The craziest thing about Assassin’s Creed is how Ubisoft was able to take a concept like “two secret ideologically opposing orders battling throughout history to secure artifacts from an ancient precursor civilization” and gradually make that less and less interesting
Ah yes the ideology of templars and assassins. Even haytham said something along the line. *assassins want free, templars want order* *peace is an invitation to chaos*
it's kind of funny thinking about it from this idea, because at the time fans got sick of Ubisoft never really telling the story, we were drip fed small information about the Isu for many games without a whole lot to go off of. it wasn't until Odyssey when they reviled everything about the Isu, from technology to culture to their goals and intentions. so you can only pull off the subtle story for so long before the series becomes stale and they pretty much had to show more about them. i for one really wish they did a real crossover of the watchdog series, because i could see a story involving the brotherhood in the present doing all kinds of hacking missions to obtain information and plots of the future story actually turning into something amazing, but no, instead watch dogs turned into it's own thing and it became meh..... bla bla bla. don't get me wrong the basic premise of watchdogs was amazing, but the potential story that could have been so much better had they made these two series really come together, hell i could also see them mixing it with the splinter cell stories in some way. but no, these were treated as their own series sadly. so the present day plot in the AC games really sucked because of this and also sadly so did the present day watch dogs via the 2nd game in the series, it was just a goofy fun game about some stupid hacker story that was very inspired by stupid millennial values lol, i say this as a millennial lol...
@@Hikaru0kamiki it was freedom is an invitation to chaos. however freedom is also an invitation for a lasting peace funny enough. one of the founding fathers once said, this is a constitutional republic, "if you can keep it" meaning you have to continually fight for it, in order for it to last, because otherwise those who want to destroy that freedom and piece will use that freedom to destroy it, and before you know it, you are living in communism and everyone is a slave in that system, which leads to mass death because people refuse to be slaves and the government deletes them. the sad ironic truth of all that is the people voted for it, and the state only gave them what they wanted. this is the cost of too much freedom, which is what Haytham was referring to.
What really bugs me is that plenty of other series can wrap up a trilogy and then build a new one in the same IP with equally compelling characters and settings... But AC didn't even do their first one justice. All they had to do was let Desmond kill Vidik, rescue his dad, NOT kill Lucy and then decide that despite his tremendous ability he doesn't want this, he didn't want it in AC1 and convince Lucy after such a tiring, emotionally and mentally fatiguing journey to go retire to a safe house and stay out of it. Maybe Rebecca and Shaun could come back in their SAME job as assistants to the next protagonist to have a feel of continuity without ruining characters and plot.
And yet the story painted her as a traitor when she was trying to move on from Abstergo. Maybe Minerva doesn’t want Lucy to be touching her man which was why she had Desmond kill her.
yeah that was a stupid idea. i would have figured out how to make a cross over series with watchdogs at that point as that would be better than the stupid comics.
@@iurysaraiva3411 The plotline they setup between Black flag and Rogue ends "offscreen" in a comic ubisoft made. I say offscreen because it wasn't resolved in its original media. And rather a separate source altogether.
Could've gone with twin/clone/digital copy of the real Lucy. The destruction of Earth and the narrow escape into space would've been amazing. Then Desmond, Lucy 2.0, Shaun and Rebecca have to alter the past through the animus to save humanity. But they have to be careful to not interfere with history too much or else they break the continuity and reality collapses. Turns out a bunch of templars also made it into space too and they try to stop Desmond's team. In the last standoff, through the magic of some 1st civ shenanigans all of the past protagonists spawn in and have to work together. No idea about the details. Idk what I'm cooking rn, but that would be f-ing cool. Imma write this shit as fanfiction I guess.
Think it was less a result of lazy writing and more of hasty rewrites and Ubisoft´s greed. When 3´s development turned sour Ubisoft wanted more games in the interim(leading to Brotherhood and Revelations)and by then they smelled the cashcow so they threw out the original Adam & Eve space ending leading to Lucy not being needed anymore. Combine that with the VA only having a 3 game contract(as was originally planned),wanting more money for an extension and off the plank she went.
Lucy being a Templar is such a lame twist when we initially thought she was a Templar. That would be like if the plot twist of Star Wars was that Darth Vader actually isn’t Luke’s father and literally no interesting explanation at all follows this
But the thing is that the Clay files DLC for Revelations expands on this, as we play as Clay himself (subject 16), and see how he became an Assassin, but also how he became subject 16 as a way to infiltrate Abstergo. And operation he was supposed to conduct alongside Lucy. These gameplay sections also reveal what the whole Lucy traitor thing was about; Basically, Lucy was genuinely an Assassin, but Vidic, after figuring out that Lucy and Clay were Assassins trying to infiltrate Abstergo. Then Vidic uses the fact that the Assassins kinda just left her in the dark for years, and just abandoned her up until right now when she's suddenly needed, to manipulate her into betraying the Assassins. This is why Lucy killed Clay (Yes, it's explained that while the bleeding effect thing was true, it was also Lucy who when Clay figured it out, and wanted to warn William Miles, Lucy killed him. But the thing is also that Lucy was more so angry at William Miles as opposed to the entirety of the Brotherhood. It's why she still cries at the deaths of the Assassin factions; they're still her family, and her betrayal wasn't planned from the start.
@@maxm.m.7219That at least adds more context which I'm surprised thats not in the base game as it would've softened the blow to an awkwardly handled twist.
@@maxm.m.7219You can kinda see this with another Assassin turncoat, Shay Cormac. He takes no satisfaction in killing his former comrades, save for maybe the Chevalier because he was a dick to him.
I'm still livid that Lucy was killed off just to cheat the actress out of better pay. There's not just the romance itself, but at one point I'm sure it's explicitly spelled out that Desmond will have a son who plays an important role. Heck, they could well have revealed the Desmond segments were themselves genetic memories that his son needed to experience firsthand to get the undiluted truth.
THANK YOU, for agreeing with me. Killing off Lucy left me in a depression so deep that I've never been able to replay the games ever again. And I certainly wasn't able to enjoy playing Revelations and assassin's Creed III.
Assassin's Creed 1 and 2 were clearly building up to eventually have Desmond play a game of his own set in the modern story and Lucy would be his wife and mother to his children and they would continue that special bloodline
Fun fact. The three cities in the original game are perfect one for one recreations of their real world counterparts down to the last alleyway. That level of detail is almost unheard of. Add to the fact that your targets are based on real people who simply disappear from the historical record and thus could possibly have been assassinated, and you get the impression that this really was a game made by History lovers for History lovers. Where did the people who made _that_ game go?
This comment right here. With all the controversy surrounding AC Shadows, I see so many people talk about how AC has never been historically accurate. Those people clearly never played any AC game prior to Origins or forget the level of historical detail Ubisoft put into the games. Especially the first entries.
Honestly I was so skeptical about AC Origins given that I really don’t like when a franchise is already established as one genre and decides to become another, but I put a lot of time into that game. And then Valhalla came and I literally cannot bring myself to play it for more than 30 minutes, there’s something about it that just puts me to sleep.
I was so stoked for Valhalla because I mainly love just about anything related to Norse mythology and vikings. However the game has so little soul and feels so by the numbers, it's monotonous and boring more than anything. I really enjoyed Origins, and Odyssey was a lot of fun, but I fell out of love with the series WITH Syndicate, and even though there was a small reinvigoration with the reinventing the play style, I just cannot bring myself to get any slight excitement now.
@@gwarriorfromhellsyndicate is so repetitive and dull. Unity is underrated imo. For me it comes down to AC being really inconsistent. There are some very good games and a lot of very dull games.
Eivor.. seriously that's it. Bayek had personality but for some reason Eivor is bland almost like a blank canvas.. maybe because of the dialogue choices but still.
Aint that the truth, both points. However after black flag I lost interest. And honestly when I learned you couldn't switch you ship over to the crazy powerful ones early on even if you successfully take over the ship it really hit me wrong, it kinda killed the rest of the game for me as I was having a blast doing sea raids and making my ship better. But I do agree with you 100 percent, just that one bummer took some gas outta my enjoyment tank.
Nah. Being a fan of a series that doesnt respect you is just as bad as being a fan of a company that doesn't respect you. Both are abusive relationships
@Goosewitdajuice317 Assassins Creed did respect it's gamers. The new rpg games that have the AC title tacked on does not respect gamers. When I say Assassins Creed, I mean the actual Assassin games. Not 300 simulator and definitely not Viking simulator.
What is wrong with people? I've seen plenty of videos like these and NONE of them talk about how the original creator of the series was fired after AC Brotherhood. And yet they wonder why the series went downhill after that.
alot of them talk about that tho. and ultimately no one can change that the original creator is no longer at the helm of the games and we know that is a part of why the games went the route that they did, but its not the only reason so the only thing we can do is to critique and give advice for what the current developers can and should do with the franchise. its a war we can't win if we choose to complain about a factor no one can have an effect on. its better to focus on things that can be worked on to form a better future.
What makes it worse is that they supposedly already have the ending for the series planned out, they just want to milk the franchise down to the marrow before they finally end it. By then, there won't be any interest left in the final game.
Well, Patrice wanted 3 games and period no franchise milking, no nothing. Ubisoft was the one who pushed it this far as a landmark franchise of the company 🤷♂️
My favorite Assassins Creed is 3. It was the only AC game I bought on launch. I was going through a deep depression at that point and finishing the game was probably the only thing that kept me going. I'm fascinated with Native American culture and deeply respect it ever since I was young. I put countless hours into the multiplayer and made some friends from it.
What irony. I was playing assassin's Creed III and not enjoying it at all because I was deeply depressed by what had happened in the previous two assassin's Creed games. Killing off Lucy alone felt Like a torpedo to the ship that was Desmond's story.
For me personally I lost my interest in the series after Odyssey. That game literally broke me as a long time fan, how far it departed from the core concepts of the series, the ungodly amount of micro transactions, how boring it was for me personally, how bad the graphics are ( i never understood when people say Odyssey is graphically impressive because when I pop it in my ps5 and replay it to see if my eyes deceived me, nope I was right low poly textures everywhere, the rocks literally look like ps2 quality graphics), how damage spongey the enemies were, no assassins in a game called assassins creed. I hate that game with a passion cause it killed the love I once had in the first franchise i was truly hooked in.
I felt that in my core reading this. I agree with you. I took a huge break after 3 to Origins. So I refreshed. And I actually really did enjoy Origins. But Odyssey was far too bloated in so many aspects. Their hard-on as they basically admit for The Witcher consumed them clearly. I platniumed both Origins and Odyssey, and I still can't believe I did it for Odyssey. And I didn't even fast travel much (stupidly, somewhat role-playing along). Because of Odyssey, I didn't get Valhalla. And because of Valhalla, I was sceptical of the last game. Decided to sit and see reviews. Wise choice. Oh and watching the Ireland DLC also bothered me as an Irish guy too. So much potential in that, and they fluffed their lines. It's hard to see me ever returning to the series now.
@@LoCoAde87 100% thank u, cause I really do see people like Odyssey but it an good Greek game but it 100% just has ac title slap onto it. I will say I expected Valhalla to be the same but no, it was actually a lot better/one of my fav to play.
There's not a single micro transaction required to complete Odyssey. I've never bought a single item and I've played Odyssey serval times through. There's not a single thing that nags you to pay for one and it's entirely a choice. If you're crying about the fact that micro transactions just exist in odyssey. then you're just being a baby. Sorry.. but that's just a fact. My recomendation, just don't go to the store page where you buy items.. done.
I disagree that the history in ac3 is boring and that connor is boring. Also that combat is slower or worse. Connor is pretty accurate for most native americans for the time and his idealism is incredibly interesting like when connor called out sam adams about spouting liberty while owning a slave which was interesting. His quote still sticks with "all people should be free and not in turns."
The history itself isn't boring, it's just presented in a very boring way, especially because it's seen through The eyes of a very boring character. That's my take anyway.
I agree AC3 is one of my faveroutes in the series I personally felt the combat was just fine I mean I suppose you could say some people found ezios combat faster and Connor slow but what it comes down to is size Connor is a big guy so obviously his weight would add more power to his attacks while ezio was smaller and able to attack with speed so both work for both assassins and yes connors quotes and the way he sees things compared to other people is impactful
Bro said Revelations is pointless while Brotherhood exists, man, that game is pure filler to fix the dumb mistake of the previous one, Revelations matters a lot more for Ezio's character
Yeah, brotherhood was good but ultimately unnecessary. Revelations is my favorite out of the whole trilogy and was way more important to the overall story.
Killing Desmond and making all those years of huild up and essentially killing the modern day storyline was it for me. At that point i knew there would never be an end to this series. That we werent building towards anything anymore. There was no point to it all anymore.
@@samiamtheman7379 no, brotherhood was peak amazing story telling and great gameplay, except that end with Lucy. revelation's wasn't shit, but it wasn't nearly as good as brotherhood.
@@5226-p1e from what I gathered, good additional story for AC1 Meh additional story stuff for AC2 The ending pulled some huge BS and the trajectory never recovered as 3 sunk it even further. So yeah in terms of peak story telling I imagine that's more 2 than brotherhood, and whatever good that brotherhood adds is outweighed by stuff that feels unnecessary or stuff that feels like it's contributing negatively to the overall story. 3 either way is the much worse follow up, and the original storyline as a whole dies with it.
@@5226-p1e Brotherhood overrated as hell. It's far from peak and is especially brought down by that ending, would go as far to say that Revelations have better story overall ignoring how insignificant it is in the big picture. It's sad to think about, but AC2 was truly peak; no bs ending, great historical _and_ modern time story, good gameplay, some of the best city designs to date, with amazing atmosphere to boot.
