Assassin's Creed: Syndicate - 8 Reasons Why The Modern Day Story Has To Go

6. It Distracts From The Historical Elements

Though Ubisoft should be commended for their efforts to educate the masses by providing interesting little fact files on key events, artefacts and locales, the animus itself is detrimental to the history that the predominant bulk of the series finds itself in. Having your modern day companions blare over a speaker telling you what to do is just far too distracting in a franchise that prides itself upon immersing the player in a realistic environment. However, despite the harmful effects the modern day has had on AC's history there have been occasions where the animus has been deployed in effective and inventive ways. Unity's 'time hop' missions (moronically spoiled before the game's release) illustrated a great way to use the animus to broaden the series' horizons - taking players everywhere from medieval France to occupied Paris during the Second World War. It'd become fairly gimmicky to repeat this process in Syndicate and other releases under the AC banner, but it's very clear that the modern day has to reinvigorate itself if it wishes to survive another outing.
Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.