Assassin's Creed: 10 Reasons Why Syndicate Is The Most Underrated Ever

On top of bringing the streets of Victorian London to life, Syndicate also contained within it a whole extra mini-game set at an entirely different point in the city's tumultuous past.

The idea of jumping into a different era of the setting was toyed with in Unity, in which players were pulled out of Revolutionary Paris and dropped briefly into the City Of Lights during the Belle Époque or the Nazi occupation. Mostly these were very short, contained sequences that largely existed to get the player to climb up the Eiffel Tower or under-construction Statue Of Liberty.

The portal to a different era in Syndicate does still focus on a climbable landmark not yet built in the period of the main game's setting (in this case Tower Bridge), but it does so as part of a more extensive open world experience.

As Jacob Frye's granddaughter Lydia you can explore a small part of First World War-era London, which brings with it its own identity, environment and collectibles, as well as going on a spy-catching mission for Winston Churchill.

It's something which adds a pleasing extra dimension to the game world, an element that feels much more like discovering a hidden treat than any other side quest. Particular bonus points too for Ubisoft for not parcelling this section out as DLC for extra cost, but just including it as part of the basic game.

Given Assassin's Creed's promise of a saga across all of history, it's a shame that other games in the series haven't also picked up on the possibility of a setting with a portal to another era. Wouldn't it be cool if Origins offered players a moment to leap forward to the same Egyptian locales in the time of the Napoleonic Battle Of The Nile, for example?