Why 'Assassin's Creed' Was on the Decline
The driving force of interest for any Assassin’s Creed game should be the modern day story arc, right? It’s all good reliving the past as various ancestors, but without a reason for doing so the plot quickly begins to fall apart. The best and most clear example proving this is the first five main game entries in the franchise, playing through the lives of Altair, Ezio, and Connor was spurred on by Desmond’s need to find secrets from the past. Many fans of the series enjoyed this balance of past and present with some arguably pushing for more present day sections much like Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Revelations, and Three. For many players, Black Flag was where the issues started, the game was overall well-received and was rather technically impressive. The issue was that Black Flag didn’t necessarily feel like an Assassin’s Creed game; for the first time in the series we were playing in first person view as a faceless and voiceless present day protagonist. Personally (and I don’t think I’m the only one) I felt quite disconnected from the present day for the first time in the series. As much as Black Flag is an incredibly fun game and did move the overall story along, it seemed like a step in a strange direction, almost giving the impression that the “higher ups” at Ubisoft had too much input towards the games creation. The reason I say a strange direction and not necessarily a bad direction is because Black Flag is just as much an Assassin’s Creed game as it isn’t. A somewhat ignorant but true statement about the fourth installment in the series is that large pirate boats… SHIPS (sorry, Edward) don’t exactly represent stealth. Regardless of what people thought of the ancestor story line of Black Flag, it was the present day story game play that pushed opinions towards disliking those sections of the games (I would dive into the present day issues with Assassin’s Creed Rogue, but the same applies).