Nintendo Cancelled The Legend of Zelda Spin-Off Developed by Ubisoft

The Legend of Zelda is one of the most successful and recognizable video game franchises. Naturally, Nintendo earned its popularity primarily through Super Mario and Pokémon, but it was the story of Link and Zelda that brought the studio widespread recognition and proved it could create games capable of competing with AAA titles—and hold their own.

As it turns out, just recently we could have gotten an unusual spin-off franchise from Ubisoft, the developers of Assassin's Creed. Insider Gaming shared the details, revealing that the company’s division in Milan had been working on a project codenamed Goliath; initially, the main character was a completely new one, but Nintendo decided to make the protagonist Ganondorf—one of the main villains in the series who fights against Link and Zelda.

Ubisoft reportedly presented its vision for The Legend of Zelda to Nintendo in early 2023. The developers were given until the end of that year to prepare the game for the next phase, but already in November, the company rejected the revised version of the spin-off. The reasons have not been disclosed at this time, but most likely Nintendo did not approve some of the gameplay concepts. There was also talk of Ubisoft taking on a Star Fox or Mario project, but ultimately, starting in 2024, relations between the game studios grew increasingly strained. The story came to an end in mid-2024 when Gian Marco Zanna, Davide Soliani, and Cristina Nava—who had been working on Goliath—left Ubisoft to join the newly formed studio Day 4 Night, which announced its debut project, Bradley the Badger, at The Game Awards 2025.

It’s also worth noting there was a time in history when third-party studios developed The Legend of Zelda games—some of which were even made by Capcom, such as Oracle of Seasons and The Minish Cap. It would have been interesting to see what a project from Ubisoft would have looked like, and it’s clear that many of the mechanics we’ve seen in previous Assassin’s Creed games would have made their way into Goliath.

This November, Nintendo will release a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the first official footage of which was shown earlier this month during a Nintendo Direct presentation. The game will be available exclusively for the Switch 2. Additionally, a film based on The Legend of Zelda will premiere next year, directed by Wes Ball (The Maze Runner, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes). The main roles in the film are played by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth (Link), Bo Bragason (Princess Zelda), and Uli Latukefu (Ganondorf).