Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate - 8 Major Overhauls That Would Save The Franchise

5. Set The Whole Thing In The Present Day

The direction the first Desmond-centric games were going was exactly where they should've ended up; applying centuries of free-running and weapon skills to a large-scale concrete jungle of skyscrapers, pipes and other obstacles to traverse. Now that we've had seen Ubi completely run out of ideas for historical locations (alongside ignoring Feudal Japan, the only one people actually wanted), the timeline is almost up to present day, creating the perfect opportunity to modernise everything, embrace all sorts of high-tech gadgets, HUD elements and reworked Animus tech along the way. Obviously you wouldn't need to deep-dive in the Animus to relive memories when you're carving out your own present day path, but taking the DNA-analysis hardware with you in some small portable form would easily allow for players to interact with targets and continue the whole "Kill them to receive dying wish info" stuff; a perfect way to propel the story. Being restricted to the past only made elements like the Golden Apple or arrival of the futuristic (but ancient?) First Civilization more dismissible and ridiculous anyway, whereas doubling down on a present day setting would at least allow for a world where technology is more freely available, and can somewhat ape the more fantastical aspects of the world's lore too.