In this blog I will be talking about spoilers, but I will try to shine away from the gory details as much as possible. That said, you have been warned!

Ah, Assassin's Creed. How I love thee, let me count the ways. Many already know the history of the series so I don't need to tread any well-worn territory, but what I will do is explain to you my love for Assassin's Creed: Rogue, and then I will explain why I hate Assassin's Creed: Rogue.

Let's begin at the beginning, shall we? The announcement trailer.

Holy. Fuck. Right guys!? We're playing as a TEMPLAR!?!? IN ASSASSIN'S CREED!?!?!? Yep. I was right there. On the proverbial ten yard line. Pumping my fists, yelling at my computer screen, waking my neighbors. For once, I was that guy. Yeah, that's right pal, I get excited by pointless video game trailers, come at me bro.

Ubisoft had done it, they had actually made a game where we play as a Templar. In a world of color, all we're able to see for the first time, is gray. Because we have the power now, we have the resources, we are the Templar's, and we will not stop until the world is under control, until they feel our wrath and remember that we, and all our brethren, are better. Right? Wrong.

The game, a prequel to Assassin's Creed III, but sequel to Assassin's Creed IV(and also mentioned as the game that links them all together) starts off and you are Shay Patrick Cormac, an Assassin.

You are palling around with your buddy Liam O'Brien who, with a name like that, may or may not be a voice actor. In the opening mission you rescue some prisoners and then steal a ship named The Morrigan and encounter a cast of characters. You then go to the Davenport Homestead which people who played Assassin's Creed 3 should be familiar with. Once you arrive, you see two old faces in the form of Adewale, your first-mate partner-in-crime black-best-friend from Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, and also Achilles Davenport, the mentor and trainer of Connor Kenway in Assassin's Creed III. Adewale in his old age reminds me a lot of Big Boss, in that he's a seasoned veteran killer with no regards for giving a shit. It was great to see him, I was very excited to see what he would be up to after so many years since the end of Black Flag. And as for Achilles, well anyone who played AC3 knew that he had a family at one point so I was excited to see them as well. Basically, as a fan of the previous games, I expected this game to pray off of the history of these characters and do something with the knowledge I already have. Fanservice, in a way. But Ubisoft shows their hand all too soon and you get nothing.

Ubisoft had mentioned in the past that when Rogue begins you are an Assassin, but after some devastating event not far into the game, you switch allegiances and become a Templar. Problem: You spend a little under half of the game as an Assassin. Another problem: You only interact with terrible characters that aren't and will never manage to flesh themselves out enough for us to actually care about. I wanted to go pal around with my old buddy Ade and hear stories of his life after Edward Kenway retired. I wanted to see Achilles and his young son Connor(He would later rename Rahtonhakaton "Connor" because he had no idea how to pronounce his native name name) having a day out on the Homestead. I wanted to love these characters and become attached to them all over again before turning into this big bad monster who wants nothing but to kill them. And I didn't get that, but for more reasons than you might think.

1. Adewale fucks off at the beginning of the game and doesn't even show up until somewhere near the end-ish of the game.
2. Achilles loses his family not too long into the game but you are only told this in passing while piloting your ship and absolutely nothing comes out of this.
3. Shay is not a bad person.

I may have raised plenty of eyebrows with that last point. "Not a bad person? But he's a fucking Templar! This is what we have been waiting for! Goddamnit!" Yes, goddamnit indeed. The plot in the beginning is that there's a book - a manuscript that can locate "First Civilization" temples hidden around the world. The Assassin's are using this to try and find an Apple Of Eden, which is a long tenured "piece of Eden" in Assassin's Creed lore. The problem is, these fucking Assassin's don't know what an Apple of Eden looks like, so they go to these temples and pick up the object - which is actually a device used to hold together tectonic plates - and then remove them, causing catastrophic damage to pretty much everything in sight. I mean fucking fire and brimstone, man, death and carnage everywhere. 2012, the movie. The thing is, Shay has no idea about this. Why Achilles or any other character doesn't mention this to him I don't fucking know. You use Benjamin Franklin's help to find one of these temples somewhere in Lisbon. Long story short, shit goes bad.

