10 Plot Points Assassin's Creed TOTALLY Forgot About
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VOICE OVER: Aaron Brown
WRITTEN BY: Caitlin Johnson
"Assassin's Creed" has a lot of plot points to juggle, it's just a shame Ubisoft sometimes forgets about them. For this list, we're looking at plot points that were forgotten specifically in the games, and which ideally should have been wrapped up in the main series. If they were concluded in the comics, they can still count. Our list of plot points "Assassin's Creed" forgot about includes Unity's Fake Games, The Nazca Lines, Modern Templars, Jesus, and more!
Welcome to MojoPlays! Today, we’re looking at 10 Plot Points Assassin’s Creed Forgot About. It’s easy to get lost in this franchise. For this list, we’re looking at plot points that were forgotten specifically in the games, and which ideally should have been wrapped up in the main series. If they were concluded in the comics, they can still count.
When “Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood” ended with Desmond being manipulated into assassinating Lucy Stillman, his closest ally up to that point, everybody thought it would be addressed extensively in the next game. Well, that game was “Revelations”, and the base game had minimal references to Lucy – other than how guilty Desmond felt about her death. Was she a triple agent or not? According to the DLC for “Revelations”, she WAS, and that’s why Juno had to force Desmond to get rid of her. We appreciate that Kristen Bell wasn’t going to be returning at this point, but the death of a main character like this absolutely should have had more time committed to it. And you shouldn’t have had to buy a DLC for the sequel to find out what really happened.
The Templars just haven’t been doing much for quite a few games now. Though they were still a major force in “Black Flag” and “Rogue”, by the time we got to “Unity”, the nameless modern-day character was so insignificant that you forgot how dangerous Abstergo really is. And the problem has only gotten worse in subsequent games. Sure, Layla initially works for Abstergo and then betrays them, but what are the Templars doing? Do they have a new grand plan after Desmond thwarted the last one? Why has Ubisoft apparently forgotten all about its main, villainous faction in favor of bringing back more Isu? Hopefully, we get an answer about all this soon.
Perhaps Callum Lynch is better off forgotten, considering how poorly received the 2016 “Assassin’s Creed” movie was. But the fact remains that that movie was slated to kickstart a trilogy, and the two sequels were canceled when it catastrophically bombed. Callum’s story has never been properly wrapped up, though. He’s very briefly mentioned in “Origins”, which makes sense because that game was still in development while the movie was coming out, and then disappeared completely after minor appearances in two comics. Ubisoft never saw the need to maybe write Callum as a character into the games to conclude his story, so we’ve lost track of him completely.
This weird box is what drives most of the conflict in “Assassin’s Creed Rogue”, with Shay defecting from the Assassins after they try to activate one underneath Lisbon. But the boxes themselves are never really dwelled on. They’re supposed to be data storage devices, containing vast amounts of Isu knowledge, but nobody else ever tries to go after them. It’s true that the Templars warn the Assassins at the end of “Rogue” to stay away from the boxes, but even in the modern era where they could be contained and supplied with enough power, nobody’s ever gone after them and tried to use them since. You’d be forgiven for forgetting these crucial relics exist at all.
Leaning into the Abstergo Entertainment angle entirely, “Unity” opened with a selection of past Abstergo games, letting you choose only “The Tragedy of Jacques De Molay” from among twelve of them. While most were versions of existing “Assassin’s Creed” games in the real world, following the likes of Ezio, Edward, and Connor, there were two at the end: “Jazz Age Junkies” and “Hell in Hibernia”. Presumably, one would be set in the US during Prohibition, and the other would be set in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence. But we’ve seen little to nothing of these fascinating settings in the years since “Unity”. Fans would love a mainline game set in the twentieth century, and Ubisoft certainly made a mistake by tempting people with them.
Similar to the Precursor Boxes, the Crystal Skull has also fallen by the wayside since “Black Flag”. While it was a little silly that the Isu would have made a Crystal Skull like that in the first place, the skull was an extremely powerful Piece of Eden capable of locating anybody using just a sample of their blood. It’s what everybody in “Black Flag” wants, chasing down the skull and the Observatory in which to use it. At least three have been found and they’re supposedly used by Abstergo in the modern day, but you’d only know that if you played the 2010 “Project Legacy” Facebook game or diligently read the emails in “Assassin’s Creed 1” – which came out six years before the skulls actually became important. It’s absurd that everybody completely lost interest in the skulls after Edward.
In the first two games, eagle vision can reveal various glyphs and messages. Desmond sees them at the very end of the first game, strange symbols written on the walls by Subject 16 to warn him. There are many symbols, including hieroglyphs and doodles of pyramids, but also some of the Nazca Lines glyphs. Why Clay would choose to draw the Nazca Lines is anyone’s guess, and Ubisoft, of course, never explains. Does it mean that the lines were actually created by the Isu? Do they mark something important? Considering we’ve never had a game set in Peru that explores this, we still don’t know. More likely is that it’s just creative set dressing from Ubisoft, but it still raises many questions.
Particularly in the Ezio trilogy, frequent mention is made of Eve, the first woman. We see her and Adam lead the human rebellion in “Assassin’s Creed II’s” flashback, but Subject 16 also references her repeatedly as though she’s the answer to all their questions. Somebody clearly forgot this along the way, however, because we still don’t know why Eve was so important, aside from leading the humans in the war. Subject 16 himself is supposedly one of her ancestors, which is how he got that video to show Desmond, but since Clay completely disappeared from the continuity in “Revelations”, we might never get an answer about who else was descended from her.
