Assassin’s Creed is devastatingly popular, but it’s also a franchise on the rocks. Ubisoft has weathered the ups and downs of its flagship series since the late 2000s, taking it from a small, focused historical action-adventure to an open-world RPG anthology that has more in common with Far Cry than Prince of Persia, its initial inspiration, and the results have been mixed, to say the least.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla might have been a colossal success for the series, but the fervent discussion surrounding the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows proves that the IP’s status is anything but safe. Generally speaking, the Assassin’s Creed franchise has been wanting for allure in recent years, especially as its complex story gets increasingly long in the tooth and its core mechanics stagnate after so many releases. The series may still be able to achieve some degree of success under the current formula and narrative, but it could also see diminishing returns if it doesn’t double down on innovation, and a hard rest could be just the way to do that.
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Why a Hard Reboot Could Be the Best Path Forward for Assassin’s Creed
Assassin’s Creed Has Lost the Plot
The story of Assassin’s Creed has gone off the rails, and not in a particularly good way. Unlike other franchises, like Metal Gear Solid and Kingdom Hearts, which are convoluted in a somewhat charming and chaotic way, Assassin’s Creed has seemingly been stacking new narrative blocks atop one another with no clear endpoint in sight. Each new entry in the franchise seemingly serves only to set the stage for the next chapter, rather than to lead the story to any meaningful conclusions.
The modern-day side of the Assassin’s Creed formula has been the basis of its overarching plot, but it’s become far too vaporous and transient to be satisfying or rewarding to follow. Until Assassin’s Creed 3, the franchise was seemingly headed for some sort of finale, with each game evolving protagonist Desmond Miles’ story in a reasonable way. Many even assumed that the franchise would culminate in a full-fledged modern-day release, which would tie all the previous games together. As it stands, the franchise feels like it’s just spinning its wheels, releasing new, disconnected games, switching out protagonists arbitrarily, and introducing increasingly complicated ideas without actually delivering on any of them.
This doesn’t just apply to narrative, either. The gameplay of Assassin’s Creed can be defined as trend-chasing rather than trailblazing, borrowing from the likes of The Witcher, Dark Souls, and various MMOs without actually putting a unique spin on any particular idea or mechanic. As such, Assassin’s Creed has lost much of its identity over the years, being more of a vehicle to produce action-RPGs chock-full of predictable content than a cohesive, artistic whole with a focus on innovation and exponential growth.
Assassin’s Creed Needs a New, Firm Creative Vision
In a word, one might describe Assassin’s Creed as rudderless. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting a franchise to last forever, even if such an approach necessitates a less satisfying narrative due to the lack of an ending. But Assassin’s Creed feels like a franchise that isn’t quite sure what it wants to be, repeatedly course-correcting and responding to the success or failure of its previous releases instead of growing its existing elements into something greater.
Perhaps a definitive pivot away from the modern-day storyline and a reintegration of the core Assassins vs. Templars struggle could help Assassin’s Creed regain some of its lost identity and charm. By the same token, maybe doubling down on unique stealth systems, doing away with quasi-magic powers, and embracing smaller, more focused game design would alleviate some of the fatigue players feel with the series. Abandoning microtransactions wouldn’t hurt, either.