The city commits sudoku and Shay is really sad about this. So he goes back to the Assassin's and very calmly explains his issues with them in a warm and open environment. Oh, wait, no... that, that doesn't happen at all. He flips the fuck out and yells at everyone and it's really, really dramatic. No doubt. He is told on the spot that they won't stop using this manuscript to find pieces of eden and that he should probably go fuck off. He doesn't like this answer so he breaks into the Davenport Homestead mansion and steals the manuscript. This, in my opinion, is where the game begins to go downhill. One: The characters may be terrible and generic(Teehee, I'm the sexy girl assassin I flirt with everyone (: / I am the stoic native American Assassin, I am a rock, I am an island. A rock feels no pain, and an island never cries / I am the french Assassin so I'm a fucking cunt all the time and no one likes me), they are generally nice people. They seem to be passionate and compassionate about what they do and I could imagine they would help you if you needed help. Problem: They do a total 180 on their own characters and become really toxic and fucked up.

As you make your escape from the mansion with the manuscript, they taunt you and berate you and INSTANTLY accuse you of some great betrayal. There is maybe a minute or two gone by and already you are the greatest evil in the room. It makes no sense, even for "dramatic purposes". I mean, I get that they wanted to turn on your Assassin friends, but... it's your Assassin friends that turn on you. Shortly after this, you fall into the ocean and get rescued by Templar's. The thing is: These Templar's are super nice and cheery and friendly and good. They are GOOD. GUYS. This is, in my opinion, where it was locked firmly into a downhill position that it could never turn upright from.

Some AC games backstory: The Templar's are the bad guys. Assassin's? Good guys. There have been bad Assassin's and good Templar's, but at the end of the day, that's the alinement we have in our universe. Templar's bad, Assassin's good. It started with Assassin's Creed III, it was the first installment of the series to actually feature deep and textured characters. For the first time in the series, villains were no longer cookie cutter cartoon villains who only want to do *insert evil thing here* and only live for *insert other evil thing here*. No, this was the game of villains who truly believe in themselves and their order, and want to do right. It just so happens that they were wrong, but that's all a part of the journey! And it was the same with Black Flag, this time even breaking from the mold more-so by having a main character that was, by all intents and purposes, a cunt. It wasn't until later in the game that he realized being a cunt cost him all of his friends so he stopped being a cunt and it was one of the most emotional journeys I have seen in a video game. With Rogue, we went into another direction. We went into: Friends of Shay are great people, heart and soul, whereas people indifferent to him are TOTAL EVIL AND BAAAAAD!!! BAAAAD!!! It got to the point sometime in the game where you are talking to your first-mate Gist and they were talking about how they just want to help their common man, and that all they live for is to better the lives of people and free them from evil and it's like, dude, come the fuck on, YOU ARE A TEMPLAR. I'VE PLAYED THIS FUCKING GAME'S SEQUEL, I KNOW THAT YOU ARE ALL CUNTS. Truly, I feel like this game was written for people who have never experienced the Assassin/Templar conflict before, because it was subverting the most basic of expectations.

In doing so it created, in my opinion, one of the most boring stories I've seen and definitely the number one most terrible Assassin's Creed narrative.

Throughout the series Templar were always the evil mastermind, up to no good with plans of world domination in play somewhere. Instead, after becoming a Templar yourself, the rest of the game is about you and your Templar cronies playing second fiddle to the Assassin's. You are constantly catching up to them, you are constantly running after them, you are constantly chasing after. Point being: They are always ahead and you are always behind.

The bigger issue is the fact that this game was supposed to link together the "Kenway Saga" of Assassin's Creed 3 and 4 and even link us into Unity. It was supposed to close out the previous games and send us on our way forward, but the way that it does that is so half-assed. There was nothing about seeing Achilles in his prime(Which, you really don't see Achilles much at all, truthfully), nor Adewale in his old battle hardened years that truly stood out. It wasn't fun. I know Adewale deserved better, hell, they all did. They all deserved a fighting chance at having "character", but if Rogue has anything to say, at all, it's "Rogue has nothing to say". Now how's that for meta commentary.