@@shira_yone i will agree that AC2 had more locations to go to, but the combat though better than AC1 it wasn't by much, that was significantly improved in brotherhood and revelations, revelation's story when it came to Ezio was good and brotherhood was good as it was a good revenge story and amazing location for the series and continuance of the AC2 storyline, Istanbul was kind of a dark and gritty dirty city, it was not nearly as big of filled with as many things to do, but it was ok, i didn't like the ending of brotherhood with the Lucy bit and i didn't like how that story carried over into revelation's as desmond was basicaly in a coma for the entire game that story sucked and the added DLC even sucked it was some stupid puzzle thing that you would hear audio of his past growing up in the brotherhood, however there were some parts of the story that weren't bad, some situations were kind of boring or annoying would be the better apt word. the assassin recruit missions were more detailed in revelation's but they were also annoying when it came to the recruit personal missions, it was interesting but kind of meh, i did like revelation's options with bombs and distraction methods i liked the hookblade and the traversal with that blade and how it could be used in combat uniquely, the fighting was roughly the same outside of a few new NPC's that made fighting harder, those janissaries who could not only block your counter kills but they also came with a pistole that were used a little too often so you had to find other ways to fight them outside of straight up counter kills, but i loved brotherhood for many of the same reasons i liked in revelation's but i do think they were a bit better implemented in brotherhood in comparison. it was the first game when they introduced the recruit assassins mechanic, it continued the economy mechanic i loved in AC2 and expanded on it and made it much more varied, hell it even had gambling and investment's via region population and it depended on cleared locations and shops you renovated, it wasn't just a simple mechanic for the gameplay, it was explained in the story that this is how he was able to build and maintain the assassins creed empire to maintain control over specific regions of the map as well as other locations outside of Rome and each mission you sent your recruits there were these special missions that came with their own lore that continued the story through this mechanic, and if you want to carry this even further it explained how the creed became so wealthy in later installments such as Unity as that was one of the established locations that their oder liberated and installed a creed location, it was cool to have the ability to build your assassins from simple recruits and turn them into master assassins through a ceremony of their peers and to also boost the economy to life to the extent that it transformed these regions, of course that was a choice up to the player, you didn't have to really interact with this mechanic if you didn't want to, but for me it made sense that this is how he would run and maintain his empire and be able to spread the brotherhood across the ocean. i even loved the assassination missions the history of each demographic location of the city that Ezio went to, they weren't exactly full mapped locations like AC2 but they were cool to see other locations built for these contracts that furthered the main story involving the Borgias and the pope's allies that helped them on various Borgia interest's, even down to the Lucrezia mission where the main game story was almost over she was sent to marry a duke guy who was just a political ally of her fathers as he was using her to infiltrate his court and status i can't remember her role in all of this, all i know is that Ezio was after some Leonardo paintings that contained some blueprints for his war machines that he wanted to be destroyed, then of course it had the classics tomb missions that furthered the history of the location and also furthered the story involving the Borgia influence through the followers of Romulus, i love that it felt like there was an underground world location of the Rome map, it was just so mysterious and cool, especially when it came down to the ruins of the demographic location as there were secrets hidden in these ancient tombs. i love a good build up of a revenge story, revelation's was kind of like this but it ended as a love story with sofia and that was fine as well as Ezio was in his late 50s i assume. like to this day i loved Ezio's story above all, to me all of his story was counted in one game, i know they were released as a series of games but to me they were all connected and very well told stories outside some of the modern day missions stuff, the modern day stuff was sadly this series worst parts because it was just bad written stuff and you didn't really get to explore much of anything. brotherhood just had so many interconnecting stories in it in comparison to the other games, like you had a story with Bartolomeo that mercenary guy and then you had the continued courtesan missions via his sister taking over the courtesans and then the thief's guild via la volpa all of their stories had their own troubles but also they all connected into the main story, then there was that point in the game when Leonardo got the attention of these treasure hunters and it introduced some more enemies to fight, they fight like the thieves' but had daggers and they could dodge some of your counters, but they were still easy, it was still fun fighting them though because you also had to sneak passed them and they could screw up other missions when spotted. man i just love so much in that game in comparison to the others, i loved the location to the music to the fighting to other elements of the gameplay, it was overall a great game. to be honest if the gameplay fighting was like brotherhood in AC2 i would give it far more credit, but it was nice when it came out i did like AC2's locations and story and the gameplay when i first played it, the music was good too, if a bit monotonous at times. the Ezio game series is and will always be the best in the series for me.
It's kinda darkly funny when you play the first AC games and get hit with the "We are a multicultural team" splash page. Like, that was literally the timeframe for some of the worst workplace bullying and harassment at Ubisoft. Build a castle on sand and it's going to crumble eventually.
It was so that they didn't get accused of hatred against Christianity when they called Christ a charlatan. In retrospect, that probably was a warning they weren't joking...
AC3 had so much potential to be THE modern day game. The modern day sections were pretty good and if expanded and focused on could have been incredible. Desmond had so much skill and potential at this point, and we never saw it realized.
The ring finger burn was a form of ceremony the hidden blade was updated to no longer need ring finger removal because of Leonardo getting the plans for it.
Also, it made sense in the context of the Second Tenet. A missing ring finger combined with a hood is a dead giveaway, while a brand is a compromise: keeps the tradition while being conspicuous.
@@jokurandomi93 i don't think it was because it was an initiation ritual, it was just a flaw of the construction of how the blade worked, up until it was upgraded and modified to not cut the finger off.
The ending of AC2 before Brotherhood was really great. You just saw Ezio’s entire lifetime of transformation and the last you see of him he’s confused, angry, and realizing all he worked for was for something he couldn’t possibly understand. It left him as a memorable piece in a larger story and rang hollow in just the right ways. 1&2 had this sort of weird sci-fi thing going on. Not quite cosmic horror, but certainly interested in the ways that the protagonists whole lives were basically meaningless outside of the ways people in the future could make practical use out of them. A dark sci fi twist. Brotherhood onward and the series became more sincere. It started to love its characters and see them as epic heroes with compelling narratives. And that’s cool but it’s definitely not the same as the cold, hollow feeling the ending of AC2 gave me. It’s just a little bit more generic. The series has really never recaptured that old feeling, but I will say the new style did culminate well in AC4’s plot.
My pet gripe is that I felt like the series was going in the direction of a stealthy No More Heroes. Desmond would fight it out with Abstergo hitmen who had various historical figures bleeding into their psyches. I also felt like Those Who Came Before were playing both sides. The Assassins provided vessels for them to live again, while the Templars rebuilt their control mechanisms. But I dropped the series after AC3 so I have no clue if they went with that.
My favorite Assassin's Creed...is 3 lmao. Brotherhood before that because it's just peak but yeah, i liked the modern day stuff a lot in 3 plus the homestead side missions. Also BIG bias because it helped me remember historical events as a kid and i passed a test because of it, i spent time playing it rather than studying so yeah, HUGE bias. I liked the linear side missions of collecting some...idk relics or smth and it led to some big treasure at the end. I don't remember what it was, maybe just an attire but anyway. Connor and Haytham are such a based duo when they're together plus it was fun hunting for animals (legendary or not) using the trees to parkour and most importantly hunting troops. I wasn't even being stealthy when out of the city, Connor is a brute anyway so i just use the rope dart to hang my first victim, what an entrance to the slaughter that follows. I too wish the story was still good and concluded but whatever, the series died with Desmond for me so i stopped caring after that. I go back to the trilogy from time to time to remember why they're good and that's it, only notable exception to the franchise is Unity with its parkour STILL being peak all that time later
This series would have been better off if it wasn't an annual release like CoD or any sports game. I played an AC game, can't remember which, and I liked it. But I wasn't going to try to buy and play them all. And the glitches that happened in AC Unity just showed the mentality that UBISoft and their corporate investors have with wanting money right there and then, not giving a crap about how the game looks or performs. Release it now and fix it later...
I'd say the problems first began when they decided to kill off Desmond. Sure Desmond was boring but everything in the story relied on him and his ancestors. He was a normal guy going through his heritage. As such each ancestor felt like a natural progression from and to each other then onto Desmond. The transition from Altair to Enzio felt smooth as silk. The transition to Enzio to Edward felt off but had a good game, and the transition from Edward to Connor felt terrible with the game being bad. Clearly the devs felt constrained by Desmond and so kept trying to go further away from what you would expect from his ancestors and making them not even Assassins, until deciding to kill him off in III. The games after this were still able to hold up enoughish with Rogue and the others. And then of course the second wave of problems occurred, the devs completely going off script and getting increasingly political with the new era of Assassin's Creed games along with microtransactions. At this point the series is unrecognizable really and has been like this for more games than the core original games. They've gone so out there that they've completely forgotten what sorts of historical figures would be Templars and which would be Assassins. Best example of this right now is Shadows. Nobunaga the conqueror of Japan, the guy who gave out land to Western priests and got assassinated is somehow not a Templar. Presumably because he is viewed as open-minded and "progressive" which means the devs want him to be of the "good" faction for their politics. He is one of the most stereotypical Templar type historical figures to ever exist and yet he and Yasuke are Assassins, painful.
I agree on Revelations, but on different view: I hate that it wasnt Yusuf Tazims game, like dude should have been far more present and have more screentime, and even better: to be an actual protagonist. But i love Revelations, just like you said, because of closure on Altairs story. My favorite in Trilogy is still Brotherhood Edit: May be controversial, but i feel it became ruined after the Desmond story, kinda like Marvel after Infinity War/Endgame, it just exists without any big plot
i liked the game but i kind of agree with you, i think it would have been nice to see a story from his perspective of the same story, kind of like how they presented adwale in black flag and the game that came after where you play as him. yeah the issue with the modern day stuff was that Ubisoft didn't really know how to write it, like i still remember the hints of the brotherhood and Abstergo being hinted in watchdogs, sadly they never combined these two games. it would have been nice and it could have fit, but they turned the watchdogs story into something else that is now only viewed as a joke because of the direction they took that game. i played and even liked WD2 of that series, but the story overall was super silly and goofy, it no longer had the more serious undertones the series started with and it kind of lost it's identity, but i saw the potential that it could very lead to a great modern day sequence for the assassins involvement in the story in some ways, again watchdogs 2 was a goofy fun game, but it would have been so much better if these two series were combined in the modern day stuff. i know they did that stupid legion game that sort of combined them, but that came off so uncanny valley that it felt like an wasteful experiment that ultimately lead nowhere.
Honestly? You're right. Yusuf should have been the main character. He could have been mentored by Ezio and learn the ropes of being an assassin as the game went on, and then maybe have a plot twist that he's also a descendant of Altair, because it's a family tree and not a family post, meaning it branches off.
I can certainly relate a lot to how the gameplay just doesn't have its own niche anymore, it's become generic, not special. Any RPG could have the same gameplay with the modern RPG games and it wouldn't be out of place but even before that there was a much bigger issue. Starting with Assassin's Creed IV, Assassin's Creed essentially transformed from a game focused on a plot spanning the entire series so far into an anthology series. You can't just do that though, an anthology series only sustains success if that is what it has always been, if that is what it was always supposed to be. An anthology series is indefinite, it has no end like Mario, or the Legend of Zelda, or GTA. It is focused on individual characters living in the moment facing a conflict for that given moment, not an end all be all conflict like Assassin's Creed had set up until the end of Assassin's Creed 3 where Desmond essentially made the only choice that would allow the series to continue in the most unsatisfying way possible that way Ubisoft could exploit the genetic memory setting in perpetuity without any particular direction for the series or major looming threat to end all threats. The problem is that you can't just transition to a anthology game series with episodic threats and villians that can be handled in every game without leaving a lot of loose ends. Assassin's Creed could have ended, and sure we wouldnhave missed out on a lot of fun games, but as we see now we could have also missed out on the series inevitably eventually being milked to death by developers who increasingly stray from the original vision in a desperate attempt to keep the series relevant for as long as possible. It's sad but at the end of the day I wouldn't have minded at all, I never thought it would become so bad though that now they are keeping the game relevant with completely unnecessary and hostile arguments on Twitter. It just goes to show that the series has reached that ugly conclusion, when it has been co-opted by people who care nothing for the game itself and everything for keeping the game relevant and reaching the final untapped audience of people buying the game to virtue signal.
@@coltonwilkie241 I loved that game, idk why I just love everything about it. Quality over quantity, a solid 5-6 hour experience. If they mess it up I will be permanently done with that company
i actually liked the rebuilding of Rome mechanic. because to me, it wasn't just a mechanic of the game, it was an explanation to the story in how Ezio built his empire of assassins and how he maintained them. the economy and money was very integral to the story as much as it was to gameplay, and it gave me a semblance of accomplishment in building that empire, something they pretty much took out of their later games sadly. i also loved the assassin recruit missions and the training of my recruits to the point of turning them into master assassins, as these also expanded on the story as well, if you payed attention they had their own stories imbedded within them that followed each other, the more important assassin missions, they not only gained ranks in this system which makes sense but they also established footholds and were able to influence other allies in other countries and the results of this were found within one of these locations in the form of the next game in the series, Istanbul, this is why there was a present brotherhood in this location, so the game didn't just add these things to the game for just giving the player something to do, it was also something that was further expanding on the games overall story. they don't really do this in the newer games.
Honestly this video sums up everything I ever wanted to say about why I don't really care about assassin's Creed anymore And the part I appreciate so much about this video is that it never once comes off as though you're saying The old games are better than the new games rather small mistakes ultimately hurt assassin's Creed in a long run from a OG fan perspective.
