Not much is known about Assassin's Creed Infinity, but what is known points to a completely different experience than what fans are accustomed to. It is a live-service evolving world with multiple settings, inspired by the successes of Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto Online. But what that means for a franchise that has been historically single-player, one-setting adventures is hard to predict.
It could be something like a hub world, where various expansions build on the idea of one game. That begs the question why the live-service model is needed if each expansion is effectively itself a game. It could be a bigger world, where players take on the role of a character and engage in multiple settings in a similar time period. The latter could be the most interesting prospect, as it would take the global Assassins vs. Templar conflict and make it global in one game. Again, this is all speculation and what Assassin's Creed Infinity exactly is remains to be seen, but if it is indeed globalizing the franchise, it needs to globalize the conflict more directly too.
Assassins vs. Templars
The Templars are as convoluted as the Assassins, truth be told. Generally, they play the bad guys who want control of the world, but there are good individuals found within its ranks. An "evolving" world in the franchise would be doing them a disservice to minimize them as just the bad guys in this one. Maria Thorpe, Elise, and even Haytham (if less so) come to mind, while players have taken on the role of a righteous Templar once: Assassin's Creed Rogue's Shay Patrick Cormac. He was an Assassin Hunter trying to prevent the eager Colonial Assassins from destroying the world, and he wasn't really one for all the Isu stuff beyond the Box. In other words, both Assassins and Templars have layers that make them ripe for exploration.
Of course, it's hard to play a Templar in a mainline "Assassin's Creed" game, but that doesn't have to be the case for Infinity. Depending on the latter's approach, if it were a more centralized and globalized story, both Assassins and Templars would have reason for traveling to any of Assassin's Creed Infinity's many settings. If, for example, players were sent to Japan in order to retrieve a Piece of Eden, that could work for both the Assassin Brotherhood and the Templar Order. Both would be interested, and in an area with tighter, more city-focused and parkour-based gameplay, the only thing that would really need to change is how the story is perceived. Allowing players to have an Assassin character and a Templar character could continue the story from both sides, and allow for the experiences that fans want out of gameplay, even in a live-service world.
This would be intriguing for the story, allowing it to be told from multiple angles for a lot of replayability. Multiplayer Assassin's Creed games are not unheard of, even in co-op, but allowing players to engage in co-op or even MP as Assassin and Templar factions could work. That's not to say that Assassin's Creed Infinity should effectively be Fortnite, no battle royale mode is needed after all, but Ubisoft should take what it learned from AC3/AC4 multiplayer, as well as Assassin's Creed Unity's co-op, and make something that works as an attache to the game.
Multiplayer shouldn't be the focus in Assassin's Creed Infinity, but in exploring smaller, tighter time frames with core Assassin's Creed gameplay, the options for MP modes and SP stories, and the choice of an Assassin/Templar could surprise Assassin's Creed fans. Really, it's all in how Ubisoft implements everything from the gameplay (something more akin to Unity than Valhalla), the live-service elements, the settings, and the story. Obviously, that's a lot to say and a lot more to do, but Assassin's Creed Infinity is said to have ambitions—hopefully, they're the right ambitions.
Assassin's Creed Infinity is in development.