That's not even taking into account the fact that you really don't even fight Assassin's. In the other games, they have things like Templar forts and hideouts and all that, so when you get in there busting faces, you fight REAL. LIVE. TEMPLARS. In Rogue? You fight "gangs". You go to "gang hideouts" and fight them in their "settlements" and it's so lame. I wanted to fight Assassin's! I'm a fucking Templar and I'm fighting the gangs of New York? What? Give me my shiv and let me uh uh uh a fucking Assassin Knight or whatever they call themselves, not some stupid fucking lame ass shitty looking generic goddamn "gang leader". It's all just so lazy.

And that's just the narrative!

If you would have me what I thought of Rogue yesterday, I would have told you it's fucking incredible. Not up to snuff compared to Black Flag but close enough that I could love it tenderly. Today? I've beaten the game, I've unlocked a bunch of unlockables and I've spent a lot of time doing stuff. See, that's the thing about Assassin's Creed: The world is so big, yet there is nothing to do. Oh, wait a second, that's not entirely true anymore!

Rogue claims to offer up a dramatic change from the series Asassin-centric origins. It was supposed to be you, playing a Templar, doing Templar shit. What actually ends up happening is you play an Assassin doing Assassin's Creed shit while you wear Templar logos and plot world domination. But it does try, it surely does.

One interesting change is the near-constant threat of Assassin stalkers in the area. They hide in the environment in places such as bushes, hay, on benches, on rooftops, hiding against walls and basically in any sort of way you could hide. If you hear a spooky whispering sound effect that means there is a stalker nearby and if you go into eagle vision, you get a locator ring that fills up in proximity to your would-be assassin.

You might imagine it would get boring after a while, but truthfully I thought it was fun all the way through. It's a decent change up in the tried-and-true nothing is happening anywhere any time oh god kill me that Assassin's Creed is known for. You need to keep your wits about you as you explore the city of New York as an Assassin could jump out and severely injure you at a moments notice. Leaping out of their hiding spot, the game goes into slight slow-mo and you have an opportunity to counter their attack just as you would any other enemy in the game. Once you do so you can kill the Assassin and move on about your day. The best thing about this mechanic is that the Assassin's aren't entirely stupid. They will wait for you to engage combat with other people before making their move and injuring you and that makes it a little more exciting knowing that I am not truly safe. You get to learn what it's like being an Assassin target, first hand.

It doesn't stop there. Out on the open seas of naval gameplay you also have some Assassin worries in the form of Bounty Hunters. Bounty Hunters made an appearance in Black Flag where they would come after you in some sort of GTA-Like wanted system where the more you kill and plunder, the more they want to kill you. It's not exactly the same this time, however, as these "bounty hunter assassin's" have the ability to board you this time around.

Once they board you, they use their own form of swivel guns and start gunning down your crew. My first boarding was almost a very tense situation as I had a bunch of Assassin's all around me attacking me and my crew while subsequently gunning us down from their ship. It was a nice change from Black Flag's bounty hunters and it added to every naval exchanged, where I knew that if I don't sink this ship now, he will probably board me and fuck my shit up.

Unfortunately, while this mechanic is a well appreciated change of pace, it doesn't happen very often at all. As they are "bounty hunters" you have to become "wanted" before they will appear. It seems to take a lot to get wanted in this case because I spent hours and hours plundering and pillaging ships in the arctic without seeing a single bounty hunter ship. Not only that, but your wanted level will reset sometimes for no clear reason, resulting in you losing all of your wanted progress that you have built up, further lessening the amount of bounty hunting ships you will see.

When it comes to the traditional Assassin's Creed gameplay, I think the game falls apart. One, the combat seems really disjointed now and two, the free-running navigational stuff is the least reliable it's been in years. I had trouble attacking enemies because I was in "combat mode" but the enemy wasn't, so I had to wait for him to ready up before we could fight. That happened a lot. Often times I would have issues where Shay wouldn't fight. I would press a button to hit enemies and nothing would happen. It felt really sluggish and unresponsive. While I had issues with the combat from Black Flag, it was absolutely responsive. What they had to do to get that to happen boggles my mind.