So I'm writing this after the intro, I'll come back after but hearing your introduction, I think I know 100% what you're talking about. Usually when I hear "former AC fans" I almost want to ask at what game did they stop. After the video: I disagree in some parts, specifically on Revelations and some sections of 3, but yeah. I dropped off after Unity. I didn't gradually pick them up, I got Unity with my Xbox One, played it, and dropped the series. I did get Syndicate and Origins for free, and I only played Syndicate. Revelations: Closure for Ezio and Altair is partly the point, I felt like it wrapped up loose ends well. Everyone kept saying "you're undergoing the bleeding effect we just need to get you enough skills so you'll be fine" and then to see that the Apple of all things caused his mind's collapse fits. And I always felt that the animus had more going on. Like if it can recreate memories down to their exact detail, why not a whole human personality? Wouldn't a modern person's memories be stored and create a model? As for this "sudden library" I figured that the codex wasn't 100% complete, and he was reviewing it. But I agree with gameplay. I also really liked the subject 17 files. Just like Desmond has to finish with Altair and Ezio's main life stories, he has to relive his own memories up to that point. What sucks is that to play them all you need to collect all the memory fragments (which suck) OR you have to buy the Subject 16 DLC which unlocks all of those memories at the start of the game. Rant about the Subject 16 DLC: I originally went into this with AC3, but I need to make it its own section. So when Desmond talks about Subject 16 and Lucy in 3, they aren't retconning the scribbles. They are directly referencing Desmond going through Subject 16's memories between Revelations and 3. This is what the Revelations DLC is about. As I said it isn't *legally* available on PC anymore! Now, you can find old versions of the DLC online and plant them into your Revelations file, but that is piracy so... ANYWAY Desmond would see flashbacks of her and subject 16. It adds depth to her character arc in that she WAS a templar and assassin double agent, but because the assassins neglected her presence and role she felt isolated from them while the templars seemed to care more. It shows a side of her that while she does care about Shawn, Rebecca, and Desmond, she doesn't care about the assassins anymore. They preached so much about freedom and caring for people, yet there she was "behind enemy lines" making reports to some faceless entity. This is a retcon, but it shows that Lucy was extremely reluctant for either side. She didn't like the ideology of the Templars but they seemed to be the only ones who gave a fuck about her, meanwhile her ideology matches up with the Assassins, yet they stay so distant. Same with getting Subject 16's gradual descent into insanity and then "revival" in the animus. This DLC is an emotional roller coaster, melancholic, and heartbreaking. Subject 16 had so many regrets and issues that transcended the bleeding effect and it was like he was fighting against the inevitable all his life, and by the time he realized his mistakes he was dead before he took his own life. He tried to get some sort of message out of the animus, but never did until Desmond relived all this. TOO BAD IT IS SHOVED INTO A DLC YOU CAN'T PURCHASE!!!! Assassin's Creed 3: So on one hand I don't like how so much of Connor's character is relegated to side-content, but what we do get in the main story we do get a personality from him. The issue is with Native American mannerisms and accents, which are very subtle as it is. They really nailed Native American culture, the issue is that traditional western mannerisms are more exaggerated by comparison. But I also agree that the modern and pre-civ story was really boring and Daniel Cross was so wasted. And the ending was definitely underwhelming, but alludes to the historical cycle the earth was caught in. The humans and ancient civilization were a war fought on order and freedom then snuffed out before their time, and then it happened again with the assassins and templars, and would happen again with whoever came next. That as time goes on "history" turns into myth and then i spirals out of control. I like that in theory but man they really just ignored the modern story. AC4: Yeah I 100% agree. Amazing pirate game, but it isn't an assassin's creed game. But I stuck around for Rogue and Unity Rogue: It is my favorite and definitely slept on. Take the start of AC3, and the pirate stuff of 4, put them together (which is exactly what they did) and it is a short, but fun game. I even like the present day story that you play as a different employee who is being groomed to be a templar, and the main templar villain is an obsessed lunatic who literally collects the memories onto all the failed assassins and then unleashes the archive onto the assassin's network to prove an ideological point. It is incredibly misguided and nothing is done with it, but looking at the character, yeah that scans. (Also this character is retconned to be the multiplayer character from Brotherhood and Revelations) Unity: Again I agree and this is when I dropped off the series. Syndicate: I got it for free at some point. I remember being bored and I remember nothing except that the "cane sword" is never actually used as a cane sword. Origins: I got it for free. Haven't played it. Might never will. What sucks is that they TRIED to do something with the whole Desmond X Lucy thing, that is why Unity featured Assassin X Templar romance, Aita X Juno, an assassin turned templar. It was like they wanted to set up some sort of arc that under the right conditions two seemingly opposite forces could finally come together. But nope, that was abandoned entirely. But yeah they kept putting the modern story on the backburner and we're left with something that is charred and belongs in the trash.
You definitely SHOULD play Origins, if only for Bayek's character. The story is actually pretty good, and the side-quests show more of Bayek's personality. It's not like ACIII where most of his personality is relegated to these side-quests, but it does show "more", and shows the way Bayek sees and interacts with his world, and how his personal views affect his actions. Origins is where they tried properly introducing the modern-day again with Layla Hassan, and it was honestly on a pretty slow burn till it started picking up some promising speed in Valhalla until it sorta kinda left on an 'idk' note. Desmond was 'brought back' in a sense at the end, revealing that his consciousness was saved in the Isu 'cloud' (btw, after Playing Revelations, I suddenly realised this was actually a bit of interesting continuity, and the kinda payoff for Clay 'saving Desmond' when he hugged him. You can see that when Desmond wakes up, he briefly looks at his arm showing Isu/Animus sigils for a second. I think that Clay knew Desmond was going to die, so he 'saved' him by giving a way for his consciousness to live on). You should definitely also play the DLC for Origins. Origins deviates a bit from the previous titles in terms of gameplay, but makes up for it with the characters and performances + it's the most detailed AC game till date. When it comes to Valhalla, it does connect to several titles throughout the franchise in an interesting way. As for Mirage, I'd recommend it, as, while I don't trust Ubisoft, the corporation, I do trust Ubisoft Bordeaux, the studio that made this game, because of their attitude towards fan feedback, and their vision. Mirage takes many elements from all across the franchise to make a genuinely decent AC Game. It's an amazing stealth game. The story is okay imo, not bad, not amazing, but if you pay attention, you'll catch the nuances, and nothing ever feels out of place. If anyone is saving AC, it's Ubisoft Bordeaux, and the fact they're working on their next game already (it's not Hexe) has me excited. From a deleted end-credits modern-day scene, it's implied that the next AC will probably take a bit time-skip into the far future, so I have no idea what that will do for AC Shadows. We'll see. I'll be playing it, so we'll see when we see.
I'm in the same boat as you on the series but DAMN does this thing NEED a reboot. If there ever was a property that needed a reset it's Assassin's creed.
A do-over from the ground up where the main protagonist and the girl he loves end up both surviving and living happily ever after. I'm sick and tired of sour endings.
I wasn't able to enjoy myself playing Revelations and III because the back of my mind still felt depressed for being forced to murder off my character's love interest. I probably could have forgiven assassin's Creed for assassinating Lucy's character if they had instead had abstergo find us and shoot her while we were fleeing instead of me being forced to stab her.
I still have to laugh about the notice I got in AC3 for my high ranking among players in the shipping mechanic. I put in the bare minimum of effort out of curiosity, which was more than 90% of the player base who did not care.
Just because it’s not original, doesn’t mean it’s not true. In fact, when a lot of people tell you that Assassin’s Creed has turned bad, it’s time to listen.
Ezio's naive outlook on life reminds me of my own at the time. "It is a good life we live brother, may it never change". Then you get a little older and realize that all it takes to fail is everyone else putting more effort into destroying your life than you put into salvaging it...
The music alone brings me to a happy place. Then I look at the newer games and that magic is just gone. It's depressing... but at least I'm still able to go back to AC2 and feel like a kid again, which honestly, fits the themes of that game so well - growing up.
Love your videos man. I was really into AC from the very first until around the time that the third one came out (truly loved all of the Ezio saga) so I'm really looking forward to this one.
I remember asked my friend in tertiary years ago (2018). Why odyssey was even called assassin's creed? It literally had nothing to do with assassin's creed.
Black flag was also the last game in the series I ever played. I had a very similar experience to you, I loved the series since the start, but hated 3 (Although I dropped it after a few hours and never finished it) and then I came back for black flag after a friend told me it's really good. That's pretty much where the series ended for me.
My 3 favourite AC games are AC1, AC3 and Origins. And my reasons are as following: For AC1 it's the simplicity and medieval setting, i think the art-style of the first game (each city has it's own colour) the simple progression and simple yet interesting story with a modern sub-plot that was at the level of the main story made AC1 a incredibly enjoyable experience, Altäir is easily one of my favourite Main Character's of the games due to the effects his growth as a person has and the fact it does actually matter, and also the slow climbing and parkour for me it was the best in the series, i genuinely prefer it to AC2, Brotherhood and Revelations. Then there's AC3, for me AC3 is in a very weird spot and yet i can't help but love it, i like the stealth, i like the story and i love Connor, when you criticized Connor i understood why you did so, for some reason in the main story they forget to put most of his actual characterization wich is all in the homestead missions for some weird reason, also as someone who isn't american, i found the aspect of the civil war and the setting of North America as pretty interesting not gonna lie, i really liked parkouring through trees, hell i even enjoyed the hunting. And now Origins.... despite the light and very useless RPG mechanics in the game that i didn't appreciate, i really loved the story and the setting..... yeah at this point the actual cool plotline is kinda gone to hell but i still really liked Origins, Bayek is easily my favourite protagonist in the series and exploring Egypt has been way too cool to pass on it, i really liked the constellations you could find around the map, i never found the side missions in origins a drag, i found Odyssey and Valhalla WAY more boring, for me Origins is just amazing. Sorry for the VERY long comment, but i felt like giving my honest opinion as a long-time fan of this franchise, and as someone who like everybody else had to see a series i love deteriorate in what it is now, i think a perfect video to watch would be "I HATE That I LOVE Assassin's Creed Origins" by "That Boy Aqua". Thanks For Reading.
I respect and agree with many of the flaws of Revelations but, i have to disagree with the statement of Ezio not having a story arc in Revelations, since its very much connected to the Altair plot, in which is knowing when to quit and make a life of its own outside of the britherhood and being tired of the endless war against the templars, which he mentions within the game introduccion (historical, not the "previously on AC" cutscene), and ifs something very much visible within the last sequences of the game Simply, he starts to give so much sh*t at that point that he breaks so many tenets, especially in cappadocia In the last Altair sequence that is played after that sequence talks about how altair wished he had the humility to know when he had seen enough of both the war and the isu But still, great video, and i agree with the rest of it
Assassin's Creed fell into the worst and the most common disease in writing: K. I. S. S = Keep It Simple Stupid. Killing Lucy was a completely unnecessary retcon. She could just follow the crew until the end where she would witness the end and that's really it. Give her a few moments to satisfy the story. On the Relevations... Ffs, storyline with Desmond's mind collapsing is interesting but I would prefer if this was shown in between missions, like Animus glitching to hell, hearing voices of things that never happened, having visions and all that. Elevations should be it's own entry without Animus or Desmond. Just let it be a personal story of both Altair and Ezio. That's it. This is exactly what happens when storytelling isn't planned from the beginning, even if you can't exactly fit everything in one game and if that's just a sketch. Why? Because you can always foreshadow some things or put explainable mystery for the players to discover. For example: we have two factions fighting, however we later discover there's a third faction (supposed bad guys) which show up from time to time. They're not really involved with "main plot", but they are there and characters comment on thier actions which are relevant and disruptive in some way. So when they are really important they're showing up in the story in full power. However thier actions and motivations are hinted at beforehand.
It was by far the worst in the series up to that point lol, I can't remember a single fun aspect about it that the other games didn't do better. And a god awful story at that. Haytham was such an interesting character at first, and him being a Templar plot twist was so good. Then it just... sizzled out into bland shyte with Connor.
As someone who grew up with & played the AC games on release I can honestly say you nailed everything I pretty much felt throughout the series. I feel the Ubisoft from those days is well & truly gone - there's no way the company of today would ever come up with an AC game from scratch. All innovation & originality has disappeared from Ubisoft and now it just produces the same game constantly with different themes. I struggled through Origins & Odyssey although I couldn't force myself to play the dlc as the main games were so bloated I was just tired of them by the end but Valhalla I just couldn't finish, such was my boredom.
I always thougth embers was a fitting end to ezio's story. A person who is so entwined in a world of plotting, counter-plotting and murder almost never gets to walk off into the sunset and live the rest of their lives in peace. For a time they can, but that world beckons to them, one way or another, or even reaches out to them to claim them.
The reason that Desmond couldn't see Ezio's epilogue is because he made children. That's why AC protagonists only have children off screen. Paying attention on AC 2 would show that he can only see the person before his DNA is passed on.
I have 1,2,Brotherhood,3 Remastered,Origins,Odyssey and Revelations in my steam library and haven't started playing them yet. Your experience makes me genuinely sad and will probably make me drop these games lower down my priority list in favor of other games. But I'm still hoping I regain interest enough to a play these games in the future. Thank you for this video. And of course, you earned a sub! Cheers!
Dang the way you feel about Assassin's Creed is the same way I feel about Star Wars. All the interesting things they set up in The Force Awakens ended up being very lame. At this point I don't even care about modern Star Wars. Also FYI Let me be clear despite disliking modern Star Wars and being a fan of the first 6 Star Wars films, I condemn any sort of harassment targeted at the individuals making the new films and shows. Making a show I don't like is not a crime.
I'm also a star wars fan and feel exactly the same way. The mandolorian was great though, it gave me the classic star wars feeling. I still have hope for Star Wars though, I think after they see enough of their projects fall flat they'll either sell the rights to a smaller more passionate buyer or purge the staff who are not actually star wars fans in an effort to rescue it. Patient, we must be.
