Black Room

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Desmond in the Black Room.

The Black Room, also known as the Animus Island, was a safe mode inside the Animus virtual machine, which could be accessed through a back door in its programming. The room was located below its polar opposite, the White Room loading screen. It was the "guts" of the Animus, as described by Subject 16. The Black Room was the original test program, which consisted of only basic physics and weather simulation. Not intended for direct human interface, the Black Room formed the backbone of the Animus' higher levels of programming.

History

Desmond questioning Subject 16 about the Animus.

When Desmond Miles was placed back inside the Animus by his father William while in an unstable mental state in 2012, he used this room to look through his own lost personal memories. By accessing them, Desmond hoped to reintegrate the splintered layers of his subconscious in order to wake up from his coma. However, Desmond was unable to wander out of the Black Room; doing so would have resulted in him being "deleted, like a little virus," according to Subject 16.

Somewhere in the Black Room, the key to Desmond's recovery from his coma was located at a point in time where the paths of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, and Desmond all coincided, similar to a hub. This created a Synch Nexus, which allowed the Animus to separate the lives of Desmond's ancestors from his own and ultimately repair his fractured mind.

Trivia

• The Black Room involves puzzle-oriented gameplay as a means of representing Desmond piecing together his subconscious mind. According to Alexandre Breault, this gameplay was inspired by the works of Rene Magritte and Roger Penrose.
• Due of its source of inspiration, the Black Room is nicknamed "Penrose Island" in the internal files of the game.
• It is impossible to leave the island by any means, as either Desmond (or, more precisely, his digitized representation) cannot bypass the digital boundary limiting all activities to the island.
• Although Clay says the Black Room was devised for functions like weather simulations, the weather conditions don't change in the game.

Gallery

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  Concept art of Desmond's shattered mind.
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  Desmond in the Black Room.
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  The Black Room memory corridor.
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  Animus Island storyboard concepts by Martin Deschambault.
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  Concept art of Desmond Miles near the Animus Island portal by Martin Deschambault.
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  Concept art of the Animus Island by Martin Deschambault.
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  Concept art of the Animus Island by Gilles Beloeil.
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• File:16s.jpg
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Source

• GameInformer, June 2011 edition