Assassin's Creed Infinity Could Be the Shake-Up the Franchise Needs

 Assassin's Creed Infinity takes the franchise into a live service model, which provides great opportunities to deliver changes fans want.

Few franchises in gaming have experienced the same kind of explosive evolution as Assassin's Creed. The original game is a stealth-action adventure with parkour elements that can be finished over a long weekend. Last year's Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is an action RPG with parkour, drinking games, rap battles, sailing and more that takes well over a hundred hours to fully experience. The next entry, Assassin's Creed Infinity, promises to be another reinvention of the franchise, which Ubisoft has described as moving the franchise to a live-service model while remaining familiar to fans.

Of course, such major changes have come with their share of fan outcry. Before 2017's Assassin's Creed Origins, the games relied heavily on players using stealth and gadgets to accomplish their goals. Combat, while generally to be avoided, relied on an almost rhythmic approach, similar to the Batman: Arkham series. In more recent entries, stealth has taken a back seat to broader combat abilities built around a hitbox system more in line with Dark Souls or Horizon Zero Dawn. Stealth kills using the trademark hidden blade became more complicated in the newer system, too, going from a single button press to requiring stat leveling or synchronized button presses to take down stronger opponents.

Ubisoft is a company that loves a formula, so Infinity likely won't stray too far from the current basics of the series on a mission-to-mission basis. However, the larger structure of the game will likely allow for more modularity, which means Ubisoft can deliver smaller, more flexible packages to appeal to fans with more specific visions of what Assassin's Creed is.

In the franchise's fictional universe, people in the modern-day can access historical events using a device called an Animus. This narrative setup provides a clear opportunity for the structure of Infinity, where the modern world functions as a hub area through which players access different time periods with friends or for solo play by using the Animus. This modular structure means that Ubisoft doesn't have to commit to a particular design choice for a single AAA-scale title. Different, smaller sections of the game can revisit settings and mechanics from the franchise's past. In one game session, a player might sneak through a linear mission in the Paris catacombs with classic Assassin's Creed mechanics, join a team to clear a Roman fort as in Origins, and finish with Edward Kenway for pirate ship raids. Instead of a bloated feast, Infinity can be a buffet.

A lot remains to be seen about the shape Infinity will take. A more modular approach to content means a different price structure than simply paying for a single title in whichever regular, special or gold edition plus microtransactions for cosmetics and equipment. A regular subscription might be the best way to ensure a consistent stream of specialized content, but customers may be reluctant to sign on, especially given Ubisoft's recent reputation and disastrous foray into NFTs.

The promise of Infinity lies in its potential to deliver many different flavors of Assassin's Creed. Switching to a live service model poses substantial risks, but it also means a higher degree of flexibility to explore what the battle between the Assassins and Templars has looked like, does look like and can look like. Whether the game can live up to such potential remains to be seen.