AC was Desmond's story which would lead to the conclusion of the modern conflict between assassin and templar, until Ubisoft saw that they couldn't milk the cow if they resolved that so they shelved Desmond in AC 3 and transformed the franchise into an andless treasure hunt for ancient Isu artifact.
One thing I disliked most is that after revelations the protagonists aren't really part of the brotherhood. Connor gets like 7 guys that don't even wear the getup and Kenway is a pirate who's "fleet" is offscreen and his sailors stay on the ship.
You don't need to wear the getup to be an Assassin. Sure, Connor can pass off as a Patriot scout or light infantryman with his default outfit, but when 6 other people wear the same thing out in public it starts to become sus.
I agree Lucy's death was a blade in a gut for a franchise and later Desmond's death was a bullet to the head. A spirit of the franchise died with Desmond. I have a feeling that ever since Desmond's death the franchise is struggling to regain or rediscover its identity. Once again Ubuysoft greed mortally wounded a franchise and series is still to this day the franchise is in my eyes, technically, In hospital bed connected to an life support machine...just let it die so maybe one day it can be brought back. But, not by Ubisoft.
For me I always thought the AC games were kinda boring. Tailing and stealth were easy but tedious. I liked Black Flag despite the boring parts because the pirating aspect was ridiculously fun. I loved boarding enemy ships or swimming up to an enemy ship, boarding and taking everyone out then going back to my ship and when you engage its an instant win since the crew is already wiped out.
My head canon is that I choose to believe that Lucy was an unknowing sleeper agent. I can’t believe that she was a double agent the whole time it doesn’t make sense to me
I agree with most of this, but there's one piece of info that at least explains Lucy's storyline: in the Lost Archive DLC for Revelations it's explained that Lucy gets manipulated by Vidic into betraying the Assassins, so she was NOT a Templar all along. Other than that you're spot on. I went through a similar path as you, but I just progressively lowered my standards as time went on. With Brotherhood I stopped thinking the ending of the modern day would be satisfying, with III I stopped thinking the modern day storyline would be decent, with Unity I stopped thinking the past storylines would be decent. When Origins (and even worse, Odyssey) dropped I stopped thinking I would ever get an actual AC experience when I bought an AC game, so I decided I'd just stop buying ACs. I did get Mirage because it was some sort of a return to form where the gameplay is concerned, urban playground, stealth and parkour and all that, but other than that Ubisoft isn't ever getting my money again. Shame, because AC is the franchise with THE most interesting premise bar none. I'll try and remember it for what it was and not what Ubisoft turned it into, not much else I can do about it.
Yes, this is exactly how I feel about the series, thank you for putting it into words. I still enjoy the feeling of visiting a historical place in each game but yeah, ghost of Tsushima is what assassins creed wishes it could be. But I just want it to be ac 2
I've stopped playing a bit later, AC: Odyssey was the last AC game I played, but I agree on pretty much everything you said. Bayek accidentally lost his ring finger killing one of his targets with hidden blade. So they didn't stop carrying completely, but that's a small detail.
Damn I've never seen someone summarize how I feel about Assassin's Creed so well. AC4 was the last one I played. My friends and brother who were playing the games along-side me at the time were heavily invested in the Desmond story. The ending of AC3 was so bad that after I saw that AC4 wasn't going to course correct I dropped the series and never looked back. Same for those I knew who were playing. You're right it really felt like they were building up to a fully future timeline game and after so many games, so many years of building this story up, AC3 is when they lose confidence in Desmond? I felt really genuinely betrayed by these games. I always thought they could have saved AC3 by having Desmond's father take the hit instead of Desmond himself. Having that last moment together would have redeemed his dad in the best way possible given the conditions. The idea that at such a young age me and my group of friends (as well as many others, clearly) had a stronger vision for the story of Assassin's Creed than a writers room full of adults would end up being able to give us shows really how disorganized the process was at the time seemingly. This is the kind of stuff that happens when marketing is allowed to step in and be like "we're getting feedback people don't like the x,y,z sections. Cut it." Star Wars showed us the way. Know the ending before you write the intro.
If 16 did write all that stuff on the walls, with his blood, how come it was invisible to everyone ? the sleeping area should have looked like a slaughterhouse. I never figured out the game creators thinking. Another thing that's bothered me, it's, no matter what everyone says, Desmond and Altair are the exact same model. Desmond does look arabic. As for Altair, despite his hood, whatever little you can see from his head, his face does look like Desmond. Concerning the assassination missions. Nothing wrong with that, i mean, he IS an assassin, that's his job, to assassinate.
Now that I think about it, the main characters give me JoJo vibes, with Altair being Jonathan, a by-the-book character with little personality, who pretty much paved the way for the later characters, who mostly have their own crazy personalities, lmao
I personally hated the addition of 'piece of eden beasts" which were basically excuses to put mythological monsters as boss fights in a history based game. Very not assassin's creed. the worst offender is valhalla where you got to Jotunheim and fight fenrir and stuff.
I remember how I basically found out they killed Juno in a comic. I believe I was like 80% through Odyssy about a year after it released when the modern day people had a conversation mentioning it and I was like "What?" Then looked up it happened in a comic. That was a gigantic middle finger for anyone wanting to see any resolution of that storyline in the mainline games.
It was ruined in AC2 as soon as they decided to actually make the precursor race a definite and not a "well this is what Abstergo think they are and ONLY them becuase its not important where the magic balls came from, only that they exist"
I tried to stay loyal to the series since i had been there since AC1, Valhalla broke me. I simply CANNOT finish that game. Couldn't get into MIrage and after wanting a feudal japan AC for so long i feel like Shadows is going to be mid at absolute best.
Jesus mate you lasted that long? I saw the signs in ACIII already with that disastrous release state and the direction they were going in with Demond killed off and the overarching supernatural theme being downplayed hard and jumped ship, can't imagine having had to go through all the garbage that came out after, with 1 or 2 notable exceptions (apparently Black Flag was good, but aside from that)
I couldn’t agree more with this. I think AC should’ve ended on revelations and then a modern day game. Their biggest issue was that Ubisoft wasn’t ready to finish the story because they didn’t believe that they could’ve come with other franchises that would’ve been that successful.
3:20 "To play assassins creed 2... to play assassins creed 2 on the big TV-" I'm not mad my bacon man, but I just finished an indie game where half the narration did this, and started to question if it was my brain or the video glitching.
I started from the first game this year and I got invested purely for the purpose of studying popular historical fiction. As I played I got interested in the ideas being presented throughout each game, yes even in AC3.
The fact that in ACIII, probably the game I was most hyped for in my life, only had Connor dawn the assassin's robes halfway through the damn game was such a weird choice.
To Devil's Advocate for Ubisoft for the reduction of the modern storyline, it was that period of the internet where people outside could hear from it but not recognize what was actual critique and what was just people yelling. My strongest memories of the discussion of Assassin's Creed during the Ezio trilogy were not about the gameplay or characters; it was "The modern storyline is stupid, why would they let that get in the way of the fun part" and "Why isn't this series in Japan so I can be a ninja?" The story was too focused to change course there, but I'm almost certain there was at least one person at Ubisoft telling the developers to remove the modern story as much as possible. The discussion wanted something different, and the developers changed course fast enough to alienate those interested with the modern storyline but slow enough to not fully satisfy the people who didn't care.
Connor is interesting considering I only see two camps when it comes to him. Either one thinks he's very boring and one note or the other side thinks he's really interesting and introspective. I heard the homestead missions fleshes out his character but, I've never done those missions when I played AC3.
Summed it up pretty damn well, actually. I'm a few years older, but I too was taken in by the historical setting, expansive gameplay, and time spamming story. The ingredients of something great were there from the start, but great stories need endings. This series has spun its wheels for so long, it really doesn't feel like it's going anywhere, you just change the jerseys, update the rosters and add a few new stadiums. Wait what were we talking about?
While I definitely like the fact that they went with the native American perspective for AC3 for their protagonist, Haytham is really close to Ezio in terms of personality and interest. More prim and proper, but highly cunning and intelligent, efficient. Eloquent and occasionally humorous. I almost feel like they did the native's a disservice making Connor so focused and naive. Haytham makes VERY good points and really redeems the Templar's of his era. He's right about Washington, he's right about America. A few privileged people make beneficial choices for themselves and damn the rest.
My Cherokee Indian buddy got me into AC3(hes adamant about using Indian("my ancestors fought and fell against Europeans labeled as Indians and most of us would rather be called that", he finds Native American soft and downplays the crazy battles of the past. Legit goes out and digs up arrowheads and ancient stone tools every month, super interesting to hear him and his family explain how they worked), and the first 3 are amazing. AC4 was fun for a while but it really bored me in the middle and the history aspect seemed more absurd than my mind could take. Seriously tho my buddy has a very large collection of ancient American Indian artifacts, hes even un-naturally good at identifying just the leftover foundation of ancient American settler's settlements. Lol we even accidentally became "blood brothers" in a mechanic mishap, im geting sidetracked but I cannot think of AC without my best bud. A real solid guy.
I had a similar experience with the games as you described here. Only I have yet to play past Brotherhood. I thought Revelations was the end of the future plot but it seems to go on and on. And I thought Lucy comes back. Too bad, I liked her, AC2 ending was really a hallmark of game endings. Tbh, I only bought the later ones because I love pirate games and the others for historical settings. But I'm not buying Valhalla. Something about it feels off. And Shadows... ehh I have been waiting for an AC set in Japan for over a decade but U B Soft in da head doesn't deserve my money anymore.
Confession Time: I played (and enjoyed) Revelations before Brotherhood so it hit differently with me. Initially I thought Brotherhood was a DLC expansion for AC2 and I got the impression that Revelations was very distinct. I finally got burned out on the franchise after Unity. The apparent presumption by Ubisoft that this was the only game I'd play that year didn't sit well with me....
I think Revelations was meant to be a DLC game tbh. Maybe a 6-8 hour game at most with the ending, but Ubisoft being Ubisoft, well, you know the men in suits, they wanted a full price game.
The craziest thing about Assassin’s Creed is how Ubisoft was able to take a concept like “two secret ideologically opposing orders battling throughout history to secure artifacts from an ancient precursor civilization” and gradually make that less and less interesting
Ah yes the ideology of templars and assassins.
Even haytham said something along the line.
*assassins want free, templars want order*
*peace is an invitation to chaos*
@@ryszakowy Based take
it's kind of funny thinking about it from this idea, because at the time fans got sick of Ubisoft never really telling the story, we were drip fed small information about the Isu for many games without a whole lot to go off of.
it wasn't until Odyssey when they reviled everything about the Isu, from technology to culture to their goals and intentions.
so you can only pull off the subtle story for so long before the series becomes stale and they pretty much had to show more about them.
i for one really wish they did a real crossover of the watchdog series, because i could see a story involving the brotherhood in the present doing all kinds of hacking missions to obtain information and plots of the future story actually turning into something amazing, but no, instead watch dogs turned into it's own thing and it became meh..... bla bla bla.
don't get me wrong the basic premise of watchdogs was amazing, but the potential story that could have been so much better had they made these two series really come together, hell i could also see them mixing it with the splinter cell stories in some way.
but no, these were treated as their own series sadly. so the present day plot in the AC games really sucked because of this and also sadly so did the present day watch dogs via the 2nd game in the series, it was just a goofy fun game about some stupid hacker story that was very inspired by stupid millennial values lol, i say this as a millennial lol...
@@Hikaru0kamiki
it was freedom is an invitation to chaos.
however freedom is also an invitation for a lasting peace funny enough.
one of the founding fathers once said, this is a constitutional republic, "if you can keep it" meaning you have to continually fight for it, in order for it to last, because otherwise those who want to destroy that freedom and piece will use that freedom to destroy it, and before you know it, you are living in communism and everyone is a slave in that system, which leads to mass death because people refuse to be slaves and the government deletes them.
the sad ironic truth of all that is the people voted for it, and the state only gave them what they wanted.
this is the cost of too much freedom, which is what Haytham was referring to.
@@5226-p1e wow i just saw this and is a sad truth, back when ac had deeper meanings like this
When you realise this series was meant to be a trilogy it’s kind of insane
What really bugs me is that plenty of other series can wrap up a trilogy and then build a new one in the same IP with equally compelling characters and settings... But AC didn't even do their first one justice. All they had to do was let Desmond kill Vidik, rescue his dad, NOT kill Lucy and then decide that despite his tremendous ability he doesn't want this, he didn't want it in AC1 and convince Lucy after such a tiring, emotionally and mentally fatiguing journey to go retire to a safe house and stay out of it. Maybe Rebecca and Shaun could come back in their SAME job as assistants to the next protagonist to have a feel of continuity without ruining characters and plot.
I absolutely really wanted Lucy and Desmond to get married and have children and continue that special bloodline. 🥰
@@NostalgicGamerRickOShaySaaaaaaaame
It didn't help that with it being Ubisoft, they had to milk the dead cow because hell forbid you make a new IP name
@@aerrae5608 true I mean look at halo, while Some of the sequels were bad the original trilogy wrapped itself up nicely
Assassin’s Creed was never the same after Desmond.
Killing him off was a mistake.
My interest in Desmond died with Lucy.
Without Lucy, Desmond's story was boring and not worth it.
And yet the story painted her as a traitor when she was trying to move on from Abstergo. Maybe Minerva doesn’t want Lucy to be touching her man which was why she had Desmond kill her.
@@NostalgicGamerRickOShaydoesn’t mean he couldn’t be developed into a better character after she died?
