User blog comment:ConnorKenwayRatonhnhaké:ton/How do you think Desmond's story will end?/@comment-4435191-20120726094136/@comment-4435191-20120726131633

My point was that Halo had a rich and diverse universe with franchise spaning potential and a deep background encompasing themes such as dogma, military complex and the nature of man as a whole and on an individual level. Meanwhile the games were more like what Michael Bay would do, with the exception of Halo 2 there is no character or inter personal development and the third game, promising to finish the fight, ended on a wet note that resolved almost nothing.

The logic I'm working on is self evident. Aassassin's Creed 1 had a nuanced philosophical story, the Templar (even Vidic) were people with motivations and personal attatchments to their goals, they had real reasons to do what they did and all had internal hopes an fears which they were driven by. Altair's alies were also realised characters, they all had their own oppinions on the Creed and on his methods. In lieu of trying to keep the game action orientated we had long sections of dialogue and character moments, Altair had an arc spanning a single game. Even Desmond was kind of likeable, in so far as he didn't know what was going on and Lucy seemed to be just as vulnerable as him.

On the flip side, you have AC2. It removed a lot of the character focus and changed the Reneisance Templar from being philosophy centric extremists to mustache twirling bad guys. It used gaming abstractions to justify real world events and moved away from the plausible nature of AC1 and into the realm of Carriage Chases and Carnivale mini-games (Remember how the only way to win CTF was to jump 5 stories into the pavement? Thats a gaming abstraction used as a mechanic) I'm not saying that AC2 or the subsequent games weren't enjoyable, on the contrary both design philosophies are valid, but that the designers moved away from the concise and introspective writing in the first game and into a more thriller/action story with unecissarily vast webs of intrigue, dramatic stunts and little to no character arc.

Don't get me wrong, I love the series and the franchise, and I enjoyed all the games on their own merrits (even Revelations) but to me the series stopped being about the plot a long time ago. The gameplay and settings will always be incredible, thats what this series does but as far as the over arching story is concerned it stopped trying to be something inteligent a long time ago. Detailed yes, maybe even complicated, but defenitely not inteligent in the same way the first game was.