Poll: Yay or Nay on Assassin Creed's Desmond.

[Jared Jeanquart]

Desmond has a purpose, yes. But, what I was kind of hoping for was that, since he's so bland, and spends so much time reliving the lives of his ancestors (and so much time as Ezio), then Ezio would begin to take over his personality. Then Ezio would live again.

But then, I totally figured that AS 1 would end with the bad guys being all "We have what we need. dispose of him" and a thug goes up to Desmond in the animus, and then desmond, like, kills him out of nowhere with his own pen, or something, then kills a few more thugs, assassin-style, all blank-faced and utterly calm. Everyone's panicking, more and more thugs pour into the room, he's cornered against a window, and he just nods, puts his hood up, and falls backwards through the window, and winds up in some bustling near-cyberpunk city, using the exact same poses and motions from in-game, and then, like, says something in arabic. Because now desmond is dead, and Altair lives again.

Of course, things like this have all SORT OF happened so far. But that would have been a good ending if AS1 had to stand alone.

 

[Calvar Draveir]

If you like Assassin's Creed and don't like Desmond, I pity you. When AC1 got tedious, I kept playing to learn more about Desmond's story. AC2's animus story was much more engaging, but I still loved every single bit that I learned about the Modern Day times of Assassin's Creed. From what I've seen about people complaining, they see Desmond as a glorified framing device. If you want to enjoy the modern portion of the story, cut that shit out. Stop looking at stories so technically. Sure, Desmond is a way to hop between different times, but if you look at ANY element of ANY story that cynically and coldly, you will hate it.

Treat it like part of the story. Dig through all the emails in all the games. Trigger all the conversations with lucy and shaun and rebecca. Trawl through all the glyph puzzles, and begin to see the depths of the centuries-old conspiracy, and the implications it has on all of history. Jesus, aided by a peice of eden taking the form of a travellers hood. Moses, wielding the Staff of Eden. George Bush, a Templar lackey. Hitler, faked his death only to be taken out by an enterprising assassin and have his apple stolen. Edison, conspiring with hitler and other templars the start the war in the first place.

The futuristic, sprawling conspiracy is the best part of AC's story. It can make up for even a lackluster Ezio story like Brotherhood, with the glyphs in that game which told the story of how the Templars engineered systems of control and how the people fought back over the years.

No-one's ever enjoyed a story they went through with one eyebrow raised.

Everything you say is true (in my opinion) and my complete lack of interest in Desmond as a personality doesn't stop me from finding all this stuff interesting. However, you fail to address the main complaint that people have about Desmond. Not the wider universe that he opens up for you, but as I said, he as a character is just dull. Unrelentingly, unbelievably dull on every single conceivable level. He even transcends what I thought possible in dull characters, in that, the more the writers try to give him a personality and a background, the duller he becomes. He's like a black hole. He pulls everything together, but get to close and he'll suck all the fun out and crush it out of existence (that's actually a pretty fucking good analogy to come up with off the top of my head when it's this late even if I do say so myself).

Bear in mind, this is coming from someone who absolutely loves Assassin's Creed as a whole. If anything, his dullness is exacerbated by how likable Ezio and friends were.

I suppose you're right, I did get away from my original point of defending Desmond and more onto the future conspiracy stuff. I can see why some people don't like Desmond, but I don't see him as dull. He hides behind detechedness and humor. He's an observer, he gathers information and keeps what he thinks of it to himself, for the most part. I identify with him in a lot of ways. People who are more up-front about what they're thinking may not see him the way I do. But assassins don't need to be ridiculously expressive characters. In fact the definition of the occupation would call for a lot of people unlike Ezio in demeanor. I find his composure and sarcasticness endearing, and I enjoyed the deeper look into his backstory we got in Revelations. I really don't think he's a flat character at all. He goes through a definite character arc in the games so far: confused and reluctant to help, learning more and gaining confidence, and eventually getting into the swing of hunting for PoEs and heeding the warnings of TWCB.

I'm sure AC3 will give him space to stretch his legs and show us more of what he's capable of. not to mention potential modern assassin gadgets!

