The main story of Assassin's Creed Syndicate is set in 1868, during the Victorian era.
The game follows twins Jacob and Evie Frye as they travel to London and challenge Templar influence over the city's institutions. The setting places the Assassins amid industrial expansion, factory labor, railways, organized crime, and the extreme social inequalities associated with nineteenth-century urban life.
The year 1868 is significant because it places the story near the end of the Industrial Revolution's major transformation of Britain. It is also the year commonly used for the game's principal historical events, although the wider franchise includes sequences and downloadable content set in related periods.
Syndicate is sometimes confused with Unity because both games focus on a major European city and feature nineteenth-century technology or political change. Unity is set in revolutionary Paris in the late 1700s, whereas Syndicate's London is a century later and is defined by steam-powered industry.