; Ezio Auditore da Firenze from the Italian Renaissance during the late 15th and early 16th centuries; and (better known as Connor), a half-Mohawk, half-British Assassin during the American Revolution. Desmond is used by Abstergo to find Pieces of Eden but is freed by Lucy Stillman, an undercover agent for the Assassins. Lucy takes Desmond to meet Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane, two other members of the modern-day Assassins. The group is joined later by William Miles, Desmond's father. They continue to explore Desmond's memories and eventually discover the Eye and Minerva's warning of another possible solar flare. They also inadvertently free Juno, who then kills Lucy, revealed to be a double agent for the Templars. The group continues to find the vaults across the globe via Desmond's memories, and Desmond ultimately activates them in time to block the solar flare, at the cost of his own life.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: Starting with "", William goes into exile, while Shaun and Rebecca continue to monitor Abstergo by posing as employees of one of their spin-off companies, Abstergo Entertainment. Abstergo has refined the Animus technology to allow anyone to experience genetic memories from the DNA material of another person, allowing Abstergo to continue their search for the Pieces of Eden under the guise of creating entertainment products. In "Black Flag", the player assumes the role of an unnamed Abstergo employee tasked with scanning the memories of Edward Kenway, a privateer-turned-pirate during the Golden Age of Piracy and Connor's grandfather. During their investigation, the player is blackmailed into helping a fellow employee, John Standish, recover sensitive information and deliver it to the Assassins. John is later revealed to be a Sage, a human reincarnation of Juno's husband Aita, who is trying to resurrect her, though he is killed by Abstergo before his plan can come to fruition. In "Assassin's Creed Rogue", the player controls another Abstergo employee who is recruited by the Templars to clean their servers after the Assassins breach them and recover data on the life of Shay Patrick Cormac, an Assassin-turned-Templar from the 18th century. The Assassins are ultimately forced to go underground once more, and the player character is invited to join the Templars.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: By the time of "Assassin's Creed Unity", Abstergo distributes its Animus product via a video game console named Helix, tapping into an extensive, unaware player base to help them locate more Pieces of Eden and determine the fates of various Sages as part of the Phoenix Project, an attempt to recreate the genetic structure of the Isu. The Assassins locate select players and bring them in as Initiates to help their cause. In "Unity", the player character is contacted by an Assassin named Bishop and asked to experience the memories of Arno Dorian, an Assassin active during the French Revolution, so that the modern-day Assassins can locate the body of a Sage and hide it from Abstergo. Despite the Assassins' efforts, Abstergo collects enough samples of other Sages by the start of "Assassin's Creed Syndicate" to move forward with the Phoenix Project. Again, Bishop contacts the Initiate and asks them to explore the memories of Jacob and Evie Frye, twin Assassins from Victorian England, to locate a Piece of Eden known as the Shroud, which Abstergo needs to complete the process of recreating the Isu genetic structure. Although the Initiate manages to locate the Shroud, the Templars beat the Assassins to it.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: A new storyline is introduced in "Assassin's Creed Origins" focusing on Abstergo researcher Layla Hassan. Initially tasked with locating historical artifacts in Egypt, Layla stumbles upon the mummified corpses of the medjay Bayek and his wife Aya, co-founders of the Hidden Ones, the precursor organization to the Assassin Brotherhood. Against Abstergo's orders, Layla uses the Animus to relive Bayek's and Aya's memories, making her a target for the Templars, before being met by William Miles, who recruits her to the Assassins. In "Assassin's Creed Odyssey", Layla recovers the Spear of Leonidas, extracting the DNA of Leonidas' grandchildren, Alexios and Kassandra. Through their memories, Layla locates the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus, another Piece of Eden, which is guarded by one of the siblings (canonically Kassandra), still alive due to being sustained by the Staff. Kassandra relinquishes the Staff to Layla, who is prophesied to one day restore balance to the world, and who proves herself to be worthy of wielding the Staff. In "Assassin's Creed Valhalla", Earth is facing yet another disaster, as its magnetic field has been continually strengthening since Desmond activated the Eye in 2012. Layla exhumes the remains of Eivor Varinsdottir, a 9th-century Viking raider, and from her memories, she learns of an Isu temple in Norway. Layla travels to the temple, using the Staff to protect herself from the radiation inside, and enters the Grey, a virtual world created by the Isu, where she meets both the Reader (implied to be Desmond's preserved consciousness) and Basim Ibn Ishaq, a Hidden One and Sage (the reincarnation of the Isu Loki) who was trapped in the Grey by Eivor. Basim helps Layla stop the disaster before escaping back to reality, where he uses the Staff to rejuvenate himself and meets the other modern-day Assassins.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: The following table lists the games created for the franchise and the respective platform(s) they released upon:


title: Assassin's Creed

