I fucking hate the ending.

Why they felt the need to push Desmond under a bridge like that for the big finale I'll never know. It felt like it was ripped right out of the ending of Mass Effect 3 for me. The whole First Civ business never really took off for me. The main structure of the present story felt better for me when it was modern Templars against the weakened Assassins's Order.

Of course this opens things up for a combined force in the next game to go up against Juno who wants to take over the world because shits and giggles?

It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Ubisoft basically said flat out that they were done with Desmond and that they know he's not popular with fans so I saw it coming. Hell of a weak ending though and yeah, my thoughts exactly on it being a clone of the ME3 dilemma minus having an actual choice. It felt rushed, his dad didnt try very hard and shaun and rebecca said nothing.

The whole first civilization thing is weak. I get that they had to explain the eagle vision and magic dna somehow but it was ridiculous seeing juno and minerva bicker like bratty kids.

If the assassins and templars team up I will probably rage because its as predictable as it is stupid.

Sadly no I have not been able to get around to renting or playing it yet. I only got about halfway through brotherhood as well. >_> You think I should play revelations before this one?

Tho this is following the trend of people liking but not loving the game from what I keep hearing.

Yes, definitely finish Brotherhood and Revelations before this. There's a lot of important shit you'll miss with Desmond, Ezio and even Altair if you skip em (and honestly I find those two games superior to this one overall).

Thanks for the heads up. I may grab one or two used and beat em then return em to go towards GW 2...since I got a little addicted after I got an invite to the trial weekend. >_>

Yea personally I would have preffered to play as Haytham the whole game, he was just so much cooler and I gotta say funnier. Connor was a pretty boring cut and paste character. And also I thought Desmond was cool, I enjoyed the out-of-animus missions and would have loved to see a whole game of being an assassin in the modern world.

*hi5* I totally loved Haytham's sarcasm and snark! It would've been very interesting to play an entire game as a Templar as well, but I can see why it probably wouldn't have worked from the perspective of the game's narrative.

Some more modern day stuff for the next game would be cool, or reliving an assassin in victorian england!

Oh man I would love to play a whole game as a Templar. I liked them already but this last game has actually made them look like less of a horrible villainous organization. You realize that they're pretty much just like the assassins just with different ideals. Me and my gf are actually doing a cosplay where she's an assassin and I'm a Templar.

I didn't sympathize with the Templars much before this because they were such awful pantomime villains, Vidic and that pope guy especially. It was really clever getting to play as/with the bad guys at the start and fleshing them out that way. And they (Haytham et al) had valid points! It really blurred the edges.

That is such a cool idea, I'd love to see your cosplay pictures :)

I am playing through it too, just got to sequence 05. I stopped reading after you warned of spoilers though.

I do find it immensely amusing that John DeLancie is the voice of Desmond's father; completely opposite of his greater known roles of Discord and of course Q; 'what if Picard managed to get that stick out of his ass and shove it up Qs' kinda thing lol.

Oh I knew I recognized that guy from somewhere! That's actually hilarious lol. Totally different from his usual character.

How'd ya like the twist with Haytham?

My jaw actually dropped when that came about. But it kinda doesn't make sense, as it doesnt really explain how connor's mother learned that.

According to the book Ziio ended things with him when she overheard a conversation between Haytham and Charles Lee.

Well, I beat it. I personally liked Desmond, minus the fact he looked way too much like Adam Sandler. I could've gotten behind everything else on Desmond though.

Anyway now it seems that the villain is going to be *SPOILER* Juno and not the Templars so much.

I'm having such a difficult time finishing this game! I put it down, like... a week and a half ago and still haven't picked it back up. I like Connor, but I find myself really missing Ezio, which is interesting since I never thought of myself as a big fan of his. He was just a lot easier to understand and I found his story somehow more compelling?? They have equal amounts of sad backstory and all, so I'm not sure what it is. Part of it is probably that I'm... honestly... just really, really, really uninterested in american history, lol.

And I finally started really liking Desmond in this game :c

I was never the biggest Ezio fangirl myself but there is some sort of... idk, charisma or something he has that Connor is lacking? Part of it might be that the VA sounds so calm like he's stoned all the time. It's nice that he has a noble spirit and such, but it makes him not so much a compelling character to play/watch. A little more personality or spark would've been nice yknow? I'm not interested in american history either lol.

The game is well worth finishing though, even if you hold off until after the thanksgiving patch, they're doing a fix of a LOT of bugs and other frustrating things including a chase at the end which made me want to punch kittens. How far did you get btw? And ditto on not being very into Desmond until this one. I don't know why I started liking him so much, his levels in this one were pretty fun though.

Can I ask how far you got?

yeah, actually playing as desmond and feeling like I was getting shit done (that first mission with him in the crazy high-rise tower was AWESOME) seriously helped me along with liking him, hahahah. It's good to hear they're fixing a bunch, I've gotten more than one game-breaking glitch, including a horrible sound glitch where I picked up a barrel of tnt and suddenly the screen went white and started screaming at me :c

goshhh what was the last thing I did..... uh.... I got to New York and started doing stuff there with Haytham, got through the whole burning building part... that's the last thing I remember, story-wise.

I stopped caring about the 'modern' world in Assassin's Creed after I read on the AC wiki that:

Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and FDR were all Templars and the Second World War was part of a plot to take over the world. (Conveniently forgetting the Pacific and CBI theaters of war.)

Lenin and Gorbachev were backed by the Assassins.

In the 2000 US Presidential elections, Bush was backed by the Templars and Gore by the Assassins.

It can be fun and interesting to make historic figures part of secret societies (who doesn't like the idea of da Vinci as Q to Ezio's 007, Machiavelli as an ally of Bond/Ezio, and the Borgias as the Bondesque villains?) that largely play into the facts of historical persons (da Vinci was a genius, Machiavelli was f___in' awesome, and the Borgias were evil).

But I find it incredible to believe that FDR and Churchill could have been caught up in Stalin- and Hitler's evils. And while I am no fan of Bush, I would hope the Assassins could have done better than Gore.

I could see this all making some modicum of inverted sense, if they put Lincoln up as a Templar and Booth as an Assassin... instead of making Booth a Templar who then gets killed by Assassins.

I didn't get very far with AC2, but I think that what I liked about it vice AC3 was that it felt like the people designing the game were trying to have fun. In trying to be as even-handed as possible about the American Revolution, compounded by the addition of central plot elements concerning the displacement and ethnic cleansing of native peoples in America, I fear they dried up a lot of that fun. (Fun that we got a brief glance at through Haytham.)