Why did Assassin's Creed 2 and 3 got the best writing of the series at all

One of the most unforgettable moments in the entire Assassin's Creed series that occurs near the start of Assassin's Creed 3, when Haytham Kenway has finished collecting his group of murderers in the New World. Or at least, the player leads to the belief that they are killers. Haytham uses, after all, a hidden blade, and the former protagonist in the previous series Ezio Auditore, and he played – even this point in the campaign – played the role of the hero, which led to the exit from the indigenous Americans from prison and strike British British. Only when he is pronounced by the familiar phrase, “the father of understanding may guide us”, is it clear that we are already following our right -wing enemies.

For me, this sudden setting represents a fully aware of the Assassin's Creed capabilities. The first match in the series presented an interesting concept – look for your goals, get to know them, and kill your goals – but it was short in the story section, where both the hero of the novel The Ater and his victims were completely devoid of the character. Assassin's Creed 2 step in the right direction by replacing Altaïr with the most famous Ezio, but failed to apply the same transaction to his opponents, with Big Bad from the doctrine of a spinoff: Brotherhood, Cesare Borgia, which is particularly reduced. Only in Assassin's Creed 3, which was appointed during the American Revolution, developers at Ubisoft dedicated a lot of time to cancel the search for hunting as the hunter did. The game has provided an organic flow from preparing to the reward, and as a result, it achieved an accurate balance between playing and the narration that has not been repeated since then.

Although the current RPG era of the series has been well received by players and critics, a group of articles, YouTube videos and forum posts agree that the Assassin doctrine is declining, and it was for some time. What is exactly responsible for this fall, however, is subject to discussion. Some indicate increasingly unrealistic buildings for modern games, which they face against gods such as Anubis and Fenrir. Others face a problem with a gentle Ubisoft implementation of romantic options, or, in the case of the uniforms of the doctrine that was imported hot, to replace its fictional heroes so far with a real historical personality, an African Samurai called Yasuki. Although the personal nostalgia for Xbox 360/PS3 games although there is nothing of these. Instead, such a decline is the result of the gradual abandonment of the series for the novel that depends on the character, which was now buried deeply within the sprawling sand box.

Over the years, Assassin's Creed collected the original movement adventure composition with a large number of RPGs and live service elements, from XP dialogue trees and XP settlement systems to looting of the boxes, DLC Microtransction, and the customization of the gear. But the greater the new installments, the greater the emptying they feel, not only with regard to the endless side series, but also in telling the basic stories.

Although allowing you to choose what your personality says or must make the total experience more immersive in practice, you have found in practice that it often has an opposite effect: since the textual programs become longer and longer to calculate the multiple possible scenarios, but they feel that it lacks the same level of the Polish as a game with a limited group more than the reaction. Concentrated text programs that resemble the scenario in the adventure era allowed the series to sharply specific characters that have not been withdrawn through the game structure, which requires the protagonist to be sympathetic or brutal for the player's whims.

Thus, while a game like Assassin's Creed Odyssey has the content of more than Assassin's Creed 2, many of which feel wood and back. Unfortunately, this breaks immersion. It is often very clear that you interact with the characters created on the computer instead of complex historical characters. This is in a blatant contradiction with the era of the Xbox 360/PS3 of the concession, which in my humble opinion has produced some of the best writing in all games, from EZIO's fire “Do not follow me, or anyone else!” A better speech than Savonarola, to the tragic tragic, provides Haytham when his son kills him in the past, Connor:

“I don't think I have any intention to support your cheek and say I am wrong. I will not cry and wonder what it might. I'm sure you understand. However, I'm somehow proud of you. I have shown great conviction. Power. Brave. All the noble qualities. I had to kill you long ago.”

Writing has suffered in other ways over the years as well. When modern games tend to adhere to the easily digestive division of murderers = good and Templaars = bad, the previous games were made to the extreme to show that the line between the two requests is not clear as it appears in the beginning. In Assassin's Creed 3, both Templaar uses his last breath to make Conor – and thus, the player – question their beliefs. William Johnson, a negotiator, says that Timbelsz could have stopped the original American genocide. Thomas Hikki, a fun player, calls the task of unrealistic killers and Konor promised that he would not feel satisfied. Benjamin Cherish, who betrays Haitham, declares that she is a “perspective issue”, and that the British – from their point of view – see themselves as victims, not the aggressors.

Hayeham, for his part, is trying to shake Eman Connor in George Washington, claiming that the country he will create will not be less than the monarchy of the property that the Americans sought to liberate themselves – a confirmation that rings more than that when we discovered that the matter of burning the village of Connor was not given by Hinham Charles Lee, as he previously thought. By the end of the game, the player has more questions than answers – and the story is stronger.

If we look back in the long history of franchise, there is a reason that justifies one course of Assassin's Creed 2, “EZIO Family”, with players to the point that the official topic of the series becomes. The PS3 games, especially Assassin's Creed 2 and Assassin's Creed 3, were in their character -based experiences; It was not intended by the glory chains of the “Ezio family” family to put the renaissance of the game as I Isio's personal shock to the loss of his family. As much as I admired the construction of the wide world and the graphic loyalty of the current generation of Assassin's Creed games, I hope this privilege will be out of control that reduces itself one day, and once again offers the type of concentrated and designed stories that made me fall in love with it in first place. Unfortunately, in a scene dominated by sprawling sandy boxes and one player games with ambitions similar to live service, I am afraid that this is no longer a “good work” anymore.

Tim Brinkov is an independent writer specializing in art and history. After studying journalism at New York University, he continued writing for Vox, Vulture, Slate, Polygon, GQ, Esquire and more.