How are you counting? If you literally mean a game called Assassin's Creed X, well, I doubt it'll be that far away. If only because they forgot to call Unity Assassin's Creed V and Rogue Assassin's Creed VI, which implies the numbering is gone. If you mean the tenth "main" (console game released on disc) game, we're already at eight so ten isn't so far away.
The (formerly-)Desmond part of the franchise is so fucked up at this point, I'm actually glad they all but dropped it. It's like they're not even pretending to care anymore, which is in itself kinda refreshing.
Unfortunately, this is exactly the reason I'm losing interest in the franchise. The Desmond stuff is what drove the story. You weren't just reliving these past events to dick around; you were going back and living Ezio's life in order to solve mysteries that would hopefully help you stop the Templars in the present day. You were searching for ancient artifacts and trying to find them before the Templars could. There was a purpose to these journeys. Now it's just a video game. Literally, in the universe, it's just become a game that random people play. Talk about lowering the stakes.
It was also a race against time to discover the ancient technology needed to save the world from an eminent apocalypse. Nothing beats the mystery and grandeur of learning about the Precursors for the first time in AC2. The storyline of the three Ezio games (and the Desmond half of AC3) were absolutely irresistible.
I know! The end of AC2 was so crazy! I echo Desmond's statement: "What the fuck?!" I absolutely loved the Ezio trilogy. "Black Flag" was fun, but these games just don't have a point anymore.
There is a direction these post-Desmond games are going, they're just taking way too long to get there. The signposts along the way are so subtle and in the background they're near-invisible, and (again) there is no clear modern-day protagonist for the players to connect with. All we've got are supporting characters (Shaun/Rebecca/"Bishop the Enabler" on the Assassin side, Melanie Lemay/Juhani Otso Berg on the Templar side). If Ubisoft's idea with the whole Initiates nonsense was to say "YOU are the hero of Assassin's Creed from now on!", it failed miserably. One good way they could turn this around would be to have Melanie become a reverse Shay - a Templar who goes over to the Assassins - and recenter the series around her as she struggles to get up to speed fighting-wise and work to find Juno's "Others" around the world. Of the modern-day bad guys we've seen, she doesn't seem to be entirely soulless (just rather flighty and naive). Of course, her biggest disadvantage will be her lack of Precursor DNA/"Eagle Vision." But 21st century tech (with a page taken from Watch Dogs) can take care of that...
Should I know who Melanie is? Is she someone from Rogue? It's the only one I haven't played yet. And speaking of Shaun and Rebecca, was anybody seriously annoyed with how they were used in 'Black Flag?" I guess I was happy that they were in the game, but I expected more to happen with them. I finished all the side crap and collected all the stuff they wanted from me, and then there was no payoff!
She's the too-eager airhead executive who introduces you to Abstergo Entertainment Montreal (the second-in-command of that organization) in Black Flag and watches over you throughout. She then appears again in Rogue (this time as head of Abstergo Entertainment) and then again, via Assassin Intel, in Unity where you see both her rise in the Templar ranks and her dawning awareness of what's really going on and the kind of people she's really working for. Like I said, a bit dim at first, but she truly does care for her employees and is a bit taken aback when she realizes she's supposed to take 'termination' of below-par colleagues a bit more literally. Outside of Shaun Hastings, she's also the only recurring character in all the post-Desmond games so far.
Wow, hearing people talk about the story past Brotherhood never fails make it feel like my mind is melting and slowly dripping out of my ears and nostrils.
Stuck a GTX 980 in my 'puter today. Unity now runs at pretty much constant 60 FPS with everything maxed... except for antialiasing, which I keep at FXAA. With MSAA-4x or TXAA on it dips down to 35-40 at times, and runs like a dog with MSAA-8x. But FXAA is just dandy.
Assassin's Creed Chronicles - Announcement Trailer I was honestly expecting them to cancel this thing at the last minute. I didn't think we'd be getting one game, let alone three. Glad to see them following up on Shao Jun's story from AC: Embers. The other two Assassins you know if you've read the AC comics. Assuming this is successful (and if Ubisoft can't make this game engine work, they don't deserve to continue as a series or as a company), one wonders if this will be how Conner, Aveline, Shay and Arno's stories are concluded.
Looks weird. I feel like the whole series is getting overcrowded with characters. It's difficult to care about any of them anymore.