Arbitrary Animus

Assassin's Creed had a problem right from the get go (beyond even the snivelling pleas to not be offended because some of Ubisoft's best friends are black/Muslims/Templar/British) in that the "present day" was always linked in the most tenuous way to the actual story.

Outside of one rather clever moment at the end of Ezio's story, there's nothing to elevate the Animus beyond an increasingly irrelevant framing device. With the original trilogy concluded and the world saved, it seems little more than an after thought now - indeed, perhaps in line with the fact these games are now on a conveyor belt... there's not much of anything at stake anymore.

The much hyped (and then relentlessly slated) Unity wasn't even an artifact hunt, you were just looking for a body and (spoiler alert!) you could just have stayed at home but then, that's been a problem since the start. The denouement of the first game is finding the piece of Eden after a big ol' boss battle... and then you're back in the real world and everything is terribly anti-climactic.

It's also a problem because as is often the case, the Animus presents vast opportunities but ends up only being used to find the artifact of the week. Obviously, these searches tend to conveniently tie in with some historic struggle but... well, you somewhat undermine those events when the ONLY reason to experience them is to find the McGuffin.

Whereas AC1-3 let you go around and talk to people, check you e-mails and so on - and in the case of AC3, get a whole mess of backstory about the Precursors - AC4 bumped you down to a silent protagonist, who wandered around an office block between sessions and Unity does away with that entirely... you just get prompting from the Assassins on your mission objectives and occasionally the mandatory banter.

It's clear that the Animus has become an after thought, if not an active impediment to the way the franchise is proceeding. While Desmond was pretty flat, we had at least SOME investment in him and it meant we were invested in what was happening in the present day... It seems pretty obvious that this change of direction is a response to Ubisoft's desire to pump these games out but if that's the case, it seems like abandoning the framing device of the Animus and JUST telling the story would be far more sensible than demoting them to "peace of Eden hunt seven".