AC Shadows’ Animus Hub: A Promising Beginning to a Long Adventure

In recent years, Ubisoft has made it pretty clear that it’s setting its sights high when it comes to the Assassin’s Creed series. They’re not just serving up Assassin’s Creed Shadows; there’s a fresh array of projects on the horizon, including Codename Hexe, Jade, and an intriguing multiplayer venture. As if that weren’t exciting enough, Ubisoft is weaving them all together with something they call the Animus Hub. With the launch of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, we’re finally getting a taste of what they have in store.

The debut of Assassin’s Creed Shadows is marked by the introduction of the Animus Hub. This hub acts like a central merge-point, pulling together the three prior RPGs, Mirage, and Shadows itself under one umbrella. It’s packed with missions, rewards, and captivating narratives for players to dive into. It might not revolutionize the gaming world just yet, but it’s definitely steering the franchise towards an exciting future. Still, Ubisoft has some distance to cover before the Animus Hub truly shines.

Launching Assassin’s Creed Shadows greets players with the Animus Hub, an inventive compilation of historical escapades marketed as an Abstergo product. Currently, players can leap into epic adventures from Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, Mirage, and Shadows—all accessible from this central hub, which feels like a streamlined franchise launcher. However, it’s a little disappointing that for now, the rest of Assassin’s Creed’s expansive series isn’t part of the mix.

Within this new hub, players will find a trio of features packed with engaging content. Among these are the Projects, where Ubisoft plans to introduce live-service elements with missions dubbed Anomalies. Completing these will reward players, seemingly interlinked with a battle pass system. This pass is housed in another feature called the Exchange, though it seems exclusive to Assassin’s Creed Shadows for now. Lastly, there’s the narrative-heavy Vault, a collection space for all those elusive Rift cutscenes in Shadows.

Despite the exciting potential, the Animus Hub needs more refinement. As it stands, Shadows is the sole game that launches seamlessly from the hub. If players wish to dive into one of the other included titles, they must ensure it’s installed and still navigate that game’s startup interface. Switching back to the Hub isn’t a quick task either—it essentially requires a fresh start from Shadows, which isn’t the most user-friendly approach. By contrast, Shadows offers the quick convenience of hopping back into the hub with ease after a click.

The content bundled within the Hub is largely tethered to Shadows alone, which leaves the other four included games somewhat neglected. Future Assassin’s Creed games will undoubtedly be integrated, but the Hub really should embrace the franchise’s vast back catalog. It’s intended to be a franchise-wide launcher, after all, so representing the full breadth of Assassin’s Creed is essential.

Recognizing the current version as simply a starting point, Ubisoft has lots of work ahead to unlock the feature’s complete potential. In time, we can probably expect to see enriched additions like a multiplayer mode, but sooner is always better. Right now, the hub feels more like a portal for Shadows when it’s supposed to offer so much more.