The Point - What happened to Assassin's Creed?

well to be fair the first 3 assassin creed weren't that good, sure the climbing was fun and the music was nice but the combat was lousy the characters with half-exception of ezio were terribly boring and uninspired whats the point on having "freedom" when theres really nothing to do on the games world unless you enjoy the fighting for no reason especially with that system... also the animus plot could have been the best thing in the series but the implementation was very flawed and it didnt live to a full potential... id say assassin creed could have been a master piece if it had better things on those issues and the first one was released like 1 year ealier

With the Animus story resolved in Assassins Creed 2 and 3.

This may just be a pirate game with the Assassins Creed name (which would be awesome). With the only links to the Desmond the fact that they are related. So that they can use the popularity of the AC IP to sell more and introduce this world.

This is what happens when you try to please everyone.

I feel the same way...from Brotherhood to AC 3 never got to finish them.

I agree with this assessment. Part of the major issue is, indeed, the Animus. The narrative device adds very little to the story; some might say it hinders the story, abruptly yanking the gamer into a modern setting for mild exposition, which kills immersion and pacing. If they really wanted people to care about the Animus -- which is central to tying this series together -- Ubisoft should make the gameplay behind it feel a bit more urgent rather than procedural.

The other part of the major issue is the series' over-saturation. The brand no longer feels like an event upon release. It feels generic and factory-made. I didn't even bother with Assassin's Creed 3 because I never even finished Revelations.

It's funny. I started playing the AC games for the game world, game play, and (non-Animus) story. After Brotherhood came out, I've been finding myself buying the games for the multiplayer, which they've improved in significant ways with each release, and less for the single player, where checkbox syndrome turned the experience into a chore.

I had always laughed at the Call of Duty fans who I felt were essentially buying the same multiplayer experience over and over with a slapped-on single player experience, and yet that's what AC3 became for me. When I was exhausted of the stealth, stabbing, and subtlety of the multiplayer, I'd play the single player as a nice diversion. I'd outwit (and be outwitted) until my brain hurt, and then fill some checkboxes to cool the brain down.

I hope Black Flag won't be another achievement/completionist trap like AC3 was. I somehow doubt it... but I'll probably end up buying it for the multiplayer anyhow. Now I understand how my CoD loving friends feel...

Yeap since the second one the series has lost its way revelations simply felt like a means to end ezio's story without much else to do, and dont get me started with AC3 the only fun thing there was the naval combat. I finished the story only to see how it ended but that was it ive never gone back. I really hope that 4 is much much better and goes back to the formula that 2 made so great.

Too many games, 1 per year is overkill and it will continue to loose what made the original so great, I think this is why GTA is so successful, they leave a very large gap between each game in the franchise, spend a long time making those improvments to the world so when you look at the difference between GTA 3 to 4 to 5 there are so many improvements and new mechanics. AC is in iterative process, each year they add a few extra details and enhancements in comparison to the previous title

yeh I wasnt a fan of AC3, terribly dull ending, AC1 and 2 were the best in the series after brotherhood is when they lost me.

I agree, Brotherhood was my favorite though, Ubisoft is more into Assassins Creed quantity INSTEAD of Creed quality! The 3rd Creed just didn't draw me in.

I was wondering why I wasn't feeling excited about AC4. You've explained it perfectly. I dropped my preorder a month ago because, as a broke college kid, I need to be choosy about my games. GTA5, Batman:Arkham Origins, and Watchdogs won, and AC4 was tossed.

GET BACK TO THE OLD WAY OF THINGS, UBISOFT! STOP CRANKING GAMES OUT EACH YEAR LIKE YOU'RE CALL OF DUTY!

