Since its announcement earlier this year, Assassin’s Creed Infinity has gone absolutely quiet, leaving fans to speculate about its live-service nature and content matter. It’ll likely be another year or two before solid information comes out, depending on how Ubisoft intends to approach it, but luckily, AC Valhalla does a lot of legwork to set up AC Infinity. SPOILERS AHEAD.
It does remain to be seen, of course, but there is one plot thread that will likely serve as the overarching story framework of a live-service Assassin’s Creed game. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla brings Desmond Miles back into the fore, and given the nature of his return, he’s likely to play a big role in Assassin’s Creed Infinity.
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From AC3 to AC Valhalla, The Fate of Desmond Miles
Every fan knows that Desmond Miles dies in Assassin’s Creed 3 to prevent the second disaster. Abstergo is able to recover his body afterward, taking his ancestor’s memories to be explored by other people. While Juno escapes, appears in AC4: Black Flag, but gets relegated to a comic book storyline where Desmon’s son Elijah defeats her, AC Origins introduces a major new storyline with Layla.
Come AC Valhalla, players learn that the world is constantly moving toward a new disaster, and Layla’s role as the Keeper of the Staff wasn’t for good causes. With it, Loki returns to the modern era as Basim and is searching for his family/a way to restore his love, Aletheia. During this, Layla enters the Grey via Yggdrasil, meets The Reader (who fans know to be Desmond Miles), and joins him in attempting to find a timeline where the world doesn’t end in disaster.
The Codename of Assassin’s Creed Infinity
Finding this timeline and ensuring the world follows this sequence of events so it doesn’t end in disaster is likely a key direction of the future of the franchise. And this search through a near infinity number of timelines is likely to play a key role. Fans should keep in mind how codename and subtitles suggest the content of a game—Valhalla was codenamed Kingdom and sees Eivor explore the various kingdoms of England and so on—and it was named Valhalla, likely for Eivor’s constant search for glory.
With this in mind, Infinity could suggest that the live-service game could be exploring time periods and assassins to find and ensure the proper timeline. Even disregarding this, the set-up for Desmond/The Reader and Layla is clear, and it would be a wasted opportunity not to use this as an overall framework/story device for the next Assassin’s Creed game. Toss in the obvious set-up, Infinity’s inevitable fate as a genuine follow-up sequel to Valhalla (unless future DLC ends the Basim/Reader storyline, which doesn’t seem too likely), the code name, and the fate of Desmond Miles, and it seems clear that Desmond’s impact on the franchise isn’t over.
Assassin’s Creed Infinity is in development.
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