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Here’s How Assassin’s Creed’s Animus Hub Is Going To Work

To Infinity and beyond…

If it feels like Ubisoft’s cross-game, online-enabled Assassin’s Creed launcher has been talked about for years at this point, that’s because it bloody well has. But the days of “leaks” and speculation are finally over, because with a recent rounds of hands-on previews of Assassin’s Creed Shadows out in the world (you can read ours here), the project once known as Assassin’s Creed: Infinity is finally ready for the primetime. And it’s now called the Animus Hub.

Yep, starting with the release of Shadows in November February March, the experience of launching into a modern Assassin’s Creed game will work a little differently. If you’re already conjuring thoughts of the now-ubiquitous Call of Duty launcher, you’re sort of on the right track, but Ubisoft doesn’t want you to call it a launcher! No, this is being positioned as a key feature of each game as a whole and a way to integrate the modern side of the overarching Assassin’s Creed story across multiple releases. And thanks to an official Ubisoft page as well as reporting from outlets like Eurogamer and IGN, we now have a better idea of what this all means:

So, What is the Animus Hub?

Look, I really don’t know how to get into the weeds of this thing without straight-up calling it a launcher and provoking the Parisian peeve of Yves, but here goes. The Assassin’s Creed Animus Hub is a launcher fuck a front-end menu that players will see when they boot up Assassin’s Creed Shadows (and eventually legacy/future titles), where they’ll first be presented with a menu of “Memories.” These Memories represent each of the entries in the series, presented as a historical timeline. As you scroll through each one, you’ll see that game’s protagonist depicted as they are in your current save file, equipment and all, and selecting a game will allow you to jump straight in with a new or saved file, read up on news about the game and other bits you’d usually find in any of the games’ title screens.

While Shadows will reportedly be the first and only game supported on day one, Ubisoft plans to integrate “Period 2” entries like Mirage, Valhalla, Odyssey and Origins so that any games you have installed on the same system as the one you’re playing can be played directly from the Animus Hub’s Memories timeline, cutting out the hurdle of quitting one game, booting another and going through the title sequences/screens — it’s straight into the action. One neat detail is the idea that you’ll also get a quick text-based recap of what you were doing when you last played a supported title, as you load in.

See the Animus Hub in action in the video above

What Else Does the Animus Hub Do?

The vision for the Animus Hub is seemingly much more than just a way to launch into all of the games (because it’s not a launcher, remember??), it’s also set to be the place where the series’ modern timeline unfolds, as well as a compendium of knowledge and a source of constantly-updated new gameplay opportunities.

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Projects are another feature of the Hub that are perhaps a bit more exciting. These will be additional in-game missions, released periodically at no added cost to players, that further tie the Animus experience to the games and should give a sense of progression to the modern day side of things without interrupting the historical setting of the actual game content. It hasn’t been made clear whether this means Projects will be the only interaction players have with the modern-day story going forward, but it seems like a cool new storytelling track for fans to get into, and completing these will nab players special Keys to unlock a rotating selection of rewards in a dedicated Exchange.

And for those that are all-in on the wider AC timeline and want to consume every secret and scrap of lore, or just those that need a bit of an assist in keeping up with it all, the Animus Hub Vault is going to be the go-to location for everything related to the story in the modern timeline. Text, videos, images, all collated in one place and ready to be dissected. Once again, Eurogamer‘s report is rich in more detail on this as well as a bit of an explainer on what’s actually going on with the modern story as of the debut of the Animus Hub and Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Make sure you read that here.

Will the Animus Hub Have Microtransactions?

The final crucial point of this whole endeavour, and one that will no doubt be front-of-mind for anyone with experience in modern Ubisoft titles, is how this live service-esque new experience will further monetise the Assassin’s Creed games. For those folks, I have good news.

“In the Animus Hub, everything is free,” producer Andrée-Anne Boisvert told Eurogamer.

That means those items in the Animus Hub Exchange are acquired via the keys earned through completing Projects and no other way, which is reassuring. As already stated, the Projects themselves will also be completely free, adding a nice stream of additional in-game content at no extra cost. It also erases any fears of a subscription model or anything else that might sustain the Animus Hub over time, aside from the purchase of the games themselves. Whether this holds true forever, and whether the full-price purchase model of Assassin’s Creed games even continues as-is going forward, is hard to say but the current sentiment is seemingly a good one.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is scheduled to launch on March 20th, 2025 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. You can read our extensive preview of more than four hours of the game right here.

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Written By Kieron Verbrugge

Kieron's been gaming ever since he could first speak the words "Blast Processing" and hasn't lost his love for platformers and JRPGs since. A connoisseur of avant-garde indie experiences and underground cult classics, Kieron is a devout worshipper at the churches of Double Fine and Annapurna Interactive, to drop just a couple of names.

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