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The new Animus technology
Sara Veggi, May 15th, 2017
Translated by: Markuz & Stefania One of the most interesting and fascinating things of the Assassin's Creed franchise has always been, at least for me, the plausibility of its scientific setting. Of course there is a lot of sci-fi in it but the basis on which this sci-fi relies have been, most of the times, true to reality.
The Assassin's Creed Movie, as an excellent addition to the games universe, gave me the opportunity to wonder about a new piece of technology which is, of course, the new version of the Animus. When it was announced to be so different from the familiar chair we were used to see since our first steps into the Assassin's Creed world, I read on our page and around the internet some comments of fans worried about this "discrepancy". In addition to that, after watching the movie, I saw people complaining about the bleeding effect being so fast to arise right after the first regression... I was one of them at the beginning but then, following my passion for science, I started questioning how this new Animus arm could work in the real world and I had to admit that this version of the machine actually makes much more sense than every single one of those we experienced in the past. So, what do we know about the new Animus version? It's a big mechanical arm that anchors the user's waist lifting him/her in midair. A spinal needle, connected to the machine, is positioned on the back of the neck: it reaches the epidural space that, to make it simple, is a part of the spinal canal in which spinal nerve roots lie, both sensory and motor ones. They carry respectively sensory information (pain, pleasure, cold, heat, tickling, ...) from the body TO the brain and motor information FROM the brain to the muscles that control movement. This last feature is, in my opinion, what makes of this Animus the best version created up until now and, scientifically speaking, it explains WAY better the so called Bleeding Effect. So, what do we have? We have a needle that goes into the epidural space, right beside the motor and sensory nerves of the spinal cord. We don't know what the needle function was in the authors ideas but we can speculate about the way it could work basing our hypothesis on modern science. To better understand, I need to give a very brief explanation of how the nerves conduction works. I'll try and be brief, I promise :p To put it simple, conduction of motor neurons works like this: the brain gives an "order" in the form of an electric impulse and this impulse travels on the nerves until it reaches the muscles that contract or relax basing on the original order. On the other hand, conduction of sensory nerves have a backward path: for example, our hand touches something hot, sensory receptors create an electrical impulse that travels on the nerves back to the brain and the brain, as an answer, orders the motor nerves to move the hand away from the source of the pain. Now, imagine to be able and put something that interferes with this process, something like a needle for example, that gives your body the right impulses to make you jump, crouch, hang, and so on.. and maybe all of this while some sort of technology (that I still didn't figure out :p) or drugs (or a combination of both) makes you live in a sort of virtual reality. With this sort of technology, even someone with no attitude to physical activity could be able to act like a perfect parkourer. The same thing could work for sensory stimuli and what's useful in this? Try and think of the subject that gets beat up by his enemies in the virtual reality. The right impulse on the spinal cord sent to his brain could allow him to actually feel the pain making the experience much more real. This theory is more or less confirmed in the "Into the Animus" book in which Andy Nicholson, production designer for the movie, explains: "You are connected by an epidural to the machine that reads your past, processes the information, then plays back the information to your central nervous system. If you are running along the floor or climbing a wall, it feeds back to your muscles. When Aguilar fights, you will physically see Callum see as if he were hitting stuff. If he is climbing up a church wall, you will see that for the onlooker." In addition to that, the Assassin's Creed Movie novelization gives some more detail about it when describing Lin's connection with Shao Jun: "Shao Jun was always just a whisper away in Lin's mind, but Lin always felt the strongest connection to her ancestor when she danced. Dr Rikkin had told her that unfortunately she had to insert the agonizing epidural so that the arm could move her to match her ancestor's movement. 'It's called neuro-muscular-facilitation - muscle memory' she explained to Lin." Sounds like sci-fi right? Well, surprise surprise, nowadays there are researches in which scientists are trying to give people with paralysis of the limbs (due to spinal damage) the possibility of voluntarily move their legs and arms through the electrical stimulations exactly on the epidural space of the spinal cord. Obviously this is an amazing objective and I'm not comparing it with the science behind the Animus machine. It is, however, a good example of a similar "technology", if we can call it like that, that actually exists in the real world. Going back to our new Animus, why would it be dangerous to get desynchronized? In the movie, we see Callum getting seizures from desynchronizing from the memory when Aguilar tries his first Leap of Faith. In the movie, it's not very clear how that happened, but if everything works as it is in the games, Callum did something different from what Aguilar experienced in the past. And how is that possible in a virtual reality like the one created in the movie? The explanation is once again in the "Into the Animus" artbook where you can find, in my opinion, a wonderful description of how it works: "Fundamental to Kurzel's thinking was the idea of the dance - the machine is not pulling the subject around and the subject is not pulling the arm around. The interaction was subtle, this almost imperceptible tug of war over who was leading. It would seem as if the Animus was almost conscious." So my idea for what happens when Callum desynchronized is that something shifted his focus on the memory, maybe he got distracted by Sofia screaming, nervous because of the jump or else and his brain overruled the needle's impulses. He won the war and lead the dance... but that is not something that the Animus had ever accepted as a technology. So Callum won the fight but the needle tried to get balance back and it's like a crash for the nervous system: two different impulses saying to jump and not to jump at the same time and an overload of electricity that, being on the brain and the spinal cord, results in seizures. Plus, the needle is positioned millimeters away from the nervous system and when the user does a different movement from the one planned by the machine, it could easily give a spinal damage which leads to paralysis (as it happens to Callum).
Another reason that helps making this Animus the best version up until now, in my opinion, can be found in a sentence I wrote some lines above, quoting the Assassin's Creed movie novelization: "It's called neuro-muscular-facilitation - muscle memory." Ok, new complex words but to put it simple, what does that mean? Another short explanation is needed but again I'll try to be fast! As I mentioned before, motor neurons receive orders from the brain and these orders go to muscles that perform the action they were asked to do. The connections between neurons and muscles are called neuromuscular junctions and, without going too much into detail, they are formed by the motor neuron axon (terminal part of the nerve) and the muscle fibers on which there are receptors. The electrical impulses on the neuron determine the release of chemical substances that bind to the receptors and generate the required movement. With that said, there are studies that show that training our muscles to perform particular movements determines a strengthening of the neuromuscular junction with the activation of a higher number of receptors and the recruitment of more and different muscular fibers. In a way, training is a way of teaching our body and our muscles how to move. Relating all of this to our Animus machine, I think that the fact that the user actually moves as if he/she was really living what he/she sees explains way better the Bleeding effect because performing those movements, even if forced by technology, gives the muscles the right impulses to learn that particular action like jumping on a wall or hanging from a roof. Of course in the first sessions in the Animus, the muscles won't be strong enough to perform actions that require more than just an electrical impulse. For example, Callum in the movie was a strapping man, with a well developed muscle mass so it all made sense but let's try and imagine our protagonist to be a skinny nerd like for example Harry Potter. In real life, so outside of an Animus session, he would have never been able to climb the Animus arm lifting his own weight or to win a fight with the facility guards. That's because, in addition to the right impulse, you need the right muscle mass to perform certain actions. In the machine it's not a problem because the arm helps the user performing movements that he could not do by himself in the real world. This means that, of course, some users would need physical training (both in the Animus and in a gym) to actually climb on a roof in London but this last version of the Animus really makes it more feasible. And that's all! I know I may have been a bit technical at some point but I really wanted to explain why this machine make so much sense especially if compared to the previous ones! Your turn now, what do you think of it? Did you like this new Animus or did you prefer the chair we got used to see in the games? Let us know in the comments!
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