Critique Against Assassin's Creed's Modern Day as an Element of the Games

Hello Everyone. The following are my thoughts on the mere inclusion of the Modern Day in Assassin's Creed Games, and why I feel they are better left to media that aren't the main games. I'll try and avoid criticizing the specific way the Modern Days were implemented and be a bit more general. I'll stick my examples to earlier AC games as those are often brought up as examples in favour of the idea. The following Work Assumes you've played All AC Games.

Before we start that, let's talk about what the modern days offers as positives on Paper.

Firstly, they allow multiple games, even those who take place hundreds of years apart, to link into one another. As an example, Assassin's Creed 1-3 built up Desmond's side by having Altair in the Middle Ages, Ezio in Renaissance Italy and Turkey, and Connor in Revolutionary America all contribute to that.

Secondly, It allows another perspective by contrasting our modern world with its secrets and conspiracies with that. It can be cool to see all that.

Thirdly, it allows some of AC's gameplay to be transplanted into a modern setting.

Fourthly, It provides the means for the past sections to contextualize game-y aspects by the way the Animus works.


With that said, I do not think these positives outweigh many of the game negatives. Let's talk about a few.


Firstly, It can limit the tension and the stakes presented as well as have severe fluctuations in tone.

Let's Take Assassin's Creed 2 as an example. After the sequence where Ezio and Leo set off for Venice, they are optimistic and cheerful, we are booted out into the modern day where everything is much more pessimistic because the Templars/Absertgo are in total control and the Assassins are really on the ropes. And this happens a lot and as a result, makes many of the actions the perform in the past feel meaningless. When Ezio and friends celebrate after killing a high profile target, Switching to Desmond And Pals is quick to keep reminding us that all this didn't help out much. Unlike more mystery based games or games that use intrigue in similar situations, AC games don't often lean into the contrast. Consider the following, God of War 2005 starts with Kratos attempting suicide then flashes back 2 weeks earlier. We see Kratos' adventure and what drives him to suicide in the first place. It creates a lot of anticipation. AC doesn't really do this. It's rare when an AC games shows us things that happen in the past that directly create the world of the present. More of than not, the adventures of the past are isolated in their story and only link up in ways involving Isu artifacts with the present. It takes the feeling of victory out when Ezio liberates all of Italy, most of Europe on 2+ (depending on those optional Brotherhood assignments) occassions only for it to mean nothing in the very next cutscene when we see where the Assassins are now. There are some exceptions, AC1, 3, 4, Rogue all complement each other tonally but many fans aren't fond of that. Often, switching to the Modern Day feels like an interruption to what you were doing.

There's also the way the tension is affected in other situations as well. Consider the following hypothetical scenario, imagine in Assassin's Creed 2, Ezio was captured and sent in for an execution in sequence 7 or something. Because of the way the animus works, we know the execution will not follow through, or that anything too bad will even happen to Ezio. Since the animus works by reading genetic material passed down by ancestors, unless Ezio gets romantic before his execution, we know he'll survive to have children because that's how Desmond is experiencing all this. The franchise has somewhat accounted for this now as any DNA from a person let's you see their and their ancestor's memories from any Animus, which adds some tension when characters get into tough situations (it also now allows characters to do stuff like parenting that we can see in the animus instead of out of it like in the case of Embers or that one scene in 4 but that still shows the limits of the system).

Here is a quote from a review of AC1 from its release: "biggest issue is really its story, we wouldn't want to spoil anything but you do play as two characters in Assassin's Creed. We won't tell you who the other characters outside of Altair but you basically switch between these two characters between every assassinations and the second character you play as; the whole storyline of all that is awful, has no purpose whatsoever of being involved in this story. In fact, the big twist of the game is revealed in the first five minutes. Imagine if you were watching The Sixth Sense and five minutes into the movie they told you that Bruce Willis was dead. Kind of makes the rest of the movie seems stupid"

Here are some quotes from the Noctural Rambler "6) The Animus Framework: The idea is that you're actually just re-enacting genetically-encoded ancestral memories through a Matrix-style computer. It's interesting because it gives a plausible explanation for the unrealistic things that are necessary in a video game like health meters, maps and quest markers, boundaries, floating messages, etc. But we're so used to these things being available that when this game reminds us it's all part of the computer simulation, it actually ends up breaking the immersion slightly. It pulls you out of the experience more often than it bolsters the atmosphere.

...

The whole "story-within-a-story" thing was a novel idea in the first game, but in practice it mostly served to disrupt the pacing by pulling you out-of-character. After completing every "memory sequence" they shifted you back to Desmond's perspective and made you mill about for a while before going to sleep....

...The "story-within-a-story" concept starts out feeling more significant, by having you (as Desmond) escape from Abstergo with Lucy and meeting up with fellow "Assassins" who tell you about the Apple of Eden and how you have to get to it before the Templars do. But then you're in the animus for so long that you basically forget all about Desmond and lose all interest in whatever's happening in the real world. It might have been interesting to play out some more missions as Desmond, but they missed this potential as well."

Another side effect is that technically, the games shouldn't be able to cut away from the protagonist in any capacity. So any time an AC game shifts the camera away to show you the next room in an underground puzzle or if they shift to other characters (like for example, the villains talking), they're technically breaking the rules of the animus. Admittedly that's a small one.


