Touring the Animus: Assassin's Creed and chronotopical movement

The Assassin’s Creed videogame series, developed by Ubisoft, is known for its representation of historical places and eras, such as Jerusalem during the Crusades and Paris during the French Revolution. The current article takes an interest in the games’ chronotopical appropriation of touristic semiotics and behavior, that is, the ways in which the gameplay and game world involve a specific collocation of time and space within which touristic enactments can take place. Players are at once invited to admire and ultimately conquer the space they traverse. Through these procedures and forms of semiosis, players are provided with a set of rules, behaviors, and narratives that fit in with a contemporary attitude in the Western travel industry—namely, that of anti-tourism.