I guess I hate Assassin's Creed

 What happened to us?

The other day I made my fourteenth off-handed comment about the sheer state of Ubisoft games and Assassin's Creed and it really dawned on me for the first time in a while- "God, I really hate this series now!" I mean it started as a dissatisfaction with where they were going, a bawking at concepts the series was touching on now that just seemed too 'obvious', flying in the face of the supposedly 'intelligent' choices of the franchise past. But ever since I forced myself through that dredge of a game called 'Odyssey', I've found myself actively hostile to the idea of time travelling Assassins, never ending dual story narratives and that god awful propensity for mediocre humour which sank what was once my favourite franchise of games.

And I am not being hyperbolic for effect when I talk about my former love of Assassin's Creed- I used to worship those games! I will never understand those '5 head' critics who complain about the Assassin's Creed of the past as 'all the same'. 'All you do is assassinate people all day' they would say. Factually incorrect, I say back! Assassin's Creed was as much about travelling across rooftops, platforming adventure, swashbuckling fights and action set-piece moments as it was about the assassinating! Heck, the game which received the best slate of DLC (Brotherhood) focused itself on a sight-seeing trip around the edges of Rome, because they knew the audience flocked for the exploration as much as anything else. A bad faith arguement I'd say.

Because you see I loved all of that from the old Assassin's Creed. I loved the adventuring and the world building and that sense of power once you learned how to counter, slowly increasing in ridiculousness until you became this ultra whirlwind of death, and the games started to throw more varied enemy types requiring you to develop a sort of clever Arkham-lite flow to the chain of combat- it was something special! But most of all I was there for the story! An enticing mystery narrative that seemed to slither and tease with seductive promise, flicking us an ankle here and there but keeping those delectable secrets tucked away and hidden. Next game and it will all come out, we were promised! Revelations will be the big drop, no 3! And then something weird happened.

I think you can coincide the beginning of the end with, curiously enough, the death of what many would call Assassin's Creed's least interesting element. The modern day narrative, the one connective tissue that brought us to the door of each hero, just sort of died along with it's protagonist after Assassin's Creed 3. After Desmond died the games became uninterested in replacing him with a new core protagonist, and from there the direction of the series just seemed to peter out. A direction we were assured was present by the CEO of the company himself. He promised that the franchise had a beginning, middle and end in mind! (Not the worst thing he's lied about, I suppose.) Some of the games still had some soul to them, I suspect 'Assassin's Creed: Black Flag' was a hold-out idea conceived back when the franchise still had a clue where it was going, but after that...nothing. No heart. No spark. Just depression.

When I look upon the face of the franchises' immediate future I just cringe at another inevitable failure to stock the 'spirit' of what made Assassin's Creed special. Trying in the same breath to cater to the 'Old school' Assassin's Creed 1, fragile blade in a crowd full of death, audience as well as the, superpowered hero, from later Assassin's Creed games. Neither of which I think form the heart of where this franchise shone the best. I just don't care about the character, the setting, the game direction, the team, their vision, or anything we've seen from the cowled series in so very long. And sure, some of that is because I have no connection to this protagonist character because I haven't played Valhalla. But I have no interest in playing that game either! Not after the absolute chore I dragged myself through just a few months ago! (Those scars might never heal.)

Oversaturation is a real phenomena that exists within the entertainment industry, wherein too much of a good thing turns the taste buds sour to it's touch- ruining the anticipation and the moment of shock and wonder. It's what Marvel forced Superhero media through, kicking and screaming, what Disney are determined to subject Star Wars too, and it's what Mario manages to deftly avoid by going on bizarre sabbatical breaks of four/five years between major launches. We actually rarely get to see moments where too many games of one series are flooded down upon us, for nothing more than the pure merit that games typically take a stupidly long time to make. They are their own buffer. But that doesn't seem to pan out all the time.

I see the incoming thirteen or so Assassin's Creed games as the end of this franchise, no doubt in a dark mirror to the way that Ubisoft see this as the beginning of their ascension to profit heaven. Unlike those too entrenched to see the sky, I can tell that this is a franchise running fumes propelled on the backs of an audience too beaten and bruised to know that literally every other franchise has jumped leaps and bounds in the same time it's taken Assassin's Creed to go in a limp circle back to 'it's roots'. Ubisoft are a company squeezed dry of personality, trying to pretend they can maintain the average at best quality of their current games when the entire company becomes split in dozens of different directions in the wake of this direction change. I'm not as optimistic.

There was a time that whenever a new Assassin's Creed was coming out, I would dedicate as much time as it took to 100% every Assassin's Creed title in the series in preparation! I did that until Black Flag! (Anyone who 100%'ed Assassin's Creed 1, and it's mind numbingly painful non-mapped collectibles will feel my pain.) Now I couldn't even conceive replaying an Assassin's Creed title I've already suffered through in the past. This franchise has become the last toy that Ubisoft hasn't snapped completely in two with the rough-housing, and I'm honestly relieved that we're approaching the point of no return where this franchise will ruin itself for all the world to see. At least perhaps when AC is gone, those captive gamers it's kept enshrouded with never ending mediocrity can shake the grit from their eyes and re-join this sudden new golden age of gaming we seem to have dropped right in the middle of in 2023.