 

[gideonkain]

When it comes to Assassin Creed, if there was one aspect I would GLADLY like to see let go in the new sequel, it would be anything and everything to do with future Desmond and his setting. I hate Desmond. I hate the whole gene-memory technology crap. And I hate all the Da-Vinci Code Illuminati are bad and behind it all conspiracy theory crap that follows.

Now of course this is just my opinion, but I really don't think I'm alone on this in the slightest. For me Desmond is like the aliens in the last Indiana Jones movie, it ruins the entire setting and theme in the franchise, it straight up ruins it. And I hope I won't have to play that idiot in the next game and all the scene with him in it can be skip-able cutscenes.

So who else feels the same way?

There are aliens in the newest Indiana Jones movie?! I never watched it cause I thought "Is a sequel made 20 years after the original going to be any good? Of course not! Duh."

Even knowing that, I still watched Star Wars 1-3...

 

[Bat Vader]

I like Desmond. I think that Assassins Creed 4 should introduce a new main character and have Desmond take on a support character role.

 

[DanteLives]

I only like Desmond because he can narrate like a top class narrator.

 

[Anti Nudist Cupcake]

When it comes to Assassin Creed, if there was one aspect I would GLADLY like to see let go in the new sequel, it would be anything and everything to do with future Desmond and his setting. I hate Desmond. I hate the whole gene-memory technology crap. And I hate all the Da-Vinci Code Illuminati are bad and behind it all conspiracy theory crap that follows.

Now of course this is just my opinion, but I really don't think I'm alone on this in the slightest. For me Desmond is like the aliens in the last Indiana Jones movie, it ruins the entire setting and theme in the franchise, it straight up ruins it. And I hope I won't have to play that idiot in the next game and all the scene with him in it can be skip-able cutscenes.

So who else feels the same way?

I don't because I had no expectations when I started Assassin's creed. This allowed the game to show me what it was about without the possibility of conflicting with my expectations (such as expecting just another Prince of Persia-style game with assassins) and I liked it. I like the Abstergo conspiracy and all the effort they put into writing it. Desmond as a character isn't interesting to me but I don't play the future sections for Desmond, I play it for the conspiracy thing and being trapped in a lab and trying to escape thing. I missed the mystery-solving trying-to-find-a-way-to-escape bits in the sequels.

You know what the aliens to Indiana Jones is to me in Assassin's creed? How about the ACTUAL FUCKING ALIENS IN ASSASSINS CREED. THAT ruined the story for me.

Other than that I have always been interested in the story about the ASSASSINS, about their fight with the Templars, about Altair, the Animus, Abstergo and all the other things established in the first game. Assassin's creed 2, although a better game, focused more on the story of renaissance Italy which I didn't care about. Assassin's creed revelations was just terrible to me because it wasn't ASSASSIN'S creed anymore, it was more ADVENTURER'S creed to me and I lost interest before finishing the game.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

What pisses me off is that he is such a bland and uninteresting character, like a plot device to allow us to play as different assassins. I can only suppose that the developers thought they'd have plenty of sequels in between before Desmond had to carry his own game. Then, with AC:R, someone on the team realised "S***! Better get some characterisation happening or no-one'll care what happens to him", and we got a bit of history and...platforming.

My only hope is that the 'bleeding effect' hinted at in previous games will take over completely and we will never really have to play as this terribly underdeveloped unmotivated character. Virtually every modern assassin in the game is a better character than he is.

For the record though, I don't like where this whole ancient civilisation artifact thing is going. I prefer the grounded faction battle with Abstergo.

 

[Nomanslander]

Hmmm...about %40 agree.

Nice to know I wasn't alone on this.^^

 

[RastaBadger]

I don't mind the conspiracy theory stuff but I just don't like Desmond that much. I think it would be cool if you were actually playing as someone in the far future who is in another animus reliving Desmond in his animus. Then they can switch to him do some Victorian Britain settings, Feudal Japan settings and some futurey stuff possibly set after the knights templar take over the world and the assassins are the resistance or something.

