Foehunter82 said:
The truth is, Assassin's Creed suffers from poor decisions.
1) The decision leading to oversaturation due to yearly releases.
2) The decision to make up excuses for why they won't do certain things (which they're apparently backtracking on now).
3) The "overstayed" poor writing. This is one of the reasons why TV writers argue for limiting the length of time a TV series is on the air. After a while, people just lose interest, and the show goes out with a whimper rather than a bang. Assassin's Creed is past that point now. Many people just aren't interested anymore. This trend will continue over time until it reaches critical mass.
Pretty spot-on with those points. I'm pretty sure the only people that thought it was a good idea to have yearly releases were Ubi execs with dollar signs in their eyes at the prospect of getting paid every year for what (at least at the time of that decision) was their most popular franchise.
And indeed, it was a huge failing to decide to just crap out a new game and loosely connect it to the one before it. They could have done that if there wasn't the whole "present day storyline" as a backdrop to the series. Had they just made each game specifically about the assassin's fighting templars in a new location each time, it wouldn't be that big of an issue...but since they're trying to have some over-arching story, that's where they've stepped in it. Especially when they come out and say "Yeah, we don't really have an ending in mind for the series." Because then everyone
knows they're just spinning your tires in the mud, milking a cash cow for all it's worth. So I feel sorry for all those people who said "I'm just want to see how the story ends" because not even the people writing it know how - or when - that will be.
Just on a side-note (that relates to what I was talking about regarding having each game just be purely a historical simulator and to drop the over-arching story from the present-day), there's nothing wrong with a long-running series, TV or videogame. But if you're going to do that - as I've said - you can't have it be a continuous story. Each episode or game must only be loosely attached to the ones before it, meaning that each episode or game tells a self-contained story of it's own. Then people get the closure they want regarding a story and they don't grow impatient as they get strung out over and over by a series of cliff-hangers that make them realize "Nothing ever actually happens in this series." If people like the style of the series, they'll keep coming back for more stories in that style. As an example, look to The Simpsons. That show has been around for
decades...and people keep watching it. Why? Because they like the humor and writing and each episode is it's own story. If The Simpsons had been trying to tell a continuous, cohesive story then it would have died out years ago.