Assassin's Creed has always been a great game series. Even though the first game was much worse than any other one in the series, it still introduced the basic idea of in-game Parkour (my apologies to Prince of Persia). It was an entirely revolutionary game at the time, and spawned huge amounts of fans and eager gamers wanting more. The second game was perfect as well. The game fixed about every single bug and/or glitch found in the first game and introduced an entirely new Assassin to the series, Ezio. Ezio has had 3 games made for him now, and he holds a place in many gamer's hearts as the best Assassin to live. Ever single game since that has gotten progressively better, and with newer games comes better graphics and more fluid gameplay, but Assassin's Creed has never really been about that. Assassin's creed is simply a great storyline coupled with an excellent exploration element and beautiful cities that you can explore. Even with Assassin's Creed 3, the graphics have only gotten better and now even more parkour elements have been implemented, such as climbing trees (which may sound pathetic, but is a great experience). Assassin's Creed is a great series of games, and no other 3rd person parkour game barely reaches the high bar that the Assassin's Creed series has set for that genre of video games.
Recently, rumors of a newer game named Assassin's Creed Black Flag have been circulating. This is good, since everyone loves Assassin's Creed and it will probably be a huge hit right? Well, AC3 was only released last year, does that mean Ubisoft is hopping onto the one release/year bandwagon and rely on returning fans/customers for revenue? Are the games still going to be better than the last or will it change? Take Treyarch and their Call of Duty franchise for example. At first, it was a revolutionary game introducing cutting edge graphics quality coupled with great gameplay, but now that there are yearly releases, it has become a lot less interesting. Every Call of Duty game since MW2 has seemed like a cheap re-skin or just a remake of the older one, but with different characters and/or levels. Also, the in-game engine has even remained the same throughout several games, with not a significant increase in graphics quality or gameplay experience. In truth, after playing just a few Call of Duty games, it seems like everything is just the same, but slightly different. Yet Call of Duty is a billion dollar franchise. Why? Because of their returning customers and their huge fan base. Even their expansion packs/map packs are cheap. Treyarch retextures a few guns and makes a very good looking cube and calls it a map, then publishes it as a $20 pack. I would not pay for that, but loyal fans will.
I may have strayed on a very wild tangent there, but the point is, if the Assassin's Creed franchise hops onto the "yearly release" bandwagon, they better nail every single game, or risk losing an extremely loyal fan base, a great reputation for providing the best games, and huge amounts of potential revenue.
Plus, I hate ship combat, and that is what Black Flag will centralize around...
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