And Brotherhood was honestly NOT amazing. Sure it was cool to gain assassin recruits but it didn't have NEARLY the same depth as AC2 did. You could only explore one city that felt bland and lifeless. It was literally the exact same texture of bricks copied and pasted across the whole landscape, and the whole thing didn't even feel like it accurately depicted Rome either. There were certain landmarks which they shrunk or just didn't include. The landscape wasn't 100% accurate and the whole game was very repetitive, not to mention short. In the last few sequences they tried to wrap it up waaay to fast and they didn't take their time to pace out the story properly. Technically and graphically it was a very nice improvement over AC2 but it cut out some of the atmosphere from AC2 in place for more unfulfilling activities like 100% sync and challenge metals. Plus while the assassin recruits were awesome, the game was so broken and un-challenging there was practically never a real need for them. You can just crossbow and counter attack your way through the entire game and if you're REALLY lazy you can just order a barrage of arrows that magically heat-seek their way to every enemy in a 100 meter radius. If you're going to talk about a game that was lazily slapped together BROTHERHOOD is the one to talk about, not AC3.

Im really looking forward to AC4, but not as an assassins creed game, Im looking forward to it as a brand new game. Weve never had a REALLY GOOD pirate game. Im hoping to see this almost like a new IP...

When great ideas become profitable business. There is where games stop being art and becomes a deal.

Wow, I just about completely agree. I always thought the Animus really broke immersion. You knew from the beginning you weren't the protagonist...just recreating Desmond's locked memory...interesting but ultimately destructive narrative element.

Overall I thought this was an intelligent analysis. For my part, AC3 bored me to tears. 9 hours of playing and I kept waiting for the game to start. It kept introducing so many subsystems that it forgot to let you get out and actually play the thing.

ac1 was the worst and brotherhood/2 was the best, mechanically 1 was terrible, too slow and altair was rather boring. sure all series have a peak and i think ezio was it and conner was a step back for the series, but what ive seen of Edward he seems to have that arrogant cocky attitude that we all loved about ezio. character wise i can not wait for this game any longer!!!!

thought this would be interesting and end on a high note about the potential of AC4, yet gamespot reminded me of why i dont listen to their opinions anymore... i loved ac3 and 2 and revelations and brotherhood and 1 lol great stories, huge worlds and great characters. only thing i hated about the series was desmond, id rather have templar vs assassins games that always took place in the past and never come forward to present time, i just dont care about the present is the assassins creed universe...

The other thing that I feel is worth mentioning is a point that Zero Punctuation brought up in his review for ACIII (or was it Revelations? I have no idea). His point was that the games have become less and less about planning the assassination of a target and executing said kill with stealth and more about cramming as many side features and tidbits as possible. Being a pirate, to me, has very little to do with being a skilled Assassin doing the business of killing people with stealth. It has, in effect, jumped the shark, by forgetting what made itself a good game.

100 % Sync is the biggest crap introduced from Brotherhood onwards.

Awesome video! as usual really well done. Cool insight into why it has gone that direction, interesting hearing from people who like the way it has gone or the people who rage that it has become what it is. I guess it just opens up space for the new generation of games to get back that old feeling you got from the earlier releases.

Assassins Creed wedi troi mewn i gem yr un mor generig fel call of duty, mae'n drist.

Rydw I yn edrych ymlaen i Assassins Creed Black Flag oherwydd y byd môr-ladron ac mae'n edrych fel y gem cyntaf, y ffordd mae'n gadael ti archwilio yn rhydd, neis.

Rhy cymaint o gemau y dyddiau yma yn dal dy llaw pob amser, mae'n gwylltio'r cachu allan o fi y ffordd hwn.Danny, dylai fod yn defnyddio y cerddoriaeth 'Ezio's Family', fydd yn addas i'r hwyliau gwych =)

And here I was thinking that my old age had made me too lazy and cynical to care about and/or finish this game but now I know I was wrong... unless it's everyone else's laziness and cynisism that kept them from finishing it too.

Um... I don't know about this guy but I tend to finish what I start. I definitely finished AC3, because not doing so would have been a waste of my money. That being said, I wont say that I liked the ending that much, however this guy needs to speak for himself about who completes a game. There are plenty of people who play through their games till the end.

Boo fucking Hoo! As far as I'm concerned, this latest iteration of AC is THE BEST!!!!!

@Metallicwolf29 I still feel AC1 was the best after playing all AC games to date. AC1 is the best.

