The story in AC games has been somewhat shoddy since Revelations but listening to Patrick's anger about Unity's ending makes me curious if there is ANYTHING interesting about the story.

When it comes to story in games i haven't often agreed with Patrick so that didn't impact my desire to play it so i'll likely pick it up on sale. I just wanted to hear some of the community's opinions on it.

I thought the story was fantastic. It just doesn't feed into the out of Animus story in any meaningful way... Or really at all. But Arno's story is really freaking good. Emotionally charged and reminiscent of Ezio's story, but told from an interesting perspective.

Haven't played the game but YES because all AC games have terrible stories.

@nightriff said:

This is factually incorrect.

@oldirtybearon said:

Too each their own but I have beaten most of the AC games and not once have I enjoyed the story. The are games based on moments for me but by the end I'm disappointed. I doubt I'm the only one who feels this way.

I've played all the console releases except 3 and Unity and I will stand in line with you saying AC games have terrible stories. I enjoyed 1 and loved 2, but even they had dog shit stories. The games almost always have interesting characters and some good beats here and there, but over the stories suck. My biggest complaint is they seem to feel obligated to do something weird and out there at the end, but they never build up to it or earn it at all. It always leaves me feeling empty and unsure about the closing of the game.

It's just boring and doesn't really matter in the overall Assassin's Creed fiction. Arno is uninteresting, the lady Templar is boring (and poorly acted) and the bad guy seemingly appears from nowhere in the last quarter of the game. It's just more of the same, just without a big future/alien set piece kind of level these games love to end on.

@nightriff said:

I understand where you're coming from; I was so incredibly disappointed with the way AC3 wrapped up the "real world" story that I swore off the franchise all together. Yet I don't think my disappointment colours the impression/experience I got from playing through Ezio's and Connor's life long adventures. I thought those were well written, well realized, and well paced narratives that honed in on central themes and never let go. I can understand not enjoying the "modern day" stuff because that has a heavy conspiracy theory bent and not everyone enjoys that, but for me a good conspiracy theory is like crack.

The thing is that I'm mostly wondering what constitutes a "good story" to some people. I hear people say this a lot (X has terrible story), but they never really expand upon why.

@liquidprince said:

Good enough for me! I think i remember from the Bombcast(or the QL) that you don't even leave the Animus in Unity. I haven't cared that much about the modern day events post-Desmond as it seems like Ubisoft is just making it all up as they go.

Like i said, i'll play it when it's on sale. Until then i'll play Rogue on PS3 and replay Black Flag on PS4.

I really liked it, the one thing i never liked about AC was the out of animus stuff.

Arno's story is like Ezios so if you liked his you'll like Unity's. If all you care about is the greater AC Templar vs Assassins fiction then this doesn't have that.

It's Ezio's, only not well developed enough and with a romance. The romance is fine, but it ends in a boring cliche.

The game had missed an opportunity in putting in Elise as the protagonist, who is a much more interesting character and not an Ezio-clone that fails at achieving anything.

It isn't great but it isn't that bad. The overall Arno story is pretty cliche but at the same time it has some fun and charming moments. The out of animus story is nonexistent though, which is a shame.

The side stuff is also actually pretty good too. The side missions, Assassin Contracts or Co-Op or whatever, have you interacting in some neat moments from the time period. A lot of the Assassin's Contracts even have a good amount of dialogue in them and are not groundbreaking or anything but can be pretty neat.

The should've followed through on Desmond's mind being warped to hell in Brotherhood.

I can't speak to how this game played before the patches, but I booted it up the other day and it makes a fantastic first impression. Granted I'm only maybe 3 hours in, but I can already see myself liking this better than 4. Black Flag was a fine game but I didn't really enjoy the structure of it. The sailing got old very fast. And Captain Kenway had a good personal story, but it took a hell of a long time for it to get going.

Their big throwback to the old AC didnt have a brotherhood thing or much of a modern day thing. As in, the two giant things the old AC games were all about. Like a quarter of AC2 and Brotherhood story missions took place in modern times. So in addition to the setting taking away the possibility of the funnest stuff from the newer ACs (tree traversal, ship combat, hunting, etc.) they took away the big things that made the AC2 trilogy such a hit. How could anyone be surprised by the outcome. I have to think people who are content with that just don't give a shit about story or mechanics. Maybe they like playing assassin dressup cus that's about the only thing Unity has going for it.

