AC2 does this thing where the guy (I forget his name) actually does some stuff in the real world, and I think if they had paid that off in AC3 by having it set in a future dystopian city it would have worked. That may have originally been the plan too, since AC 2 ends with a scene where you fight mooks in the real world and there's some shit with the apple and the female lead character dies and it's all dramatic.
But I think the Ubisoft execs got cold feet and put the kibosh on anything interesting that might have happened, leading to essentially an entire series that just has to keep recreating the AC 2-based games over and over in slightly different settings. Now they're trapped in limbo, forced to put a modern day plot on every game but unable to do anything interesting with it since that would change the formula and we can't have that.
AC3 did actually have more bits with Desmond Miles, aka the most boring Nolan North character ever. There were even combat sections and I distinctly remember an underwhelming chase sequence where you kill the bearded Templar scientist who was the main villain of the modern day plotline in the Altair and Ezio games.
The female lead didn't die in AC2, but the next game, AC Brotherhood. I seem to recall hearing somewhere that the actress playing her was contracted for 3 games and intended to have a pivotal role in the originally envisioned trilogy, but then AC2 was a huge hit so Ubisoft turned Assassin's Creed into a yearly franchise, starting with the two Ezio spinoffs in between 2 and 3. Her contract was up so they just killed the character off in a filler episode
AC2 does this thing where the guy (I forget his name) actually does some stuff in the real world, and I think if they had paid that off in AC3 by having it set in a future dystopian city it would have worked. That may have originally been the plan too, since AC 2 ends with a scene where you fight mooks in the real world and there's some shit with the apple and the female lead character dies and it's all dramatic.
But I think the Ubisoft execs got cold feet and put the kibosh on anything interesting that might have happened, leading to essentially an entire series that just has to keep recreating the AC 2-based games over and over in slightly different settings. Now they're trapped in limbo, forced to put a modern day plot on every game but unable to do anything interesting with it since that would change the formula and we can't have that.
AC3 did actually have more bits with Desmond Miles, aka the most boring Nolan North character ever. There were even combat sections and I distinctly remember an underwhelming chase sequence where you kill the bearded Templar scientist who was the main villain of the modern day plotline in the Altair and Ezio games.
The female lead didn't die in AC2, but the next game, AC Brotherhood. I seem to recall hearing somewhere that the actress playing her was contracted for 3 games and intended to have a pivotal role in the originally envisioned trilogy, but then AC2 was a huge hit so Ubisoft turned Assassin's Creed into a yearly franchise, starting with the two Ezio spinoffs in between 2 and 3. Her contract was up so they just killed the character off in a filler episode