@Metallicwolf29Back in 2007 it was pretty groundbreaking, in terms of the world and the environments. I remember watching my friends play it and thinking 'wow', which was their reaction as well. However when I actually played it myself in 2009 I thought it was pretty boring and repetitive. AC2 on the other hand was superb; it was a massive improvement. IMO it is definitely one of the best games of this generation.

I disagree slightly about the Animus story. When playing the first three games I found the Animus, the First Civilisation mystery, the Assassin/Templar war, the Assassin DNA that grants Eagle Vision and all that malarkey enthralling to the point of obsession. My friends and I would discuss for hours where Desmond's story was going next and how he, Altair and Ezio all have the same scar across their mouth and things like that. But in Revelations and AC3 they made such a hash job of this story thread that it detracts from the whole experience. Fortunately, having drawn Desmond's adventure to some sort of conclusion at the end of AC3 - albeit an underwhelming one - the opportunity is there to discard the sci-fi elements and concentrate on what the series is still best at. I just hope the opportunity isn't wasted.

I'm saddened that you only mentioned the over-abundance of AC games near the end, when it's the root problem that causes everything else. However, the need to interlink the games comes a close second. With Assassin's Creed's Animus nonsense, the overarching story became less and less accessible to players, especially as it was brought further and further into the forefront. Really, Assassin's Creed should have simply been about these individual stories and the meta-story of the Assassin's versus the Knights Templar.

Seriously, compare to some of the most successful long-running series ever:

The mainline Final Fantasy series is only linked between games by fanservice elements such as chocobos and black/white mages. Any direct sequels to a game are spin-offs, and almost never are they needed to understand the game they're based on (In the case of Final Fantasy X-2 and Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, they served to cheapen the base game stories).

Call of Duty isn't really a "series" in the traditional sense. You'll have linked games, such as the Modern Warfare or Black Ops/World At War games, but generally, Call of Duty is simply the name given to the penultimate Activision shooter of the year it comes out in. Ghosts could never get a direct sequel, and the games that came after would still be Call of Duty so long as they retained the frantic spectacle the series is known for (and have their industry-standard multiplayer).

The same could be said of Grand Theft Auto. GTA I has nothing to do with II, which has nothing to do with III, which has nothing to do with Vice City, which has nothing to with San Andreas, which has nothing to do with IV, etc. etc... The mechanics (and banal vulgarity) define the series, but each is its own standalone game with its own self-contained story.

The Elder Scrolls, a series that disproves the idea that you need multiplayer to be successful also disproves that a series needs to have direct connections between games. Tens, if not hundreds of years pass from game to game, and what little impact the previous one had on the current world is explained contextually, through historical tomes found throughout. Other than the most tenuous links, Oblivion and Skyrim have **** all to do with one another.

The problem with so many game companies is that, in trying to make stories that span tons of games, they only serve to alienate new players and make the game worlds feel less and less organic. Assasin's Creed could have been America's Final Fantasy. Instead, it's another series that's been taken through the fundamentally broken AAA meat grinder.

One of the biggest problems with AC3 was that there was NO Jesper Kyd. The music in AC was one of the most important aspects when it came to total immersion. AC3 suffered alot from it, it just made the game more sterile and I can't believe how the producers just didn't realize how important the soundtrack was for the series...

One of the biggest problems about AC3, which almost barely anyone notices is that there is no JESPER KYD making the outstanding soundtracks that tied everything and made the story become alive while we where playing and constantly getting immersed in the game...

I mean, who didn't stop in a beautiful rooftop of Rome, Venice or Florence and just stood there, smoking whatever you like, and just looking at the beautiful setting and listening to the breath taking and immersive music? That was in my opinion the biggest problem in AC3. No Jesper Kyd only made the most obvious flaws of AC3 more apparent and made the world look a whole lot more sterile...

I know it sounds too simplistic, but the music is (or at least was), one of the most important aspects of Assassin's Creed.

By the way Danny, you rock. You are an awesome gamer who really shows true love and passion for the gaming world.

P.S. - This is what I was talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyee46OFCkc