I feel like in the active car crash that is Unity's technical issues right now I haven't heard a lot about the game's actual content. Anyone playing the game, I'm super curious what's going on in the modern day part of the story in this game if you'd care to share. I might still get this game if that stuff pays off in this game. Did they bring it back to the forefront or is it barely a factor, like in the last game?

Spoilers ITT, obviously.

@bargainben: I haven't finished the main story yet, but I feel I'm very close. I'm in sequence 8.

The future stuff is brushed over very briefly and seems like nothing more than a slight framing device. Out of the like 12hours I've played (couldn't sleep, but that's another story) maybe 1hour total was future cutscene/occupied France gameplay that consisted of climbing.

It was nice that they used the future stuff to just randomly have you climb the Eiffel Tower for absolutely no reason at all. If were gunna be time hopping then let's go bananas! The sections weren't great but I love the idea of ubi saying "fuck it, now your climbing the Statue of Liberty or Eiffel Tower". Why? Because animus that's why. Which is good enought for me. If only the stealth and combat were actually a step forward rather than a half step to the left

Haven't played the game, but read some reviews. Sounds like the modern day stuff is minimal at best. The premise of the game is that you're someone using Helix, which is like a consumer-grade Animus that is kinda like a video game/virtual reality console. So your "modern day character" in the game is just some nobody using this Helix thing, reliving the memories of Arno. That's to the best of my understanding, unless something changes later in the game that reviews are purposely not talking about.

Effectively, it sounds like there really is not any kind of story with named characters happening in the modern day. I think people's reaction to how that went at the end of AC3 was negative enough that Ubi is largely abandoning that side of the storytelling.

I don't get that. End ending of AC3 was weird and kind of a letdown but my memory is people just didnt like Connor as a lead character and that some of the main missions were just a mess (the horse ones in particular). And it seems they heared those complaints, but throwing the baby out with the bathwater is a bit extreme. A lot of people's issues with the future stuff is that progress game to game was super marginal, even when they gave a damn about it. People didnt like the modern stuff because you didnt get cool tools or really do proper AC stuff other than traversal. I liked what they did in 4, going on the other end of things and letting things calm down since Connor died at the end of 3, but I was really hoping this game would bring a big push back and deliver on what people assumed the modern day stuff was going to become. People keep harkening back to the "old" AC cus its back in Europe, no hunting no ships etc., I was really hoping that meant a return to the modern story. Bummer