Assassin's Creed: 9 Biggest Franchise Mistakes Ubisoft Will Never Live Down

1. Killing Desmond

He could've been great. Ol' bland n' boring Dez could've been the key to pulling off the modern day Assassin's Creed romp we all thought was coming.

Clambering up the sides of skyscrapers, looking out over a New York-esque skyline, swinging from rooftops Spidey-style and landing on a group of templars attempting to steal some sort of ancient assassin artefact - who didn't want that?

Desmond's relative blank canvas personality first served to get us introduced to AC's world, too. The warring assassin vs. templar ideologies, virtual reality of the Animus and the notion of the Bleeding Effect letting Desmond acquire character traits through from each subsequent game - by the time we'd been through a handful of instalments he'd be a complete badass, capable of every ability from the franchise combined.

But then they killed him.

With Desmond's death came the end of anything remotely meaningful happening with the present day. Many fans of the older period stuff rejoiced, but it meant one half of the franchise's narrative structure had been for nothing. Literally nothing.

Desmond dying removed a key element of AC's unique franchise identity, and without it, you have to wonder if "random location of the year" is enough of a significant pull going forward.