No, no it wasn’t lol
It still pisses me off that the Juno plotline ends off screen in a comic book
yeah that was a stupid idea. i would have figured out how to make a cross over series with watchdogs at that point as that would be better than the stupid comics.
What? 😮😅
@@iurysaraiva3411 The plotline they setup between Black flag and Rogue ends "offscreen" in a comic ubisoft made. I say offscreen because it wasn't resolved in its original media. And rather a separate source altogether.
@@Nightxx9199 sheesh..
IT WHAT!?!
Glad we agree that the way they handled Lucy at the end of Brotherhood was the moment everything went downhill.
I do wonder why they didn’t just recast the character when the VA declined to return
Haaated the twist with her in the first place. Dumb and lazy, never shouldve happened
@@skibot9974 I suspect there was something in her contract that only she could voice the character, so killing her was the only way
Could've gone with twin/clone/digital copy of the real Lucy. The destruction of Earth and the narrow escape into space would've been amazing. Then Desmond, Lucy 2.0, Shaun and Rebecca have to alter the past through the animus to save humanity. But they have to be careful to not interfere with history too much or else they break the continuity and reality collapses. Turns out a bunch of templars also made it into space too and they try to stop Desmond's team. In the last standoff, through the magic of some 1st civ shenanigans all of the past protagonists spawn in and have to work together. No idea about the details. Idk what I'm cooking rn, but that would be f-ing cool. Imma write this shit as fanfiction I guess.
Think it was less a result of lazy writing and more of hasty rewrites and Ubisoft´s greed.
When 3´s development turned sour Ubisoft wanted more games in the interim(leading to Brotherhood and Revelations)and by then they smelled the cashcow so they threw out the original Adam & Eve space ending leading to Lucy not being needed anymore.
Combine that with the VA only having a 3 game contract(as was originally planned),wanting more money for an extension and off the plank she went.
Lucy being a Templar is such a lame twist when we initially thought she was a Templar. That would be like if the plot twist of Star Wars was that Darth Vader actually isn’t Luke’s father and literally no interesting explanation at all follows this
This was the point where I started to question things before I ultimately quit by Syndicate/Origins
But the thing is that the Clay files DLC for Revelations expands on this, as we play as Clay himself (subject 16), and see how he became an Assassin, but also how he became subject 16 as a way to infiltrate Abstergo. And operation he was supposed to conduct alongside Lucy. These gameplay sections also reveal what the whole Lucy traitor thing was about;
Basically, Lucy was genuinely an Assassin, but Vidic, after figuring out that Lucy and Clay were Assassins trying to infiltrate Abstergo. Then Vidic uses the fact that the Assassins kinda just left her in the dark for years, and just abandoned her up until right now when she's suddenly needed, to manipulate her into betraying the Assassins. This is why Lucy killed Clay (Yes, it's explained that while the bleeding effect thing was true, it was also Lucy who when Clay figured it out, and wanted to warn William Miles, Lucy killed him.
But the thing is also that Lucy was more so angry at William Miles as opposed to the entirety of the Brotherhood. It's why she still cries at the deaths of the Assassin factions; they're still her family, and her betrayal wasn't planned from the start.
@@maxm.m.7219That at least adds more context which I'm surprised thats not in the base game as it would've softened the blow to an awkwardly handled twist.
@@maxm.m.7219You can kinda see this with another Assassin turncoat, Shay Cormac. He takes no satisfaction in killing his former comrades, save for maybe the Chevalier because he was a dick to him.
Well before she was just an assistant
I'm still livid that Lucy was killed off just to cheat the actress out of better pay.
There's not just the romance itself, but at one point I'm sure it's explicitly spelled out that Desmond will have a son who plays an important role. Heck, they could well have revealed the Desmond segments were themselves genetic memories that his son needed to experience firsthand to get the undiluted truth.
THANK YOU, for agreeing with me.
Killing off Lucy left me in a depression so deep that I've never been able to replay the games ever again.
And I certainly wasn't able to enjoy playing Revelations and assassin's Creed III.
Assassin's Creed 1 and 2 were clearly building up to eventually have Desmond play a game of his own set in the modern story and Lucy would be his wife and mother to his children and they would continue that special bloodline
Wow. I thought they killed her for shock value. This is far crueler
I remember that moment in AC2 when she speaks directly to Desmond, my exact thought was "Why is she looking at me?" Chills man.
Fun fact. The three cities in the original game are perfect one for one recreations of their real world counterparts down to the last alleyway. That level of detail is almost unheard of. Add to the fact that your targets are based on real people who simply disappear from the historical record and thus could possibly have been assassinated, and you get the impression that this really was a game made by History lovers for History lovers. Where did the people who made _that_ game go?
They probably were all gone by the time black flag was being produced
Likely either got fired for one reason or another or are stuck dealing with execs.
This comment right here. With all the controversy surrounding AC Shadows, I see so many people talk about how AC has never been historically accurate. Those people clearly never played any AC game prior to Origins or forget the level of historical detail Ubisoft put into the games. Especially the first entries.
Some parts of the cities are estimations of buildings destroyed by wars
And they've always been bending history to fit their fiction. It's not a problem
Honestly I was so skeptical about AC Origins given that I really don’t like when a franchise is already established as one genre and decides to become another, but I put a lot of time into that game. And then Valhalla came and I literally cannot bring myself to play it for more than 30 minutes, there’s something about it that just puts me to sleep.
I was so stoked for Valhalla because I mainly love just about anything related to Norse mythology and vikings. However the game has so little soul and feels so by the numbers, it's monotonous and boring more than anything. I really enjoyed Origins, and Odyssey was a lot of fun, but I fell out of love with the series WITH Syndicate, and even though there was a small reinvigoration with the reinventing the play style, I just cannot bring myself to get any slight excitement now.
@@gwarriorfromhellsyndicate is so repetitive and dull. Unity is underrated imo. For me it comes down to AC being really inconsistent. There are some very good games and a lot of very dull games.
Eivor.. seriously that's it. Bayek had personality but for some reason Eivor is bland almost like a blank canvas.. maybe because of the dialogue choices but still.
Valhalla is still better than the other 2 RPG ones. Odyssey tries to force microtransactions onto you and Origins is boring.
@@Windrider784 no. origins>>>>
I lost interest in this series sometime after Black Flag, which I now realize was somehow 11 years ago
Aint that the truth, both points. However after black flag I lost interest. And honestly when I learned you couldn't switch you ship over to the crazy powerful ones early on even if you successfully take over the ship it really hit me wrong, it kinda killed the rest of the game for me as I was having a blast doing sea raids and making my ship better. But I do agree with you 100 percent, just that one bummer took some gas outta my enjoyment tank.
@@insurgentlowcash7564 people look at past Ubisoft games with rose tinted glasses but they weren't masterpieces.
@@insurgentlowcash7564 So many people have such a high opinion of Black Flag that I honestly felt I was the odd one out for not liking it.
I was, am and will always be an Assassins Creed fan. But what I'm not, I'm not a ubisoft fan, there is a huge difference.
Nah. Being a fan of a series that doesnt respect you is just as bad as being a fan of a company that doesn't respect you. Both are abusive relationships
@Goosewitdajuice317 Assassins Creed did respect it's gamers. The new rpg games that have the AC title tacked on does not respect gamers. When I say Assassins Creed, I mean the actual Assassin games. Not 300 simulator and definitely not Viking simulator.
@@Batman_83Even _Black Flag_ was more AC than any of these two. It's basically the titular Creed from a neutral's perspective.
@@jmal AC 1- Syndicate were actual AC games. Mirage is an actual AC game. Origins is 80% AC. They stopped caring in Origins.
@@jmalIn Black Flag's defense despite it's over use of tailing missions said missions at least made you play like an assassin
What is wrong with people?
I've seen plenty of videos like these and NONE of them talk about how the original creator of the series was fired after AC Brotherhood.
And yet they wonder why the series went downhill after that.
Because video games are a collaborative effort not just one person
He was fired after AC2
@@skibot9974 but absence of leader and original creator can't be ignored.
It's the most important single position in a project
Lazerzz and so says Jay covered that I think
alot of them talk about that tho. and ultimately no one can change that the original creator is no longer at the helm of the games and we know that is a part of why the games went the route that they did, but its not the only reason so the only thing we can do is to critique and give advice for what the current developers can and should do with the franchise. its a war we can't win if we choose to complain about a factor no one can have an effect on. its better to focus on things that can be worked on to form a better future.
Ac stopped being good since Ubisoft has strayed far from the original idea and cores that Patrice Desilet had when he started the series
What makes it worse is that they supposedly already have the ending for the series planned out, they just want to milk the franchise down to the marrow before they finally end it. By then, there won't be any interest left in the final game.
Well, Patrice wanted 3 games and period no franchise milking, no nothing. Ubisoft was the one who pushed it this far as a landmark franchise of the company 🤷♂️
My favorite Assassins Creed is 3. It was the only AC game I bought on launch. I was going through a deep depression at that point and finishing the game was probably the only thing that kept me going. I'm fascinated with Native American culture and deeply respect it ever since I was young. I put countless hours into the multiplayer and made some friends from it.
What irony.
I was playing assassin's Creed III and not enjoying it at all because I was deeply depressed by what had happened in the previous two assassin's Creed games.
Killing off Lucy alone felt Like a torpedo to the ship that was Desmond's story.
@@NostalgicGamerRickOShaybro you have to let go lucy is not coming back
For me personally I lost my interest in the series after Odyssey. That game literally broke me as a long time fan, how far it departed from the core concepts of the series, the ungodly amount of micro transactions, how boring it was for me personally, how bad the graphics are ( i never understood when people say Odyssey is graphically impressive because when I pop it in my ps5 and replay it to see if my eyes deceived me, nope I was right low poly textures everywhere, the rocks literally look like ps2 quality graphics), how damage spongey the enemies were, no assassins in a game called assassins creed. I hate that game with a passion cause it killed the love I once had in the first franchise i was truly hooked in.
I felt that in my core reading this. I agree with you. I took a huge break after 3 to Origins. So I refreshed. And I actually really did enjoy Origins. But Odyssey was far too bloated in so many aspects. Their hard-on as they basically admit for The Witcher consumed them clearly. I platniumed both Origins and Odyssey, and I still can't believe I did it for Odyssey. And I didn't even fast travel much (stupidly, somewhat role-playing along).
Because of Odyssey, I didn't get Valhalla. And because of Valhalla, I was sceptical of the last game. Decided to sit and see reviews. Wise choice. Oh and watching the Ireland DLC also bothered me as an Irish guy too. So much potential in that, and they fluffed their lines.
It's hard to see me ever returning to the series now.
@@LoCoAde87 100% thank u, cause I really do see people like Odyssey but it an good Greek game but it 100% just has ac title slap onto it. I will say I expected Valhalla to be the same but no, it was actually a lot better/one of my fav to play.
@@lulukomadori9651 Valhalla is trash compared to Odyssey
There's not a single micro transaction required to complete Odyssey. I've never bought a single item and I've played Odyssey serval times through. There's not a single thing that nags you to pay for one and it's entirely a choice. If you're crying about the fact that micro transactions just exist in odyssey. then you're just being a baby. Sorry.. but that's just a fact. My recomendation, just don't go to the store page where you buy items.. done.
@@timotmon I guess I’m a baby cause I despise any micro transactions in single player games
I disagree that the history in ac3 is boring and that connor is boring. Also that combat is slower or worse. Connor is pretty accurate for most native americans for the time and his idealism is incredibly interesting like when connor called out sam adams about spouting liberty while owning a slave which was interesting. His quote still sticks with "all people should be free and not in turns."
The history itself isn't boring, it's just presented in a very boring way, especially because it's seen through The eyes of a very boring character. That's my take anyway.
@@TBPAgreed
I agree AC3 is one of my faveroutes in the series I personally felt the combat was just fine I mean I suppose you could say some people found ezios combat faster and Connor slow but what it comes down to is size Connor is a big guy so obviously his weight would add more power to his attacks while ezio was smaller and able to attack with speed so both work for both assassins and yes connors quotes and the way he sees things compared to other people is impactful
@@joehobbs3277maybe he could've played with some mods in the Animus limiting his body weight 😂
Bro said Revelations is pointless while Brotherhood exists, man, that game is pure filler to fix the dumb mistake of the previous one, Revelations matters a lot more for Ezio's character
Yeah, brotherhood was good but ultimately unnecessary. Revelations is my favorite out of the whole trilogy and was way more important to the overall story.
I disagree, by the end of AC2 the modern day gang still doesn't know where Ezio's apple of eden is, and what mistake are you talking about exactly?
Killing Desmond and making all those years of huild up and essentially killing the modern day storyline was it for me.
At that point i knew there would never be an end to this series. That we werent building towards anything anymore. There was no point to it all anymore.
So basically Revelations is where shit started really going downhill and 3 is where the original story absolutely self destructed.
Revelations was moreso just pointless. Brotherhood was where it started going downhill story-wise.
@@samiamtheman7379
no, brotherhood was peak amazing story telling and great gameplay, except that end with Lucy.
revelation's wasn't shit, but it wasn't nearly as good as brotherhood.
@@5226-p1e from what I gathered, good additional story for AC1
Meh additional story stuff for AC2
The ending pulled some huge BS and the trajectory never recovered as 3 sunk it even further.
So yeah in terms of peak story telling I imagine that's more 2 than brotherhood, and whatever good that brotherhood adds is outweighed by stuff that feels unnecessary or stuff that feels like it's contributing negatively to the overall story.
3 either way is the much worse follow up, and the original storyline as a whole dies with it.
@@5226-p1e Brotherhood overrated as hell. It's far from peak and is especially brought down by that ending, would go as far to say that Revelations have better story overall ignoring how insignificant it is in the big picture.
