Why the modern day matters in Assassin’s Creed

The whole point of Assassin’s Creed is to traverse through time periods and foil plans from secret societies like the “Templars” or the “Cult of Kosmos”, so if all focus is on the recreations of historical eras, then why care about the modern-day aspect? 

Not only is the modern-day world of Assassin's Creed needed for the game to work also if you were to remove it then, you would destroy the entire groundwork of the game. 

The UI  

The UI system works as a technological looking glass through the Animus and what the Animus projects to its user which can either be Desmond Miles, Layla Hassan or Basim depending on the game. But through this trick of using the Animus as a MacGuffin to explain technological standpoints of the Assassin's Creed universe, Ubisoft can also use this to uniquely explain the UI. Pause menu, databases, settings, options and time skips to the gamer can be integrated in a way that doesn't ruin the immersion for the player. This can also be used to explain canonically why the UI gets better with each game being very simple in Assassins Creed 1 with the Animus Mark 1 and increasing complexity with newer Assassin’s Creed Shadows UI being a version of the Animus Mark 5. 

The Lore 

With the games focus on traveling back in time to the past this means that the whole world is just a simulation to events that have already happened. It’s about how these are a butterfly effect that last for centuries and are the causation for the conclusion of nearly all the Assassin's Creed games. 

If the games were to rid the modern-day lore just as Unity did, then the games would be less memorable than they were- because reveals like the end of Assassin's Creed 4 lead up to bigger events in future games. These narrative beats would then be lost on so many new players. If the modern sections didn’t exist, the player would lose the opportunity to guess if the events of what you've done throughout the game corelate to what happens in modern day. It also shows how the events affect modern day and if you had failed what happens if the antagonists won. 

Consequences & Conclusion 

Because of backlash from fans asking Ubisoft to retire the modern day storyline after finding them boring in 3 & 4, Ubisoft took this feedback to keep modern day elements to a minimum in Assassin’s Creed Unity and fully removed them from the game in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. 

But Ubisoft are listening to fans and hearing their cries to bring back Desmond Miles. They’re finally adding more depth into the events of modern-day Assassin’s Creed lore with the replacement of Layla and the introduction of Basim. Ubisoft are using Basim as a new way of connecting the historical eras to the modern-day stories with Basims past with the ISU and to give new players a new identity for the direction of what the new Assassins Creed games can give us with this exciting new formula.