Highlights
- Assassin’s Creed’s timeline is already complicated, and upcoming games like Red, Jade, and Hexe might make it even messier.
- Some of the upcoming Assassin’s Creed games could be more than 1,000 in-Animus years apart while experiencing out-of-Animus time skips as well.
- The convoluted timeline speaks to the depth of the franchise’s lore, but it also risks making AC unapproachable.
Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft’s flagship historical action-adventure franchise, isn’t known for its succinct, linear storytelling. Its narrative spans millennia and involves god-like beings, simulations, and real figures from various historical eras. With the next generation of Assassin’s Creed games, alongside the “hub” that will be Assassin’s Creed Infinity, the long-running story of the games might be getting even more complicated.
Broadly speaking, Assassin’s Creed can be broken up into two sections: the modern-day, quasi-science-fiction plot that serves as the main connective tissue of the series, and the somewhat more grounded, historical side of the series, which forms the bulk of each release. When it comes to the modern-day plot, each game serves as a direct continuation of the previous one’s story, and while the plot is still thickly layered, it’s much more straightforward than the in-Animus narratives of each game, which leap around to different time periods and geographical locations. With Assassin’s Creed Red, Assassin’s Creed Jade, and Assassin’s Creed Hexe on the horizon, this thread of the AC story is at risk of getting a lot messier.
Every Assassin’s Creed Game, Ranked
From the original to now, every Assassin’s Creed game has its highs and lows, but which is the best?
The Assassin’s Creed Timeline Is Becoming More Erratic
The Current State of the Assassin’s Creed Timeline
The AC series boasts a whopping thirteen entries, not including spin-off or mobile titles, and this has naturally led to the Assassin’s Creed timeline being rather complicated, especially since the series is aiming for a narrative throughline across all releases. When it comes to the non-modern-day story, the first Assassin’s Creed game is actually the fifth game chronologically, with the first game in the timeline being the tenth game released, and the fact that the series was fairly chronologically consistent pre-Origins makes this even more confusing. On top of this, the focus of the overarching plot has become less about the Assassin-Templar conflict and more about the history of the Isu and the Pieces of Eden.
Assassin’s Creed Red, Jade, and Hexe May Throw Some New Narrative Wrenches
Not too much is known about Assassin’s Creed Hexe or Assassin’s Creed Red—Red and Hexe aren’t even their official titles—but their in-Animus settings can be roughly predicted. Red will take place during Feudal Japan, and while this era spans a few hundred years, the rumors suggesting that real-world samurai Yasuke will be the protagonist of the game narrow the setting down to the late 1500s. Assassin’s Creed Hexe has been rumored to take place in the 16th century as well, but in Central Europe during the reign of the Holy Roman Empire.
Assuming these rumors are accurate, it would seem like Assassin’s Creed is returning to the 1500s, around the time of the Ezio games or maybe a bit later. But then there’s Assassin’s Creed Jade, which is confirmed to be taking place during China’s Warring States period in 3rd-century BCE, placing it just after Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on the timeline. This is going to make the series’ narrative even more confusing than it already is, especially if these upcoming titles are looking to keep telling the story of the Isu, the Assassins (Hidden Ones), and the Templars (Order of Ancients). There won’t be much consistency or a clear, overarching plot to follow.
The non-Animus plot could still offer some chronological consistency, although rumors suggest that Assassin’s Creed Red‘s modern-day story could be set several decades in the future, which could complicate things even further. None of these complications are inherently bad, and Assassin’s Creed‘s complex, difficult to parse nature may be what makes it appealing to many players. Those hoping for some narrative consolidation in future Assassin’s Creed games might be out of luck, though.
Assassin’s Creed: Mirage
Assassin’s Creed: Mirage is the latest entry in Ubisoft’s iconic stealth series.
The game will be set in 9th century Baghdad and is going to take the Assassin’s Creed franchise back to its action-adventure roots with a more linear structure, rather than the role-playing style seen in the recent main series games.
- Released
- October 12, 2023
- Developer(s)
- Ubisoft Bordeaux
- Genre(s)
- Action-Adventure
- How Long To Beat
- 12 Hours
- Metascore
- 78
- PS Plus Availability
- N/A