It's sad to think about, but AC2 was truly peak; no bs ending, great historical _and_ modern time story, good gameplay, some of the best city designs to date, with amazing atmosphere to boot.
@@shira_yone
i will agree that AC2 had more locations to go to, but the combat though better than AC1 it wasn't by much, that was significantly improved in brotherhood and revelations, revelation's story when it came to Ezio was good and brotherhood was good as it was a good revenge story and amazing location for the series and continuance of the AC2 storyline, Istanbul was kind of a dark and gritty dirty city, it was not nearly as big of filled with as many things to do, but it was ok, i didn't like the ending of brotherhood with the Lucy bit and i didn't like how that story carried over into revelation's as desmond was basicaly in a coma for the entire game that story sucked and the added DLC even sucked it was some stupid puzzle thing that you would hear audio of his past growing up in the brotherhood, however there were some parts of the story that weren't bad, some situations were kind of boring or annoying would be the better apt word.
the assassin recruit missions were more detailed in revelation's but they were also annoying when it came to the recruit personal missions, it was interesting but kind of meh, i did like revelation's options with bombs and distraction methods i liked the hookblade and the traversal with that blade and how it could be used in combat uniquely, the fighting was roughly the same outside of a few new NPC's that made fighting harder, those janissaries who could not only block your counter kills but they also came with a pistole that were used a little too often so you had to find other ways to fight them outside of straight up counter kills, but i loved brotherhood for many of the same reasons i liked in revelation's but i do think they were a bit better implemented in brotherhood in comparison.
it was the first game when they introduced the recruit assassins mechanic, it continued the economy mechanic i loved in AC2 and expanded on it and made it much more varied, hell it even had gambling and investment's via region population and it depended on cleared locations and shops you renovated, it wasn't just a simple mechanic for the gameplay, it was explained in the story that this is how he was able to build and maintain the assassins creed empire to maintain control over specific regions of the map as well as other locations outside of Rome and each mission you sent your recruits there were these special missions that came with their own lore that continued the story through this mechanic, and if you want to carry this even further it explained how the creed became so wealthy in later installments such as Unity as that was one of the established locations that their oder liberated and installed a creed location, it was cool to have the ability to build your assassins from simple recruits and turn them into master assassins through a ceremony of their peers and to also boost the economy to life to the extent that it transformed these regions, of course that was a choice up to the player, you didn't have to really interact with this mechanic if you didn't want to, but for me it made sense that this is how he would run and maintain his empire and be able to spread the brotherhood across the ocean.
i even loved the assassination missions the history of each demographic location of the city that Ezio went to, they weren't exactly full mapped locations like AC2 but they were cool to see other locations built for these contracts that furthered the main story involving the Borgias and the pope's allies that helped them on various Borgia interest's, even down to the Lucrezia mission where the main game story was almost over she was sent to marry a duke guy who was just a political ally of her fathers as he was using her to infiltrate his court and status i can't remember her role in all of this, all i know is that Ezio was after some Leonardo paintings that contained some blueprints for his war machines that he wanted to be destroyed, then of course it had the classics tomb missions that furthered the history of the location and also furthered the story involving the Borgia influence through the followers of Romulus, i love that it felt like there was an underground world location of the Rome map, it was just so mysterious and cool, especially when it came down to the ruins of the demographic location as there were secrets hidden in these ancient tombs.
i love a good build up of a revenge story, revelation's was kind of like this but it ended as a love story with sofia and that was fine as well as Ezio was in his late 50s i assume.
like to this day i loved Ezio's story above all, to me all of his story was counted in one game, i know they were released as a series of games but to me they were all connected and very well told stories outside some of the modern day missions stuff, the modern day stuff was sadly this series worst parts because it was just bad written stuff and you didn't really get to explore much of anything.
brotherhood just had so many interconnecting stories in it in comparison to the other games, like you had a story with Bartolomeo that mercenary guy and then you had the continued courtesan missions via his sister taking over the courtesans and then the thief's guild via la volpa all of their stories had their own troubles but also they all connected into the main story, then there was that point in the game when Leonardo got the attention of these treasure hunters and it introduced some more enemies to fight, they fight like the thieves' but had daggers and they could dodge some of your counters, but they were still easy, it was still fun fighting them though because you also had to sneak passed them and they could screw up other missions when spotted.
man i just love so much in that game in comparison to the others, i loved the location to the music to the fighting to other elements of the gameplay, it was overall a great game.
to be honest if the gameplay fighting was like brotherhood in AC2 i would give it far more credit, but it was nice when it came out i did like AC2's locations and story and the gameplay when i first played it, the music was good too, if a bit monotonous at times.
the Ezio game series is and will always be the best in the series for me.
It's kinda darkly funny when you play the first AC games and get hit with the "We are a multicultural team" splash page. Like, that was literally the timeframe for some of the worst workplace bullying and harassment at Ubisoft. Build a castle on sand and it's going to crumble eventually.
It was so that they didn't get accused of hatred against Christianity when they called Christ a charlatan.
In retrospect, that probably was a warning they weren't joking...
AC3 had so much potential to be THE modern day game. The modern day sections were pretty good and if expanded and focused on could have been incredible. Desmond had so much skill and potential at this point, and we never saw it realized.
The ring finger burn was a form of ceremony the hidden blade was updated to no longer need ring finger removal because of Leonardo getting the plans for it.
Also, it made sense in the context of the Second Tenet. A missing ring finger combined with a hood is a dead giveaway, while a brand is a compromise: keeps the tradition while being conspicuous.
@@ryszakowy If your opposing team has a habit of chopping off their ring fingers as an initiation ritual... Then all the fucking time
@@jokurandomi93
i don't think it was because it was an initiation ritual, it was just a flaw of the construction of how the blade worked, up until it was upgraded and modified to not cut the finger off.
@@5226-p1e That never really made sense.
@@Debatra.
what never made sense? the ritual of cutting off the ring finger or the modification to prevent the ring finger to be cut?
The ending of AC2 before Brotherhood was really great. You just saw Ezio’s entire lifetime of transformation and the last you see of him he’s confused, angry, and realizing all he worked for was for something he couldn’t possibly understand. It left him as a memorable piece in a larger story and rang hollow in just the right ways.
1&2 had this sort of weird sci-fi thing going on. Not quite cosmic horror, but certainly interested in the ways that the protagonists whole lives were basically meaningless outside of the ways people in the future could make practical use out of them. A dark sci fi twist.
Brotherhood onward and the series became more sincere. It started to love its characters and see them as epic heroes with compelling narratives. And that’s cool but it’s definitely not the same as the cold, hollow feeling the ending of AC2 gave me. It’s just a little bit more generic. The series has really never recaptured that old feeling, but I will say the new style did culminate well in AC4’s plot.
My pet gripe is that I felt like the series was going in the direction of a stealthy No More Heroes. Desmond would fight it out with Abstergo hitmen who had various historical figures bleeding into their psyches.
I also felt like Those Who Came Before were playing both sides. The Assassins provided vessels for them to live again, while the Templars rebuilt their control mechanisms. But I dropped the series after AC3 so I have no clue if they went with that.
My favorite Assassin's Creed...is 3 lmao. Brotherhood before that because it's just peak but yeah, i liked the modern day stuff a lot in 3 plus the homestead side missions. Also BIG bias because it helped me remember historical events as a kid and i passed a test because of it, i spent time playing it rather than studying so yeah, HUGE bias. I liked the linear side missions of collecting some...idk relics or smth and it led to some big treasure at the end. I don't remember what it was, maybe just an attire but anyway. Connor and Haytham are such a based duo when they're together plus it was fun hunting for animals (legendary or not) using the trees to parkour and most importantly hunting troops. I wasn't even being stealthy when out of the city, Connor is a brute anyway so i just use the rope dart to hang my first victim, what an entrance to the slaughter that follows. I too wish the story was still good and concluded but whatever, the series died with Desmond for me so i stopped caring after that. I go back to the trilogy from time to time to remember why they're good and that's it, only notable exception to the franchise is Unity with its parkour STILL being peak all that time later
I've always loved history as a child and I felt insulted by how the game portrayed Daniel Boone.
This series would have been better off if it wasn't an annual release like CoD or any sports game. I played an AC game, can't remember which, and I liked it. But I wasn't going to try to buy and play them all.
And the glitches that happened in AC Unity just showed the mentality that UBISoft and their corporate investors have with wanting money right there and then, not giving a crap about how the game looks or performs. Release it now and fix it later...
I'd say the problems first began when they decided to kill off Desmond. Sure Desmond was boring but everything in the story relied on him and his ancestors.
He was a normal guy going through his heritage. As such each ancestor felt like a natural progression from and to each other then onto Desmond.
The transition from Altair to Enzio felt smooth as silk. The transition to Enzio to Edward felt off but had a good game, and the transition from Edward to Connor felt terrible with the game being bad.
Clearly the devs felt constrained by Desmond and so kept trying to go further away from what you would expect from his ancestors and making them not even Assassins, until deciding to kill him off in III.
The games after this were still able to hold up enoughish with Rogue and the others.
And then of course the second wave of problems occurred, the devs completely going off script and getting increasingly political with the new era of Assassin's Creed games along with microtransactions. At this point the series is unrecognizable really and has been like this for more games than the core original games.
They've gone so out there that they've completely forgotten what sorts of historical figures would be Templars and which would be Assassins.
Best example of this right now is Shadows.
Nobunaga the conqueror of Japan, the guy who gave out land to Western priests and got assassinated is somehow not a Templar.
Presumably because he is viewed as open-minded and "progressive" which means the devs want him to be of the "good" faction for their politics.
He is one of the most stereotypical Templar type historical figures to ever exist and yet he and Yasuke are Assassins, painful.
Without Lucy, Desmond story felt not worth following. And it felt especially bad when they retconned his feelings towards her.
I agree on Revelations, but on different view: I hate that it wasnt Yusuf Tazims game, like dude should have been far more present and have more screentime, and even better: to be an actual protagonist. But i love Revelations, just like you said, because of closure on Altairs story.
My favorite in Trilogy is still Brotherhood
Edit: May be controversial, but i feel it became ruined after the Desmond story, kinda like Marvel after Infinity War/Endgame, it just exists without any big plot
Yusuf is trash
i liked the game but i kind of agree with you, i think it would have been nice to see a story from his perspective of the same story, kind of like how they presented adwale in black flag and the game that came after where you play as him.
yeah the issue with the modern day stuff was that Ubisoft didn't really know how to write it, like i still remember the hints of the brotherhood and Abstergo being hinted in watchdogs, sadly they never combined these two games.
it would have been nice and it could have fit, but they turned the watchdogs story into something else that is now only viewed as a joke because of the direction they took that game.
i played and even liked WD2 of that series, but the story overall was super silly and goofy, it no longer had the more serious undertones the series started with and it kind of lost it's identity, but i saw the potential that it could very lead to a great modern day sequence for the assassins involvement in the story in some ways, again watchdogs 2 was a goofy fun game, but it would have been so much better if these two series were combined in the modern day stuff.
i know they did that stupid legion game that sort of combined them, but that came off so uncanny valley that it felt like an wasteful experiment that ultimately lead nowhere.
Honestly? You're right. Yusuf should have been the main character. He could have been mentored by Ezio and learn the ropes of being an assassin as the game went on, and then maybe have a plot twist that he's also a descendant of Altair, because it's a family tree and not a family post, meaning it branches off.
I can certainly relate a lot to how the gameplay just doesn't have its own niche anymore, it's become generic, not special. Any RPG could have the same gameplay with the modern RPG games and it wouldn't be out of place but even before that there was a much bigger issue.
Starting with Assassin's Creed IV, Assassin's Creed essentially transformed from a game focused on a plot spanning the entire series so far into an anthology series. You can't just do that though, an anthology series only sustains success if that is what it has always been, if that is what it was always supposed to be.
An anthology series is indefinite, it has no end like Mario, or the Legend of Zelda, or GTA. It is focused on individual characters living in the moment facing a conflict for that given moment, not an end all be all conflict like Assassin's Creed had set up until the end of Assassin's Creed 3 where Desmond essentially made the only choice that would allow the series to continue in the most unsatisfying way possible that way Ubisoft could exploit the genetic memory setting in perpetuity without any particular direction for the series or major looming threat to end all threats. The problem is that you can't just transition to a anthology game series with episodic threats and villians that can be handled in every game without leaving a lot of loose ends.
Assassin's Creed could have ended, and sure we wouldnhave missed out on a lot of fun games, but as we see now we could have also missed out on the series inevitably eventually being milked to death by developers who increasingly stray from the original vision in a desperate attempt to keep the series relevant for as long as possible.
It's sad but at the end of the day I wouldn't have minded at all, I never thought it would become so bad though that now they are keeping the game relevant with completely unnecessary and hostile arguments on Twitter. It just goes to show that the series has reached that ugly conclusion, when it has been co-opted by people who care nothing for the game itself and everything for keeping the game relevant and reaching the final untapped audience of people buying the game to virtue signal.
Shadows had better Bomb so hard that they make the Series Dirtnap for a while.
I miss prince of Persia... Also all your videos are very well done
No worries, in 8 years that Prince of Persia remake will finally come out.
