Ubisoft Will Use The Animus Hub To Connect A “Present-Day Story” With Its Historical Settings, Says Assassin’s Creed Brand Lead

Marc-Alexis Côté, the head of the Assassin’s Creed brand at Ubisoft recently spoke to PSU for an interview about Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and revealed just how important one of Shadows new features is for the future of the series.

The Animus Hub is the first thing players see when they load up Shadows, where they see a historical scroll wheel that lets them select between the settings of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Mirage, Valhalla Odyssey, and Origins. If you have any of those games, and they’re installed on your console, choosing a game other than Shadows will immediately cause whichever game you’ve picked to start up.

It’s also a hub for the live service elements that Ubisoft has added into Shadows, but to hear Côté explain it, the Animus Hub seems to be so much more.

When asked about the Animus Hub, and the role it has to play, Côté said that Ubisoft will “use the Hub as a platform to link our different experiences together.” He said that through the Animus Hub, Ubisoft will “have this present-day story that will be told continuously between our games, and in-between, our games, as well.”

He also added, “People who love the modern day [story] will get more of it in our post-launch of Shadows, and our upcoming games, as we use the Hub as a platform to link our different experiences together.”

Could this mean we have a present-day Assassin’s Creed game coming, sometime in the future? One that doesn’t try to recreate a bygone era, but our modern world? Maybe, but it’s likely we’re still far from that. It’ll be interesting to see what we learn as Ubisoft continues to add narrative content to Shadows.