The main complaint I’ve seen about the Modern Day portions of Assassin’s Creed is that they disrupt the story the players are actually invested in, that being the Historical plots. Those players, the ones that wanted Shinji Desmond to get back in the Animus, were unsurprisingly not engaged with the Modern Day Check Your Emails simulator.
The simultaneous lack of investment in the modern day portions by both the Developers, who understandably focused on the main part of the game, and the Players, who were given no reason to Start caring about the part of the game with the least consistent writing and the least to do, Created a feedback loop where low engagement meant low prioritization and vice versa. It came to the point where the Modern protagonists stopped getting Names and then straight up stopped appearing. Which is interesting considering the Art Book for the first game described Altaïr and Desmond as Dual Protagonists.
They put all that effort into setting it up and even interspersing it with the rest of the game. They needed to decide at the beginning whether they wanted to commit to it, not awkwardly spend the next decade whittling it out.
Here’s a list of ideas to increase the actual hub world vibes of the modern day sections.
Make leaving the Animus voluntary. Instead of scripted to certain events, it gives you a little pop up, maybe a dialogue prompt. Like, you could still get kicked for plot reasons, but having the ability to choose when to take your breaks and go see what’s up at home base would increase player agency, especially if there were changes that developed or stacked every time it was prompted. Have player curiosity drive that approach. Even if there are mandatory sections the ability to do them early and often, as near little breaks with maybe some missable or optional portions, or all at once, to get them over with, increases the sense that the Player is doing as much that affects the modern world as the ancient one.
There’s a lot of really beloved hub worlds that you don’t technically have to do anything in. The Modern Portions of Assassin’s Creed don’t have to be that way. And honestly, the fact that the part of the game that are set in stone, a sequence where the past can not be altered, is the one that feels more reactive to the player than the present day timeline is wild.
There is the ability to show the protagonist actually reacting to the missions, and have the other characters dialogue about it change if you’ve chained a couple missions together. Feel like they’re actively engaging both sides of the story
For real, the much smaller scope of the modern portions, both physical and character wise, should have allowed it to be incredibly reactive to the player’s progress through the game. You’ve made the environment and a small cast of characters already, make the clutter dynamic, give those guys a larger voice bank. Have them adhere to routines while the player is out of the Animus. Do Red Dead Redemption shit to this one environment. Make it realer than the Animus for better contrast and to make the Bleeding Effect more obvious and unsettling.
Set some dynamic effects on how much you Bleed and how many breaks you take. Maybe you could linger outside the Animus and the companions could start off nice and then after a certain period start getting pushy about putting you back in the Animus.
Maybe after a really long time out of it during the between mission breaks, they start lying about how long you’ve been in the Animus during the exit callouts. “Cmon it’s barely noon, this next one will be quick.” And If you listen to them you go until you’re unceremoniously kicked and it’s the fucking dead of night and you stagger around Bleeding at the heaviest intensity they have. Dizzy with hunger and Speaking un subtitled and un translated languages. One person is still awake and if you do your email checks they are slightly more fucked up than if you didn’t spend 30 straight hours in the Animus.
