ranzware
Ever since it was formally announced four years ago as Assassin’s Creed Infinity, the retitled Animus Hub has been something of a mystery. First rumoured to be a live-service Assassin’s Creed connecting games past and present, Ubisoft later said the project would act more like a hub-style platform that groups those games together rather than a game in the more traditional sense. It’s still a bit of an unknown, however, especially since its sudden rebrand last summer.
But having finally seen the Animus Hub in action during an extensive preview build of Assassin’s Creed Shadows last week at the Ubisoft Quebec studio, I can finally tell you what the Animus Hub is, how it works and what it looks like.
What is the Animus Hub?
The Animus Hub is effectively the new start screen when you load up Assassin’s Creed Shadows. It’s not a separate launcher that has to be installed or updated – for now, at least, you’ll only ever see it inside the game once you’ve started it up.
There are four main sections in the Animus Hub, and I’ll go through each one below:
- Memories (your games)
- Projects (in-game mission content)
- Exchange (rewards)
- Vault (narrative content)
The Animus Hub is only supported in Assassin’s Creed Shadows for now, but it will be added to other ‘Period 2’ games in the series (Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla and Mirage) at a later date, and, of course, all future Assassin’s Creed games as well.
As for Assassin’s Creed games pre-Origins (aka ‘Period 1’), Ubisoft told me in a statement: “The Animus Hub does not currently support titles released prior to Assassin’s Creed Origins. The Animus Hub will continue to evolve going forward, with new features and content rolling out in the years to come.”
Despite not being a launcher per se, the closest comparison we currently have in games is probably the Call of Duty launcher, though producer Andrée-Anne Boisvert was keen to stress that, “The Animus Hub isn’t something we’re building or putting in a box and forgetting about it,” she says.
“Our objective is to provide an ongoing, coherent and consistent modern-day [story] that ties together the living AC universe. We aim to create both story and gameplay that fans can dig into at any point in time, and the hub will continue to be active and evolve through time through regular post-launch updates.”
She continues: “My worst nightmare was to suffer from another level of launch reception, so our players first and foremost need a direct path to go straight to their beloved games, not a standalone launcher.”
How does the Animus Hub work?
The first thing you’ll see when you start Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the Memories section of the Animus Hub, which shows all supported games in a scrolling historical timeline. “If we couldn’t get you straight into your games, I’d consider it a failure,” Boisvert told me. “So the Animus needed to be a seamless experience for everyone”.
As an example, if you select Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you’ll be able to start a new game, continue your current save file, and get more information about upcoming news and updates. Selecting Continue will also give you a short, text-based recap of your current mission, reminding you what you were doing the last time you stopped playing, and the latest quest you have in your tracker.
Once you hit start, the game will load as normal. You’ll find yourself in the series’ trademark Animus room while it loads, then the game will start in full.
When support arrives for other Period 2 Assassin’s Creed games, you can also scroll through the memories list and launch one of those games through the Animus Hub, provided you already have it installed on the same platform you’re currently playing on. You can also launch games you have on disc, too – though Ubisoft wasn’t able to say exactly what this transition process will look like yet.
There will be customisable backgrounds and decorative elements to add to each game in the memory screen, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows will have a background featuring sakura trees and other “hints of Japan”, Ubisoft said. You’ll also be able to see Naoe and Yasuke as they are in your own game, with whatever weapons, armour and other cosmetics you give them, so it’s personal to you.
Animus Hub Projects explained
The Projects section of the Animus Hub is an overarching progression layer where you’ll be able to take on additional in-game missions to earn “free rewards and pieces of narrative all wrapped up in our new modern-day story,” content director Ben Swinden tells me.
“We’re going to be regularly releasing new projects throughout Shadows as post-launch , and all of this content is going to be completely free.”
The idea was to “capture that feeling of progression” players experience in-game and replicate it here in the Animus Hub. “We want to celebrate AC players by giving them free rewards just for playing their favourite games,” says Boisvert.
These project missions will see you investigating special Anomalies out in the game world. These are time-based missions that are “all driven by core gameplay loops” in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and the location of these Anomalies be “constantly changing” at least once a week, says Swinden.
