Assassin's Creed devs say they'll be getting around to the whole Assassins vs Templars and modern setting stuff 'at some point, in some fashion'

Initially, the Assassin's Creed games were about a mythological rivalry between the Assassins and the Templars—and the ways in which that historical conflict bled into the present day. It seemed, in the series' infancy, that Ubisoft was ramping up for a full-blooded modern-world game where this conflict would reach its apex. Then it, uh, didn't do that. But hey, pirates! Pirates are cool, right?

While pirates being cool is an indisputable fact, it does feel a smidge like Ubisoft's fallen off the old wagon. Well, there's just the barest glimmer of hope in a recent Reddit AMA. Responding to one player as to the topic of Assassins vs Templars, level designer Luc Plante writes:

"The Assassins vs Templars conflict has always been a core pillar of Assassin's Creed. With Shadows, we wanted to properly set our protagonist in the setting before expanding on the Assassins vs Templars. Now that it's done on the main game, we scratched the surface with the Critical Role story drop, and you can expect more [of a] deep dive [into] this conflict in the near future."

That "Critical Role story drop" refers to a sponsored one-shot done by D&D livestream Critical Role—which Ubisoft then decided to make canon, for some reason.

But what about that modern setting stuff? Well, it's slim, but Plante also replied to a separate question to the affirmative, though he's being incredibly coy: "While Modern Day is not the main focus of the story we tell with Shadows, it remains important for our community, so you can expect it to be expanded at some point, in some fashion…"

So there's a chance. And, look—while I was never that much of a fan of Desmond, partially because of his mid-2000s era videogame protagonist buzzcut—I did always feel like the series was just waiting to do a fully fledged modern day sequel. And like, sure, that'd be massively less interesting than exploring another period of human history with your science fantasy series, but consider this: I want to eagle-dive off a skyscraper into a pile of trash.

To hear it might (maybe, possibly) be expanded upon in Shadows gives me some hope. Until then, I guess we've got Watch Dogs or something.