There have been some interesting Ubiannouncements from Ubisoft's Ubidays over in UbiParis. The twist in the new Prince of Persia: Assassin's Creed (not its real title) is that it will be a lot like Assassin's Creed, but with a female sidekick. EndWar will let you play a real time strategy game on a console system using voice commands. Uh huh. Sure it will. And Far Cry 2 seems to be coming along nicely, promising free-roaming, open-ended action in Africa (hi, Resident Evil 5!).

The Far Cry series has a bit of an awkward history. The original game was published by Ubisoft and created by Crytek, a German company founded by three Turkish brothers. The game was built from a bleeding edge engine, but it famously spiraled downhill at the halfway point, when it was overrun by mutants. The lead character was a wisecracking tough guy in a Hawaiian shirt. He'll be played by German action star Til Schweiger in an upcoming Uwe Boll movie. No joke.

But then something unpleasant happened with contracts and whatnot. Ubisoft took the Far Cry name and gave it to their Montreal development studio. "Here," they said, "see what you can do with the words 'Far' and 'Cry' and the number 2." We'll see how that turns out later this year. Meanwhile, Crytek slinked off with their fancy engine to make Crysis, which was pretty decent for the way it didn't famously spiral downhill until the end instead of the halfway point.

Finally, Ubisoft confirmed what everyone already knew: Michel Ancel, the French version of Miyamoto, is making a sequel to Beyond Good & Evil, one of those rare games with a female protagonist whose eyes command more attention than her breasts (a.k.a. the Cate Archer Club). Here's a link to the wonderfully understated teaser.