Completing these will stabilise the Anomalies, and you’ll be rewarded with exclusive gear and in-game items such as resources, narrative items, and a special Animus Hub currency known as Keys (more on that in a sec) and data fragments.
Data fragments are “the key to progressing my project,” Swinden continues, as each project also has encrypted data files that can only be unlocked as you gain more data fragments. “Each of these data files represents a key piece of lore or story in the ongoing, modern day story that we’re just rolling in.”
Once those data files are unlocked, you’ll be able to find them inside the Animus Hub Vault.
Animus Hub Vault explained
The Animus Hub Vault is going to be your “access point” for all pieces of the new Assassin’s Creed modern day storyline going forward, says Swinden. It will be a “growing library” of text, images and videos all grouped together, so it should make it easier to keep track of what’s going on between games as the story evolves.
It’s currently unclear whether the modern day storyline will also make itself known in the games themselves, like it’s done with Odyssey and Valhalla. But what we do know is that Shadows will begin a new modern-day storyline that’s set in the near future, and that this particular version of the Animus will be alternately known as the Animus Ego, and the corrupted Dark Animus.
“With Shadows, we’re taking this opportunity to reimagine the modern day,” says Swinden. “To do this, we’re taking the story forward into the near future. The purpose of this is to allow us to explore a new version of the Animus, that has a much wider-reaching impact on the world that the modern day story takes place in.
“So, the Animus Ego is the result of years of research from Abstergo, and it’s finally a version of the Animus that’s being put in the hands of everyone. What we see when we launch Shadows for the first time is a new user of the Animus Ego being presented with the promise of Ego. It’s a device that’s going to make you into the best version of yourself that you can be – at least that’s what Abstergo is telling you. Our journey, however, is going to start the Dark Animus. This is a hacked version of the Animus Ego that’s providing us access to genetic memories Abstergo did not want you to have access to.”
These genetic memories are the Period 2 onward Assassin’s Creed games we already know about, and will encompass future Assassin’s Creed games, such as Assassin’s Creed Hexe.
As for the modern day story, there’s still a lot we don’t know about it, but based on a press presentation trailer for the Animus Hub, a climate crisis appears to have taken place, with a diary entry from a character called Joel Eastman in Marrakech mentioning a “heat curfew in place till sunset” and that “even in the shade, it was too hot to survive”. There is also a glimpse of an operations report from Marrakech submitted by characters known as Hamza Belkacem and Operative Idrissi. They observe a stakeout that took place at night, where a stall owner named Chafiq Elharar refused a piece of paper given to them by an unnamed Caucasian male, with Belkacem suspecting that Elharar knew they were being surveilled.
Alas, that’s all we’ve been able to glimpse for now, so we’ll have to wait and see what else transpires once Shadows launches on March 20th.
Animus Hub Exchange explained
Finally, there’s the Exchange, where players can spend the Keys they’ve earned through completing Projects. It’s essentially exactly the same kind of setup as the Assassin’s Creed Store in previous games, as here you’ll be able to get special gear, cosmetics and Hideout customisation items.
Items will rotate in and out of the Exchange daily and weekly, and over time you’ll be able to collect all the pieces of a particular item set from the store.
If you’re worried about microtransactions, fear not. You can only earn Keys by completing the anomaly projects. They cannot be bought with real world money, Ubisoft has confirmed. “In the Animus Hub, everything is free,” Boisvert says.
So there you have it. The Animus Hub is effectively a new kind of wrapper for the Assassin’s Creed series – a refreshed start screen that aims to get you into your games faster, and a new home for all the same kind of Store items that have been in the games previously. It should also help with keeping track of everything going on in the new modern day storyline that starts afresh with Shadows, if you want to engage in that side of the game. That’s all there is to it.
For more impressions on Assassin’s Creed Shadows itself, be sure to read my in-depth preview where I got to play six hours of the game at Ubisoft Quebec’s studio, as well as what I thought about its customisable Hideout base building. We’ve also got the details on what Ubisoft did and didn’t change during the game’s four-month delay.
This article is based on a press event in Quebec, for which Ubisoft covered travel and accomodation.
Kurt Indovina
Add comment