Secondly, Ubi Can't Go all out for the gameplay in these sections. The Modern-Day gameplay will always play second fiddle to the past.

I'm reminded of that section in AC2 where after Desmond comes out of the animus, he has to activate those switches in the hideout. From a Narrative Standpoint, it makes sense, he's using the bleeding effect to pick up Ezio's skills and now is testing them out. But from a gameplay perspective, it's a tutorial for something players have been doing for hours. It would be if a Pokemon Game made you learn how to catch Pokemon after the 5th gym.

More on that though, we know Ubi can't create full cities like the past sections for the modern day to climb around in as we know from Syndicate the team learned that wide streets and tall buildings break the flow of parkour (and it would take development time away from the actual attraction of the games). We know that assets created specifically for the modern-day like electronics or specific gameplay can't be brought back to the past whereas past assets can be reused in the present. The lack of a hud like how the Animus provides means levels can't be extremely complex. Most of the gameplay tools and abilities from the past can't be brought into the present. We also know most casual players don't even care for all this and feel it takes away from the experience of the past. All this creates a feedback cycle where more players don't enjoy the modern-day which makes the games much more hesitant to add onto it which repeats. Not to mention that Absetrgo are everywhere so the games have to keep the players in relatively low key adventures compared to the more varied and sometimes bombastic missions in the past.

AC3 provides this dichotomy in Full. It provides the best Modern Day Gameplay, but levels feel like reskinned and diet stuff from the past. Most of the other entries have the section generally be cutscenes you happen to have control in (see AC1 and 2 especially). Brotherhood's Montergioioi and Missions feel lifeless and uninteresting as there is very little actually going on in those areas.

Not to mention, other games already do modern-day open-world action in a great way. Watch Dogs acts as more of a thriller. Spider-Man, Arkham and inFAMOUS already give the player a massive world and the means to navigate its buildings with ease. Assassin's Creed already has its niche and shouldn't feel the urge to compete with others as it was never willing to double down on its modern stuff. In gaming, it's often the case to do something right or don't do it at all.

Therein lies the problem with the Modern Day as it pertains to games. The player can spend hours in the past completely detached from the conflict and events of the Modern Day. So when the player is pulled to spend some time in Modern Day, it feels like an abrupt change that's an interruption to the game you were playing. You have to make do with sections that feel like regular cutscenes stretched into walking and talking sections with the occasional diet version of the past gameplay. What's more, is any amount of increase and decrease can add to this issue. If you increase its prevalence, you have more interruptions (AC1), you decrease but not get rid of it, you make what's left more jarring when it does come up (AC4) as well as feeling less relevant. They are also less fun in repeat playthroughs




This is where I feel other mediums might be better suited for the Modern Day. An Assassin's Creed Movie, Comic, Book etc doesn't have to worry about maintaining fun and interesting gameplay. So that example earlier where Desmond has to hit switches doesn't have a tutorial we need to play in a comic. A movie can show past and present cities and doesn't need to worry that the present city environment isn't big for the audience to explore and can even use time skips without it feeling as jarring. Books frequently make characters standing around and doing very little exciting whereas that would be considered boring in games outside of visual novels (being able to read thoughts makes even seemingly boring characters interesting). There's also the fact that casual fans of the games don't really care for the modern-day (we know from this AccesstheAnimus' surveys and Ubi's own admission) so these material designed for fans can afford to dive in more without putting off a general audience. Of course, This doesn't solve the issues of stakes and tension but I feel AC stories that are smaller and more personal rather than larger conflicts can mitigate that. And these kinds of stories are generally easier to pull off than AAA games which often require those larger conflicts unless they are visual novel-like (Many people complained that sequence in Uncharted 4 where Nate and Elena bond and reconcile was boring to play through. Telltale's Batman Games has Bruce Wayne Sequences the Arkham Games can't replicate).


Interestingly, if we absolutely need to maintain the animus and the like in an AC game, there are 3 games that minimize the downsides. Revelations, Liberation and Unity (yes, really).

In Liberation, the idea is that you're playing Liberation on your PSVita System made by Abstergo in collaboration with Ubisoft. Absetrgo has edited the game to make themselves look better. Erudito has put in targets you have to kill to hack the truth back in. In Unity, you can jump into other simulations and have much more crazy missions which can unlock documents. The benefit here is that since this all in the animus, it can carry the momentum and pacing of the past sections. Unity's missions in particular are far more exciting to play than any of its equivalents in Brotherhood and 3. I can imagine taking a few cues from Deus Ex the Breach and Brotherhood's VR Missions and making the modern-day a mix of the 2.

Revelation is an interesting case. Because on the surface, it feels like it carries all the problems I mentioned earlier. But firstly, the actual mandatory stuff are mostly brief cutscenes and are pretty uncommon so it doesn't feel as much of an interruption. And the optional gameplay of the abstract block placing puzzles has an enjoyable story and is different enough from the regular gameplay that feels like a fun change of pace the player can opt into like Gwent from the Witcher 3. This also means that playing it doesn't feel like a discount version of the main game.