Assassin’s Creed, the warrior’s rest

On February 11, the bomb dropped, news that would shake the foundations of the entire video game industry and forever change the future of… mmm, well, I may be exaggerating, but you will be with me in that the Assassin’s Creed franchise has becomeand on its own merits, in one of the most important in the sector in the past generation and also in the present.

After receiving hundreds, thousands of criticisms about the deterioration of the saga, how poorly polished the games were due to lack of time and the scarcity of playable ideas that were reducing the viewer’s capacity for surprise, Ubisoft has decided to take the step and keep the murderers in a drawer, announcing that In 2016 they would not release any Assassin’s Creed games and hinting that the reason is the need for slower cooking so that a saga like this does not leave us with that aftertaste on the palate that only fast food offers in its next installment.

“We will take a step back and re-examine the franchise” were the words used, and yours truly, after claiming the same thing many times over the last few years, could not be happier with the decision made. Below I will present a brief summary of the saga peppered with acidic personal opinions, which I’m sure many of you don’t share, or maybe you do.

The first Assassin’s Creed, released in 2007 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, marked a revolution in open world games. Despite its obvious playable limitations, the possibilities of climbing any ledge, the historical setting and an impressive city like Jerusalem left us all speechless, amazed with a story that transported us to the present with a Desmond Miles who gave us a memorable ending. The company, aware of what it had on its hands, let two years pass to launch Assassin’s Creed II in 2009, one of the best games from the last generation, and a real leap in quality compared to the previous one.

The new game – new city formula then became another much more lucrative formula: new numbered delivery – new city, and a year later Ubisoft would launch Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and then Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. It was not until Assassin’s Creed III when the saga changed its historical setting to leave Italy and go to the Americas.

The third installment debuted a new engine, a different approach, much more open, and there was more work than in the previous ones (especially Revelations, we imagine that part of the team dedicated themselves to designing the new engine and left the rest to squeeze everything that was left to squeeze from Ezio Auditore, and incidentally from Altair). However, Assassin’s Creed III was for many the worst of the saga, and the saga was rapidly losing credit, despite having a large legion of followers who eagerly bought the next annual installment of the Assassins regardless of the result.

Luckily for Ubisoft, someone thought that the era of the pirates It would be a great setting and the naval battles would give the mechanics a very fresh and necessary twist. They were completely right, but The following year they did their thing again, an Assassin’s Creed Rogue to make money (and by the way Black Flag for the new generation, more box) and time to dedicate to the big premiere of the saga in the next-gen: Assassin’s Creed Unity.

There were many expectations in Unity because of how attractive the game looked in its screenshots and videos, because of the idea of ​​placing us in the middle of the French revolution and letting us climb Paris, the city of love and beauty. The launch of the game was a real disasterriddled with bugs, a ridiculous framerate… later patches partially fixed the mess but the damage to the brand was done and Ubisoft had to publicly apologize for the disaster.

Logic would have imposed a break of the saga until its next installment, a next Assassin’s Creed that would clean up everything Unity messed up, that would look better than ever and be more than fluid. Possibly someone with little logic or many Ferraris in the garage thought not because A year later they released Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, set this time in Victorian London, with some new but poorly worked ideas (the hook-shortcut and those horrible horse chases where the physics were amazing and the game looked more like a GTA than ever) and, again – and it seems unbelievable – an unstable framerate and more bugs.

But here it is 2016, and this year finally the lord of the Ferraris Ubisoft has decided that the assassins need a rest and will wait until 2017 to offer us a new Assassin’s Creed game. A break that the saga really needs if it wants to surprise us againif you finally want to change some playable formulas that, due to lack of time, have only undergone small, fruitless changes.

What will we gain from this break? Impossible to know, I trust in one full review of hand to hand fighting, which is always tweaked but doesn’t quite work. I also hope that it will help Ubisoft to achieve a stable graphics engine, it does not need better graphics but it does need to work with Artificial Intelligence. I hope that with that time you will come up with new missions, more playable variants, a good story and, why not, the return of Desmond Miles in style, but all this is nothing more than a wish list.

Maybe I’m being too optimistic, perhaps Ubisoft will take advantage of this 2016 to focus on the development of Watch Dogs 2 (another saga that needs work and dedication because it didn’t start well and another failed delivery would sink it), or perhaps it will take the opportunity to launch a remastering of a title in the saga on current consoles, and there are those who dream of playing again all Assassin’s at 60 frames and 1080p on your PlayStation 4.

Only time will tell if this necessary rest is also beneficial for us, the players. The gesture of giving up a new million-dollar annual collection to launch a product at the level of what they want for their great saga is worthy of admiration. It’s time for the murderer to rest, to rearm, gain momentum and come back stronger than ever. The competition is fierce and the warrior has to be rested.