Future Assassin's Creed games will have "more robust modern day" than Unity

Future Assassin's Creed games will include a greater focus on the series' modern day timeline than last year's Assassin's Creed Unity, Ubisoft has suggested.

Fans were left disappointed by Unity's brief sashays into the present day, presented via a couple of quick cut-scenes.

Previous entries have included playable sections, puzzles and even whole areas to explore - which, happily, it sounds like Ubisoft hopes to return to in future instalments.

Speaking via Twitch during a Ubisoft community livestream, Assassin's Creed lead writer Darby McDevitt explained that his favourite modern day section - Brotherhood's town of Monteriggioni - may inspire present day sections found in future instalments.

"That only came about because [we] were able to reuse Monteriggioni from AC2," he recalled. "So the future - and this is the plan - is to smartly reuse things so we can have a more robust modern day."

McDevitt, who worked as lead writer for Assassin's Creed: Revelations, AC4: Black Flag and short film Embers, as well as PSP and DS spin-offs Bloodlines and AC2: Discovery, revealed that Unity had originally featured more modern day moments.

"We always plan to have more modern day but we have to be really smart about how we do it. There was a plan for a little more modern day in Unity - a plan," he stressed, "nothing that was actually cut.

"The thing with Unity was that it was a completely fresh game on a completely fresh generation. So creating any kind of modern day is a pretty huge ask. To create a city, for instance, or even part of a city, would require six months of work by many, many artists, designers, modellers. And then you'd need gameplay systems that didn't feel like you were just fencing."

McDevitt also revealed that he had been working with other Ubisoft writers on the franchise's future - including the history of the series' mysterious forerunner race, the First Civilisation.

"I particularly love the lore. I've been working the past two years, with all the other writers, on getting a great document together on the First Civilisation.

"We've created 500, 600, 700 years worth of history that we hope to start teasing out for the next 10, 20 years or however long we're around," he continued.

"As I see it there were always two ways to go about this. You could always make [the First Civ] very mysterious - to never really go into what they were. But at a certain point in the games you got to the point where you knew they were real. So why not go the other direction and treat them as real history.

"So me and the other writers have been, as a side-project to really make sure all future projects have this cool timeline to go from, creating this huge First Civ history. With all the big moments and a ton of small moments you've never thought of. So every future writer can say 'I want to reference Juno again, or Minerva' and see where she was at a specific date... and how far along was the First Civ-human war going."

While not yet officially confirmed by Ubisoft, a leak has revealed that the next Assassin's Creed game, code-named Victory, will be set in an Industrial Revolution-era London.