Edward is Connors grandfather... Haytham is Edwards son... Altair, Ezio, Aveline and the Kenways are different branches in Desmonds family tree that acummulated in Desmond... There is an in-game e-mail which may be a teaser/easter-egg from Ubisoft Montreal about other branches/ancestors of Desmond based on his processed DNA: Spoilers obviously http://kotaku.com/assassins-creeds-wild-fake-email-in-joke-or-tease-fo-1456984380
It just seems to convoluted, though. It would be one thing if Edward was a direct descendent of Altair and Ezio. But as it is (at least where I am in the game so far), Edward has absolutely nothing to do with that lineage. He just happened upon an Assassin and stole his shit. It just seems far too coincidental that he would also turn out to be Desmond's relative, considering how few people in the world are actually Assassins. It's one thing for Desmond to come from a long line of Assassins. It's another for him to come from multiple lines of Assassins. It's yet another for one of those lines to begin as randomly as Edward's did.
Because story... Though it makes a bit of sense that Assasins and Templar families would intermarry to keep the skills and secrets confined to people "in the know"... Standard secret-society practice... And Desmonds was just the most recent of the family-line to have been discovered, there was Subject 16 who was a very distant cousin of Desmond and 15 others as well... Their family-line just reacted best to the genetic legacy from the First Civilization which bestowed them with the Eagle Vision amongst other things...
I am having way too much fun with this game. This is what AC 3 should have been like with regards to naval combat and a frontier area. There are actually things to do in the open world and the assassination contracts are much better. Optional objectives aren't frustrating anymore. It is great fun to run around the Caribbean with all the standard free running and combat abilities of the past game but this is a pirate game first and foremost. In fact it can feel like a ship boarding and harpooning simulator when you spend a lot of time at sea. I'm only on sequence 5 but so far Edward doesn't seem to care for either group and only wants to get rich by any means necessary. He'll help the assassins because they'll pay him to kill people and he'll go after the templars because he wants their resources. He's very greedy and pretty apathetic to the templar/assassin conflict. As a side note to some discussion above, Ubisoft has stated that the Kenways, the Auditores, and the Ibn La'Ahads are unrelated to each other but their blood lines converge in Desmond. That's why only he could activate the Grand Temple as he had the highest percentage of alien DNA in him of any human.
Got the Templar outfit... Meh, bit bland... My favourite right now is the Governor's outfit you get from finding the 1st social treasure...
It's not convoluted, it's just the way it works. Some day a descendant of Kenway had sex with an descendant of Ezio. We're talking about hundreds of years, several generations.
I will say that I am starting to have a lot more fun with this game. I just got done with my second visit to the real world, and I'm really intrigued by how this is going to connect to all the other games. I might be in the minority, but I really enjoy the real world storyline of the AC games, so I'm excited to see how they're all going to fit together. As for the Animus parts of the game, it took me a little while to get into it. I didn't know who Edward was or why I was supposed to care about him, and I still don't have much to go on, but at least his story is beginning to show signs of progress.
There were some things in AC3 regarding the gameplay mechanics that were left completely unexplained (or I just missed them), and I had to look online to understand it (if I didn't already knew it from the previous games). Stuff like that didn't happen in AC2, every gameplay element was introduced well in the story before you needed to use it. How about AC4?
In the beginning Edward does different kinds of take-downs in a training area... Can't remember if/how Eagle Vision got introduced to the player... But this isn't entry game if somebody never played an AC game before...
OK I almost threw my controller across the room... I'm on the mission where you have to infiltrate the Assassin island and slip by 50 goddamn guards without killing anyone. I must've played it 50 goddamn times before I got to the very end and died yet again. Ugh! I hate it when I'm forced to play stealth because I'm no good at it and I just want to rush through and kill people already!
Yeah, had to restart about a dozen times until i realized i had to do it un-armed and subdue the guards...
It's better about it than AC3, but there have still been some things I've come across first before ever having to do them in the story. Things like various Mayan ruins/puzzles. I'd already stumbled across and solved a few of them before the story explained what they were. That part took me FOREVER.
2 US only freebies... Enter the code 078000103465 in both boxes and get a pair of swords https://ac4blackflag-secure.ubi.com...=en-us&nexturl=http://www.assassinscreed.com/ http://www.assassinscreed.com/schick password is SCHICKHYDRO you get a figurehead
Because of that stupid assassin island I've just been tooling around the seas, finding new locations and killing ships to upgrade my ship. I'll have to get back to it eventually... I do like the fact that every time I destroy/capture a ship I'm actually earning XP that I can use to upgrade my ship. I don't like the fact that man-on-man combat doesn't earn you anything. I feel like I should be getting XP for killing all these people Why am I having an impossible time harpooning? Once I hit the animal once and its pulling the boat I can never hit it!
https://acinitiates.com works now too... Community challenges and unlocks... You need to be online with the console to use them...