When it comes to the navigation, Shay falls all the time. He's constantly failing to grab some ledge as I hurdle to my demise, or running up the side of a tree and then dropping instead of reaching up and grabbing the ledge. I have experienced first-hand just how terrible the free-running can be in Assassin's Creed past, but with Black Flag I thought it was incredibly refined. I was jumping where I wanted to 90% of the time. With Rogue, I don't have that certainty. In fact, I am certain that I won't be able to climb correctly or jump correctly to or even jump off of things correctly. It got really annoying really quickly.

Now, I talk a lot about things I don't like, so let me take a change and talk about things I do like.

• The game opens up a lot earlier than other Assassin's Creed games, probably because it's so short, but it was a welcome change. I felt like I was able to get right into the open world and side mission activities as soon as I became a Templar somewhere around Sequence 3. To put it in perspective, before I had beaten the game, I had beaten all legendary ship battles, found all viking sword pieces and finished all of the Assassination Interception missions.
• The side missions. With the new missions they have introduced a new side mission that is quite clever. It's the exact opposite of the usual "assassination missions", in which you intercept a carrier pigeon and then protect someone who has been targeted for assassination by using eagle vision to scan hidden Assassin's and then kill them. It was really fun and exciting when coupled with the fact that Assassin's are so deadly.

Speaking of Legendary Ship Battles, I actually like what they did here. In Black Flag, Legendary Ship Battles were you going toe-to-toe with a massively over-powered enemy ship. It was really challenging and it pushes you to the limits of your piloting abilities. In Rogue, they are almost like missions. Almost. You enter the area and there is one gigantic and overpowered ship, surrounded by other ships that you must destroy or else it's going to be even more difficult. The interesting thing is, though, you have allies of your own. Your own little NPC buddies float around and help you out. Except they don't. Often times all they did was get in my way and I'd end up killing them by accident. The Big Bad legendary ship doesn't even shoot at them, so they aren't used for a distraction.

I liked that they fleshed the idea out and actually got something meaningful out of it. It's a shame that they didn't do that for many other facets of the game because I really wanted to enjoy Rogue. I truly wanted to enjoy being a badass badguy who killed Assassin's and didn't give a shit. In the end, I didn't get that. I got "Almost Black Flag 2 but not really". A contrived cast of characters that we are supposed to care about because they "were Shay's most trusted friends" when you see exactly no information that would make them friends nor would they care about each other. In the end, it's just a bunch of people just happening to die who are Assassin's from Shay's hand, who just happens to be a Templar. I truly didn't feel the Assassin/Templar conflict in this game and whatever the fuck story I did get felt like someone with no understanding of the series, or basic human emotions, wrote it.

If this was a review, which I'm not sure if it is, I would rate the game. And since I'm rating the game, I'd probably give it a whopping:

Ultimately, even though I did not care for Rogue, I don't think it's terrible. I just think they did enough wrong that I can't really enjoy myself. I don't like the characters, I don't like the gameplay, I don't really even care about the "modern day story" anymore. If Ubisoft can get it right next time and get us back to the days of Edward Kenway and Connor. Back when characters had character and I cared about the shit they did. With Rogue, I really did find myself just not caring. I wanted to see Adewale fuck shit up with his cool giant ship. I wanted to see Achilles beating the fuck out of some Templar's in his prime. And most of all, I wanted Shay to be a badass Templar who erred on the grayer side of morality. I did not get this from Rogue. All I got was disappointment.

Oh well. There's always next year...

I post stuff from time to time on my blog, if you are interested, give it a look. Don't worry, I'm not selling some scummy product and I don't even have ads on my blog.

3Spooky5Me

@darthorange: The scariest part about this game is the potential that it had, but just like in The Others, it turned out the potential was a spooky ghost the whole time!!

