Assassin’s Creed Origins’ first expansion, The Hidden Ones, officially comes out on January 23. However, some players on Xbox One can already play the new content after the game was patched overnight.
The Hidden Ones, the first of two major story DLCs currently announced, focuses on events set four years after the main game’s story and takes place in a new region, Sinai. It also raises the level cap to 45 while adding new outfits, mounts, and weapons. But while it’s not due out for another week, some players already managed to access it on Xbox One through the in-game store after the game’s latest patch rolled out earlier today.
While Ubisoft has not yet responded to a request for comment by Kotaku, a post by one of the company’s community managers on its forums later in the day confirmed the mix-up had taken place and that certain Xbox One owners had already downloaded the DLC and were in Sinai. “The Hidden Ones expansion was unintentionally made available on Xbox One earlier today for some players before the January 23 release date,” Ubisoft community manager Dominik Voigt said in the post. “This happened due to a misconfiguration of our in-game store and has been corrected.”
The post went on to say that Ubisoft will not remove access for players who have already downloaded the DLC and entered the new region in order to “avoid complications with save files.” While players who have access to Sinai will keep it, the post concludes by asking players to keep discussion of the expansion to spoiler-designated areas of the sub-forum.
Details about the new story missions, items, and any interesting quirks about Sinai itself that distinguish it from the main game will likely continue to trickle out as players explore. One Reddit user who goes by Winsdaddy posted a picture of their assassin in one of the new outfits. Another posted some brief footage of themselves standing in the new area. It’s raised a small debate among the game’s community about how difficult it will be to avoid spoilers for another seven days.
[Update 7:05pm] - Ubisoft passed along the following response reitarating their earlier explaination:
“Earlier today, The Hidden Ones DLC was unintentionally made available early for some Xbox One players. We have removed the DLC from the game store, however players who already downloaded the DLC are still able to play it. These players will now be known as “The Lucky Ones.” The Hidden Ones DLC will be available for all season pass owners or can be purchased separately for $9.99 on January 23rd.”