@@coltonwilkie241 I loved that game, idk why I just love everything about it. Quality over quantity, a solid 5-6 hour experience. If they mess it up I will be permanently done with that company
A fun thing for you to try If you ever play through the first again: Play without a HUD, let your subconcious memory guide you,
That spiderman 3 clip killed me lol
i actually liked the rebuilding of Rome mechanic. because to me, it wasn't just a mechanic of the game, it was an explanation to the story in how Ezio built his empire of assassins and how he maintained them.
the economy and money was very integral to the story as much as it was to gameplay, and it gave me a semblance of accomplishment in building that empire, something they pretty much took out of their later games sadly.
i also loved the assassin recruit missions and the training of my recruits to the point of turning them into master assassins, as these also expanded on the story as well, if you payed attention they had their own stories imbedded within them that followed each other, the more important assassin missions, they not only gained ranks in this system which makes sense but they also established footholds and were able to influence other allies in other countries and the results of this were found within one of these locations in the form of the next game in the series, Istanbul, this is why there was a present brotherhood in this location, so the game didn't just add these things to the game for just giving the player something to do, it was also something that was further expanding on the games overall story.
they don't really do this in the newer games.
Honestly this video sums up everything I ever wanted to say about why I don't really care about assassin's Creed anymore And the part I appreciate so much about this video is that it never once comes off as though you're saying The old games are better than the new games rather small mistakes ultimately hurt assassin's Creed in a long run from a OG fan perspective.
So I'm writing this after the intro, I'll come back after but hearing your introduction, I think I know 100% what you're talking about. Usually when I hear "former AC fans" I almost want to ask at what game did they stop.
After the video: I disagree in some parts, specifically on Revelations and some sections of 3, but yeah. I dropped off after Unity. I didn't gradually pick them up, I got Unity with my Xbox One, played it, and dropped the series. I did get Syndicate and Origins for free, and I only played Syndicate.
Revelations: Closure for Ezio and Altair is partly the point, I felt like it wrapped up loose ends well. Everyone kept saying "you're undergoing the bleeding effect we just need to get you enough skills so you'll be fine" and then to see that the Apple of all things caused his mind's collapse fits. And I always felt that the animus had more going on. Like if it can recreate memories down to their exact detail, why not a whole human personality? Wouldn't a modern person's memories be stored and create a model? As for this "sudden library" I figured that the codex wasn't 100% complete, and he was reviewing it. But I agree with gameplay. I also really liked the subject 17 files. Just like Desmond has to finish with Altair and Ezio's main life stories, he has to relive his own memories up to that point. What sucks is that to play them all you need to collect all the memory fragments (which suck) OR you have to buy the Subject 16 DLC which unlocks all of those memories at the start of the game.
Rant about the Subject 16 DLC: I originally went into this with AC3, but I need to make it its own section. So when Desmond talks about Subject 16 and Lucy in 3, they aren't retconning the scribbles. They are directly referencing Desmond going through Subject 16's memories between Revelations and 3. This is what the Revelations DLC is about. As I said it isn't *legally* available on PC anymore! Now, you can find old versions of the DLC online and plant them into your Revelations file, but that is piracy so... ANYWAY Desmond would see flashbacks of her and subject 16. It adds depth to her character arc in that she WAS a templar and assassin double agent, but because the assassins neglected her presence and role she felt isolated from them while the templars seemed to care more. It shows a side of her that while she does care about Shawn, Rebecca, and Desmond, she doesn't care about the assassins anymore. They preached so much about freedom and caring for people, yet there she was "behind enemy lines" making reports to some faceless entity. This is a retcon, but it shows that Lucy was extremely reluctant for either side. She didn't like the ideology of the Templars but they seemed to be the only ones who gave a fuck about her, meanwhile her ideology matches up with the Assassins, yet they stay so distant. Same with getting Subject 16's gradual descent into insanity and then "revival" in the animus. This DLC is an emotional roller coaster, melancholic, and heartbreaking. Subject 16 had so many regrets and issues that transcended the bleeding effect and it was like he was fighting against the inevitable all his life, and by the time he realized his mistakes he was dead before he took his own life. He tried to get some sort of message out of the animus, but never did until Desmond relived all this. TOO BAD IT IS SHOVED INTO A DLC YOU CAN'T PURCHASE!!!!
Assassin's Creed 3: So on one hand I don't like how so much of Connor's character is relegated to side-content, but what we do get in the main story we do get a personality from him. The issue is with Native American mannerisms and accents, which are very subtle as it is. They really nailed Native American culture, the issue is that traditional western mannerisms are more exaggerated by comparison. But I also agree that the modern and pre-civ story was really boring and Daniel Cross was so wasted. And the ending was definitely underwhelming, but alludes to the historical cycle the earth was caught in. The humans and ancient civilization were a war fought on order and freedom then snuffed out before their time, and then it happened again with the assassins and templars, and would happen again with whoever came next. That as time goes on "history" turns into myth and then i spirals out of control. I like that in theory but man they really just ignored the modern story.
AC4: Yeah I 100% agree. Amazing pirate game, but it isn't an assassin's creed game. But I stuck around for Rogue and Unity
Rogue: It is my favorite and definitely slept on. Take the start of AC3, and the pirate stuff of 4, put them together (which is exactly what they did) and it is a short, but fun game. I even like the present day story that you play as a different employee who is being groomed to be a templar, and the main templar villain is an obsessed lunatic who literally collects the memories onto all the failed assassins and then unleashes the archive onto the assassin's network to prove an ideological point. It is incredibly misguided and nothing is done with it, but looking at the character, yeah that scans. (Also this character is retconned to be the multiplayer character from Brotherhood and Revelations)
Unity: Again I agree and this is when I dropped off the series.
Syndicate: I got it for free at some point. I remember being bored and I remember nothing except that the "cane sword" is never actually used as a cane sword.
Origins: I got it for free. Haven't played it. Might never will.
What sucks is that they TRIED to do something with the whole Desmond X Lucy thing, that is why Unity featured Assassin X Templar romance, Aita X Juno, an assassin turned templar. It was like they wanted to set up some sort of arc that under the right conditions two seemingly opposite forces could finally come together. But nope, that was abandoned entirely. But yeah they kept putting the modern story on the backburner and we're left with something that is charred and belongs in the trash.
You definitely SHOULD play Origins, if only for Bayek's character. The story is actually pretty good, and the side-quests show more of Bayek's personality. It's not like ACIII where most of his personality is relegated to these side-quests, but it does show "more", and shows the way Bayek sees and interacts with his world, and how his personal views affect his actions. Origins is where they tried properly introducing the modern-day again with Layla Hassan, and it was honestly on a pretty slow burn till it started picking up some promising speed in Valhalla until it sorta kinda left on an 'idk' note. Desmond was 'brought back' in a sense at the end, revealing that his consciousness was saved in the Isu 'cloud' (btw, after Playing Revelations, I suddenly realised this was actually a bit of interesting continuity, and the kinda payoff for Clay 'saving Desmond' when he hugged him. You can see that when Desmond wakes up, he briefly looks at his arm showing Isu/Animus sigils for a second. I think that Clay knew Desmond was going to die, so he 'saved' him by giving a way for his consciousness to live on). You should definitely also play the DLC for Origins.
Origins deviates a bit from the previous titles in terms of gameplay, but makes up for it with the characters and performances + it's the most detailed AC game till date.
When it comes to Valhalla, it does connect to several titles throughout the franchise in an interesting way.
As for Mirage, I'd recommend it, as, while I don't trust Ubisoft, the corporation, I do trust Ubisoft Bordeaux, the studio that made this game, because of their attitude towards fan feedback, and their vision. Mirage takes many elements from all across the franchise to make a genuinely decent AC Game. It's an amazing stealth game. The story is okay imo, not bad, not amazing, but if you pay attention, you'll catch the nuances, and nothing ever feels out of place. If anyone is saving AC, it's Ubisoft Bordeaux, and the fact they're working on their next game already (it's not Hexe) has me excited.
From a deleted end-credits modern-day scene, it's implied that the next AC will probably take a bit time-skip into the far future, so I have no idea what that will do for AC Shadows.
We'll see. I'll be playing it, so we'll see when we see.
I'm in the same boat as you on the series but DAMN does this thing NEED a reboot. If there ever was a property that needed a reset it's Assassin's creed.
A do-over from the ground up where the main protagonist and the girl he loves end up both surviving and living happily ever after.
I'm sick and tired of sour endings.
I quit playing after 3 and then got back into them at odyssey which I really enjoy
I think as an rpg it's pretty decent.
I wasn't able to enjoy myself playing Revelations and III because the back of my mind still felt depressed for being forced to murder off my character's love interest.
I probably could have forgiven assassin's Creed for assassinating Lucy's character if they had instead had abstergo find us and shoot her while we were fleeing instead of me being forced to stab her.
I still have to laugh about the notice I got in AC3 for my high ranking among players in the shipping mechanic. I put in the bare minimum of effort out of curiosity, which was more than 90% of the player base who did not care.
Just because it’s not original, doesn’t mean it’s not true. In fact, when a lot of people tell you that Assassin’s Creed has turned bad, it’s time to listen.
Ezio's naive outlook on life reminds me of my own at the time.
"It is a good life we live brother, may it never change".
Then you get a little older and realize that all it takes to fail is everyone else putting more effort into destroying your life than you put into salvaging it...
The music alone brings me to a happy place. Then I look at the newer games and that magic is just gone. It's depressing... but at least I'm still able to go back to AC2 and feel like a kid again, which honestly, fits the themes of that game so well - growing up.
Love your videos man. I was really into AC from the very first until around the time that the third one came out (truly loved all of the Ezio saga) so I'm really looking forward to this one.
The live action mini series about Ezio's dad was some real hype for AC2! The marketing was off the charts.
I think what really hurt the series was overall it's yearly release. Ergo they have to crank out a game near every year
I remember asked my friend in tertiary years ago (2018). Why odyssey was even called assassin's creed? It literally had nothing to do with assassin's creed.
The cult are the pre-decessors or something of the templars.
Black flag was also the last game in the series I ever played.
I had a very similar experience to you, I loved the series since the start, but hated 3 (Although I dropped it after a few hours and never finished it) and then I came back for black flag after a friend told me it's really good. That's pretty much where the series ended for me.
Seeing Assassins Creed 2 gameplay really takes me back to much simpler times 😢❤️🔥
Built Juno as an huge ambitious villian then ended her off screen. Peak Ubi 10/10
My 3 favourite AC games are AC1, AC3 and Origins.
And my reasons are as following:
For AC1 it's the simplicity and medieval setting, i think the art-style of the first game (each city has it's own colour) the simple progression and simple yet interesting story with a modern sub-plot that was at the level of the main story made AC1 a incredibly enjoyable experience, Altäir is easily one of my favourite Main Character's of the games due to the effects his growth as a person has and the fact it does actually matter, and also the slow climbing and parkour for me it was the best in the series, i genuinely prefer it to AC2, Brotherhood and Revelations.
Then there's AC3, for me AC3 is in a very weird spot and yet i can't help but love it, i like the stealth, i like the story and i love Connor, when you criticized Connor i understood why you did so, for some reason in the main story they forget to put most of his actual characterization wich is all in the homestead missions for some weird reason, also as someone who isn't american, i found the aspect of the civil war and the setting of North America as pretty interesting not gonna lie, i really liked parkouring through trees, hell i even enjoyed the hunting.
And now Origins.... despite the light and very useless RPG mechanics in the game that i didn't appreciate, i really loved the story and the setting..... yeah at this point the actual cool plotline is kinda gone to hell but i still really liked Origins, Bayek is easily my favourite protagonist in the series and exploring Egypt has been way too cool to pass on it, i really liked the constellations you could find around the map, i never found the side missions in origins a drag, i found Odyssey and Valhalla WAY more boring, for me Origins is just amazing.
Sorry for the VERY long comment, but i felt like giving my honest opinion as a long-time fan of this franchise, and as someone who like everybody else had to see a series i love deteriorate in what it is now, i think a perfect video to watch would be "I HATE That I LOVE Assassin's Creed Origins" by "That Boy Aqua".
Thanks For Reading.
I respect and agree with many of the flaws of Revelations but, i have to disagree with the statement of Ezio not having a story arc in Revelations, since its very much connected to the Altair plot, in which is knowing when to quit and make a life of its own outside of the britherhood and being tired of the endless war against the templars, which he mentions within the game introduccion (historical, not the "previously on AC" cutscene), and ifs something very much visible within the last sequences of the game
Simply, he starts to give so much sh*t at that point that he breaks so many tenets, especially in cappadocia
In the last Altair sequence that is played after that sequence talks about how altair wished he had the humility to know when he had seen enough of both the war and the isu
But still, great video, and i agree with the rest of it
Assassin's Creed fell into the worst and the most common disease in writing: K. I. S. S = Keep It Simple Stupid.
Killing Lucy was a completely unnecessary retcon. She could just follow the crew until the end where she would witness the end and that's really it. Give her a few moments to satisfy the story.
On the Relevations... Ffs, storyline with Desmond's mind collapsing is interesting but I would prefer if this was shown in between missions, like Animus glitching to hell, hearing voices of things that never happened, having visions and all that. Elevations should be it's own entry without Animus or Desmond. Just let it be a personal story of both Altair and Ezio. That's it.
This is exactly what happens when storytelling isn't planned from the beginning, even if you can't exactly fit everything in one game and if that's just a sketch. Why? Because you can always foreshadow some things or put explainable mystery for the players to discover.
For example: we have two factions fighting, however we later discover there's a third faction (supposed bad guys) which show up from time to time. They're not really involved with "main plot", but they are there and characters comment on thier actions which are relevant and disruptive in some way. So when they are really important they're showing up in the story in full power. However thier actions and motivations are hinted at beforehand.
I haven't gone back to 3. But i have such fond memories of assassins creed 3. It was such a fun game. Ill have to go back and try it again.
Assassins creed 4 is where i felt the game completely dropped off. But everyone loves that game to the end of the earth.
@@illjam9695ac4 is one of the only games with fun navel combat. That's why people love it. The rest of the game is mid at best.