text: The first game in the series was released in November 2007 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and in April 2008 for Microsoft Windows. It features a historical recreation of the Holy Land (primarily the cities of Masyaf, Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus) in the late 12th century. Its narrative includes real historical figures and events from that time period. The storyline consists of two portions: one set during the modern-day, which follows Desmond Miles; and one set in 1191, which follows Desmond's ancestor, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, a member of the Assassin Order during the time of the Third Crusade. Desmond's story begins with his abduction by pharmaceutical company Abstergo Industries, whose lead scientist, Dr. Warren Vidic, forces him to explore Altaïr's memories through a machine called the Animus that allows him to connect with his ancestors' DNA. In doing so, Abstergo hopes to find powerful artifacts called Pieces of Eden, which the Assassins and their rivals, the Knights Templar, have fought over for centuries. Altaïr's story begins with his demotion to the rank of Novice Assassin after he botches an attempt by the Assassins to recover a Piece of Eden, the Apple of Eden, from the Templars. To redeem himself, Altaïr is tasked with assassinating nine Templar targets across the Holy Land.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Assassin's Creed" introduced core elements that remained in the rest of the series. Players can freely explore the game's open world, making use of Altaïr's parkour and climbing skills to navigate the environment. The game also features refined hack-and-slash combat, with players able to block and counter-attacks, and stealth mechanics, such as hiding in crowds of people, which allow players to avoid detection by enemies or lose pursuing foes. Although players can choose the order in which they kill their main targets, the mission design was seen as linear and repetitive because players had to complete several side quests before each assassination. The side quest prerequisite was one of the most criticized aspects of the game, so it was abandoned in future games.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Assassin's Creed II" is a direct sequel to the first game and was released in November 2009 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, in March 2010 for Windows, and in October 2010 for OS X. The modern-day narrative again follows Desmond, who escapes from Abstergo (revealed at the end of the previous game as a front for the modern-day Templars) with the aid of Assassin mole Lucy Stillman and is taken to her team's hideout. Hoping to train Desmond as an Assassin, they put him in the Animus 2.0, where he begins to suffer from the bleeding effect; this allows Desmond to gain his ancestors' skills, but it also damages his mind, as he begins to involuntarily experience flashes of his ancestors' memories outside of the Animus. Meanwhile, the main narrative takes place at the height of the Italian Renaissance in the late 15th century and follows Desmond's Italian ancestor Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a young nobleman from Florence who is forced to become an Assassin after his father and brothers are killed by the Templars. During his journey to avenge their deaths, Ezio makes allies such as Leonardo da Vinci and Caterina Sforza and combats enemies such as the Pazzi and Barbarigo families and Rodrigo Borgia. Ezio also comes into contact with technology left behind by the First Civilization, a race that created humanity and the Pieces of Eden and who were wiped out by a catastrophic event.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: Similar to the first game, "Assassin's Creed II" incorporates historical events into its narrative and features recreations of several cities from the time period it is set in (in this case, Florence, Venice, Forlì, San Gimignano, and Monteriggioni). Missions are divided into main story missions, themselves into memory sequences reflecting points in Ezio's life, and side missions that can be accomplished at any time; this approach to mission structure remains consistent in the other games in the series. The Villa Auditore in Monteriggioni, which acts as the Assassins' headquarters for most of the game, provides several functions that can be expanded on by paying for upgrades of surrounding buildings, or by purchasing artwork, weapons, and armor for the villa; in turn, the villa will generate wealth for the player at a rate influenced by the upgrades and acquisition of these items.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Assassin's Creed Brotherhood" is the sequel to "Assassin's Creed II", and was released in November 2010 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, in March 2011 for Windows, and in May 2011 for OS X. The game begins immediately after the events of its predecessor, at the end of which Desmond was warned by Minerva, a member of the First Civilization, about a solar flare that will hit the Earth and kill humans in a few months. Desmond and his team travel to Monteriggioni, where they set up a new base and use the Animus to find the Temple of Juno, another First Civilization member, which houses Ezio's own Apple of Eden and the key to stopping the solar flare. The main narrative continues the story of Ezio, who travels to Rome, the center of Templar power in Italy, to re-establish the Assassin Brotherhood there and defeat the Borgias, who have attacked Monteriggioni and stolen the Apple of Eden.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Brotherhood" shares many of the same features as the previous game though it takes place primarily in one city: Rome. Like the Villa Auditore, the player can spend money to buy and upgrade shops and other facilities throughout the city to increase the revenue they can collect from it; however, the player will be required to destroy Borgia towers that control various sections of the city before they can do so. The Brotherhood of Assassins is introduced, by which, after saving citizens from certain events, the player can recruit these citizens as Assassins; they can then be dispatched to remote locations across Europe to gain experience and money or can be called in to help the player directly in a mission. For the first time in the series, the game features online multiplayer, in which players assume the role of Abstergo employees who, through the use of the Animus, relive the genetic memories of Renaissance Templars in various game modes. It was the last game to feature "Assassin's Creed" creator Patrice Désilets, as the creative director of the series.