I never played Assassin's Creed 1 when it came out, and had planned on grabbed both it and #2 for Christmas sales in order to play then. Then AC:Brotherhood comes out and further cements the fact that I REALLY need to play this series of games. The cultural zeitgeist surrounding them has now swelled to such proportions that I either need to get in on things now, or miss out forever. Do I NEED to play #1, or can I skip that and go straight for #2?

I never played Assassin's Creed 1 when it came out, and had planned on grabbed both it and #2 for Christmas sales in order to play then. Then AC:Brotherhood comes out and further cements the fact that I REALLY need to play this series of games. The cultural zeitgeist surrounding them has now swelled to such proportions that I either need to get in on things now, or miss out forever. Do I NEED to play #1, or can I skip that and go straight for #2?

You can skip it, the gameplay is pretty bad compared to 2 and it's a new ancestor story in 2 which is the story I care most about. That said, I'd still burn through 1 first, you can probably do it in a weekend or so.

AC is good but if you've just played Brotherhood the only one that directly links to it is AC2. But if you see AC for cheap I'd purchase it anyway. =]

I think you should start with AC 1, because it's awesome.

AC 1 is TERRIBLE.  It's got some good ideas but the game is marred by unholy amounts of repetition.
 
AC 1 is so bad that it completely killed interest in me for the whole series.   Even though everyone says AC2 is better, I can't actually bring myself to play it.

I tried giving AC a chance a week ago. I couldnt go past 3 hours of play cause it was god awful.

You defiantly CAN skip right to 2...
 
BUT, I was in an identical situation to yours, after hearing so much good stuff about Brotherhood, I went out and bought AC 1 & 2 (for about $40 bucks total).
 
I loved AC1. It was a cool start to the story, and I liked the ending. It's really neat to see such a big cliffhanger, and know that you don't have to wait two years to see the continuation.
 
It does get repetitive, there are 9 targets, and every one has you first pickpocket, interrogate, or eavesdrop on civilians before assassinating the target. That didn't bug me as much as it did most people, and I easily beat the game in two days, and I'm glad I did.
 
I beat AC2 just the other day, and can't wait to jump right into Brotherhood... but I've got finals comming up this week, and I know if I go out and buy it, I'll never get anything done.

I really like AC1. However AC2 made so many improvements that its hard to recommend playing the first one now.

No, you absolutely shouldn't skip. AC1 is mechanically flawed, but it still has great writing and to understand the story as a whole you need to play them all. No way around it.

WUT. 
 
I enjoyed AC1 so much more than AC2. If you just want to follow-up on the story, then just go to AC2, because you don't really NEED to know what Altair went through. But the franchise has always been about visiting historic periods, and I thought the crusades was a great setting for a game like this. Plus, the game was made to be pure simple, sticks to its logic, and makes you feel like you're mastering your skillset at a manageable pace.

And people, stop saying AC1 had terrible gameplay. AC2 tries so hard to vary in gameplay and became a huge clusterfuck of underwhelming and unnecessary features.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Think I'll watch some Steam sales, see if maybe I can catch AC1 and AC2 both on sale, grab them both and give them a play through. I already knew (based upon comments on AC2 here on Giant Bomb about improvements it had over AC1) that AC1 has fairly bad gameplay in comparison to the rest of the series. I'm more interested in the storyline for the whole franchise, and am more than willing to overlook some bad gameplay because of it. I just didn't know if AC1 story actually tied into AC2 and the rest or not, but from the sounds of it.. it's still of interest to go through.

ACI on deployability is just terrible, the ideas are there It is a great job in cementing the reality and the structure of everything but 2 just fixes so much of everything. THe story in 1 was simply told terribly. Long ass pretentious conversations, ugh