 

[Random Argument Man]

They didn't take a real chance to really flesh him out. I mean Revelation tried... It really tried, but they really failed at the "Show, don't tell". His story is about to finish so I wouldn't make a fuss.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

I personally don't find Desmond to be all that interesting, though I have enjoyed parts of the games where you actually get to play as modern-day Desmond (like the Colosseum run at the end of Brotherhood).

For those that would like to see him go though, I'm wondering what they think the alternative is? The whole series doesn't really work without him, or someone just like him...

I don't think he was ment to be interesting, I think it was his blood line that was. You pick a normal guy off the street, put him in a machine that let's him relive the life of his cool ancestors.
Makes for a pretty interesting story arc.
That, or they just put all of their mental copacity in Ezio.

 

[Nomanslander]

I don't mind the conspiracy theory stuff but I just don't like Desmond that much.

As much as I don't like Desmond, I think what I really don't like is what he represents.

Honestly, I wouldn't be too against the idea of an assassin creed game set in the present. But not with all that wide-eyed technology and ancient conspiracy crap I see in the series.

I believe that "brevity is the soul to wit," meaning keep it straight, keep it simple, but keep it good, and it'll be clever.

Okay? Assassin's Creed:

-assassin's set in the past--awesome idea.
-conspiracy theories--okay, still sounds alright but I kinda got tired of that in the 90s.
-ancient organisations bend on taken/destroying the world--that...kinda sounds dumb!
-gene memory decoding technology--okay, now you sound like you're mixing genres...no like!
-Desmond in the present is the center of it all--okay I'm done, you lost my interest.
-Desmond needs to learn ancesterial memories to save today's world.--I'm not listening!
-Desmond is a BLAND character but we'll force you to like him--okay, fuck AC!

That's pretty much what happened to me the first time I picked up AC.

 

[Leo Goldschmidt]

Desmond completely derails the story by taking you completely out of it and putting you into a terrible one. this completely interrupts the flow of the game, and i would prefer it at least just be at the beginning and ending of the game.

 

[Maxtro]

If the Animus part of the plot is going to continue, they need to find a new person to be the diver.

Personally, I'm hoping for somebody Japanese, for obvious reasons...

 

[TheSteeleStrap]

He serves as a good framing device for the better characters.

 

[Supertegwyn]

If the Animus part of the plot is going to continue, they need to find a new person to be the diver.

Personally, I'm hoping for somebody Japanese, for obvious reasons...

Obvious reasons?

I like Desmond and his character arc.

Also:

 

[Maxtro]

If the Animus part of the plot is going to continue, they need to find a new person to be the diver.

Personally, I'm hoping for somebody Japanese, for obvious reasons...

Obvious reasons?

If the guy in the animus is Japanese, most likely his ancestor would be Japanese. And of course the setting would be Japan.

Now I vaguely remember the Japanese having an order of assassins in the past. I can't quite remember what they were called....

Frankly, I'm disappointed that the setting of 3 was America. Feudal Japan would have been so much better.

The timeline also skips a big chunk of time. Ezio story ends 1524 and #3 doesn't start until the late 1700's.

During that gap, mid to late 1500's, Japan was having major conflict with Christian missionaries, who could easily be written into the story as Templars. Samurai were still around as well.

 

[Tdoodle]

I hate Desmond. I hate the whole gene-memory technology crap. And I hate all the Da-Vinci Code Illuminati are bad and behind it all conspiracy theory crap that follows.

Desmond was kind of required for the last three games, because he was a common link between the main protagonists. I don't particularly like him, or his "chosen one" role, and when we're asked to play as him it's usually a fairly dull sight-seeing tour (so far, I'm only on sequence 6 of the newest one), but I'll accept it because it brings the stories together and makes the idea of an ancient order of Assassins seem a little more coherent - otherwise it would just be an assortment of random hooded busybodies with a penchant for murder and occasionally mumbling something in another language.

Same for the genetic memory and Templars, they're pretty ridiculous but it needs them. The genetic memory thing means we can hop back to wherever we fancy in time which means the setting can completely change every couple of years, which keeps the series fresh even after 5 games (3 of Ezio was too many, though), and without the Templars the various Assassins don't have a common enemy. If you get rid of both you haven't got a series.