Scrap Desmonds Story? Assassin's Creed

[distortedreality]

There's a continuing story there with or without Desmond.

There is......but it's incredibly weak, and without the Animus and Desmond, the link between the games is pretty tenuous. Sure, they could shoehorn something else in to connect the games in a way that makes more sense, but as it is, I think Desmond is kinda critical to the story aspect of the game. As I said before, I think Desmond is the glue that holds it all together.

I don't care for Desmond, but it's not like I don't understand your point of view.
However, even if it was a disconnected series like you said it would (which I don't agree with either, they could fairly easily tie the games together anyway, I'd say), would that really be such a bad thing? In my mind, no. I'd still play them, even if they only had mere hints and were simply about the protagonists in each game.

Yeah that's understandable. Personally though, if there wasn't something tying the games together and giving me a reason to be connected to the series as whole story wise, it would turn into a yearly CoD/FIFA kind of thing to me, and while the gameplay is fun, it's not fun enough for me to buy a yearly game with little improvements if there's no story reason to do so.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

I see no reason to it, honestly.
Yeah, the idea is pretty cool, but it's executed poorly.
I find some of the people desmond is with more memorable than him. Honestly, you'll be playing the game so long that when you get back to a desmond part you're shocked. "Where the hell is my Ezio?"

 

[Chester Rabbit]

I did care about Desmond?s story back when it looked like by 3 we would
actually be playing a game that fully revolved around him.
But then it turns out that he, that animus and contemporary plot were completely pointless.
So I stopped caring.

 

[Fenra]

I get sick of this.

Spoiler

Desmond is dead. D-E-A-D dead.

so was subject 16, that didnt stop him from turning up in the games

for me, i've always been mixed, in 1 it was ok as a framing device, in 2- revelations i got really intrigued and was eager for it in 3, in 3 the real world stuff was neat but all too short and seemed shoehorned in

Spoiler

power crystals? really?

All in all I enjoyed it but not as much as the past stories, if they keep that formula then give the real world stuff real meaning and place in the game not 2 or 3 5 min distractions, split the game more 50:50 between animus and modern day (and a more compelling "desmond" character wouldnt hurt)

 

[lunavixen]

AC3 has wrapped up Desmond's story, in the future games (and we know there will be some) someone else will be stepping into his shoes

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

What I honestly thought would happen would be that 'bleeding effect' from the first game would take over and Desmond would somehow destroy Abstergo whilst basically hallucinating that he was in the past as Altair. But clearly that's not going to happen, so f*** if I know how they're ever going to get the series into the present day, if they bother at all. Desmond's story might be a load of cutscenes until they run out of time periods. Because god knows they can't hide behind the archaic guns excuse all day, eventually they're going to have to address the advent of non-melee combat.

Basically what I know of Desmond is that he grew up in an isolated community of Assassins who basically didnt use any technology and warned Desmond of the outside world, but Desmond couldn't see the point so he went off anyway, worked in a bar a bit, then got kidnapped by Abstergo, got sprung by the new Assassins (who apparently aren't averse to using technology after all), found the Apple,

Spoiler

killed Lucy

and is in varying states of needing to be in the Animus for as long as the series goes on.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Desmond's story is basically; his family are assassins, and they start training him to be one too. He runs away in his - I think - teen years, and joins 'normal' society. The modern era templars capture him and put him into the animus because of his unique bloodline containing DNA from many many important assassins throughout history.

I personally think it adds a nice bit of diversity and helps the pacing of the game. It also gives us something else to think about seeing as we have to kind of fill in some of the gaps in Desmond's story. It doesn't feel tacked on, just not fleshed out very well (yet).

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

The animus and future-Desmond were shockingly bad ideas, even by Ubisoft standards. They should cut them out completely. Don't even explain why they're gone. Just cut them out unceremoniously. Then we can move on, and try to forget.

 

[Zhukov]

I would be happier if they scraped that particular dog turd off the boots of the series.

