Why Don’t People Like Poor Desmond?

Tobold recently was not impressed by Assasin’s Creed 1. He expressed the same baffling opinions that I often hear about AC, which gives me a chance to be baffled in a public blog post.

I’ve always like Assassin’s Creed. At the time AC1 came out, I thought it was mind-bogglingly revolutionary. It was the best mo-cap I’d ever seen, the graphics looked realistic as crap, the city landscapes were amazing, and it had so many friggin actors on the screen at once. Also, nobody had ever seen “Parkour” before. All of that innovation is unfortunately lost on a modern audience, though, and all anyone sees when they go back to AC1 is the boring and repetitive gameplay.

But anyway. What baffles me is why everyone complains about the Desmond parts of Assassin’s Creed and how it “interrupts” the game for them. That’s always been my favorite part. To me, that’s where the actual story of the game is, the over-arching plot of the series. What’s going on with Altair and Ezio has always been secondary to me, just sort of a side plot that allows you to unlock the real story. The main reason I kept playing through the repetitive gameplay was to find out what the heck was going on with Desmond and Abstergo and the Ancients or whatever they’re called.

At least originally. I was blown away by the meta-story in AC1 and the cliffhanger ending. I eagerly played AC2 and Brotherhood to see what happened with Desmond and all the meta-things they revealed.

After Brotherhood, they succumbed to fan pressure and made the Desmond side of things more optional. So optional that they’ve basically just been phoning it in story-wise. I think the people who originally came up with that meta-story are no longer even there, so it’s kind of pointless. AC Revelations had a Desmond story but it was completely unrelated to anything (plus Desmond looked totally different). In AC3, it’s like they’ve entirely given up on trying to make a compelling meta story. From what I’ve read, it’s even worse in AC4.

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p>Personally I wish they’d get back to that part of the game, or maybe make another game that tells that story. Or publish a book or a movie or something. Revealing that meta-story was way more interesting to me than running around collecting feathers.