The Destiny 2 and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla crossover gives insight into what a futuristic Assassin’s Creed game could look like. On Dec. 6, Bungie added a collection of Ubisoft-inspired cosmetic items and weapons to Destiny 2, which included futuristic versions of Altaïr's, Eivor's, and Kassandra's Assassins robes. At first glance, merging Assassin’s Creed with Destiny in this way seems a pointless endeavor: Ubisoft’s franchise is rooted in human history, whereas Bungie’s is based in a sci-fi world of extraterrestrial travel. But when considering the similarities between Assassin's Creed 's and Destiny 2's lore, this crossover shows exactly how AC games could work in a futuristic setting.
The Assassin's Creed franchise shares important story patterns with Destiny when it comes to sci-fi themes. For instance, the Isu of Assassin's Creed lore were an ancient humanoid species that had advanced cities and technologies, but it was lost due to the Great Catastrophe and the war between humanity and the Isu. This is reminiscent of Destiny's Golden Age when technology flourished and space colonization was at its peak. However, in the Collapse, Darkness followed the Traveler, leaving a small area on Earth as one of the few safe spaces left for humanity. Now, the Earths of Assassin's Creed and Destiny are plunged into never-ending conflicts.
Assassin's Creed Should Model A Future Setting After Destiny 2
The similarities between Assassin's Creed and Destiny's lore show just how apt Ubisoft and Bungie's crossover is (although the cosmetic items' appearances in Ubisoft's cossover trailer are enough to justify its existence). If the Assassin's Creed games ever venture into the future, modeling their settings after Destiny would be an excellent way of adapting the conflict between the Assassins and Templars into a sci-fi world. However, traveling to the future rather than the past would be a difficult task for Ubisoft to pull off with Assassin's Creed series due to its plot devices like the Animus.
Assassin's Creed Should Shift Its Present-Day Stories Into A Destiny-Like Setting
To pull off a futuristic, Destiny-inspired setting in Assassin's Creed, Ubisoft would need to push the series' present-day narrative into the future. Since Abstergo's device can only take people into ancestral memories from the past, the only way a futuristic setting could work is if an Assassin's Creed present-day narrative takes place in the future instead. This would be a big change for the series. Since Assassin's Creed's first present-day protagonist Desmond Miles, Ubisoft has not directed much focus toward the games' present-day narratives. But if the series suddenly jumped forward in time, a lot more attention would be called to the stories happening outside the Animus.
A futuristic setting in which the Animus exists would draw an additional comparison between Assassin's Creed and Cyberpunk 2077. In that game, the Soulkiller program can steal people's consciousnesses and memories from their bodies and store them digitally. Having something similar would create a lot more drama around the Animus in Assassin's Creed. The process of using a machine that connects people to the experiences and memories of their ancestors would suddenly have more risks associated with it. Combine this with a Destiny-like setting in which humanity is struggling against extraterrestrial forces, and Assassin's Creed's present-day narratives would finally feel as important as its historical ones.
Though the crossover between Destiny 2 and Assassin's Creed at first seemed incongruous, it ended up being potentially revelatory for fans of Ubisoft's franchise. The parallels between the Isu and the Golden Age make Destiny's setting a solid inspiration for any Assassin's Creed games based in the future. Hopefully, if such games ever come into existence, they will make use of the sci-fi Assassins robes that came with the crossover.
Source: Ubisoft / YouTube