Do you miss Desmond? Well, know that Marc-Alexis Côté, the executive producer of the Assassin's Creed license, is also missing. During an event linked to the BAFTAs, the gentleman spoke about the end of this arc and the difficulty that the license encountered in offering a modern story rich in meaning and truly gripping since then. Completely abandoning this part of the adventure for a time, Ubisoft then tried to introduce a new character, Layla. But despite their best efforts, the teams failed to make Layla as important a character as Desmond. The fault is an overly repetitive narrative pattern and episodes more spaced out in time, making this sporadic arc more difficult to follow. “As this approach became more repetitive, players and critics felt that modern history had become a subsidiary concern.” admits Marc-Alexis Côté, “kind of like a side quest rather than an integral part of the overall experience.”
It is therefore difficult to find a narrative balance between these two stories, especially when the modern arc turns out to be more handicapping than anything else. Marc-Alexis Côté has indeed raised two problematic points. The first is the complexity and “charge cognitive” created by this double narrative which can quickly lose newcomers. Another problematic point: the risk of distracting the player from the initial goal of the franchise. According to Côté, “the continued focus on characters searching for Isu artifacts made the storyline more predictable and reduced the importance of the conflict between the Templars and Assassins to a simple pursuit of power over – let's be honest – magical relics. This change took us away from what was the heart of the license: exploring history.” It was therefore necessary to mourn once and for all the scheme which worked so well with Desmond Miles but which struggled to persist without him.
Once this is said, what should we do? Quite simply, modernize the formula to meet the needs of the license and the players. It is of course Assassin's Creed Shadows that will have the heavy task of establishing the foundations of this new approach. If the goal is to refocus the plot around the historical story, the more modern plots will be there to highlight it. “By drawing meaningful parallels between the past and the present, we want to restore the balance that has long been the hallmark of the license” explains the executive producer. Thus, the modern plot should focus on topics like the search for identity and the influence that the past can have on it. “These themes will allow us to address contemporary issues: freedom versus control, the power of knowledge and the conflict between individuality and conformity, all through the prism of History.”
It must be said that even before its release Shadows already clearly illustrates certain concerns of our modern society. The nauseating turmoil caused by the mere presence of Yasuke and Naoe is a sad example of this. A point to which Marc-Alexis Côté also returned, denouncing “lies, half-truths and personal attacks online” on impact “devastating”. As he recalls, “Assassin's Creed has always explored the full spectrum of history, and by its profound nature, that history is diverse.” But some obviously preferred when this diversity remained well hidden under the hood of the Assassins…
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