TheAssassin’s Creedseries includes several things you don’t see in other games. One of those is memory corridors. You enter these special planes of existence when you’re assassinating someone or waiting for the game to load. In-universe, they’re formed by the Animus machine that you’re technically always in while playing the games.
The Animus is a complicated piece of equipment, so it’s unclear why you enter these places at times or why the corridors in each game are vastly different from the others. They all have their own distinct design, and here is how they stack up against each other.
This ranking isn’t based on the scenes or dialogue that takes place in memory corridors. Instead, they’re ranked based on their presentation and aesthetics.
For Liberation, the developers tried something a bit different with the memory corridors, adding vibrant orange and blue colors. These colors are in the form of shapes and contain a unique lens flare effect.
It’s certainly different from the other memory corridors, but ‘different’ doesn’t necessarily mean good. The color choices aren’t bad, but the lens flare effect looks a bit odd when used in this way. It works better in small doses and when there’s a beam of light in the scene.
The Revelations memory corridors aren’t the most original. They’re very similar to AC2 and Brotherhood, as they contain lines moving up and down. However, Revelations does stand out from those games due to its color scheme.
Gone are the bright whites. In their place are dark grey and black colors. It was the first game to have a darker memory corridor, but others did dark corridors better. This one isn’t easy on the eyes and contains nothing interesting to look at.
Technically, Unity has memory corridors, but they’re very different from the ones seen in other games. This is because when you kill someone, you aren’t transported to a special place. Instead, you see some recent memories of the person you just killed. So, these flashbacks serve as the memory corridors.
The concept is a little strange, as while Arno isa powerful protagonist, he shouldn’t have the ability to see another person’s thoughts, and neither should the Animus. Visually, though, they’re well done. The blue hue on the scenes and the little visual imperfections you see help show that you’re watching a memory.
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As with many of the later games in the series, Mirage’s memory corridors are pretty dark. They feature a black floor and a dark orange sky, with bits of that floor rising into the air. They aren’t the most visually impressive corridors to look at.
That said, the loading screen version of the corridor isn’t bad. It’s visually the same as the assassination one, but it contains black silhouettes of people. When you run up to them, they disappear like a mirage. That’s a remarkable little detail.
Freedom Cry started as DLC for Black Flag, so it understandably has the same memory corridor design. These corridors are primarily teal and contain some little lighter-colored dots all over the place.
These dots move and sway in unison, as they’re supposed to represent the ocean, as these games are about pirates. So, the inclusion of the ocean-like dots makes sense, and they look really good, too, as does the teal coloring.
The memory corridors used for the assassination scenes in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla are specific to the person you’re killing. So, instead of it just being Eivor and their victim, there are additional props and items related to the target. This is a nice detail, albeit one that already debuted in Origins, so it isn’t unique to Valhalla.
The loading screen memory corridor is different from the Assassination one. While it is a similar color, the loading screens don’t include any items or much in terms of detail. In fact, they are quite dull. Yet, at least they contain the aurora borealis in the sky, which is fitting for a game where the main character is from Norway.
In Syndicate, the memory corridors are white and grey spaces containing a floor made of blocks. These solid square blocks slowly move up and down independently from one another.
When you’re in a loading screen, their movement partly depends on you, as they continually fall into a solid shape so they can serve as a lovely floor for you to run on. Other notable details of this corridor include a dark grey sky and other buildings in the distance.
The second game and Brotherhood have pretty much identical memory corridors. Both are white, with plenty of lines going up and down, and a few subtle DNA coils go across the screen.
Also, when Ezio assassinates someone and converses with them, there is a bit of blurriness around the edges of the characters and within the corridor itself. This helps create the feeling that the place you’re in isn’t real, which is fitting for a memory corridor.
The memory corridors in Assassin’s Creed 3 are by far the whitest in the series. Yes, the ones in AC2 and Brotherhood are white, but those in AC3 are incredibly bright white. It’s a good look, even if you may burn your eyes when you look directly at it.
What’s also great about these memory corridors are the floor effects. Little triangle chunks of the floor are continually breaking off. In the loading screen, they break apart more when you get up close, making running around satisfying.
The memory corridors in the original Assassin’s Creed are primarily light blue, with a bit of a cloudy effect. They also contain plenty of small bits of code and little glitches floating around.
The glitches and code are nice inclusions, as they really help get across that you’re in the Animus. Most of the other memory corridors in the series don’t feel like that, so this one gets bonus points for that. Also, the fact these codes and glitches aren’t just there all the time but flicker in and out creates a cool visual.
