Assassin’s Creed Shadows Fans Are Disappointed With The Modern Day Storyline

Summary

Assassin’s Creed fans are upset with the direction the modern story took in Shadows.
Instead of following up on Valhalla’s bombshell of a cliffhanger, with Desmond ‘alive’ as the Reader and Layla now in the Grey alongside him, and Basim awakening to find his family, we’re left with audio logs and text files.
However, fans are hopeful that Hexe will pick up the pieces, continuing the story one way or another.

The modern-day storyline in Assassin’s Creed floundered for years after Desmond Miles died (franchise boss Marc-Alexis Coté admitted as much), but it felt like the series was finally getting back on its feet with Layla. Instead of a nameless Abstergo employee, or a random initiate assassin hacking into video game consoles, we had a dedicated protagonist who tied directly into the past, making what we were experiencing throughout history feel meaningful to the overarching plot.

However, Shadows dropped this modern-day story almost completely. Animus rifts, which are optional and strewn about the map, amount to audio logs with static visuals, while much of the story unfolds through text files buried in the battlepass. Some are happy to see the modern day treated like an afterthought, shifting the focus to the past again, but others are upset that the contemporary war between Templars and Assassins is taking a backseat.

“The modern day of Shadows has really disappointed me,” u/Visual_Test5141 posted on r/AssassinsCreed, one of many such threads. “I’ve just felt so uninterested […] because it’s so boring. The personal connection that was felt with Desmond and Layla made it so interesting and gave the game a purpose, and the set up that Valhalla gave with Basim gave me a lot og hope, but it seems that that’s been thrown away.”

Assassin's Creed Valhalla Screenshot Of Layla Hassan Infront Of Window

“It’s frustrating,” u/Assassiiinuss put it simply. “Valhalla actually had decent modern day again. Things happened. Characters were developed. Story threads set up. And now all of that is just scrapped again? It’s hard to care about something when I’m 90 percent sure it’ll just be abandoned again immediately.”

Shadows modern day was really bad indeed. They need to find a good writer for this part of the franchise — u/guifesta.

“Changing it to what doesn’t seem to be a real person but a weird Animus simulation person is very weird,” u/Journey2thaeast commented. “I thought that a lot of the memories we saw playing out during those scenes in the game were very interesting. But I want a character that I can feel connected for the modern day.”

Granted, some are hopeful that AC Hexe, the next mainline game (set in 16th century Germany during the witch trials), will pick up the pieces and continue with a substantial modern day, especially with writer Darby McDevitt returning. However, whether it’ll be with Basim at the helm is another question entirely.

A picture of Basim with the hidden blade - Assassin’s Creed Mirage (1)

Where Is The Modern Day Story Headed In Assassin’s Creed?

In Valhalla, it’s revealed that Desmond did not truly die, but instead transformed into an enigmatic figure known as the “Reader”. He now resides within the Grey (a “virtual existence” described as a “spiritual-tech hybrid afterlife”), alongside Layla, who chose to remain by his side. The two are now working together to avert a world-ending disaster akin to what we saw in Assassin’s Creed 3.

Taking her place is Basim (ie Loki, a living Isu), who had been trapped in the Grey for centuries until we came along. After the Second Disaster was stopped in 2012, he was able to send cryptic messages to the Assassins, luring them to Eivor’s remains. And with Layla, Shaun, and Rebecca in New England, he took the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus to restore his body, vowing to find his children and restore his family while also fighting back against the Templars. From the end of the game, we are able to step into his shoes and control him as the new protagonist.

So, the obvious way forward for the story is to continue playing as Basim, picking up right where Valhalla left off. But Shadows seems to point in another direction.

Eurogamer editor-in-chief Tom Phillips, who recently got through the first project on the battlepass, speculates that there’s a new Desmond being groomed for a modern-day story set 50 years from now.

Through this fictional window into our future, we discover that AI is more prevalent than ever, and unchecked climate change has reached a critical juncture, with heat curfews employed in a desperate bid to prevent any further deaths, as when power fails, huge swaths of the population are wiped out. During this time, a young British man called Joel Eastman visits Marrakech to find out more about his late father’s work.

By this point, Abstergo has used the Animus technology to alter our perspective on history almost completely. Eastman’s father was an archeologist seeking to find the truth.

Despite the efforts of William Miles, Desmond, Layla, Shaun, and Rebecca, the Assassins are “scattered [and] stripped to the bone”, but things seem to be picking up steam again as a small cell (including Eastman) attacks the Templars directly, kidnapping a scientist called Dr Muller who was working on something called “Project Mnemosyne”, named after the Greek goddess of memory. What exactly it entails is unknown.

There’s a lot to unpack, especially with the Awakening project to consider and no doubt more to come in future expansions, but right now, Eastman appears to be a major candidate to replace Layla, sidestepping Basim entirely. Whether AC Hexe will pick up from these text logs and jump ahead to the future, or follow on directly from Valhalla, we’ll just have to wait and see. But perhaps a soft reboot set in the near future is exactly what the modern day story needs.