As for the story, and not going into spoilers beyond what was in the quick look. Historically its very difficult to portray the Marquis De Sade in cinema and very rarely does an actor capture the raw nature of him without making him into an obnoxious cartoon. He is suuuuuper obnoxious in this story. And there's a mission early in the game which seems super high in potential because it sort of deals with Animus stuff but then that doesnt go anywhere. Its like at some point they were going to go back into the future but then just pussed out and replaced that content set with a dozen identical missions. Like if they doubled the number of icons in the city people would be happy about a game where kind of nothing happens.

But hey, in the last game people were able to vote on missions. Maybe this game was built around that. So maybe AC fans ruined AC. Im just going to walk away from it, its not for me anymore.

I thought people hated Unity because of the bugs and performance (which didn't affect me all that much). I thought Unity was a good game beyond that. It certainly had an improved mission structure and a different take on the assassin's/templars than the previous games. I thought the last game had a better protagonist and setting but taking those away shouldn't have garnered the amount of hate this game has gotten. I don't know what kind of stuff people want out of this series anymore.

I have not played Unity, so I can't comment specifically on that game, but I think the common element of "good" stories is that they take their time to establish and develop their worlds and characters. I guess the formula is doing > showing > telling. Because players tend to experience the story vicariously through their character, stories work the best when they allow the play to actively participate in them (i.e. doing). Barring that, a cutscene (showing) is generally better to establish characters and gameplay than audio logs or just straight dialogue describing events (telling). A good example is comparing the way AC2 handled Ezio and Leonardo (which was good) vs. how AC3 handled Connor and Washington (which was poor).

In AC2, you first meet Leonardo during a tutorial mission that has you carrying a bunch of his pictures for Ezio's mother. Admittedly, you aren't doing much, but the mission serves a few purposes. First, is gives you insight into both Leonardo and Ezio as characters - Leonardo is really passionate about science and the arts and changing the world while Ezio just wants to get back to chasing skirts. Second, it establishes that they know each other so that when you need to go back to have Ezio's hidden blade fixed, it isn't completely out of the blue that you'd go to Leonardo to have the work done. By the time the game gets to the halfway point, there's been enough interaction that it feels completely natural that the two would be lifelong friends. As a player, you're equally invested in that relationship, so when Leonardo gets really excited about his flying machine, it's hard not to smile a bit.

Compare that to Connor and Washington in AC3. Instead of having any sort of gameplay or cutscenes to establish the relationship between the characters, the game opts to fade out during the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and then fade back in a couple of years later where, magically, Connor and Washington now know each other. Although that method had the advantage of getting the player back to the action more quickly than a cutscene might have, it completely failed in giving the player any investment in the relationship between the two characters. I'm being told that they've worked together and are friends, but I don't have anything to back that up beyond what the game is choosing to tell me. This creates several problems that could have been avoided if the game had chosen to develop that relationship via gameplay or a more comprehensive cutscene:

First, what am I even doing at Valley Forge in the first place? Have I been a hitman for Washington? A spy, what? The game hasn't provided me with any context beyond an objective marker telling me to "talk to Washington." I'm left to infer what has happened, which is inherently less satisfying than actually doing it. Second, the lack of time spent developing the relationship between Connor and Washington means that it falls flat for the player. Subsequent revelations, like how Washington ordered the attack on Connor's village, therefore lack the impact they should. Sure, Connor can be pissed, but because I don't feel any particular affinity for Washington as a player, I just sort of shrug my shoulders and move on. Had the game taken the time to have you get to know him as well as Connor apparently does, it might have been a more impactful moment.

I would be fine with the Assassins Creed games just not coming out at all anymore. The real shame about Assassins Creed: Unity is that even if the game had 0 bugs at launch it would still be a lame game that wouldn't be worth anyone's time or money.

@lawgamer: Agreed. Good explanation!

This. Honestly all AC stories are extremely generic.

Also, I was so angry when Elise was killed off. She was the most interesting character in the game.

I only saw my friend play through 2 middle sequences, but it did not seem like there was anything going on in the story which would hook me. Also, Arno seems really lifeless to me, especially compared to Edward and Ezio.

Don't know. I only ever played 2 and couldn't really give a shit about the story they were telling. I did appreciate that you could loop the pope in an infinite combo where you just wailed on his nuts though.

It's fine, but lacking in a lot of places. The first 2/3 or so were good, and then the game just shits on you.

Not far enough into it to comment on the story, but it's a shame about the messy launch because they seem to have actually made some decent improvements to the gameplay and removed a fair bit of the bloat.

I don't know how I feel on the story as a whole, but Arno is probably the closest I've come to liking an Assassins Creed character since Ezio (Also liked Kenway but Black Flag was almost an else world compared to most of the AC games)

I appreciated 4's due to Edward - he's kinda as if Ezio never lived through the personal tragedy that served as the catalyst for his development until the very end of the game.