Remember those iconic games before 2014? The OG, while dated was really unique for its time, the Ezio Auditore Trilogy that became the standard for the franchise, 3, that was very ambitious (probably too much) with it’s setting and story telling. Even 4, although it was the first time AC escaped from the base of what an assassin’s creed game is supposed to be.
Unity was the very first big misstep and since then the franchise has become unrecognisable, taking gameplay and mechanics from batman games and now went into unnecessarily long, repetitive and bloated RPGs than the real fans of the series couldn’t care less, especially since the core legacy mechanics of parkour and missions were gone. Not only that but they completely threw the modern day story on the trash since Desmond’s death…
AC was one of the last original franchises a triple A company gave us and now is just a Witcher wannabe.
“Oh wth are you talking about, it sells well” sales doesn’t equal quality. The last games are such a step backwards for the series.
Because they were getting really stale and they wanted to hold onto the franchise name anyways. People are nostalgic now, but when AC games were coming out back to back people were getting really bored of it.
When Assassin’s Creed 3 came out, everyone was saying how this is the third time they remade what is basically the same game (AC2, brotherhood, revelations, then 3). People weren’t impressed. Unity and Rogue didn’t sell that well. Syndicate apparently also didn’t sell very well.
So they basically remade the franchise into an RPG starting from Origins. They aren’t that special, but honestly, neither was everything after Revelations.
Rogue was barely advertised and the concurrent release with unity was doomed. Unity was so full of bugs (and there was the whole sexual assault scandal) that Ubisoft lost a ton of goodwill before syndicate.
They fired the lead designer in the middle of Brotherhood because he didn’t want to push shit games and you feel it. The only good things in Revelation is nostalgia and the bombs. After that you lost the parkour in 3 (although Rogue has some).
I’m tentatively hopeful with Mirage but I don’t expect the Japan one to be any good.