The early games regularly used religious imagery. From Altaïr encountering the Biblical Ark of the Covenant to Ezio going tomb-raiding underneath various, important cathedrals, it looked like Ubisoft wanted to lift the lid on the TRUTH about Christianity. But they must have gotten bored, because after Ezio, this stopped mattering. Though there were many hints about Jesus himself potentially being a human-Isu hybrid, or using Pieces of Eden to perform his miracles, Ubisoft never completely explained all this – and what it DID explain, it explained through cryptic puzzles. A game about the life of Christ would be fascinating, but we’re not sure they’d be brave enough to actually do it.
She’s reappeared in recent games to an extent, showing up very briefly in “Odyssey’s” “Fate of Atlantis” DLC and then in “Valhalla”. But what happened to Juno, who was set up to be the real main villain of the franchise? Well, unless you read the “Uprising” comic book series, you’d have absolutely no idea, because she was killed off and swiftly forgotten about. “Uprising” might be a good comic run, but the fact remains that Ubisoft absolutely should not have killed its primary antagonist in a comic book that plenty of people wouldn’t have even known about. And they also made the mistake of not replacing Juno with another villain, leaving the games floundering until the addition of Basim.
Lucy’s Betrayal
When “Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood” ended with Desmond being manipulated into assassinating Lucy Stillman, his closest ally up to that point, everybody thought it would be addressed extensively in the next game. Well, that game was “Revelations”, and the base game had minimal references to Lucy – other than how guilty Desmond felt about her death. Was she a triple agent or not? According to the DLC for “Revelations”, she WAS, and that’s why Juno had to force Desmond to get rid of her. We appreciate that Kristen Bell wasn’t going to be returning at this point, but the death of a main character like this absolutely should have had more time committed to it. And you shouldn’t have had to buy a DLC for the sequel to find out what really happened.
Modern Templars
The Templars just haven’t been doing much for quite a few games now. Though they were still a major force in “Black Flag” and “Rogue”, by the time we got to “Unity”, the nameless modern-day character was so insignificant that you forgot how dangerous Abstergo really is. And the problem has only gotten worse in subsequent games. Sure, Layla initially works for Abstergo and then betrays them, but what are the Templars doing? Do they have a new grand plan after Desmond thwarted the last one? Why has Ubisoft apparently forgotten all about its main, villainous faction in favor of bringing back more Isu? Hopefully, we get an answer about all this soon.
Callum Lynch
Perhaps Callum Lynch is better off forgotten, considering how poorly received the 2016 “Assassin’s Creed” movie was. But the fact remains that that movie was slated to kickstart a trilogy, and the two sequels were canceled when it catastrophically bombed. Callum’s story has never been properly wrapped up, though. He’s very briefly mentioned in “Origins”, which makes sense because that game was still in development while the movie was coming out, and then disappeared completely after minor appearances in two comics. Ubisoft never saw the need to maybe write Callum as a character into the games to conclude his story, so we’ve lost track of him completely.
Precursor Boxes
This weird box is what drives most of the conflict in “Assassin’s Creed Rogue”, with Shay defecting from the Assassins after they try to activate one underneath Lisbon. But the boxes themselves are never really dwelled on. They’re supposed to be data storage devices, containing vast amounts of Isu knowledge, but nobody else ever tries to go after them. It’s true that the Templars warn the Assassins at the end of “Rogue” to stay away from the boxes, but even in the modern era where they could be contained and supplied with enough power, nobody’s ever gone after them and tried to use them since. You’d be forgiven for forgetting these crucial relics exist at all.
Unity’s Fake Games
Leaning into the Abstergo Entertainment angle entirely, “Unity” opened with a selection of past Abstergo games, letting you choose only “The Tragedy of Jacques De Molay” from among twelve of them. While most were versions of existing “Assassin’s Creed” games in the real world, following the likes of Ezio, Edward, and Connor, there were two at the end: “Jazz Age Junkies” and “Hell in Hibernia”. Presumably, one would be set in the US during Prohibition, and the other would be set in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence. But we’ve seen little to nothing of these fascinating settings in the years since “Unity”. Fans would love a mainline game set in the twentieth century, and Ubisoft certainly made a mistake by tempting people with them.
The Crystal Skull
Similar to the Precursor Boxes, the Crystal Skull has also fallen by the wayside since “Black Flag”. While it was a little silly that the Isu would have made a Crystal Skull like that in the first place, the skull was an extremely powerful Piece of Eden capable of locating anybody using just a sample of their blood. It’s what everybody in “Black Flag” wants, chasing down the skull and the Observatory in which to use it. At least three have been found and they’re supposedly used by Abstergo in the modern day, but you’d only know that if you played the 2010 “Project Legacy” Facebook game or diligently read the emails in “Assassin’s Creed 1” – which came out six years before the skulls actually became important. It’s absurd that everybody completely lost interest in the skulls after Edward.
The Nazca Lines
In the first two games, eagle vision can reveal various glyphs and messages. Desmond sees them at the very end of the first game, strange symbols written on the walls by Subject 16 to warn him. There are many symbols, including hieroglyphs and doodles of pyramids, but also some of the Nazca Lines glyphs. