Visionaries Art Reveals First Look at the Franchise’s Dark Future

Assassin’s Creed is no stranger to looking into the past, but a new comic will now take the franchise in a bold direction, looking at a potential dystopian future. While it probably isn’t canon, Assassin’s Creed: Visionaries’ dark future is still something completely new for the franchise and gives its creators room to play with familiar ideas in ways that readers might not be expecting, and certainly haven’t’ seen before.

Since the original Assassin’s Creed game was released in 2007, the franchise has played with the ideas of multiple time periods and sci-fi technology. What the series hasn’t explored until now, however, is the future. The new comic Assassin’s Creed: Visionaries #1, written by Ale Santos and illustrated by Stéphane Louis, is now exploring this for the first time in the franchise’s history.

Each mainline Assassin’s Creed game has featured modern day framing devices, as characters delve into their ancestors’ memories via the Animus. While the amount of modern-day story has varied from title to title, it’s become more and more sci-fi as the Animus technology has been pushed publicly by Abstergo, the public face of the evil Templar Order. Now this new comic will push the sci-fi elements further than ever before.​​​​​​

Assassin’s Creed Finally Looks To The Future

In Assassin’s Creed: Visionaries #1, readers will see a potential dystopia set in 2119, where the templars have once again all but wiped out the Assassins. What’s interesting is that the stories in Assassin’s Creed: Visionaries, which will feature multiple different settings per issue, aren’t set in continuity, allowing Santos and the different illustrators tackling each story to let their imaginations run wild. Issue #1 also features a story illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque set in Brazil in 1971, exploring the real-life dictatorship that ran the country.

One huge question is whether this dark future is canon or not. While Assassin’s Creed: Visionaries has been described as out of continuity, it wouldn’t be hard to secretly hint at the franchise’s future with a surprise in-canon story. Recently rumors have swirled around the potential for the series to make a huge time-jump, with its roughly contemporary present becoming the distant past, a mirror of how the historical sections of AC games relate to the present day. If this is true, then Assassin’s Creed: Visionaries could in fact be a stealth reveal of this new setting for the franchise.

Is Assassin’s Creed‘s Present Just Another Simulation?

If so, could the “present day’”also be a result of a future Animus user looking back in time? Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Odyssey’s Isu messages have cryptic spiels about simulations, which has led some players to theorize that huge portions of the franchise, especially the modern day, could in fact be a larger simulation, perhaps some future or parallel version of the Animus. However, it’s equally possible that this could also be a meta commentary on the fact that a video game is being played. Where Assassin’s Creed goes from here is uncertain, but Assassin’s Creed: Visionaries is offering several compelling paths it could take, including the future.

Assassin’s Creed: Visionaries #1 releases November 29 from Massive Publishing.