Assassin's Creed Shadows is finally here and brings with it groundbreaking new gameplay additions to the franchise, including some fairly unexpected features. Despite some initial controversy over its historical accuracy, AC Shadows managed to beat the odds and hit a massive launch with over 2 million players merely two days after release. While many of the features in Shadows take full advantage of the game's unique setting and hardware advancements, the Animus Hub feels like a massively missed opportunity for the series.

Introduced by Ubisoft alongside Assassin's Creed Shadows came the live-service Animus Hub, allowing you to access a multitude of free additional content for the game in the form of hidden lore and bonus content from its battle es. Aside from these features that enhance the gameplay experience of Shadows, the Animus also acts as a hub for launching all your Assasin's Creed games in a single place. While the project is still in its infancy with claims that it will get developed over time, its current state feels massively underdeveloped for how much value it could have provided to Assassin's Creed Shadows.

An Assassin's Creed Remaster Would Have Paired Perfectly With Shadows

Offering More Incentives For Long-Time Fans

Much like how the Call of Duty franchise bundled remakes of their original games with the latest installments in the franchise, Shadow's Animus Hub would have been the perfect opportunity to unveil a new remaster project for one of the older titles in the franchise. While there's understandable concern that it may have overshadowed the release of Shadows, it's hard not to picture a storyline like Ezio's origins in Assassin's Creed II pairing excellently with Yasuke and Naoe's similar, albeit overdone, revenge trope.

Not only would the added incentives help justify Shadows' $70 price tag, but it could have been a signal for older fans in the franchise to take a closer look at how the latest inspirations are deeply rooted in the franchise.

Introducing a plethora of new and returning skills for both protagonists, some of the features involving base-building mechanics are something the series had already experimented with way back as early as Assassin's Creed 2 and its spin-offs. While Shadows takes these mechanics to even greater heights in a way that completely transforms the gameplay loop, it's still great to see my favorite aspects of the older titles make their way into Ubisoft's newest offerings.

Notable Protagonists Are Missing From The Animus Hub

Ignoring What Made The Series So Popular In The First Place

Aside from the lack of a brand-new remaster to kick off the release of the highly anticipated Assassin's Creed Shadows, there was a notable lack of love for the original era of games that made the franchise so iconic in the first place. Currently, the Animus Hub only includes characters from the self-described second period of the franchise that started with Assassin's Creed Origins and beyond. Given that the original Assassin's Creed games are still available on Ubisoft's digital store, their absence feels even stranger when they would benefit the most from the single launcher due to their smaller file sizes.

Making the complete disregard for the original games even more odd is the complete lack of news regarding the heavily rumored Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag remake, which is allegedly aiming for a release in late 2025. While a brand-new remaster is more of a reach, the fact that we've known about the Black Flag project for so long and Ubisoft didn't take the release of the Animus Hub to unveil it could be a worrying sign for the release date of the game.

While the Black Flag remake seems to undoubtedly be on its way, the project could have been affected by the delay in Shadows pushing back the dates for the rest of the franchise offerings. Despite being disappointed by the numerous absences in the Animus Hub's lineup, the planned updates combined with Ubisoft's lofty goals of seeing 10 Assassin's Creed games in the next 5 years, as noted by SemirAC on Reddit, could be fantastic news for fans of the originals, making new remasters or remakes more likely as a result.

Older Assassin's Creed Games Are Still Beloved For A Reason

A Classic Experience That's Hard To Beat

Aside from the simple nostalgia the classic games provide upon revisiting, many of the original Assasin Creed entries offered some of the best stories in the series. Even when the franchise was being accused of growing stale with its simple combat mechanics and lack of innovation, the gameplay in each entry was still tight and perfectly encapsulated the feeling of being an unstoppable assassin during vital periods in history. Despite their well-beloved status, many of the original games were far from perfect in their design but offered satisfying and immersive gameplay that took great advantage of their historical settings.

While more recent entries like AC Mirage and AC Shadows pay more homage to the original period of the series in their inspirations, it's still a night-and-day comparison of how the standard gameplay functions. While the series was definitely in need of some groundbreaking changes to keep the gameplay fresh, it's hard to recognize from the original intentions. Despite their differences, each entry in the Assassin's Creed franchise has a unique perspective into the Brotherhood's history, with the dual protagonists of Assassin's Creed Shadows allowing for a seamless transition between more modern combat and classic stealth mechanics.

Source: SemirAC/Reddit