Ubisoft has new technology that could soon allow Assassin’s Creed players to visit multiple timelines during the course of each game. Assassin’s Creed could get a lot more interesting, with each game becoming bigger and broader than ever before.
In each Assassin’s Creed game, players step into the shoes of a character who spends time in something called an Animus. This is a machine that uses DNA to allow those that use it to relive the lives of assassins who existed in the past. This means that games have taken players to such far-off places as the Holy Land during the third crusade in the 1100s, Europe during the Italian Renaissance, the American Revolutionary War, the High Seas of the West Indies during the early 1700s, 18th century New Orleans, Victorian London and ancient Egypt. The latest title in the franchise, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, will take players to ancient Greece.
Although Assassin’s Creed generally limits gameplay to one particular historical period, Ubisoft said that it has plans to use new technology to allow players to visit multiple time periods within each game. Ubisoft Canada’s executive vice president of creative Lionel Raynaud spoke about this new technology in an interview with the Ubisoft blog:
Assassin’s Creed, though, is not the only title that would benefit from this. Other open world titles, such as Far Cry and Watch Dogs, could also allow players to visit multiple countries with each game. This creates a whole new meaning to the term “open world.” Ubisoft plans on focusing more on titles that feature smaller plotlines within the whole of an overall story arc that goes on even after the final villain gets defeated.
“We all see a future where a game will stay {post-launch], and new experiences will come in the games. But we will have technology that will break the [current] limits of memory, for instance, because of new technologies that are arriving. We would be able to – in the same world – have several historical periods, for instance, in Assassin’s Creed, and use the Animus to travel from one to the other.”
This is similar to the experience of playing Assassin’s Creed Origins. In that title, players have a series of people that need assassinating, but the game does not end after the final assassination. It continues on and allows players to stay in that world longer than they may have previously.
Considering the high cost of games, as well as their long development cycles, creating a system that keeps players entertained in those worlds for longer periods of time can only bode well for players. But how will that play out for the companies that make games? Will they have to figure out how to monetize those longer play periods to earn back the investment they put into the games to begin with? Will this mean even more microtransactions, something that players would prefer to have less of? Those questions remain unanswered for now.
More: Ubisoft Wants To Reach 5 Billion Gamers Within The Next 10 Years
Source: Ubisoft
