Loading screens often suck. But occasionally they can become more than just periods of time when you are forced to sit and wait. In Assassin’s Creed, a tradition has been formed of letting players run in an endless void and has stayed (mostly).
Not long ago I decided to finish the few Assassin’s Creed games you have never completed or played. I started with Odyssey, a game I had halfway before other things drove me away. Booting up I discovered that the fun loading screens seen in previous games had disappeared. I was sad.
I fully admit that this is not the most important thing in the series. But there is something comforting and even nostalgic about running around a giant, cyber-killer. It has become something I only expect from this series. When I light a Assassin’s Creed game I have an internal checklist of “Things I want to see and experience.”
- Climb tall towers.
- Jumping from high towers.
- Meeting of historical figures.
- Too many collectibles.
- Some disgusting mini-games, which generally involve puzzles.
- Killing people while running alongside them in a slippery way.
- Running around the loading screen, sometimes moving my hidden blades in and out.
Odyssey complies with most of these except the last bullet point. Not only are there no hidden blades, but there are also no shenanigans on the loading screen. This made me think about loading screens and their history throughout the Assassin’s Creed games. Assassin’s Creed Unity its The just another “main” Assassin’s Creed game that abandoned my beloved antics of the loading screen. Another reason why it’s so low on our list! (Not really…)
I’m not sure why Unit abandoned the “Animus Memory Corridors“Or as I call them” dumb data rooms. “At first, I thought it might be a narrative theme. Unit, you are playing a home console version of Helix created by Abstergo and you are not using a traditional animus. But then Labor union, which also featured the same main character using the same version of home console, included the silly data rooms.
So I have to guess that Unit abandoned them because they were a technical hurdle developers didn’t want to deal with in their first next generation Assassin’s Creed game or they felt it was time to shake things up. Or was it a bit of both.
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These memory runner loading screens would return Assasins’s Creed Origins too, and I loved them. (Just another reason is the best game in the franchise …) But then, as I mentioned earlier, they didn’t come back in the last game, 2018 Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
According to Gamerant, Ubisoft has confirmed that these loading screens will return to Valhalla. However, there is a wrinkle to remember. One of the great selling points of these new consoles is how they will not have loading screens. Or at least very few loading screens and they will be short. Be Valhalla on PS4 and Xbox One have these silly rooms, but not on PS5 and Xbox Series X?
Only time will tell. Perhaps Ubisoft should include an option in the new consoles to turn on artificial loading screens between scenes. Just so I can have my dumb data rooms and people who don’t care can turn them off and never think about them again.
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