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00:00 "When we have war and honor, the final journey commences."
00:05 Welcome to Mojo Plays, and today we're looking at the times Assassin's Creed didn't live up to our expectations.
00:12 "Alright then, if that's how you want to play it."
00:15 Before we begin, we publish new content all week long, so be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
00:23 Helping Connor, Assassin's Creed III Liberation
00:28 "That regiment passed through here. Look at the destruction they left."
00:32 While Aveline spends most of Liberation down in New Orleans and the surrounding bayou, she goes further afield at certain points.
00:40 Down to Machu Picchu and even north to the snowy frontier.
00:44 There, she encounters Connor, who helps her go after one of her targets.
00:48 But not before he inexplicably forgets how to do parkour, and then needs Aveline to defend him in combat.
00:55 Yes, what could have been a fun dual combat experience, maybe more akin to the Arkham games,
01:01 becomes an absurd mission where Aveline needs to escort Connor, despite there being no reason why he can't hold his own.
01:08 She even needs to make platforms for him to cross a bridge.
01:12 "It's the arrival that concerns me."
01:15 "Heh. Then you are on the right path."
01:18 Jack the Ripper, Assassin's Creed Syndicate
01:25 Twenty years after the main story of Syndicate, and Jack the Ripper is terrorizing the streets of Whitechapel.
01:31 This beloved DLC adds new weapons, gameplay mechanics, and maps.
01:36 But it didn't exactly end with a bang.
01:38 As we'll see, most of the old Assassin's Creed games don't excel where boss fights are concerned.
01:44 And Syndicate was no exception.
01:47 Because the fight is heavily scripted to take place in stages, there are times where you just can't injure Jack at all.
01:54 Even if you're countering all of his attacks and not taking any damage.
01:58 This leads into a brief stealth section where you need to perform an assassination to make him vulnerable.
02:04 Clearly aping the Mr. Freeze boss from Arkham City.
02:08 "We're the same, you and I."
02:12 "Oh, Jack."
02:13 All the bosses. Assassin's Creed Rogue.
02:16 "If you don't tell, he'll kill you."
02:18 The problem with Assassin's Creed Rogue has always been that it's too short.
02:23 With another year or two to cook and be developed further, with even more time given to all its story beats and characters,
02:30 it would definitely be up there with some of the series' best.
02:34 But because of its lightning-fast length, we just don't get enough time during the intro to get to know the Assassins that Shay will be hunting down.
02:42 This means that the encounters with them throughout the game don't feel as meaningful as they do in other games.
02:48 And some of them are just badly designed, too.
02:51 Like the mission where Shay assassinates Hope.
02:54 Worse, the legendary ship battles recycle all the models from the legendary ships in Black Flag.
03:00 "I say, she cannot save the Red Rocks. She has to keep eyes on her life."
03:04 "She will be the master of the planet."
03:07 Showdown with Deimos. Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
03:11 "Alexios."
03:13 "Please."
03:15 "You use that name as if it means something to me."
03:18 From the moment you see him in the cult base in Delphi, you're waiting for your chance to finally go up against Deimos, your villainous sibling.
03:27 Canonically, this is Alexios, taken by the cults as a child and raised into a weapon.
03:33 But you don't have to fight Deimos at all.
03:36 Classic RPG style, there's an opportunity to talk down the final boss of the story and bring him back into the fold.
03:43 Except, because Odyssey doesn't really have a speech or charisma skill to build up, it's extremely easy to determine the correct dialogue options.
03:52 And even if you don't, Odyssey actually encourages you via the loading screen tips to save scum if you mess up the dialogue trees.
04:00 "You're home now."
04:06 "I've done terrible things."
04:10 Fighting Roshan, Assassin's Creed Mirage.
04:13 "Her shoulder, that is how to break her."
04:16 Mirage was a true return to form for the series, by making its combat system extremely limited and tool-based and giving you a poorly designed final boss.
04:27 Though there's a lot of narrative weight behind Bossom's final encounter with his mentor Roshan,
04:32 and the entire story builds up to this as Bossom abandons his duty as an assassin to learn the truth about who he is,
04:38 the actual fight isn't executed that well.
04:42 You can't hurt Roshan at all until you're able to use a throwing knife to hit a very specific weak point,
04:48 and that weak point isn't telegraphed all that clearly.
04:51 This means you have a climactic boss battle that you primarily spend spamming throwing knives,
04:57 with an on-screen pop-up telling you what to do.
05:06 Elise's death, Assassin's Creed Unity.
