Now that we’ve finished the Assassin’s Creed game starring Ezio, it’s time to start the next one in the franchise: The Assassin’s Creed game starring… Ezio?
That’s right. It’s time for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.
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It is difficult to discuss Brotherhood without first discussing the context in which it was developed. It was the time that the franchise was pushed to deliver a yearly release. (AC2 was in 2009 while Brotherhood was in 2010.) Additionally, it broke another precedent set by its predecessor by sticking with Ezio rather than moving onto a new protagonist. Though the final product is still excellent, there were clear pains resulting from this transition that are felt within the game itself.
We’ll get into those as they appear, but for now the transition is the important part. For the executive-class, it is important to see yearly growth and yearly profits, so I suspect this change was more a business decision than a creative one. And it worked, for a time, but it was one of the root causes of the fatigue many people experienced, myself included, with Assassin’s Creed.
It might not be where the change was most noticeable, but Brotherhood was the one that certainly ushered it in, and as a result it’s a far more pivotal game in the franchise canon than the strength of its story and gameplay improvements would imply.
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