Most of you probably remember how in last year’s Assassin’s Creed 4, the franchise’s main lead Desmond was unceremoniously replaced with an un-named new recruit into the Templar’s front, the Abstergo Corporation. That theme is set to continue in the year’s Assassin’s Creed Unity, as Ubisoft takes it’s idea further as they move the story back to the old modern day Assassins of previous games, sans Desmond.
“We ended Desmond’s cycles in Assassin’s Creed III, and then we made Black Flag about an Abstergo employee being contacted by Assassins. So you played this third-person character in the present, and we wanted to go one step beyond that. We decided that you’re actually, you the player, are the pilot of the Animus. So you start the game and then at some point you get contacted by the Assassin order to explore the memories of Arno through the Animus, and basically figure stuff out for them in the present. We made a few twists but we understand that this is the seventh game, so the story is becoming complicated; as such, we wanted to reintroduce some of the main elements of the narrative in a different way.”
It’s certainly an interesting evolution in the franchise, and one that would better suit into the idea of Unity being a cooperative experience. Will this mean that the other people you play with will also be modern day assassins plugged into the animus? Will they be able to contact each other in the modern first person segments? If played right, Ubisoft’s latest iteration into the widely praised and popular franchise could end up being very interesting indeed.
And nobody really liked Desmond anyway.