Future Assassin’s Creed games will focus on the modern story more, says Ubisoft
Ubisoft Montreal’s most recent Assassin’s Creed game, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, shied away from the series’ modern day storyline, which made up a significant portion of the story and gameplay elements of earlier titles, but the Canadian studio has suggested that it intends to return to that aspect of the series in greater detail in the future.
The first five main Assassin’s Creed titles ostensibly told the story of Desmond Miles, the modern day heir to a millennia old legacy of assassins who relives his ancestors’ memories with the help of a Matrix-like VR device called the Animus.
After the events of Assassin’s Creed 3, the series shifted gears and used an unnamed silent protagonist in Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, which told the modern portion of the story through first-person view. In Assassin’s Creed: Unity, the modern day sections were limited to a small handful of brief cutscenes, removing all gameplay and exploration from the modern story portion.
Assassin’s Creed lead writer Darby McDevitt explains that one reason Assassin’s Creed II: Brotherhood was able to include a lengthy modern section was its reuse of the castle town of Monteriggioni from the previous game. The town was already designed and built, so updating it for a modern story segment involved a smaller amount of work.
“Creating any kind of modern day is a pretty huge ask”
Assassin’s Creed: Unity, by comparison, took place in an entirely new environment that had to be designed from scratch.
“The thing with Unity was that it was a completely fresh game on a completely fresh generation,” McDevitt said on a recent livestream. “So creating any kind of modern day is a pretty huge ask. To create a city, for instance, or even part of a city, would require six months of work by many, many artists, designers, modellers. And then you’d need gameplay systems that didn’t feel like you were just fencing.”
But while future games might see a greater focus on the modern story, McDevitt has previously stated that a fully modern story in the Assassin’s Creed universe is unlikely.
“I doubt we would do a modern day AC,” he said in an AMA on Reddit in 2013. “There are just too many mechanics we would have to develop to make it believable.”
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