Now time for Assassin's Creed III. I have to first make a disclaimer that I started this game in 2018 so my memories of the earlier parts are a little hazier. This probably is down with the first game as one of the worst in the series. Let me start by saying the franchise isn't the best: The characters aren't very interesting and the plot is dumb, but I love climbing all over historical urban environments. I haven't played Assassin's Creed II since the early 2010s, but to this day I can remember with startling clarity parkouring Ezio up the cathedral in Florence.

Assassin's Creed III doesn't really have that. Boston and New York in the 1700s haven't created the architecture that's jaw-dropping enough to draw interest; hell, a good portion of New York is fucking burned down. So the vast majority of the game is wilderness. And herein lies the studio's problem with game design since day one: They create massive environments, but there isn't a lot of stuff in them. What they do is construct famous landmarks with fine detail, but the everyday buildings people live in look exactly the same and there isn't enough visual difference for me to navigate or even care about what I'm looking at. Let me compare to Arkham Knight. Yes, storefronts were replicated, but in my head I can still remember the lighthouse by the movie studio, the intersection for Gotham's version of Time Square, how the train tracks moves through that Eiffel Tower thing, the Halloween balloon floats by the GCPD, the shops underground below the skyscrapers, and the dock area on the southern part of Founder's Island. If I'm asked to even remotely lay out a city map for Boston or New York, I've literally got nothing. Ubisoft just made bunch of skins for buildings and plastered it everywhere.

This is massively worse in the "frontier" because if you've seen one tree or log, you've seen them all here. Oh, I can recall the coastline to the west and east, where the fortresses are, Lexington, Monmouth, etc. But it's not fun to run through. Let's take another game, Breath of the Wild. Most of that game was climbing up the side of mountains or fighting in forests or swimming up a waterfall. I haven't played that game in a long time, but I still can vividly recollect shrines, ponds, cottages, stabbing enemies on scaffolding over a ravine, finding a tower surrounded by tar, the beautiful rocks around Zora's Domain, stumbling upon dragon skeletons... Exploration was the reward in that game. It's just not in Assassin's Creed III. Yeah, there are the feathers or treasure boxes, but I just indifference. As I said, tree 1 looks basically the same as tree 384.

The next issue is Connor. He's just boring as character. Altair went from douchebag to humble leader, Ezio was cool in everything he did, but Connor... I don't think he ever really knew what he was doing. His thing is revenge, specifically against Charles Lee for burning down his village and killing his mother. Everything else he did was really trying to put roses on his actions. Yeah, Ezio's was vengeance as well, but he really became a leader who furthered the Assassin cause. Conner... well, he made the homestead but just kinda invited people to live there and none of them were assassins. He meanders his way to his end goal by saying he wants to protect his village but ends up killing those of his people who don't agree with his methods (including his childhood friend). He allies himself with the Patriots, even though it should be very evident they don't like Native Americans any more than the British, and then is surprised when he learns Washington has killed some of his people. Also his voice actor is not very good. Really, I would've preferred to play the game as Haytham and I was so sad when we found out he was a Templar.

Assassin's Creed III also closes the Desmond arc. The premise behind the franchise is interesting—that you can access memories of your ancestors through your DNA—but as the series progressed I found the modern-day portion to become the most farsical part. Yeah, it was cool back in Assassin's Creed II when you saw the first glimpses of the "truth" and realized there was this ancient civilization that the Assassins are probably descended from. But then we learn that everything was destroyed in a solar flare (which somehow causes massive earthquakes?) and we have to stop it from happening again. Ubisoft, is that the best you can come up with? Where the hell did that come from? You walked away from that conference room thinking that was a good idea? When Desmond has to make his big decision about his fate and that of the world, at this point I'm just incredulous about the whole situation that it means nothing to me.

However that section does provide the funniest part of the whole game: When Desmond breaks into Abstergo, for some reason he and all the guards are using swords on each other. Why? It's literally 2012. Why aren't you all using guns? Can you imagine touring the White House and all the secret service are sporting scimitars instead of a glock?

So yeah, this was a very underwhelming installment. Normally I try to collect as much as possible and play the DLC because even after all my bitching Assassin's Creed is still fun to play, but I didn't have the emotional attachment or amusement to put in the extra effort. Hopefully the next game will be better.