Damnit, I had been psyching myself up all day to jump back in post-game and do some secondary stuff (in hopes of maybe having some fun with the game). Now you've gone and ruined it for me =(

Did you ever do any of the sunken ships ? Still wonder if there's anything interesting going on there.

Sunken ships? There are shipwrecks everywhere but I didn't spend too much time there. I only went after some collectibles and side-activities and left the others for later. Truthfully with how early the game opens up, I was really excited to jump in and get everything. Then the issues started pouring in and the game was almost fighting itself, and I just couldn't bring myself to get everything. I did get a lot though.

As someone who has had only passing interest in this series (mostly like oh hey they put out another AC game this year... good I guess), and as someone who likes history, I was hoping for a game where the Templars are the good guys and the Assassins are the villains they are (or more like neither group mattered in the grand scheme of things but the Templars actually stuck around for a while, were surpressed and sort of came back and were kind of cool so yay I guess?).

@belegorm: I was really expecting more from the game, and that's probably my fault, but the main thing I wanted was to be a Templar. You spend half of the game an Assassin and the rest of it as some happy-go-lucky guy wearing Templar logos who just happens to fight guys wearing Assassin logos.

Also, in terms of history, there really isn't anything here. You fight a lot of French and help out the British but really if I didn't know much about history I would have no idea what they were actually doing. The problem with the game is solely on the direction. The story is about this grand event that pits friends at opposite ends of a timeless war between Assassin's and Templar's, but they introduce these characters and do nothing with them. We see your "best friend" Liam and then if you read the database you'd know that Liam and Shay grew up together, and have been friends their whole life. Yet the game doesn't know how to tell this story and instead makes every interaction with them feel awkward and hallow.

That's the biggest fault, and it's massive since the entire story is centered around you "breaking bad" and going "evil". Having to fight your former friends and maybe even kill them. But the whole time Shay is singing the song of love and friendship. He's not presented as a bad guy, or even a conflicted or confused character. He is adamant that what he is doing is right and so it's easy for him to make the decisions he makes, even if they don't truly make sense. And so it's disjointed.

In a way, I say that Assassin's Creed: Rogue is the most Assassin's Creed-ass game we've seen in years. It's just a shame that the characters are empty headed and unappealing and the overall story is flat and uneventful.

@n7: More simply here: what the fuck are templars and assassins doing in the eighteenth century?

@belegorm: Helping the English and killing French apparently. Beyond that, I've got no idea. Whatever the reason, it's not very important.

So what happens at the end? Does Shay stay as a Templar or does he realise the error of his ways and becomes an Assassin again? Also anything significant/interesting happen in the modern day setting?

I'm probably looking too far into this but Shay sort of implies that he's going to do his own thing. The game ends with him basically explaining that he lives by his own creed and won't let anyone else get in his way. They also tie it into Unity because it was Shay that kills Arno's father. You actually see a young Arno(And his giant fucking head) alongside Elsie. But I'm pretty sure Shay's still going to be a Templar. No one knows when he died either, so we'll probably be seeing him and Connor in a game, since Unity is going on about 10 or so years after the end of AC3.

Actually, I pretty much don't care about the modern day story anymore, but even I would be blind to not mention it actually moved forward quite a bit. The character you play as helps out Abstergo by going around and hacking computers(It's literally the exact same from Black Flag) and once you hack something you get an audio file. The audio file is either a commentary on a certain Templar from history while this german guy explains why he was so important to the Templar order or some "battlefield report" of some shit that went down in a battle against the Templar's. This german guy is a Templar Knight mercenary who has been involved with the nastiest of nasty battles against the assassins and at the very end of the game, right before the credits, he offers you a position to join the Templar's or die. The game then cuts to credits. It's obviously implied that you will get to be some big important part of the Templar order later on. But honestly, it was the exact same thing from Black Flag(The puzzles were different, to be fair) so I was pretty burned out by that point.

@n7: So let me get this straight, let's call everything after Revelations "the Kenway saga". Chronologically, Black Flag is the first story, followed by Rogue which starts just before but then plays out concurrently with Unity and pre-Connor Assassin's Creed III? Man, I thought the lore of Assassin's Creed was confusing enough before, but now it's just a total mess that I can't even keep track of.