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Assassin's Creed: Revelations" is the final installment of the Ezio Trilogy and was released in November 2011 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows. Following the events of "Brotherhood", where he was possessed by Juno and forced to kill Lucy (who, unbeknownst to him, was a Templar double agent), Desmond has fallen into a coma and was put back into the Animus to save his mind. Within the computerized core of the Animus, Desmond meets the preserved consciousness of Abstergo's previous Animus test subject, Clay Kaczmarek, who explains that Demond's mind must achieve full synchronization with Altaïr and Ezio, or else he will fall into dementia. Desmond continues exploring the memories of Ezio, who, a few years after the events of "Brotherhood", travels to Constantinople to find five keys needed to open a vault built by Altaïr, which is said to contain the power to end the Assassin–Templar conflict. In Constantinople, Ezio becomes caught in a feud between the Ottomans and Byzantines and discovers that the Templars are also searching for the keys. The game also continues Altaïr's story after the first game, as the keys allow Ezio to witness Altaïr's memories to learn more about his life.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: Originally "Revelations" was announced as "Assassin's Creed: Lost Legacy", and conceptualized as a Nintendo 3DS title focusing on Ezio traveling to Masyaf to explore Altaïr's legacy and uncover the origins of the Assassin Brotherhood. "Lost Legacy" was later announced as cancelled on July 15, 2011, after Ubisoft decided to expand the idea further, cancel the 3DS development and shift all development duties towards PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC to release the game as a full-fledged main installment of the franchise. The original premise remained and evolved into the plot seen in the final game. Included were many new systems and additional weapons such as bomb-crafting and an expanded Assassin recruitment system. The multiplayer mode returns in "Revelations", with more characters, modes, and maps; players once again assume the role of Templars in training and as they level up and rise in the ranks, they are told more about Abstergo's history.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Assassin's Creed III" was released in October 2012 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and in November 2012 for Wii U and Windows. A remastered version of the game with enhanced visuals was released for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in March 2019 and for Nintendo Switch in May 2019. This is the final game in the series to follow Desmond, who travels to the First Civilization's Central Temple in New York with his friends and father to use the technology inside to prevent the solar flare set to hit the Earth in less than a month. To access this technology, Desmond must undertake several missions across the globe to retrieve 'batteries' to power the Temple, as well as an ancient key to the Temple's inner chambers. To find the latter, Desmond uses the Animus to relive the memories of two of his ancestors who were in possession of the key at various points in time: Haytham Kenway, a British Templar from the 18th century who travels to the American colonies to establish a strong Templar presence on the continent and find the Central Temple; and (later known as Connor), Haytham's half-Mohawk son, who becomes an Assassin to exact revenge on the Templars, whom he blames for the destruction of his village and the death of his mother in his youth. To this end, Connor later becomes involved in the American Revolution, helping the Patriot cause in exchange for their help in hunting down Haytham's faction of Templars, who hope to use the Revolution to further their own goals.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Assassin's Creed III" is structured similarly to the previous games, with missions taking place in an open-world map based on Colonial Boston and New York. The game offers a large wilderness area in the form of the Frontier and the Davenport Homestead, where the player can hunt animals for materials, which subsequently can be used to construct goods to be traded and sold throughout the colonies. Naval battles also debut in the series, wherein the player must steer a warship named the "Aquila" in dangerous waters and perform ship-to-ship combat with cannons and mounted guns. The multiplayer mode from the previous two games returns in "Assassin's Creed III" with new game modes, characters, and maps inspired by Colonial America, but this time no major narrative elements are included.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag" was released in October 2013 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii U and in November 2013 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows. Following the events of "Assassin's Creed III", at the end of which Desmond sacrificed himself to save the Earth, Abstergo retrieved samples from his body to continue exploring the memories of his ancestors. The player character is an unnamed Abstergo employee tasked with analyzing the memories of Edward Kenway, a famous 18th-century pirate and Connor's grandfather, ostensibly to gather material for an Animus-powered interactive feature film; in reality, Abstergo are searching for the Observatory, a First Civilization structure that allows the user to see through the eyes of a subject to find them anywhere on the planet. As Edward, the player must unravel a conspiracy between high-ranking Templars to manipulate the British and Spanish empires into locating the Sage — later identified as Bartholomew Roberts — who is the only man that can lead them to the Observatory.