The Assassin's Creed franchise has been running strong with its massive series of games exploring different points in history. One thing that ties the whole main series together is the inclusion of the modern day plot.
There are teams of modern day characters who are exploring the rest of the story through either an ancestor or some found DNA using the Animus, a clever way to explain the menus and some game functions that are generally overlooked in lore. However, as the series progresses, more and more gamers are finding themselves angered by the existence of the modern day plot.
10 Takes Away From The Story Being Played Out
Snapping between modernity and a historical plot is a massive whiplash as far as the story is concerned. One second the player is fighting a ton of enemies, feeling success in their actions, and then it snaps over to a much more calm modern plot.
After hours of investment to leveling, picking out the perfect skills, and planning the next move, for the game to suddenly take a drastic turn is jarring. It wouldn't be quite as bad if there was the ability to improve both sides, but there isn't.
9 Shows Up At The Most Awkward Points
Walk into a big cave and expect to finally get some answers, and then the game decides to do a commercial break and snap back to the modern day. Nobody likes commercial breaks while watching their show, who thought it was a good idea to essentially add them into a video game?
They almost always seem to pick the strangest areas to appear instead of when both plots are in the same general mood.
8 There Is No Point To It Beyond The Start Of The Games
It's a clever way to explain the point of this title and tie all of them together. It's a clever way to give a lore reason for everything that's seen on screen. It's also a clever way to add in information that the player may be lacking, such as some sort of historical context.
However, making it a required portion of the game is awkward and clunky. There are plenty of optional parts of the games, including entire portions where the player can walk around and talk to historical figures for context. So the forcing it on a computer in the middle of the game is just pointless.
7 The Choices Make No Difference
Since it isn't actually part of the Animus, whatever is done during it doesn't matter. The modern part of the plotline is very little than a slightly interactive cinematic, where no matter what is chosen, it is going to keep doing whatever it wants.
The choices that matter are all within the Animus, where the player can customize their character, make choices, and actually progress a story. Outside of it? Not really.
6 Just A Waste Of Time
The plot could be progressing. The protagonists could be getting the answers they are looking for. Instead, the players are snapped back to people they have little interest in so that they can get answers that the player had no involvement in.
For the most part, the scenes get skipped rapid fire while players try desperately to get back to what they were doing. Even grinding for experience is less of a waste than everything that happens outside of the Animus.
5 Not Enough Time To Become Invested In The Characters
Spend dozens or even hundreds of hours on a game, and players are bound to get invested in who they are playing and what they are doing. The modern characters show up for five seconds and are gone again, then by the time they show up again, players have probably forgotten what was going on.
The only time that anyone knows about the modern characters enough to have any sort of attachment are when they appear in multiple games, like Layla Hassan. Even then she is hard to care about.
4 It Is Literally Too Dark
Sure the game is called Assassin's Creed, but the games are so vibrant and full of life. The modern parts are literally so dark it's jarring. The lighting is so drastically different in a desperate attempt to give a visual cue to separate the two parts that the depressing modern plot almost demands the settings to be increased just to see them at points.
Then they try so hard to make the lighting look like modern artificial lighting compared to more natural lighting of history, that it gets close to being painful at the sudden shifts.
3 Trying Too Hard To Be Cinematic
Honestly if the developers insist on still including the modern plot what they should do is make them optional to watch cinematics instead. That's essentially all they are as is, but now the player has to occasionally press a button to get them to progress.
They have little action that the player can actually control, and if they do it's just to opaquely force the player to interact with something that it could have just shown.
2 More Of An Infodump Than Anything
They are generally there just to add historical context or to explain something like a slap to the face instead of being better integrated into the story. Assassin's Creed Odyssey does great with the optional setting that is more historically accurate, with figures that the player can walk around and interact with.
That's all the modern plot needs to do, or giving the opportunity to unlock these scenes to watch at the players own leisure instead of shoving them down the throats of their captive audience.
1 Barely Connects The Story
For something trying so hard to use the modern plot to link the games together, they hardly connect to one another and tend to feel more standalone than anything. Once in awhile there are reoccurring characters, but the motivations are so shaky that no matter what happens they feel like separate people.
The best that it does is to introduce the Animus and explain that the happenings from within it are being observed by an outside force. They could leave that there and the games wouldn't suffer at all.
0 Comments