Actually, they do call 3, 4 and Rogue the Kenway saga. As I said in my post, Rogue was supposed to be the game that tied them all together as you see everyone from Achilles to Adewale and Haytham Kenway, and then get mention of Connor during the end.

The problem, in my opinion, isn't the order of the series or when characters make an appearance where. The problem is that they "tied it all together" in a game that had pretty much no impact. It was a series of "YOU BETRAYED OUR ORDER! YOU WERE OUR BROTHER!" and then "BUT BRO YOU'RE TRYING TO DESTROY THE WORLD. WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO!?" and then "WELL IT DOESN'T MATTER, BECAUSE NOW WE AREN'T BROTHERS, WE ARE ENEMIES!! TO BATTLE!" and I'm sitting there going "what the fucking fuck, did the writers from The Walking Dead write this shit?". There was no dramatic build up. There was no satisfying anything. It was a checkerboareded series of events that was supposed to equal out to be this grand story of Shay Patrick Cormac having to turn his back on everything he's ever known in order to do what he thinks is right, only to get burned by the ones he loves the most and then to be recruited by their enemies and fight against those he cared so much about. That's not what happened. That's not even close, because again(And I apologize for saying this so many times here), he's intrinsically a good guy. He's all about helping people and not hurting anyone that doesn't deserve it and even pleading for the lives of his enemies if he thinks that they have learned their lesson. That's actually a part of the reason the ending makes no sense, with him killing Arno's father for personal revenge and then swearing to live by his own Creed, because he's going against everything he just spent the entirety of the game telling us.

Believe me, if I were to be labeled anything, it's The Evil Within's Champion, Metal Gear Solid Pureblood, and Assassin's Creed Fanboy 4 Life, but even I was disappointed in Rogue's halfhearted attempt at an attempt. That should say something.

@jimbo: The resemblance is uncanny... Who is this mystery man, and how can he interfere with the fabric of time itself? I feel there are more questions than answers...

It's a shame it turns out Rogue is as much of a wet blanket as Unity. Hell, it's probably even wetter on the account of you sailing the seas so often in it!...

Still, after the shitstorm that's been circulating Unity, my human instinct of then hoping that the underdog, the little guy, the last generational Assassin's Creed game would prove to be the bigger man in it all seems to have fallen flat on its face. The moral of the story? Never rely on your instincts for anything ever.

Interesting to hear how this game ties into Unity. I keep waiting for an AC game post Brotherhood to rope me back in but Rogue seems increasingly lame duck and Unity just has too many problems to be excited about. Maybe next year...

@yummylee: I was really hoping Rogue could do it. Everything they had shown off was "Black Flag 2.0", but it didn't even manage to capitalize on that. The new additions to the gameplay were neat, but there was just absolutely no payoff for any of that. Definitely heartbreaking.

You forgot this!

@n7: Thank you so much for your review of the game.

This is the first time since Altair's AC that I do not buy an AC game at release.

I honestly did not care at all about Connor as he was such a dull and unappealing character and found Haytham more interesting although he was a templar. I felt that the transition from detailed Italian buildings to trees and more trees extremely unimpressive . I just can't see myself playing as a templar and killing assassins, this is a big no no.

I do not understand where Ubisoft is trying to take the saga (other than to complete s*it). We find ourselves playing as who knows who in the modern day story. Like always there are more questions than answers, which wouldn't be a bad thing if at some point we actually got solid fulfilling answers. It feel like they made Desmond die and there's no plan B so they are improvising with an uneventful story.

Why not give us an insight on the assassin's society where Desmond grew up?

I feel like I'm lost in the junk of the Kenways & co games and don't even understand what's going on in present time other than hacking computers. I thought and hoped that Rogue would give an insight about modern day story, because honestly at this point I care more about it than the ancestor's BS that Ubisoft is giving us, but according to what you have said nothing interesting happens in the present.

