Assassin's Creed: Shadows

[Gredival]

Modern day stuff is still going on??

After Desmond there are random people working for Abstergo using the animus for Rogue and Black Flag. Then a random called the Helix initiate for Unity (France), Syndicate (Britain).

They tried making another Desmond in the form of Layla Hassan starting with Origins (Egypt).

[Anoat]

Modern day stuff is still going on??

Cliff notes version for Shadows “modern day” stuff is that there are two AIs fighting for control of the animus. One of them (heavily implied but not confirmed to be Desmond reborn as the Animus caretaker) is fighting to make sure the Animus portrays things as they actually happened to preserve the truth. The other AI is trying to make it so the user can manipulate the Animus to be kind of like a holodeck type thing where you can do anything and have events play out however you want. This is the game’s explanation for why you can switch between either Naoe or Yusuke for major story events or be locked in to one in particular for a canon playthrough.

[Anoat]

The state of modern day following the final Shadows update. Unknown if Black Flag resynced will touch on this, but they’ve made some big kind of modern day reset

Spoiler: show

Modern day is now set in the 2090s. No mention of William Miles but presumably he would be dead of old age by now. Sean and Rebekah likely as well.

Basim/Loki apparently did *something* to both the Assassins and Templars in modern day that crippled both of them for a while. Basim is now searching for a way to reunite with his family thru different saints and other methods, but has moved on from extracting revenge on the descendants of Odin. Supposedly whatever he did to both the assassins and templars was to stop them from hindering his efforts.

The templars are using the AI in the animus to create “what if” scenarios to see if they can create another world ending solar flare so they can seize control. The AI animus is apparently letting them explore different options before being attempted in the real world.

The assassins are striving for historical accuracy to learn how to prevent the solar flares. Heavily implied Desmond and Layla are both now living AI gods of some kind inside the animus.