Over and Over and Over…

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Ezio proved so popular with players that he returned for a further two games in the series; 2009’s Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations in 2011.

After fulfilling his vendetta against the Borgias in the previous game, Ezio comes to regret leaving his enemy Rodrigo Borgia, alive. Rodrigo’s son Cesare forces Ezio and his family to flee from Monteriggioni. Losing the “Apple of Eden” that they retrieved at the end of the last game,  Ezio returns to Rome to find the Assassins in decline. Throughout the game he rebuilds the Assassin’s in Italy, eventually becoming their leader.

In the present day, Desmond retrieves Ezio’s Apple of Eden and experiences visions of another strange woman, Juno, who forces him to stab Lucy, killing her before he himself collapses into a coma.

Revelations resume the modern day story right where Brotherhood left off, with a comatose Desmond being inserted back into the Animus as a kind of mental life support. Once inside, he learns that his mind has become fractured and lost within the Animus with Ezio’s and Altaïr’s from Subject 16, a remnant of a former captive of Abstergo. The only way for Desmond to save himself is to play out his ancestor’s memories to their end.

Desmond rejoins Ezio years after the events of Brotherhood as he moves to Constantinople, present day Istanbul and traces Altaïr’s movements after the first game. Ezio seeks out keys to Altair’s Library at Masyaf but which also allow Ezio to experience moments of Altair’s life in the same way Desmond relives Ezio’s. After engaging in the political machinations of Constantinople royalty, Ezio returns to Masyaf with all the key pieces to find Altaïr’s skeleton and his Apple of Eden contained within.

Knowing that he is playing a part in some larger drama, Ezio addresses Desmond directly, hoping that he can solve the riddles that Ezio and Altaïr spent so much of their lives decoding. Desmond, his mind now restored experiences yet another vision, this time of a third mysterious person, Jupiter, who informs him to travel to a hidden vault in New York.

Farewell Desmond

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It’s in New York that Assassin’s Creed III, and Desmond Miles’ last adventure begins. Entering the Hidden Temple, Juno once again appears to Desmond. Having left behind Altaïr and Ezio, Desmond enters the Animus and under Juno’s influence experiences the memories of a Templar Grand Master, Haytham Kenway.

Unable to gain access to the Temple in the 18th century the player then switches to the role of Ratonhnhaké:ton, Haytham’s son with local Mohawk woman. As Ratonhnhaké:ton, later dubbed Connor, the player joins the Assassins at Juno’s insistence, protects the temple and engages in the war of Independence.

After trying to reach peace with his father (and the Templars), Connor resorts to eliminating the Templars in the colonies but at the cost of his own tribe. Once Desmond uses the key Connor hid to access the temple’s inner sanctum; he is confronted by visions of both Minerva and Juno. Presented with the choice to either try and save all of the Humanity from a terrible fate, but unleash a new evil on the world, or to contain the evil but only allow a small number of humans to survive, Desmond chooses to save humanity as a whole. It’s a choice that cost him his life and ends up “freeing” Juno.

Connor’s tale also reaches a bittersweet ending as he clears away the remnants of the Templars, but sees a foreshadowing of some of the dark times that lie ahead for the colonies.

Pirates of the Caribbean

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With the Desmond arc put to bed, Ubisoft ditched a named protagonist in the modern day sections of Assasin’s Creed IV Black Flag. With a nod and a wink, Abstergo Industries was recast as Abstergo Entertainment (with a few Ubisoft in-jokes thrown in) and the player takes on the role of an unnamed employee. With fragments of Desmond’s recovered DNA, anyone can now access the memories of Desmond’s ancestors, and the player is tasked researching another one of Desmond’s ancestors, allegedly for research for a pirate film!

In the Animus the player relives the experiences of Edward Kenway, Connor’s grandfather, taking the series back in time, searching for an ancient site known as The Observatory. Unusually, Edward blunders his way into the Assassin/Templars conflict. Initially, he’s only out for his profit as a privateer and then pirate, before becoming allied with the Assassin’s cause.

In the Abstergo offices another employee named John, convinces the player to deliver information from the Animus to Desmond’s compatriots in the Assassins, before he organises for the player to access the Animus’ core, providing, you guessed it, a vision of Juno. John reveals his ties to Juno just before trying to murder the player, only to be dispatched by Abstergo security.

The Enemy of My Enemy

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2014’s Assassin’s Creed Rogue, switched the player to yet another new Abstergo employee, one tasked them with using “The Helix”, a commercialised version of the Animus, to relive memories of Shay Cormac, an Irish Assassin who, becomes disillusioned with the order after witnessing the devastating effects of its members mishandling of one of the Pieces of Eden. Defecting to the Templars, Shay tries to prevent assassinations rather than carrying them out.

In the modern day, the player character compiles information showing how close the Assassin’s came to catastrophe, a revelation that casts the Assassins into disarray.

For the final two games in the series (currently) players take on the role of yet another unnamed Abstergo employee, (not the same one as either the previous two games). Contacted by the Assasin’s, “The Initiate” uses the Animus to travel to revolutionary France  (Assassin’s Creed Unity) and Victorian England (Assassin’s Creed Syndicate), running a clandestine information gathering exercise for the contemporary Assassins, to help keep more ancient artefacts out of the Templar’s hands. Unity took place in revolutionary France with the player controlling Arno Dorian, while Syndicate moved the action to Victorian England and introduced two playable characters Jacob and Evie Frye.

Since the year gap after the first game,  2016 marks the first year without a main entry in the series since 2008, leaving plenty of room for the film.