If you’ve played Assassin’s Creed 3 you’ll understand why now might be a good time to look ahead to what might come for the series, if you haven’t yet, well, you might want to stop reading now before some things are spoiled for you. Assassin’s Creed has served as Ubisoft’s annual-installment franchise for a while now, with it becoming a bigger and bigger deal every year and five major games being released and quite a few games being released on handheld systems as well. What has been clear from the beginning is that Ubisoft is trying to tell some huge story full of M. Night Shymalan-style twists and ample MacGuffins to make sure that the plot keeps pushing forward no matter what.
Assassin’s Creed 3 was no different, as you got to see a lot more of the rather bland Desmond Miles and try to flesh him out a bit more as in the last three games he has taken a backseat to the charismatic Ezio Auditore. Ezio should be proof enough that if they want to, Ubisoft can pump out a character that fans will fall in love with, but sadly enough, Desmond is the lead character so here we lay in the same grave. Assassin’s Creed 3 saw a lot more play time as Desmond from the previous few games, and his story was given an ample push as being valuable. Connor’s story was indeed important, but you actually got the feeling that Connor’s story was serving Desmond’s and not vice versa.
The ending of the game left things kind of ambiguous when it comes to the fate of not only the world but the fate of Desmond Miles, who made a big decision that comes with big consequences. Is Desmond finally gone, or will he continue to fight on into another game in the series? For the next major installment of Assassin’s Creed it would seem to be a bit more difficult to follow the same formula of Desmond’s story happening in modern times and him sitting in the Animus to play as an ancestor and discover the whereabouts of some ancient artifact. Will the next Assassin’s Creed game finally be an “all current day” game instead of being gameception?
They’ve been building to it and with how sales have been, I’m simply not sure that they are willing to jeopardize a money-making formula for what will be moderate storytelling. I’d love to see Assassin’s Creed tackle a modern day city in the same style and ditch the historic fiction stuff, but I’m not sure that the rest of the world wants the same or that Ubisoft is ready to stop the gravy train.
