Marionette strings

An ode to the Animus and how it justified the world of creed.

Looking at it today, the Animus seems like the perfect MacGuffin; a device that lets Ubisoft take us to anywhere in the world, to any period of known history. The science fiction and real-world elements may have become tempered in recent years, but back in 2007 it was integral to Assassin’s Creed. The machine let Desmond experience the memories of his assassin ancestor Altaïr, working to explain away many of the idiosyncrasies of the experience. Repetitious dialogue and strange accents? A result of the Animus attempting to translate everything into English for Desmond. Game bugs and boring mission design? You are simply seeing streamlined fragments of Altaïr’s memories. Cumbersome movement options? That’s because Desmond is merely controlling Altaïr – each input on your controller corresponding to limbs rather than action directly, part of the unique Marionette input system. Assassin’s Creed worked so hard to justify its fiction, in many ways it’s a shame that that has disappeared over the years.