If everything you know about the Assassin’s Creed series came from trailers, you’re unaware of the series’ true lore, such as the identity of the Isu.
Ubisoft ingeniously hid what Assassin’s Creed was really about when promoting the first game and has been keeping the secret from non-players ever since. If you’ve never played the series before, you likely believe it follows a bunch of different heroes from different periods in the past. You have no idea that most of it is actually taking place in present times. Yes, even though players get in the shoes of deceased assassins of that world, we only do so through the Animus, a sci-fi contraption that allows the real main characters in the present to relive their ancestor’s lives.
That’s the main secret of the Assassin’s Creed series, but there’s a deeper secret hiding in the shadow of the first secret: the Isu.
Telling history apart from mirage
One of the things that the Assassin’s Creed series excels at is historical accuracy. That’s true even when you think about Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the game with all the wacky ancient Greek mythological elements.
The series fills every non-mythical part of every game with serious aesthetical and historical detail. The latter Assassin’s Creed games even contain fully-fledged didactic materials that real Egyptologists use in their lessons. It’s gotten so crazy that Assassin’s Creed Origins predicted the discovery of a secret chamber inside a real pyramid.
But not everything in the series is real or even based on existing human-made myths. The Isu are the most original element in this series.
So what are the Isu?
Even though the game presents the templars as the greatest threat to the assassins and the world where the series takes place, the Isu have always been the greater looming threat. They’re a race of beings that inhabited the earth and achieved great technological prowess long before humans came about. Sadly for them, none of their many scientific advances saved them from an extinction event that brought them to the brink of total annihilation.
The Isu are the inventors of the Animus. The animus’ real purpose isn’t to allow humans to learn more about their ancestors. It’s to allow the Isu to inhabit the bodies of others. The animus grants them the power of reincarnation.
Are these Isu in the room with us?
In the world of Assassin’s Creed, all ancient deities worshipped by ancient civilizations were actually Isu. They look and behave just like people, but they have their quirks. Some are okay, but many of the Isu don’t see us as equals and would like to either enslave or wipe us out.
Spoiler alert: In Assassin’s Creed Mirage, we play as Basim, a human who’s the reincarnation of Loki, the famous Viking deity that, you guessed it, is Isu. Luckily, even with all the mischief, Basim isn’t one of the bad ones.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage is now out on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S.
