For many Assassin’s Creed fans, the series' modern-day plotlines have always felt somewhat extraneous. When the series began, most players were more interested in exploring Jerusalem as Altair or Italy as Ezio Auditore rather than the year 2012 with Desmond Miles. When the franchise felt like it largely left its modern-day storylines behind as anything more than a framing device after Assassin's Creed 3, many welcomed the change. However, with a new game on the way codenamed Assassin’s Creed Infinity, the series’ recent modern-day segments could pose more of a challenge than ever.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla redeemed the modern-day storyline of the last few games in the eyes of many. However, it also left Assassin’s Creed Infinity – or whatever the next major chapter in the series will be – with a great deal of hanging plot threads no matter which historical period Ubisoft decides to explore next.
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Assassin’s Creed’s Modern-Day Storylines
The Assassin’s Creed games have included a modern or near-future plotline since the very first entry in the series. Across Assassin’s Creed 1, the Ezio trilogy, and Assassin’s Creed 3, the historical-fiction story was bookended and occasionally interrupted by the story of Desmond Miles, a supposed average joe whose ancestral memories were being accessed through the animus.
The series' sci-fi elements had a relatively interesting role to play in the historical-fiction story of each game, but many felt the plot with Desmond Miles wasn’t compelling enough to warrant breaking up each games' main plot. These story segments required players to be invested in characters who weren’t the focus of the main story.
Although each Assassin’s Creed game after Assassin’s Creed 3 kept the premise that the main story was a representation of the ancestral memories of a modern-day person being accessed via an Animus, this fell further into the background. Desmond’s story was over – he’d sacrificed himself to prevent another Great Catastrophe. The games only began to focus on the modern storyline again when Assassin’s Creed Odyssey introduced a new modern-day protagonist, Layla Hassan.
Valhalla's Present-Day Plot
The treatment of the modern-day plotline by Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has been considered something of a redemption for the long-running series’ major subplot. In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Layla Hassan becomes trapped in the Grey, a cyberspace created by the Isu of the First Civilization – which makes up the gods and mythical figures of the Assassin’s Creed universe. In the Grey, she met a mysterious figure many fans have assumed to be Desmond Miles himself.
As part of the same modern-day plotline, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s villain Basim escaped from the Grey into the modern day. He took control of a powerful Isu artifact known as the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus, restoring himself to full health. In Valhalla’s Viking-era plot, Basim is revealed to be the sci-fi reincarnation of the Isu who became known as Loki, the Norse god of mischief.
These are clearer stakes than previous Assassin’s Creed plotlines set in the modern day. The original trilogy tried to get players invested in the age-old battle between the Templars and the Assassins, which was a hard sell when most players assumed that battle was unlikely to end. Valhalla’s modern plotline at least involves characters that players had more of a personal stake in, with major characters like Basim travelling across both plotlines. That doesn’t mean Valhalla’s modern-day plot won’t cause the next game problems, however.
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Challenges For Future Assassin's Creed Games
Assassin’s Creed Infinity needs to answer the questions the last game left fans with, such as whether it is really Desmond Miles in the Grey, or what Basim plans to do now he’s escaped to the 21st Century.
These are questions which will almost certainly be central to the framing of the next game, but in committing to answering these questions Ubisoft ultimately risks limiting the kinds of stories the next game can tell. It seems likely that players will find themselves diving back into an animus to explore the memories of an ancestor who knew the location of another powerful Isu artifact, or something similar that will allow them to defeat Basim in the present.
It’s a formula Assassin’s Creed has used before, and it’s not particularly compelling. Alternatively, Basim could be central to the next game’s historical-fiction plot, but that would severely limit the time period in which the next Assassin’s Creed could be set. As a result it seems likely that, once again, there will be an arbitrary link between the next game’s modern plotline and the historical-fiction plotline, something Assassin’s Creed Valhalla cleverly avoided by bringing its historical plotline's villain into the modern era.
If the next Assassin’s Creed focuses enough on its modern-day story to actually get players invested in its stakes, that focus will risk coming at the cost of its historical-fiction story; the meat of the game. If the next game ends up failing to get fans invested in its modern-day story, Valhalla’s apparent redemption of the modern plotline will have been short-lived, with the series falling back into familiar patterns that beg the question of why the games still have a modern plotline to begin with. With some speculation that Assassin's Creed Infinity will be a multiplayer game and not a main entry in the series, it's possible fans could be waiting for some time to see how Ubisoft plans to tackle the problem of its modern-day plotlines.
Assassin's Creed Infinity is in development for unspecified platforms.