The Ezio trilogy was nice but you can really tell that after AC3 (which I disliked on release but actually quite enjoyed when I replayed it years later) there was a sort of "Well, shit. Now what do we do?" moment at Ubisoft where they were stuck between a rock and a hard place of "Keep doing basically the exact same thing over and over again like we have been for a while but with different settings and tacked-on mechanics and incremental improvements in the graphics and parkour" or "Try something totally different and hope the fans don't hate us", because of course the idea of just letting the franchise die and starting something fresh is impossible in an era of endless sequels, reboots, remasters, etc.
AC4 almost feels accidentally successful because while they failed to create an Assassin's Creed game, they definitely made a pretty great pirate game, and so it gets to coast (heh) by on that. They basically copy-pasted AC4 (but this time you're a TEMPLAR!) in Rogue. And then they cleared wanted to go back to the traditional formula and made Unity and then Syndicate, which made some genuinely really cool additions like the parkour system in Unity and it's finally a game about, like, Assassins again, but the faults were glaring enough that they then flip-flopped back and then miraculously managed to create two (maybe three, idk how good Valhalla is) well-received games and enjoyable games in a row that were even further away from Assassin's Creed than AC4 was, and then flip-flopped again with the new game which is set in the Middle East I think and kinda back to the AC1 days, aka a soft reboot of the series. So in a couple game's time they'll once again go back to the open world formula I predict.
The biggest issue I have with these games isn't really that the exemplify the typical Ubisoft formula that they do with fucking everything, though there's a discussion to be had about that too, it's basically just that you could have released AC4+Rogue and Origins+Odyssey+Valhalla off as entirely different franchises and remove any mention of the Assassins and just have them be entirely their own thing, and keep the Assassin's Creed franchise about goddamn assassins. It's part of the much larger problem in entertainment right now where literally like 90% of what is released right now is part of existing franchises because of the fear of taking a risk, so you have movies that were originally about something else entirely and then the directors go "Man, this would be great as Movie #32942 in the Blorbo Franchise! Change the script up a bit and tie it in!" or whatever the hell is going on in those companies
AC4 could have been "Local pirate man goes on a drunken adventure for a magical/nonmagical treasure and learns to become a less shitty person with morals after seeing all his friends die" without any mention of a templar and it would be like, 5% different. Origins could have been "Medjay man goes on revenge quest with his wife because his child was killed by a group of powerhungry assholes, helps local community along the way" and there would be no need to show an apple of eden. Same thing goes for the other similar games. you can't do the same for Altair or Ezio or Connor (well, maybe you could do the same for Connor actually but I don't think Ubisoft is based enough to make a game where you're a native American going sicko mode against settler-colonists, especially given that they did anti-French-revolution propaganda in Unity) or Arno and Jacob/Evie because those games are, top-to-bottom, about being a shady stabby dude with knives trying to build/rebuild/fix their order against a group of bad guys while funky magical objects help and hinder them
The Ezio trilogy was nice but you can really tell that after AC3 (which I disliked on release but actually quite enjoyed when I replayed it years later) there was a sort of "Well, shit. Now what do we do?" moment at Ubisoft where they were stuck between a rock and a hard place of "Keep doing basically the exact same thing over and over again like we have been for a while but with different settings and tacked-on mechanics and incremental improvements in the graphics and parkour" or "Try something totally different and hope the fans don't hate us", because of course the idea of just letting the franchise die and starting something fresh is impossible in an era of endless sequels, reboots, remasters, etc.
AC4 almost feels accidentally successful because while they failed to create an Assassin's Creed game, they definitely made a pretty great pirate game, and so it gets to coast (heh) by on that. They basically copy-pasted AC4 (but this time you're a TEMPLAR!) in Rogue. And then they cleared wanted to go back to the traditional formula and made Unity and then Syndicate, which made some genuinely really cool additions like the parkour system in Unity and it's finally a game about, like, Assassins again, but the faults were glaring enough that they then flip-flopped back and then miraculously managed to create two (maybe three, idk how good Valhalla is) well-received games and enjoyable games in a row that were even further away from Assassin's Creed than AC4 was, and then flip-flopped again with the new game which is set in the Middle East I think and kinda back to the AC1 days, aka a soft reboot of the series. So in a couple game's time they'll once again go back to the open world formula I predict.
The biggest issue I have with these games isn't really that the exemplify the typical Ubisoft formula that they do with fucking everything, though there's a discussion to be had about that too, it's basically just that you could have released AC4+Rogue and Origins+Odyssey+Valhalla off as entirely different franchises and remove any mention of the Assassins and just have them be entirely their own thing, and keep the Assassin's Creed franchise about goddamn assassins. It's part of the much larger problem in entertainment right now where literally like 90% of what is released right now is part of existing franchises because of the fear of taking a risk, so you have movies that were originally about something else entirely and then the directors go "Man, this would be great as Movie #32942 in the Blorbo Franchise! Change the script up a bit and tie it in!" or whatever the hell is going on in those companies
AC4 could have been "Local pirate man goes on a drunken adventure for a magical/nonmagical treasure and learns to become a less shitty person with morals after seeing all his friends die" without any mention of a templar and it would be like, 5% different. Origins could have been "Medjay man goes on revenge quest with his wife because his child was killed by a group of powerhungry assholes, helps local community along the way" and there would be no need to show an apple of eden. Same thing goes for the other similar games. you can't do the same for Altair or Ezio or Connor (well, maybe you could do the same for Connor actually but I don't think Ubisoft is based enough to make a game where you're a native American going sicko mode against settler-colonists, especially given that they did anti-French-revolution propaganda in Unity) or Arno and Jacob/Evie because those games are, top-to-bottom, about being a shady stabby dude with knives trying to build/rebuild/fix their order against a group of bad guys while funky magical objects help and hinder them