I don't want to ever go back to the Kenways I'd rather go back to Altair. After all he's the only character who only had one dedicated game and not a trilogy. I'll always hold on to the idea of playing in Eden, that would have been so cool and would have made more sense than pirate ship wars.

I've also heard that AC Rogue's story is getting better ratings than AC Unity which is living me hopeless XD .

I guess I'll just watch youtube videos lol and maybe get AC Rogue when game when it's $19.99 or maybe bet 0.99c on Ebay lol.

At least this time Ubisoft had the decency of not wasting space on the disk with their worthless MP.

I am :disappoint:

@xx_elisa_xx: That's really exactly what happened. Ubisoft pointed out that people were both: A. Disinterested in the character of Desmond Miles. And B. Disinterested in the modern day story. So they killed Desmond and then changed how the whole modern day stuff worked by making a character that is, as Ubisoft says, you. That's right. Your character doesn't talk or have a face because they wanted that character to represent you.

So now people have been calling bullshit on this for the past 2 years and what with all of the bad attention that both Rogue and Unity is getting(But really, Rogue is getting no attention) they are probably going to try and get the modern day story back into high gear. Problem is, they killed Desmond. They'd have to work pretty hard in order to get us to care about a character like that again.

Desmond's story was going to end in such a cool way. You've got him going into the past and basically being trained by Altair, Ezio and Connor and learning all of their skills and techniques via the bleeding effect that allowed him to retain the information he learns via the Animus. He was going to take the fight to the Templar's and change the tide for the Assassin's. And it was gonna be fucking awesome. But nope. They did some Vince Russo shit and swerved us all and then made the story about some fucking computer hacker. You don't have to be Sebastian Castellanos to say "What the fuck" to that.

Disappointing indeed.

@n7: LOL what did Desmond learn from Connor though? How to skin animals? I don't think he would have find any use to that skill in the present times XD.

Yes Desmond's end was brutal in so many ways, when I saw how they opened his body up I cringed.

It seems that the only constant in these AC Games is betrayal.

Al Mualim was a templar who posed as an assassin and totally betrayed Altair.

Altair fell in love with a templar.

Desmond was betrayed by Lucy. That was a big wtf moment.

Ezio was F*ed in a bad way by Cristina - I love you and I'm gonna keep your medallion forever but I'm gonna marry another dude,treat you like shit and then die-.

Connors father was a templar who didn't give a S*hit about him or his mother.

Edward was a cross-dresser drunk pirate who happened to sympathize for the assassin's. But his story was better than Connors.

Shay turns against the assassins. I hope Ubisoft comes out with a DLC where we get to kill him <3

The dude from AC Unity is kept from his real identity from his templar adoptive father.

Ubisoft betrays their fans by creating shitty filler games.

They seriously need to come up with more original stories. I feel like Twilight is a better story than the last 3 AC games.

This is a super interesting review, thanks. I'm always a little baffled to hear that other people (including Jeff in podcasts, IIRC) were interested in the way the modern stuff was going to unfold. I couldn't make heads or tails of the solar flare bit, and Desmond Miles struck me as a pretty dull character (even when we were getting scenes with his father), but without the benefit of the interesting settings the historical protagonists get. But I'm a giant history nerd, and am largely interested in the games for that reason, so I suppose I'm a niche case.

@queenoflasers: The problem with Desmond is he was being built into a super Assassin. He was being "trained" by the other Assassin's using the Bleeding Effect. They were trying to make Desmond super cool and badass without making him some Mary Sue who's just badass for the sake of being badass. The problem is they really didn't seem to know where they were going with it.

They were going for something cool but dropped it and then it feels like to me that they're trying to get back to something similar to the original games, but it feels more like them trying to justify it where they want to go instead of just saying fuck it and going there. They lack conviction anymore. Black Flag was a great departure from the traditional Assassin's Creed tedium but they couldn't even follow that up. They seem more interested in iterating now more so than just doing something different. I really doubt Victory is going to be any different from Unity, and we really have no reason to believe it will be.

Look at me trying to sound official. I dunno. I hope they can do better but I doubt it.