Gameplay revolves around combat, stealth, and exploration, including the use of parkour to navigate the environment. Main games in the Assassin's Creed series are set in an open world and played from the third-person view. 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. 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. 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. The series features historical fiction, science fiction, and fictional characters intertwined with real-world historical events and historical figures. 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. 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.