The points mentioned above extend beyond Legacy of the First Blade and reflect the issues that the Assassin’s Creed franchise has been suffering from in the last few years. Among these issues is the fact that the lore itself is treated more like a series of easter eggs and fan service than a cohesive and well-knit narrative which we got used to during the Desmond saga.

The recent games feature an immense potential for great stories and a tons of raw materials for the significant lore progress which hardcore fans of the franchise have been hoping and calling for in the past five years. Issues such as great, immersive and rich settings like Egypt which can be a wondrous playground to evolve the First Civilization narrative are wasted in favor of short cryptic records which none of the characters makes much sense of or even acknowledges, including the present day protagonist, “epic moments and revelations” are either not powerful or compelling enough to evoke the intended emotion or placed without any good build up to allow players to genuinely feel them, other issues include how the plot is written to serve one game without much effort to extend beyond it, that the following game comes in with a brand new narrative and few references here and there make the games feel quite disconnected from one another with each game feeling unfinished as the lingering plot lines are never tied and the progress per game is minimal that following the grand overarching narrative to be an excruciatingly slow and unrewarding experience.

The fact that the majority of people who play Assassin’s Creed do not seek the overarching narrative probably influences the decision-making process regarding the size and scope of the present day, but it isn’t a good justification to utilize the short amount of time and resources to tell a story that raises a lot more questions than answers, and not in a manner that feels positive or expansive, but rather in a way were hardcore fans are constantly questioning whether the story is being written to be an honest expansion and progression of already great existing narrative, or written on the fly with the presumption that fans will never question the glaring inaccuracies as well the expectation of suspension of disbelief a lot more than a rewarding storyline to those who invest a lot of time into it.

Among the decisions regarding the franchise’s direction that felt detrimental to the seriousness of the narrative as well as its impact:

1. Shifting a major plot line to transmedia. The story of Juno, a major villain introduced in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood whose story evolved over six games in ever-decreasing doses was culminated in a series of comic books “Uprising” which was a huge disappointment to a large number of community members who were simply interested in games as a format for storytelling. Comic books do not resonate as well as video games in terms of storytelling, especially in stories that begun in video games and grew in an episodic format that got players gasping at the cliffhanger of each game, waiting for the next to deliver a rewarding answer that never came.

2. Historical settings and time periods are apparently chosen based on their popularity rather than how much sense they make to the evolution of the plot, and with the decision to dedicate only one game per setting and refraining from fully utilizing the Animus or First Civilization objects such as the Memory Disks, a lot of time periods within the same setting are wasted as the game as focused on only one to insure that the game features the same protagonist evolving through a more RPG-driven system than a linear and a cohesive storyline.For example, Egypt is rich in various iconic periods that could’ve gotten their own trilogy to explore or even a set of DLC that was better utilized to explore them rather than an illusion of an Apple of Eden representing the mythical ancient Egyptian afterlife, which was visually stunning, yet ultimately did not contribute much to the narrative nor the rich setting, which leads us to the next point.

3. Dedicating only one game per protagonist stands in the way of expanding upon the character and their impact across time. For example, Bayek of Siwa was promoted as the founder of the Assassin brotherhood (known as The Hidden Ones) yet Assassin’s Creed Origins itself, as great as it ways as a game, it did not manage to deliver a true origin story nor given Bayek much time to focus on the foundation of the brotherhood, save for a short DLC and few post-credits cutscenes.

After Origins, the logical follow up would be to further emphasize on the role of Bayek in being the founder, yet what followed as Odyssey where the presence of the Creed is non-existent and Darius was more of an accessory to the story of the Eagle Bearer than explored as a character of his own who was introduced years ago as the iconic man who first utilized a Hidden Blade, and despite the ending of the first story arc which does make a link between Origins and Odyssey, the connection is more of a nod to the fans than any fruitful revelation that help expand the narrative, and knowing the recent decision-making process, it is doubtful that we’d ever see more of Aya or Elpidios or even Darius or the Eagle Bearer beyond the boundaries of Odyssey and its post-launch content.