05:09 Since the whole game was concerned with the Romeo and Juliet element of an assassin and a Templar falling in love,
05:19 it's understandable that Ubisoft would decide to kill one or both of Arno and Elise off during Unity.
05:25 But considering Elise should have been the main character instead,
05:29 as she was about a hundred times more compelling as a character than Arno,
05:33 the fact she was killed off doesn't sit right.
05:36 Worse, she dies because she won't listen to Arno as they try to fight Germain at the end,
05:41 running directly into danger and getting herself killed.
05:45 Sure, she wanted revenge for her father's murder, but why didn't she just help Arno so they could fight him together?
05:51 Siegert's fate, Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
06:02 Does he still live?
06:04 He does.
06:06 For the darkness.
06:10 The entire ending of Valhalla is tied up with Siegert, Eivor's adoptive brother.
06:15 How you treat Siegert at various points determines what happens,
06:19 as Siegert will abandon the Raven Clan completely if you cross him too much.
06:24 But the game gives you minimal reason to care about Siegert.
06:27 Throughout, he makes nonsensical decisions, leaves the clan under Eivor's control, and behaves like a child.
06:34 So, even if you do anger him by punching him in the face,
06:38 delaying his rescue, and seducing the wife he's left behind, it's hard to feel too bad about it.
06:43 We really needed to spend more time with Siegert at the beginning to care about treating him properly,
06:49 and the emotional conclusion of his character arc inevitably fell flat.
06:53 I hope for your sake that you grow well into the role you've earned today.
06:58 Fighting the Pope, Assassin's Creed II.
07:01 How is it you resist?
07:03 I see. Kind of you to bring me the apple.
07:07 Yet another unfortunate boss battle.
07:10 This might be one of the most notoriously awful bosses in video game history.
07:15 After spending the entire game hunting down Rodrigo Borja,
07:19 and discovering that he's now become the Pope, Ezio chases him all the way to the Vatican.
07:25 There's a climactic sequence where he rides along the walls of Rome,
07:28 and climbs through the Sistine Chapel, before being taken to an Isu vault.
07:33 Then, the Pope decides that it's going to be a fist fight,
07:36 which leads to Ezio kicking the life out of him for about five minutes.
07:41 The hand-to-hand combat is so bare-bones that you spend the whole fight wailing on him,
07:46 and he has no way to fight back.
07:48 You can't! You can't! It's my destiny!
07:53 The truth about Lucy. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.
07:56 To find the temples, I'm convinced we need to get our hands on Ezio's Apple of Eden.
08:01 Minerva altered it somehow when she touched it.
08:04 We were all left in shock after Brotherhood gave us that cliffhanger,
08:08 with Desmond manipulated by Juno into assassinating Lucy Stillman, his partner in crime.
08:14 Rumors suggest that this happened because of behind-the-scenes disagreements between Ubisoft and Kristen Bell,
08:20 but these have never been substantiated.
08:22 Regardless, Lucy was all but erased from the continuity, with her death rarely dwelled on.
08:28 But we didn't get confirmation that she was a traitor at all until a DLC for Revelations,
08:34 which definitely doesn't do the character justice.
08:37 The modern-day storyline really never recovered from this moment.
08:41 They should have at least revealed she was working for the Templars in the base game.
08:46 What are the other teams doing?
08:48 Combating Abstergo's search for pieces of Eden.
08:51 Juno's death. Assassin's Creed franchise.
08:54 Four towers would be built to pull her fury into this place and dispel it.
09:00 We all remember that moment in the Assassin's Creed games where you finally take on Juno,
09:05 the big bad of the first half a dozen games.
09:08 Except no, we don't, because that moment isn't in any of the games.
09:14 It happens in the Assassin's Creed Uprising comic book series.
09:18 While that's a great comic and definitely worth a read,
09:21 it's still shocking years on that Ubisoft decided to kill off the series' main villain like that.
09:28 And Juno's absence has been seriously felt in the years since,
09:33 as the overarching mythology and lore gets increasingly aimless.
09:37 But they do bring Juno back occasionally for cameos,
09:41 like in the Jotunheim sequence of Valhalla.
09:44 So clearly there are some people at Ubisoft who are still fans of her.
09:48 You played your part well, Desmond.
09:51 But now, now it's time that I play mine.
09:57 Let us know in the comments a time when you felt let down by Ubisoft.
10:02 Disappointed!
10:04 Check out these other great clips from Mojo Plays,
10:07 and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
10:11 [outro music]