User blog:Master Sima Yi/A desire for more transmedia

Hello all. I'd like to address something that I have been thinking about for a while now. Every year, we get a new game with an all new story, an accompanying novel retelling the very same story, one new comic book originally released in French and released a year later in English, and about yearly another comic book made by Karl Kerschl and Cameron Stewart.

I very much look forward to playing a new game and experiencing a new world within this amazing universe. I also enjoy the announcement of a new comic book featuring an all new story. But waiting a year for half an hour's worth of reading said comic, is too much for my liking. And reading the novelizations just to gather a few extra plot points when I already know the core story is not really worth it for me either.

Assassin's Creed is still, first and foremost, a video game series. Ubisoft has been expanding its lore via the aforementioned comic books and novels, but more notably via the internet. We got a lot of new lore from the Facebook app Assassin's Creed: Project Legacy, with a lot of mystery attached to these new storylines. After that we got a few short stories via a promotional app for Assassin's Creed: Revelations titled Discover Your Legacy. And I think we've all heard of Assassin's Creed: Initiates by now, which entered Open Alpha a few days ago. Project Legacy gave us some clear storylines, Discover Your Legacy teased us with its story and Initiates gives us a lot of short stories based on real history and a lot of clarification and information on the story established in the games, novels and comics. But I'm also not satisfied with that.

Taking a quick look at other video game franchises like Halo, Mass Effect and Dragon Age, to list a few examples, will easily show you the multiple original novels that these series have. Novels with stories that are connected to the games, but not based on it. Mass Effect also has a lot of unique comic books and comic book series, and currently has a 13-issue monthly comic book series titled Mass Effect: Foundation running. I wonder why this can't be the case for Assassin's Creed. I'm sure that there aren't many fans that would not like to see the series expanded upon during the wait between the games, rather than getting a video game, a novel and two comic books within October-November.

Admittedly Assassin's Creed is more limited compared to those other series in that it has to base itself on actual history, and it'll want to save up its time periods for the games. But not every new medium has to explore a new time period, in my opinion. There's a lot of unexplained plot that I'd like to see transition to a novel or a comic book series. I'll list a few examples.


 * Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad's exploits in Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.
 * What did Ezio Auditore da Firenze do between 1488 and 1491, between 1492 and 1494 and between 1494 and 1497?
 * What did Shao Jun do in her later life?
 * How did Altaïr's Apple go from the library in Masyaf to the hands of Queen Elizabeth I?
 * What was the Assassins' and Templars' involvement in the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony?
 * The lives of any of the Sanctuary Assassins.

And many more. I really enjoy reading comic books so I may be a bit too biased, but I'd like to know what other people think of this. Maybe if there's enough people here sharing my opinion, we can start a petition. Because GAMER ENTITLEMENT rules.