Am I alone in thinking that the Assassin’s Creed series would be soooo much better if the present time plot point was removed?
I love the games, but only when I’m playing as the assassin during the past. The wall running, parkour, fighting and leaps of faith are all the highlights that I love. The present day Templar VS Assassins story and the Animus is just not needed. They could have just made a game for each time period and focused on the story of that game’s assassin and I think the game would have been just as awesome, if not more.
I’ve only played one, but yes, I totally felt that way. The meat of the game was tremendous fun. The present-day story felt like sitting in a bar while a stranger told me the plot of the movie they’re writing.
I never made it past part 3. Conner was kind of fun, but I got tired of doing all the stupid side missions and hunting. It was nice to look at, but with the size of the map and all the filler missions, it just became too much. Then with the way the present day story was playing out, it just turned me off of the series completely.
100% yes. I just want to play historical thrillers. I couldn’t give a shit about the modern corporate stuff or secret wars. I gave up on AC4 after I completed all the open world pirating stuff because I hated the “You’re an intern at Astergo!”* crap so much.
*Or whatever it was called, I can’t be bothered to look up it because I hate it
I love the actual game(s). The part spent walking around in a game company’s hallways, dealing with email and meetings? I do that in my real life, I don’t want to do that in my leisure time.
I’ve played all of the AC games except for Syndicate, Chronicles, and whatever ones were not available on the PC.
I actually really like the concept behind the modern day stuff. I liked the idea that (at least when we were Desmond) the descendant would learn more and more of the assassin’s skills as they lived through their genetic memories, and that we were slowly learning about how those ancient conflicts were shaping the current mysteries. I thought that there were a lot of exciting possibilities that the AC series could have developed in the “current day” aspects of the games.
The execution, however, was spectacularly lacking, and all of the exciting possibilities collapsed into a stinking heap. What a pointless waste.
I thought having handlers in the “real world” was a reasonably slick way of providing historical exposition without sounding too turgid. But I was never really into the “Adam and Eve were escaping ancient computer DNA gods from the planet Neptune” story line, either in the past or in the present.
The real-life stuff worked early on because it was not only mysterious, but was also a fresh way to bookend the core gameplay concept.
It was super compelling in the first game and reasonably compelling in the next couple. The problem is that there have been roughly six hundred AC games at this point and they just kept going back to the concept.
As time went on, their meta-story (“Adam and Eve were escaping ancient computer DNA gods from the planet Neptune”) got weirder and weirder and became less relevant for the actual game.
They should have kept it at “two secret societies have been battling it out through all of recorded history.” That’s all you need for a bunch of video games about stabbing dudes.
The current-day events were all build-up, no pay-off. If they had culminated in AC 4 in modern day New York with Desmond as the main character, finally growing a pair (and a new personality) and hurdling taxis in New York like they were hedgerows, well, sure. I would have given that a shot. But it didn’t and they should kill that aspect of it entirely and as soon as possible.
ETA: Well, they kind of did make that game and it was Mirror’s Edge, but yeah.
Honestly I just got through the modern day stuff as fast as possible and didn’t pay attention. In my headcanon there was no modern day angle, just historical fiction.
Fortunately so little of the gameplay was in modern day so it wasn’t hard to suffer through.
Mirror’s Edge was EA. Ubisoft did make Watch_Dogs, and supposedly at some point during development they were sort of maybe possibly thinking it was an Assassin’s Creed game. Like most things Ubisoft does, they never quite committed to anything.
Showing my noobishness here, but do any AC games have mods enabled?
I bought Black Flag when it was on sale and also because people said it was like any other AC game to date. Are there “flash forwards” in Black Fag like in the previous AC games? If not, Black Flag will definitely be up my alley.
No it still has them. The modern day stuff is a continuation of the story from AC3, though the flashbacks to pirate times go further back in time than the American Revolution era of the previous game.
So no, sorry, you still have to deal with the “B side” of the game.
I think you are all missing an important point. No doubt focus group testing showed that 15 year boys couldn’t relate to the idea of playing swarthy foreigners in the 15th century, and that they would need a white american man (even if he only makes up 10% of the game) to show them that the game was ‘acceptable’. I mean, we’re talking about a series where Altair (who arguably could’ve been an Arab) was voiced by a camp American serial killer, in a game where every other character had believable accents. Now the series is popular and Ubisoft wouldn’t lose any customers if they got rid of Desmond and kept it set firmly in the past, but they have have continued with the modern timeline segments. This wouldn’t be a problem if they were able to make those modern levels fun. The fact that they are unable to do so is why there is such a consensus on this thread.
I doubt it. AC was originally supposed to be another Prince of Persia game, which features swarthy foreigner protagonists and has no need for white guy interludes.
The first AC game was about an Arab dude killing a whole bunch of Christians. Considering the potential backlash they were courting, I somehow doubt Ubisoft was suddenly worried too much about whether 15-year-old boys would ‘identify’ with Altair’s ethnicity.
Altair does a whole bunch of cool chopping and stabbing and jumping. That’s plenty of cool stuff to identify with.
I see this brought up all the time, and it reminds me of everyone on YouTube who says that Foreground Eclipse would be better without all the screaming. The present day is a framing device. It’s connective tissue. It’s what brings all the threads together. It gives a reason we should give a damn about a bunch of mass murderers who lived and died centuries ago. Having Assassin’s Creed without Abstergo would be like having Street Fighter without Shadaloo or Dead or Alive without Doatec. You could, it’s just going to lose a whole lot of purpose.
No, I didn’t find any of it the least bit boring or annoying, and I never understood why I was supposed to be bored or annoyed.
Honestly, this is what cheeses everyone off about AC? Sheesh. Go read the stuff I had to say about Unity again.
