Preach it! This one time I missed 100% after a super tedious "run here, follow that guy FOREVER" because I didn't do the correct jump kill or something, I had the sound turned down and didn;t hear the tutorial or read the captions I guess.

I followed a guy, undetected, and killed him. ASSASSIN WIN? Nope, not according to the game I guess

/punt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKUZ42T9diU

I've played every one up to 3 and might give 4 a try at some point. But it got to the point where I just stopped caring. I came for the gameplay since it was a power fantasy. Plus there were plenty of fun missions in each game (although the first one is still eh in my eyes). I never found the mythology to be interesting and the fact that AC3 ended the way it did just felt dull to me. I stopped caring.

splinter cell is a good example of this. in the original trilogy guns blazing is actively discouraged and penalised. in blacklist, action is a viable play style and you're rewarded for following that path. the problem is that this goes against everything that made the early games popular and, as is the way with ubisoft these days, instead of following the steve jobs mantra of doing one thing and doing it well i.e. stealth, they try and shoe horn everything into a game in an attempt to broaden the appeal as wide as possible and end up with a game that doesn't satisfy either camp, particularly fans of the first few games.

and with the focus spread across into action the stealth inevitably suffers. compared to chaos theory and its predecessors blacklist's stealth elements feel watered down and overly simplified (a process that's been underway since double agent tbf), the level design has morphed from semi open levels that you can navigate around freely to getting funnelled down a deceptively linear path from one predictable set piece area to the next, gadget use that was once thought requiring like cracking door / safe codes through remote hacking has descended down to stand next to a laptop and "hold down button A to hack," the cast have gone from genuinely interesting and believable to a bunch of generic stereotypes. and a whole host of other little things that i could whine about but won't as i'm concious this is turning into a bit of a tirade lol. and it's a much poorer game for all these things, in my humble opinion of course

I hope it's okay that my post will not be nearly as long as yours is.

I think Bioshock: Infinite would have been much better without the amount of combat and shooting that it had/has. The atmosphere and story were enough to captivate me, the shooting just soured it. It was clearly added just to appeal to the masses.