It was by far the worst in the series up to that point lol, I can't remember a single fun aspect about it that the other games didn't do better. And a god awful story at that. Haytham was such an interesting character at first, and him being a Templar plot twist was so good. Then it just... sizzled out into bland shyte with Connor.
Nostalgia’s got u pal
Thank you, sir. A1 video. You described every feeling and issue I've had with this series. I had accepted the fact that I was the only one lol
As someone who grew up with & played the AC games on release I can honestly say you nailed everything I pretty much felt throughout the series. I feel the Ubisoft from those days is well & truly gone - there's no way the company of today would ever come up with an AC game from scratch. All innovation & originality has disappeared from Ubisoft and now it just produces the same game constantly with different themes. I struggled through Origins & Odyssey although I couldn't force myself to play the dlc as the main games were so bloated I was just tired of them by the end but Valhalla I just couldn't finish, such was my boredom.
I always thougth embers was a fitting end to ezio's story. A person who is so entwined in a world of plotting, counter-plotting and murder almost never gets to walk off into the sunset and live the rest of their lives in peace. For a time they can, but that world beckons to them, one way or another, or even reaches out to them to claim them.
The reason that Desmond couldn't see Ezio's epilogue is because he made children. That's why AC protagonists only have children off screen. Paying attention on AC 2 would show that he can only see the person before his DNA is passed on.
I have 1,2,Brotherhood,3 Remastered,Origins,Odyssey and Revelations in my steam library and haven't started playing them yet. Your experience makes me genuinely sad and will probably make me drop these games lower down my priority list in favor of other games. But I'm still hoping I regain interest enough to a play these games in the future. Thank you for this video. And of course, you earned a sub! Cheers!
Dang the way you feel about Assassin's Creed is the same way I feel about Star Wars.
All the interesting things they set up in The Force Awakens ended up being very lame. At this point I don't even care about modern Star Wars.
Also FYI Let me be clear despite disliking modern Star Wars and being a fan of the first 6 Star Wars films, I condemn any sort of harassment targeted at the individuals making the new films and shows. Making a show I don't like is not a crime.
I'm also a star wars fan and feel exactly the same way. The mandolorian was great though, it gave me the classic star wars feeling. I still have hope for Star Wars though, I think after they see enough of their projects fall flat they'll either sell the rights to a smaller more passionate buyer or purge the staff who are not actually star wars fans in an effort to rescue it.
Patient, we must be.
I was so surprised you were making an “Assassin’s Creed” video, that it took seeing the community tab for me to finally know this video was yours.
AC was Desmond's story which would lead to the conclusion of the modern conflict between assassin and templar, until Ubisoft saw that they couldn't milk the cow if they resolved that so they shelved Desmond in AC 3 and transformed the franchise into an andless treasure hunt for ancient Isu artifact.
One thing I disliked most is that after revelations the protagonists aren't really part of the brotherhood. Connor gets like 7 guys that don't even wear the getup and Kenway is a pirate who's "fleet" is offscreen and his sailors stay on the ship.
You don't need to wear the getup to be an Assassin. Sure, Connor can pass off as a Patriot scout or light infantryman with his default outfit, but when 6 other people wear the same thing out in public it starts to become sus.
I agree Lucy's death was a blade in a gut for a franchise and later Desmond's death was a bullet to the head. A spirit of the franchise died with Desmond.
I have a feeling that ever since Desmond's death the franchise is struggling to regain or rediscover its identity.
Once again Ubuysoft greed mortally wounded a franchise and series is still to this day the franchise is in my eyes, technically, In hospital bed connected to an life support machine...just let it die so maybe one day it can be brought back. But, not by Ubisoft.
saying connor has no personality is a sin.
5:55
It's actually because the PC Port of 1 added more variety, the Console version is probably what's ingrained in memory
My biggest gripe with the RPG AC games was that I couldn't heal during the battles.
For me I always thought the AC games were kinda boring. Tailing and stealth were easy but tedious. I liked Black Flag despite the boring parts because the pirating aspect was ridiculously fun. I loved boarding enemy ships or swimming up to an enemy ship, boarding and taking everyone out then going back to my ship and when you engage its an instant win since the crew is already wiped out.
My head canon is that I choose to believe that Lucy was an unknowing sleeper agent. I can’t believe that she was a double agent the whole time it doesn’t make sense to me
Assassin's Creed Revelations was actually my favorite game (apart from 2) just because I love the setting of it, I'm a huge Byzantine Empire fan
This sums up my experience with Assassin's Creed perfectly. Except one minor detail. I never continued after Black Flag.
I agree with most of this, but there's one piece of info that at least explains Lucy's storyline: in the Lost Archive DLC for Revelations it's explained that Lucy gets manipulated by Vidic into betraying the Assassins, so she was NOT a Templar all along.
Other than that you're spot on. I went through a similar path as you, but I just progressively lowered my standards as time went on. With Brotherhood I stopped thinking the ending of the modern day would be satisfying, with III I stopped thinking the modern day storyline would be decent, with Unity I stopped thinking the past storylines would be decent. When Origins (and even worse, Odyssey) dropped I stopped thinking I would ever get an actual AC experience when I bought an AC game, so I decided I'd just stop buying ACs. I did get Mirage because it was some sort of a return to form where the gameplay is concerned, urban playground, stealth and parkour and all that, but other than that Ubisoft isn't ever getting my money again. Shame, because AC is the franchise with THE most interesting premise bar none. I'll try and remember it for what it was and not what Ubisoft turned it into, not much else I can do about it.
Yes, this is exactly how I feel about the series, thank you for putting it into words.
I still enjoy the feeling of visiting a historical place in each game but yeah, ghost of Tsushima is what assassins creed wishes it could be. But I just want it to be ac 2
*hugs Connor* I like the storyyy we see every steps of his journey to become a real assassin, that isn't boring !
Sadly once Enzio left I only cared about beating the game with the side challenges. Not everyone can be Kratos where every game is a hit.
Tower defense mode was so cool. Felt like the Assasins were actually a formidable enemy to the templars and not 5 guys fighting 10 bajillion.
I've stopped playing a bit later, AC: Odyssey was the last AC game I played, but I agree on pretty much everything you said.
Bayek accidentally lost his ring finger killing one of his targets with hidden blade. So they didn't stop carrying completely, but that's a small detail.
Damn I've never seen someone summarize how I feel about Assassin's Creed so well.
AC4 was the last one I played. My friends and brother who were playing the games along-side me at the time were heavily invested in the Desmond story. The ending of AC3 was so bad that after I saw that AC4 wasn't going to course correct I dropped the series and never looked back. Same for those I knew who were playing. You're right it really felt like they were building up to a fully future timeline game and after so many games, so many years of building this story up, AC3 is when they lose confidence in Desmond? I felt really genuinely betrayed by these games.
I always thought they could have saved AC3 by having Desmond's father take the hit instead of Desmond himself. Having that last moment together would have redeemed his dad in the best way possible given the conditions. The idea that at such a young age me and my group of friends (as well as many others, clearly) had a stronger vision for the story of Assassin's Creed than a writers room full of adults would end up being able to give us shows really how disorganized the process was at the time seemingly. This is the kind of stuff that happens when marketing is allowed to step in and be like "we're getting feedback people don't like the x,y,z sections. Cut it."
Star Wars showed us the way. Know the ending before you write the intro.
If 16 did write all that stuff on the walls, with his blood, how come it was invisible to everyone ? the sleeping area should have looked like a slaughterhouse. I never figured out the game creators thinking.
Another thing that's bothered me, it's, no matter what everyone says, Desmond and Altair are the exact same model. Desmond does look arabic. As for Altair, despite his hood, whatever little you can see from his head, his face does look like Desmond.
Concerning the assassination missions. Nothing wrong with that, i mean, he IS an assassin, that's his job, to assassinate.
I have to disagree about Revelations. I belive that Ezio actually does have an arc. It could have been done better, but it's there.
Now that I think about it, the main characters give me JoJo vibes, with Altair being Jonathan, a by-the-book character with little personality, who pretty much paved the way for the later characters, who mostly have their own crazy personalities, lmao
I personally hated the addition of 'piece of eden beasts" which were basically excuses to put mythological monsters as boss fights in a history based game. Very not assassin's creed. the worst offender is valhalla where you got to Jotunheim and fight fenrir and stuff.
I remember how I basically found out they killed Juno in a comic. I believe I was like 80% through Odyssy about a year after it released when the modern day people had a conversation mentioning it and I was like "What?" Then looked up it happened in a comic. That was a gigantic middle finger for anyone wanting to see any resolution of that storyline in the mainline games.
In the short movie with old Ezio it is heavily implied that the guy sitting on the bench with him was a templar and poisoned him.
It was ruined in AC2 as soon as they decided to actually make the precursor race a definite and not a "well this is what Abstergo think they are and ONLY them becuase its not important where the magic balls came from, only that they exist"
I tried to stay loyal to the series since i had been there since AC1, Valhalla broke me. I simply CANNOT finish that game. Couldn't get into MIrage and after wanting a feudal japan AC for so long i feel like Shadows is going to be mid at absolute best.
Jesus mate you lasted that long? I saw the signs in ACIII already with that disastrous release state and the direction they were going in with Demond killed off and the overarching supernatural theme being downplayed hard and jumped ship, can't imagine having had to go through all the garbage that came out after, with 1 or 2 notable exceptions (apparently Black Flag was good, but aside from that)
@@tortyreus2384 oh yeah man, I was on the copium hard until Odyssey lol
I couldn’t agree more with this. I think AC should’ve ended on revelations and then a modern day game. Their biggest issue was that Ubisoft wasn’t ready to finish the story because they didn’t believe that they could’ve come with other franchises that would’ve been that successful.
3:20 "To play assassins creed 2... to play assassins creed 2 on the big TV-"
I'm not mad my bacon man, but I just finished an indie game where half the narration did this, and started to question if it was my brain or the video glitching.
I started from the first game this year and I got invested purely for the purpose of studying popular historical fiction. As I played I got interested in the ideas being presented throughout each game, yes even in AC3.
The fact that in ACIII, probably the game I was most hyped for in my life, only had Connor dawn the assassin's robes halfway through the damn game was such a weird choice.
To Devil's Advocate for Ubisoft for the reduction of the modern storyline, it was that period of the internet where people outside could hear from it but not recognize what was actual critique and what was just people yelling. My strongest memories of the discussion of Assassin's Creed during the Ezio trilogy were not about the gameplay or characters; it was "The modern storyline is stupid, why would they let that get in the way of the fun part" and "Why isn't this series in Japan so I can be a ninja?" The story was too focused to change course there, but I'm almost certain there was at least one person at Ubisoft telling the developers to remove the modern story as much as possible. The discussion wanted something different, and the developers changed course fast enough to alienate those interested with the modern storyline but slow enough to not fully satisfy the people who didn't care.
Connor is interesting considering I only see two camps when it comes to him. Either one thinks he's very boring and one note or the other side thinks he's really interesting and introspective. I heard the homestead missions fleshes out his character but, I've never done those missions when I played AC3.
Your always a fan. Just of thevolder generation.
Summed it up pretty damn well, actually. I'm a few years older, but I too was taken in by the historical setting, expansive gameplay, and time spamming story.
The ingredients of something great were there from the start, but great stories need endings.
This series has spun its wheels for so long, it really doesn't feel like it's going anywhere, you just change the jerseys, update the rosters and add a few new stadiums.
Wait what were we talking about?
The biggest thing assassins creed has going for it nowadays is how quickly it goes on sale and how big the sale is
While I definitely like the fact that they went with the native American perspective for AC3 for their protagonist, Haytham is really close to Ezio in terms of personality and interest. More prim and proper, but highly cunning and intelligent, efficient. Eloquent and occasionally humorous. I almost feel like they did the native's a disservice making Connor so focused and naive. Haytham makes VERY good points and really redeems the Templar's of his era. He's right about Washington, he's right about America. A few privileged people make beneficial choices for themselves and damn the rest.
My Cherokee Indian buddy got me into AC3(hes adamant about using Indian("my ancestors fought and fell against Europeans labeled as Indians and most of us would rather be called that", he finds Native American soft and downplays the crazy battles of the past. Legit goes out and digs up arrowheads and ancient stone tools every month, super interesting to hear him and his family explain how they worked), and the first 3 are amazing.
AC4 was fun for a while but it really bored me in the middle and the history aspect seemed more absurd than my mind could take.
Seriously tho my buddy has a very large collection of ancient American Indian artifacts, hes even un-naturally good at identifying just the leftover foundation of ancient American settler's settlements. Lol we even accidentally became "blood brothers" in a mechanic mishap, im geting sidetracked but I cannot think of AC without my best bud. A real solid guy.
I had a similar experience with the games as you described here. Only I have yet to play past Brotherhood. I thought Revelations was the end of the future plot but it seems to go on and on. And I thought Lucy comes back. Too bad, I liked her, AC2 ending was really a hallmark of game endings. Tbh, I only bought the later ones because I love pirate games and the others for historical settings. But I'm not buying Valhalla. Something about it feels off. And Shadows... ehh I have been waiting for an AC set in Japan for over a decade but U B Soft in da head doesn't deserve my money anymore.
Confession Time: I played (and enjoyed) Revelations before Brotherhood so it hit differently with me. Initially I thought Brotherhood was a DLC expansion for AC2 and I got the impression that Revelations was very distinct.
I finally got burned out on the franchise after Unity. The apparent presumption by Ubisoft that this was the only game I'd play that year didn't sit well with me....
12:24 wasn't Lucy a sleeper agent like Cross? Since she would not know about her mission until it's the time to strike
I think Revelations was meant to be a DLC game tbh. Maybe a 6-8 hour game at most with the ending, but Ubisoft being Ubisoft, well, you know the men in suits, they wanted a full price game.