User blog comment:Master Sima Yi/Assassinews 11-02-'16 – No Assassin's Creed game in 2016 confirmed by Ubisoft/@comment-18014300-20160307221335

I think I'm among the minority of people that never minded the annual releases. There are so many potential settings for this franchise, and so many exotic cultures and ethnicities (e.g. Mohawk) never represented in media that has a great chance to find that representation through this series. And I fear that if Ubisoft took too much time off between games, the series would not live up to its potential within 20 years. I disagree that it was being milked. I think that the series has expanded to the point where it simply couldn't be contained within a video games alone (but diverting over to comics and novels can be underwhelming).

I also attributed much of the dissatisfaction towards later games as merely higher expectations becoming more and more unrealistic. I know of players that played Revelations before Assassin's Creed II that thought that the former was the best game of the series while the latter was incredibly overrated.

Nevertheless, I have to admit that Unity fell way off the mark in terms of presentation. I liked its gameplay, but there were not enough cutscenes in the game, not enough depth. Up until Unity I wasn't entirely convinced that Assassin's Creed was really experiencing fatigue so much as fans just jumping on the bandwagon of crying "it's being milked." I don't dislike Unity; the only game in the series I think was a horrendous disaster was Rogue, but after that I have become convinced that Ubisoft has lost their sense of direction for the series. In terms of gameplay though, I don't think it ever degraded or they ever lost in touch with fans. There were many aspects of Unity that were obvious responses to player feedback. It is the story that has been lacking. They have been on what is essentially a filler arc since Desmond's death.

I have yet played Syndicate, and I do fear that it will take too many years for Assassin's Creed to live up to its fullest potential, but I am glad for this break in the end as a moment of reprieve for me to catch up, and for them to catch up with their story and philosophy.