Sadly, they've kinda chained themselves to the bloody sod. Hence why they keep trying to make him work... and keep failing miserably.

 

[Soxafloppin]

Take the gameplay forumla, and change the settings with every game! Hardon!

You mean....like it already does?

cheap midquel cash grabs non-withstanding, every Assassin's Creed game has covered a different time period with a different protagonist with a different story.

Seems a little weird to kill the main character of a game so you can change time periods, in a game all about changing time periods.

What I mean is the Time periods only ever move forward, skipping loads of interesting eras along the way, and I don't want to kill Desmond (I'd actually like an AC in modern times and the main character should obviously be Desmond).

 

[Altorin]

eventually his story will end, and then who knows what will happen, but I don't think they should just remove it entirely. The whole series has been building up to Desmond being a super badass assassin in the modern age, and I can't wait for that to come to fruition. Perhaps it does in AC3, I don't know for sure.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

If they didn't wait until Revelations to actually give him a backstory, or ANY story, or character development, or context whatsoever then maybe I would have liked him.

Even then they had it as basically one long series of exposition that played in the back ground of the weird first person platforming levels. The ones that seem to exist solely to mask the fact that you are listening to about 30 minutes of backstory/test a potential Portal clone's engine.

I haven't played AC3, but I do know I would have preferred to play as ANY of the other people in that van. Lucy, British guy, or Geeky girl. Any of them were more interesting and likable than Desmond.

The whole first people story was interesting until they started getting control over people and talking to them through proxies. Makes Ezio's entire life seem pretty damn meaningless when all it amounts to is a means for dipshit to find Altair's apple. If he had just continued reliving Altair's story he would have gotten the info a lot quicker.

What happened to the other Apple? I'm pretty sure their were 2, or they forgot that Ezio had one and retconned it so that Altair still had it all along. Then the Templars had one or two they used on satellites.

Honestly I'm not playing AC3 as much for my not caring anymore about this plot, as because I just don't have any interest in the Revolution.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

I don't understand why anyone would want an Assassin's Creed in a modern setting. So far they've given us some very interesting and unique settings. There are plenty of games where you run around the roof tops of New York City. It makes no sense to want Assassin's Creed to ape the same tired bullshit.

I guess if you are somehow immune to the soul-obliterating stupidity of the entire animus/future Desmond thing, I can kind of see why you would want that to have a big resolution in Desmond's time. But still. Let's keep it in the past.

 

[illas]

I liked it.

I understand that this opinion makes me something of an outlier, but the contrast between the historical world and the sci-fi present set both off nicely.

Also, the conflict between the Assassins and Templars being essentially the same in both tied the two periods together well.

 

[Coffeejack]

I liked the idea of Desmond, but they fucked it up by not bothering to flesh him out, which is a shame. Instead he's just a plot device for setting up an alternative history storyline.

Absolutely. The segments in the past are more interesting than present-day stuff, but they could have at least done something to stop his story from stagnating. Present Desmond seems so dull compared to past/stabby Desmond. You go from fighting the enemies of the Assassin order to present Desmond trying to get to...I think it was actually just first base.

 

[Timberwolf0924]

-You can Explore the surrounding area or get back into the Animus-

*Gets back into Animus*

 

[Sunrider]

Yeah that's understandable. Personally though, if there wasn't something tying the games together and giving me a reason to be connected to the series as whole story wise, it would turn into a yearly CoD/FIFA kind of thing to me, and while the gameplay is fun, it's not fun enough for me to buy a yearly game with little improvements if there's no story reason to do so.

I'm a huge proponent of story > everything in most games (there are ofc exceptions, but that's irrelevant), so I agree with what you are saying. I do think there would still be a story worth exploring even without Desmond, and chances are, I'd prefer it.
There would be some things that would need changing of course, but I've always thought AC has potential wasted on Desmond, if that makes sense.