4. With the recent shift towards RPG, the games contain a lot more quests than previous games, side characters are introduced with their own quest lines to follow and tens if not hundreds of errands an live events are introduced, all while the main storyline and the important plot points are given less and less screen time. The time and resources spent on creating a hundreds of side quests and post-launch free quests could be allocated to crafting more fulfilling present day and historical missions that contribute to the ties between games and the overarching narrative. Quality over quantity.

5. The present day is delivered in very small fragmented segments each game without any clear direction or plot conflict that is meant to be resolved and this issue stemmed from the fact that the role of the greatest threat to both factions, Juno was finished in a comic book, leaving the games on a game-by-game plot line that is rarely connected to the games before.

6. The stories for each game are written with the convenience to serve the gameplay rather than to stand on their own right. For example, it feels that when a game is pitched, it’s in the form of “we want an Egyptian game” and “we want a revamp” so Origins was decided to be the “origins” story and revamp to the franchise, and that origin story was placed in Egypt, which is a great choice, but it was set in 49 BCE even when Iltani as formerly referred to as an Assassin with her own Babylonian Assassin Insignia placed on herÂ state at the Villa Auditore, and the same applies for Darius, so why that time specifically? Because they wanted to show Cleopatra and Caesar.

However, the game did not do much to explore the origins of the brotherhood and was more of a story about the fall of an empire and the rise of another than a story exploring the birth of the brotherhood, a subject that should’ve taken at least a whole game to manage, rather than a short part of its ending.

In addition, placing the story at 49 BCE was detrimental to the lore as previous games have always stated that the two warring factions, the Assassins and the Templars have existed roughly since 75,000 BCE, and writing a story that promotes itself as the beginning of the brotherhood leaving fans to create conflicting theories about how to make sense of the Assassins that are referenced in previous games to have existed way before Bayek rendered the lore more convoluted than ever and reduced the seriousness of each story and its interconnectedness to other games to be paper thin and more of a context, and since fans by now understand that the next game will very well disregard everything that is established before it and the new team would write a new story based on their own vision for the franchise and maybe, just maybe they will leave a small easter-egg that references the other games, but not in any meaningful way that makes this revelation or twist feel as powerful as intended.

7. Lore elements are treated superficially without much depth like the Desmond saga where every little detail mattered. Barcodes and small well-hidden riddles reveal few familiar words such as “The Father of Understanding” or “Juno” yet they do not extend beyond that. A First Civilization transmission states “Nothing is real. Everything is permitted”, and a similar statement is made by Darius and Amorges “Nothing is absolute” the Eagle Bearer being able to see writings glowing on the wall that only he/she can see, which is a nod to the Eagle Vision yet what is missing is a follow up to make sense of these statements within the lore.

8. The games try to please everyone and be everything at the same time, and that is another detrimental factor to the franchise, as each brand has its own distinctive mark, the elements that served as the magnet for fans to stick to its narrative and style and grow with it expecting more with each title. For a brand to modernize itself and evolve with times is a must, however evolving beyond its own identity will eventually cause a rift between longtime admirers and newcomers, resulting from the conflict between the franchise being good at growing its own identity vs. becoming a new product marketed with a well-known name, in addition to the fact that trying to be two conflicting things at the same time ends up leading to disappointing both.

To attempt to become a series of standalone games as well as a franchise where games complete one another and progress a bigger plot line has led to the franchise not being able to set itself free of the overarching plot line and developing its own identity without being held back by any expectations to be satisfactory in the same manner the original games were, nor being a rewarding experience that fulfills the expectations of the original, evolving to be more modern but without losing its identity to whatever is popular. The expectations from a franchise like The Witcher is different from those from an Assassin’s Creed game, by morphing the style of one to become more like the other will lead to an understandable disappointment to those who were dedicated to the deeper aspect of either franchise, rather than the general casual gamer’s experience, which is why it’s essential for each brand to evolve within the constraints of its identity. Imagine baking a cake and trying to make it a more delightful or one with a different frosting vs. turning a cake into a piece of bread or a pizza using some common ingredients and expecting players to treat them both as the same product, when in reality, the latter is not even a dessert.

Whether it’s a good or a bad product is not the problem, the problem is the identity of the franchise, does it give the sensation that it’s an evolved version of the same franchise, or is it a whole new game with an amalgamation of iconic elements placed here and there without any real context or impact, just to give the illusion that it’s part of the same product?