Assassin's Creed: Syndicate - 8 Reasons Why The Modern Day Story Has To Go
5. It Doesn't Add To The Immersion
Not even the animus could excuse AC Unity's distorted and nightmarish models, nor could it justify the overall buggy release the game had either. As many an Assassin will know, Ubisoft have utilised the animus to explain the quirks of the series - namely those dodgy accents and the 'occasional' glitches players will encounter in their time travelling adventures. This is done in the name of immersion, but its effect is quite the reverse. Players don't want to play as a gamer playing as an assassin - they just want to be the Assassin. By taking out the middleman that the Animus presents, Ubisoft could quite easily do away with a lot of these immersion-breaking features and give players a truly authentic historical action adventure. It would also call for a change in the menu design as well. Instead of uploading facts to the animus database, gamers could just discover scrolls, engravings, and other factual indicators to further enhance their knowledge of the period. Indeed, Assassin's Creed could exist quite happily outside of the shackles the modern day brings with it.
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.
