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The Assassin's Creed series tends to have a flaky relationship with its own lore, as you can never be quite sure whether theoretical mainstays like modern-day shenanigans or Isu artifacts are going to appear in any given entry. Even the conflict between the Assassins and the Templars was more or less swept under the rug in Assassin's Creed Shadows, but Ubisoft is hinting that may soon change.
"The Assassins vs. Templars conflict has always been a core pillar of Assassin's Creed," a developer identified as Luc says in a Reddit AMA. "With Shadows, we wanted to properly set our protagonist in the setting before expanding on the Assassins vs. Templars. Now that it's done on the main game, we scratched the surface with the Critical Role story drop, and you can expect more deep dive in this conflict in the near future."
Shadows does technically feature a handful of Templars, but the organization is very much in the distant background of the game's main conflict. Luc's comment doesn't make clear when we'll see the return of the full Templar storyline, but the Assassin's Creed Shadows roadmap currently only has a single major story DLC release on it – I'd say that free Claws of Awaji expansion is a pretty safe bet for some Templar action.
And yes, the Critical Role story drop Luc alludes to is indeed canon, though the Dead by Daylight crossover is not. Luc confirms as much in another comment, where the issue of Isu artifacts is also addressed. "The fact that there is no Isu artifact in the main game of Shadows doesn't mean that it doesn't exist in the world of Shadows; it just wasn't a story device that we needed for the story we wanted to tell," Luc says.
What about a return to the modern-day storyline? "While Modern Day is not the main focus of the story we tell with Shadows," Luc says in yet another comment, "it remains important for our community, so you can expect it to be expanded at some point, in some fashion…"
On the topic of both the Templars and the Isu, another dev identified as Simon notes that any specific details "would be a spoiler," but says to "keep an eye on our future updates – there might be more deep-lore secrets drops than you imagine…"
That's a whole lot of "someday" and "maybe" with regards to the central lore of Assassin's Creed, but it does at least sound like we can expect a big check-in with the Templars sooner rather than later. As an unapologetic enthusiast for the series' ancient aliens and bizarre sci-fi plot twists, I hope those "deep-lore secrets" are indeed bigger than I imagine.
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