The Top 3 Things I Miss From Old Assassin’s Creed Games

The amazing abandoned design DNA from my favorite open world series

2023’s Mirage comes the closest to feeling like an “old” Assassin’s Creed game in the modern era, with its tighter city area. But it’s still missing some key things. Great chickens though. PS5 Pro screenshot captured by the author.

I get that gaming franchises have to reinvent themselves every so often in the relentless pursuit of cash. It’s part of the natural order of convincing fans to keep reinvesting their money over and over again. If companies just made the exact same game every time, with no reboots or new ideas ever, it’d lead to total audience burnout.

Over the last decade, Assassin’s Creed has rebuilt itself into a class-leading action RPG, inspired as much by games like The Witcher and Dark Souls as it is by its own history. You can pick up any title from Origins onward and get a tightly honed and iterated gameplay experience that’s easy to pick up if you’re familiar with other games in this genre.

However, these games started out as more focused open world action adventures — designed around the fantasy of being an unstoppable sneaky warrior. They were much more about parkour, daring fight choreography, and dense city environments than picking your way across sprawling open worlds.

I generally love the franchise as a whole, but from a gameplay perspective it’s more like two different series’ that share the same fictional world. Here are the top three things I miss from the “old…