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Black Flag" retains many gameplay mechanics from "Assassin's Creed III", including the ship-based exploration and combat. For the first time in the series, naval exploration is a major part of the game; players can captain Edward's ship, the "Jackdaw", and battle rival ships or hunt sea animals. The game includes a large open world spanning the West Indies, with players able to explore the cities of Havana, Nassau, and Kingston, as well as numerous islands, forts, and sunken ships. A multiplayer mode is once again included, although it is entirely land-based.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Assassin's Creed Rogue" is the final game in the series to be developed for the seventh generation of consoles, being released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in November 2014, and for Windows in March 2015. A remastered version of the game was released for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in March 2018. In the present day, players again take on the role of an unnamed Abstergo employee, tasked with researching the memories of Shay Patrick Cormac, an Assassin from the 18th century who, for reasons unknown to Abstergo, defected to the Templar cause. During their investigation, the player accidentally trips a hidden memory file that infects the Animus servers. They must complete Shay's memories to clean the servers while Abstergo is put in lockdown. The main narrative takes place during the Seven Years' War, and follows Shay, who starts out as a talented, but insubordinate Assassin trainee. After witnessing the Assassins' hypocrisy and willingness to sacrifice civilians in their blind pursuit of the Pieces of Eden, Shay betrays them and joins the Templar Order, helping his newfound allies hunt down members of his former Brotherhood to prevent them from endangering more innocent lives. Shay's story is set between the events of "Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag" and "Assassin's Creed III", and is meant to fill the gaps between their respective narratives, while also having "a crucial link to the Kenway saga" according to Ubisoft, as well as to "Assassin's Creed Unity". Several major characters from "III" and "Black Flag" make appearances in the game, such as Haytham Kenway, Achilles Davenport, and Adéwalé.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: In March 2014, a new "Assassin's Creed" game code-named "Comet" was revealed to be in development for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, set to release later that year alongside "Unity". By the end of the month, additional reports indicated that "Comet" would be set around 1758 New York City, and would feature sailing on the Atlantic Ocean. The game would be a direct sequel to "Black Flag", and would be the first to feature a Templar as the main protagonist. In May 2014, Guillemot stated that, "for the foreseeable future", "Assassin's Creed" games would continue releasing on the last generation PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, despite the franchise moving to the current generation PlayStation 4 and Xbox One with "Unity". On August 5, Ubisoft officially announced the game as "Assassin's Creed Rogue". While the game reuses many assets from "Black Flag", a number of new systems and weapons were included, such as an air rifle and refined naval combat, and the multiplayer aspect has been removed.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Assassin's Creed Unity" was released concurrently with "Rogue" in November 2014 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows, and Google Stadia. In the present-day, the player character is a player of Helix, an Animus-powered gaming device produced by Abstergo, who hope to use their unaware player base to locate more Pieces of Eden. While playing, the player is contacted by the modern-day Assassins and invited to join them as an Initiate and help them locate the body of an 18th-century Sage. The main story is set in Paris during the French Revolution, and follows Assassin Arno Dorian as he attempts to avenge his foster father's death at the hands of the Templars, which leads him to discover an internal conflict between the Templars as a result of the Revolution.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: On March 19, 2014, images leaked for the next "Assassin's Creed" game, titled or code-named "Unity", showing a new assassin in Paris. On March 21, Ubisoft confirmed the game's existence, having been in development for more than three years, by releasing pre-alpha game footage. The game features enhanced visuals compared to its predecessors, and several new gameplay mechanics, including a four player co-op mode, a first for the series.


title: Assassin's Creed

text: "Assassin's Creed Syndicate" was released in October 2015 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, in November 2015 for Windows, and in December 2020 for the Stadia. In the present-day, players control the same unnamed Assassin Initiate from "Assassin's Creed Unity", who, this time must help the Assassins find a powerful artifact, the Shroud of Eden, hidden somewhere in London. The main story is set in Victorian era London and follows twin assassins Jacob and Evie Frye, as they navigate the corridors of organized crime to take back the city from Templar control and prevent them from finding the Shroud. The narrative also includes segments set in war-torn London during World War I, which follow Jacob's granddaughter, Lydia Frye, as she battles German soldiers and Templar spies and searches for a Sage.