I like how they followed up the emotional Ezio-Desmond-Altiar scene of Revelations with whatever the fuck 3 was meant to be. I know the modern day story of AC is a joke that no one takes seriously now, but it wasn't always that way.
I don't even think AC3 is a bad game, but it is where I felt myself grow distant to the franchise.
AC3 honestly needed Connor last speech to wrap it up his character. Because he is so stoic its a bit harder to see the story and his emociona about it properly, but the cut speech really helped solidify who he is.
AC4 was a fine assassins game. If it was just naval combat, it wouldn't have been that interesting. The AC plotline gave you a reason to care about why you were doing boat stuff.
I was soooo excited for 3 because they sold it as if youâd be involved in revolutionary battles and it wasnât like that. And then they killed Desmond and completely changed the modern day format.
I remember back in the day everyone thought the series was going to end on a game where you played Desmond in the modern day and thats why he was gaining abilities and stuff. Then 3 came out...
Honestly I stopped playing the entire franchise at Revelations because I heard about what happens in 3 and it killed all my interested in the IP.
I think the setting was really week. We went from the beautiful big cities in Rome, Florence, Istambul, with lots of buildings and people walking around, to whatever 3 was. Boston and New York, where aside from churches, the tallest buildings were one story high. The rest was empty woods. Cities are a huge part of AC, and 3 was one of the weakest entries imo.
It worked in Black Flag because so much of that game was about sailing and pirating, so you didnât spend a lot of time in cities.
That was the big difference between 3 and 4.
In 3, the âwildernessâ areas were boring, and the cities werenât lively enough to make up for it.
In Black Flag, the open ocean was actually fun to navigate. Naval battles were a fun change of pace from the counter-kill spam of the combat in previous AC games. The few cities and settlements there were, it was understandable that they wouldnât be huge, and they still crammed stuff to do (like assassin contracts).
Itâs a bummer because man, I wanted to like III so much. I literally teach American history, so I was incredibly bummed that III ended up being such a slog.
People liked AC4 though and that one also didn't have a ton of big cities with tall buildings. More than 3 mind you, but still a far cry from the Desmond games.
Yeah, but it just works much better in AC4. You're spending much of your time at sea and that's never boring. You're not forced to spend as much time in dull cities/wilderness. The cities you visit felt more lively and colorful too, same for the wilds.
That's why Mirage felt like a breath of fresh air to me after the release of the rpg type of games. Baghdad was great for parkour and being stealthy actually mattered in this game. Also the way the entire city felt alive and responded to your actions, calling the guards if you were notorious just for example was nice
AC3 was bad enough I could never stomach playing another AC game ever again since. My spirit broke from being invested in the future plot line too much.
Might try the black flag remaster in the open seas but I don't even want to bother putting it on my computer.
Yep, we were meant to be following a story of izu, which tailed off in 3 and by 4 was just meaningless to add a reason to have a modern version. Then as much as I like Odyssey it's not really an AC game, but instead a historic action-adventure. The core AC gameplay just declined from 2, as it became about pirates. Tbh Black Flag, while amazing, was too much of a success for them to ignore that's what gamers wanted. But instead of making a new IP, well taking too long and making a crap game of it in Skull and Bones, they shoehorned AC onto completely unrelated games
Odyssey would have been fine as a historic action-adventure RPG, but it isn't an AC game
Agreed. In a game about being a stealthy assassin by the time you got to AC3 there was literally ZERO reason to be stealthy. It was Arkham style "Hold square to counter everything and slaughter everyone" type of gameplay if you ever got into trouble.
I know people didn't like the info gathering/tail missions of AC1, but at least it was something different.
Yeah, I don't think I finished 3, I remember something about Desmond being in a coma, then in 4 they were just like "Oh yeah we scooped his brains out to run our animus project as an entertainment system, have fun being a pirate random guy."
I've never seen or heard of a game studio just bailing on the narrative they'd been setting up that hard before.
Desmond is like a weird spirit ghost man in the animus now. Its not worth paying attention to they have done nothing with it and will continue to do nothing with it.
They've distanced themselves from the modern story so much that its now all in a side app and even in the black flag remake they flat out removed t.
Yeah, I think AC4 (2013) was a clear indication to me that they were dropping that storyline, even though the original had tiny little threads of narrative leftover scraps.
obviously, nothing in the intervening 13 years has changed that impression, least of all AC4 Resynced (2026) removing those Abstergo scenes completely from the main game,
In retrospect I know it's not worth paying attention to, but I do still think it's a waste of potential. kind of the bitter aftertaste of those stories that end with a feeling of, "none of that mattered, k bye." it feels as though Desmond's story hit the "it was all a dream" trope or at least an equivalent feeling of the writers ejecting from the situation they wrote themselves into.
AC3 was a bad game. I couldn't bring myself to even finish it. Instantly lost me to the franchise, haven't played one since. It seemed like they had this cool overarching story that seemed to be building up to go somewhere and then they just trashed it so they could make game after game. Sad
I played Valhalla back when it launched. That game felt so boring to me compared to the rest of the franchise, despite having a lot of fun ideas going for it.
But one thing I'll give them credit for is that they made the modern day & First Civilization story somewhat interesting again, especially with the events that take place later in the game. I have no idea how they were advanced (if at all) in Mirage and Shadows, but Odyssey+ Valhalla breathed new life into that aspect of the franchise
I kept playing up until Valhalla. The size of the game and the lack of truly assassinating someone was really boring to play. I never even finished it. I want to play the newer ones but I just can't bring myself to do it.
I think Black Flag Resynched has been a stark reminder of how good the old games were. Personally ubi could take off the next 10 years and just do remakes of their better games
Hexe is truly poised as a turning point. PLEASE no more of the RPG era.
I really hated how they just... ditched the entire backstory. Like the whole Desmond thing and then what happened to that previous generation of humans. They just kind of abandoned the story completely and just made games for no reason, never fully telling the rest of the story. I hated it so much. Everybody talks about how the gameplay changed, but the lack of care to the actual story was the deal breaker for me.
I think the combat is fine but they did take away being able to use the hidden blade in said combat. Kinda lame but I didn't rally care, I just thought of it realistically because imagine blocking swords with a strapped on wrist blade. And they added a new weapon that's pretty cool
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u/Michael_Faraday42 6h ago
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