168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed Hexe, one of several Ubisoft games in development for the planned Assassin’s Creed Infinity service, is reportedly going to be “168澳洲幸运5开奖网:more linear” than previous entries in the series.

Those two words immediately got my attention because (outside of spin-offs like Chronicles) Assassin’s Creed has always been open-world. Saying that an Assassin’s Creed game will be “more linear” is a little like saying it won’t take place in a distinct historical setting. It means letting go of a key part of Assassin's Creed.

Assassin's Creed's History Of Evolution

How much can something change before it loses its identity? This isn't the first time Assassin's Creed has pivoted in a new direction and, if history is any indicator, it won't be the last. More than most long-running video game properties, Assassin's Creed has pushed against the aspects that most define it.

This has been going on for almost as long as the series has been around. Between the first Assassin’s Creed and its immediate sequel, the franchise changed significantly. The first game was intently focused on the assassinations, and Alta♓ir’s quest was structured around taking out nine important targets. Each kill💦 felt significant, because completing one meant you were inching ever closer to finishing the game.

Assassin’s Creed 2, though, is a much more traditional open-world🐈 game. Though Ezio is still completing assassinations, those hits are broken up by all the bells and whistles you expect in a modern sandbox game. You have a base to decorate, rooftop races to win, wanted posters to tear down, hidden treasure to hunt, and towers to activate. It was a major pivot in a more commercial direction and, if the original game was your first experience with the series, ൲you could reasonably feel that AC only really stayed true to itself for that first game.

Assassin's Creed's RPG Trilogy Steps Away From The Series' Origins

In 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed Origins, the series changed again, deemphasizing urban stealth in favor of RPG-inflected action in a sprawling open world. Odyssey and Valhalla carried that torch for♛ward for two games (and hundreds of hours of DLC). I played a ton of Valhalla, and while I had a great time,🌳 I did very little sneaking. Eivor was much more often charging into battle hoisting a broadsword than skulking in the shadows. If you’re an AC purist, that RPG trilogy was a major change that may have lost the series’ spirit.

Other changes have shaken the series' approach to how it presents its historical narrative. Spoiler alert for 12-year-old game 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin's Creed 3, but Desmond Miles, the protagonist behind the protagonists, died at the end of that American Revolution-set outing, effectively making the series' first five games one long story.

Since then, Ubisoft has thrown a variety of ideas at the wall, attempting to find a new angle on the Animus. In Unity, for example, the player character was a faceless Abstergo employee, working on a video game that 🍷allowed players to tap into their genetic memory like a home version of the Animus. Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla found a substitute for Desmond in Layla Hassan, an Abstergo researcher who goes rogue when the shadowy company attempts to kill her, joining up with Desmond’s crew from the earlier games.

But, Layla didn't last either, shunted to the side for Mirage, which was the first mainline game not to include the Animus at all. Though that game was pitched as a ꧟return to the vibe and scale o﷽f the original game, cutting the Animus could (pretty reasonably) be considered a betrayal of the original’s ethos.

Change is the only constant in life, and Assassin's Creed fans may be more aware of that than most. As someone who played the first game around the time it came out, and has popped back into the series on-and-off over the next 17 years, I'm open to whatever the developers want to try. If that means a "more linear" game, I'll hear them out. If the series had never changed, we wouldn't have gotten Assassin's Creed 2 or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Black Flag or Valhalla or any of the other games that a subset of fans will name as their favorite. It's better for a series to grow — even if it risks losing its identity — than to stay the same so long it stops being interesting.