Board Thread:Series general discussion/@comment-5088097-20170624223327/@comment-3535905-20170711091249
I'm actually still not convinced. The Assassin's Creed dialogue might be evidence, but I think it contradicts evidence from later material and shows that originally Ubisoft took the whole "Animus is exactly like a video game" too literally and extremely.
I think you have it backwards when you argue that comics don't show the open-world aspect because authors want us to jump right into the action. Sure, that's an OOU-explanation, but IU, it makes more sense that a user of the Animus is severely limited in where he goes. If you use the "open-world" argument and say that users of the Animus have an open-world like players of the game, well you should know that in real-life, the open-world is limitless. It's not limited to one city, but the entire world. So logically, if the simulation is "open-world", the Animus-user would be able to explore the entire world even when the ancestor did not go there at the time. The reason why this is not logical is because this would diverge from the ancestor's path and cause desynchronization. The fact that Assassin's Creed: Trial by Fire expressly shows Charlotte de la Cruz's inability to even get Thomas Stoddard to save Bridget Bishop's life without desynchronizing is clear evidence of what limitations the Animus-user has. This example refutes the idea that a comic book doesn't show the "open-world" freedom just because it wants us to dive right into the action and what happened because otherwise we won't see Charlotte trying to save Bridget and failing but just not trying to save her at all. It's clearly shown she failed to control her ancestor into saving Bridget.
You have to remember then that what the Animus-user is viewing and experiencing is still a memory record of the ancestor's experiences. If Arno on a certain date didn't visit the Pantheon but stayed at the Assassin headquarters, it doesn't make any sense that the Animus-user can proceed all the way to the Pantheon. There's no memory record of that. It'd be too divergent from the ancestor's path, who won't know what was going on around the Pantheon and what civilians were there at that exact time. If you argue it's "open world" and therefore the Animus-user is somehow not limited with the fact that the ancestor didn't travel to a location at least a mile away, then logically, the Animus-user is not limited by where the ancestor hasn't gone, which means that the Animus-user should be able to run all the way to China the whole time his ancestor is in France.
It does not make any logical sense for the simulation to give that much freedom. If taking injury causes desynchronizing or even killing a guard when an ancestor didn't kill any in that mission costs some percentage of synchronization, well, objectively-speaking, running a mile away from the ancestor's path is more divergent from the ancestor's memory then staying in the same place he did and getting hurt a little, and that's what synchronization is: staying true to the ancestor's memory data.
Ultimately, we shouldn't take gameplay mechanics too literally as 100% what the Animus-user is experiencing even if Ubisoft tried to force that premise too hard in the first game. It just doesn't make any logical sense. If desynchronization is deviation from an ancestor's actions and the memory data, why do we lose synchronization in free-roam only from taking damage and not other deviations? It's gameplay mechanics for the player's convenience. Of course, maybe it can be argued that only playing actual memories is playing what the Animus-user is experiencing, free-roam being just a gameplay mechanic for the player entirely, but then this just goes to show that again, not everything we play is what the Animus-user experiences. If taking damage causes loss of synchronization, why won't playing side-memories out of order, a greater deviation, cost synchronization? We shouldn't take gameplay mechanics to make a game fun and convenient for a player so literally.
The way I see the Animus working is that it decodes and presents a visual representation of the way that particular ancestor perceived those memories. That's why you can't visit China when your ancestor never went there because the Animus can't render a simulation of China because, as far as the Animus is considered, there is no China. France would be the entire world if your ancestor only ever experienced France and never set foot outside that location.
Also, another thing to consider is that the memories that you experience are not actual 100% accurate representation of how those events occurred, but in fact a representation of how that ancestor perceived those events which adds in the biasedness of the stories that we get to experience in the games according to the way the ancestor felt then.
I also think that the Animus just works to maintain the consistency of the more crucial and ingrained memories. That's why you have to perform the main memories in order. The side missions are minor memories which didn't have as much of an impact on the ancestor as the main memories, that's why they usually don't involve synchronization constraints and can be carried out in any way as long as you complete the required object which matters.