Assassin's creed series narrative: what's your opinion on that?

I've played and finished all the Assassin's Creed games until Rogue and I somehow lost will in jumping into the next chapters.

For a game that is supposed to have a heavy focus on story, I just can't really get involved in it. I can see that there's quite an effort in narrating the events and the characters in a complex way, but ultimately the story feels somewhat uninspiring.

I don't know if any of you feels the same or the opposite, but does it get any better in the newer titles, also in regard to gameplay?

The series tries so hard to be a movie production, but ultimately the games are all about being either an Assassin or a Templar and cut in some historical events, tail and eavedrops guys to exhaustion, prevent Templars or Assassins from ruining the world, protect the Apple of Eden and accept the fact that we all are Juno's slaves. Nothing memorable about narrative and gameplay is more of the same and gets boring quickly. If you're interested in the story, just watch those movie walkthroughs on Youtube where they show a couple of hours of cutscenes.

Like this:

Ubisoft lost there way in AC3 and on. There WAS an overarching narrative, but they changed it at about that time in order to NOT end the story, but instead stretch it out to continue making games.

Right now they are sort of in the mode of "searching" for a new overarching narrative. Still though, the stories told in the "past" portions of the games are solid a ever....better even than before.

If you made it through Rogue, I recommend skipping Syndicate and Unity, and just going to Origins. S and U were definitely big steps backwards in the series, and Origins is a fresh take in some ways. Origins is a lot of fun, story isn't as good as some of the others, but great gameplay.

PS: I thought AC2 had one of the best stories in gaming. Especially Minerva speaking to Desmond through Ezio.

PSS: I loved the animations with the tomahawk in ACIII.

Zzzzzzzz

Assassin’s Creed has a story? They lost me at 3. That game was dismal.

The first three games have very good narrative running thru the desmond story, both in animus and outside of it. Best trilogy storyline in gaming history, even beating ME.

Sadly, rest of the AC games lack strong narrative and interesting stories. They are fun, but rather empty.

It's a video game, not a book, nor a movie. Gameplay should be the focus, narrative is just there for you to have an idea of what you're aiming for. The main issue of Assassin's Creed is in its gameplay that tends to get tedious as you progress through the games.

Sorry, but this is just a dumb/narrow view of what "Videogames" are. The Gameplay in AC has arguably always been solid, and mostly improving and innovating as the series continues. The story surrounding the gameplay is just another carrot to keep you playing in the world and getting invested in the series.

FYI: the Assassin Creed franchise consists of a series of games (mainline and side stories), books, comics, and movies.

So yeah, the story is pretty important, just as important as how the games play in many respects.

I have never played more than 10 hours of any AC game and have no idea what the heck is going on. The story sucks.

But thankfully the AC movie came out and I understand the jist of it now.

That's debatable, I played several Assassin's Creed games and I don't see that much of an improvement on the gameplay department; I'd say it got worse after Brotherhood. I also atually likeed ACIII hadn't it been for its countless bugs and newly implemented, weird gameplay mechanics; but that was my favorite in terms of narrative.

But then again, as someone else stated earlier, some games are better watched than played when and if you find them to be tedious, but you're still interested in the story. I can't do that, but I see why several people have that issue with the series or feel "burned" with it.

Oh no, that movie is really BAD.

Yes I heard bad things about Unity especially. The graphics look fantastic, tho.

AC2 was very well narrated and characterized and it was a big jump over the original Assassin's Creed.

ACIII was not bad but felt rushed

I've felt the stuff happening in the past was generally well done. Never really cared for the modern day stuff and they pretty much lost me with the ending of AC2.

The Desmond story arc was the worse, I thought they were on right track with Black Flag since it did th e modern day Templar/Abstergo thing right and dive's weren't limited to ancestral DNA. But then everything after is just a dive in the Animus without any real world / dive world interwoven conflict, I think this is a mistake in the direction. Haven't played Origins yet to see how they handled it, nor have I played Rogue but I am curious to see how they handled this aspect.

It's also disappointing how they made the subject mute and you're basically piloting a slave who does as they say.

The AC games can be broken down into a few gameplay styles:

• AC1 and 2 (includes Brotherhood and Revelations)
• AC3 (includes Black Flag and Rouge)
• Unity and Syndicate
• Origins

Each of "styles" were made on different engines, and the last game made in each engine was usually the best gameplay wise.

You say you think it got worse after Brotherhood? Play Revelations, the Gameplay was better than Brotherhood objectively. You say you liked AC3 despite the bug? Play Black Flag and/or Rouge. The overall GP was better in in those games (even though they took away many of the different weapon animations), and they got rid of most of the bugs and the series progressed.

IMO, I have pros and cons for the series for each "era" of the games. Revelations was the best in combat, though you still could jump to your death too easily (that was a problem that was only fixed after AC3). AC3 was great, but it was buggy, and the combat was just "spam X". It was when they "dumbed down" the combat system even more after AC3 proper is when it got really annoying (they took away A LOT of combat animations). Unity took the series back to it roots with the lack of ship combat, and no horses and what not. And though the game was good (even with all the bugs), it was vanilla, and thus not that memorable. IMO Syndicate was just a bad game...but that's just me. (The combat REALLY sucked).

Origins is a good step forward. Though I do miss many things from the old series of games, Origins is a good, fresh start, and it can only get better.

But yeah, objectively the gameplay gets better as each team learns to better manipulate the game engine, but at the same time they reset bar every time they jump to different engines. Overall they do struggle game to game (engine to engine) with the continuous climb on the "better" scale, but overall they do learn from past games, and fix many of the issues of those past games.

Fair points, actually. The rest is just a matter of personal preference

The story, along with the strong emphasis on Stealth are the main reasons this series never interested me. I did enjoy BF though, the ship stuff mostly.

I tried to get into it with AC2, but I just could not connect with the story, if I recall correctly it was something about a guy sitting in a lab dreaming the whole thing up. Anyways, I enjoy many others types of games and stories, there is no time to play it all and this series just doesn't do it for me. The art style is amazing though, always liked that.

You don't like any stealth games or just Assassin's Creed?

After AC2, the only good ones were Black Flag and Origins.

The best story elements the series has ever shown was the way it handled the Truth segments in AC2... It was brilliant.

@italygamer: I don't like Stealth-heavy games in general, not just AC. I don't mind some stealth.... I enjoy that actually, but I'm not really into the games that focus a lot on it and where you have to sneak around a lot. Some exceptions though, like Splinter Cell.