What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

[snowblizz]

I always interpreted the Animus and its variants in Assassin's Creed as a purely gameplay-inspired reason for why you can play the games the way you do, rather than anything meant to be scientifically rigorous.

Well that is basically what it is. It is as I said a very good way of having both your this is a videogame and this is reality at the same time cake. It is a very elegant solution to limit the players interactions with the world and removing the real world/game barrier by the game itself embracing the fact that is is a simulation. In the early installations where "real world" and simualtion is blended there are differences in gameplay, as in real world does nto come with all enhancements simulation does. It is rather meta. Not sure if I make sense. (Even though the real world/simualtion isn't perfect, you can mess up and reload on the real world parts too, cause you know, it has to be). Contrasted to stuff like Call of Duty where if I mess up and die well hey it's just a game and I reload. The AC series embraces this aspect.

However, it does *claim* to be based on science (not all of it science that may exist, the is a strain of the Precursor science/artefacts being effectively magic), in this case genetic memories being an actual thing, so for the purposes of this thread it can be argued.

I actually wanted to defend the Animus and attendant technologies as it does, in the context of the game it sort of holds together.

Some of the story bits of how the Animus technology is used, improved and spread holds up quite well IMO in it's own world.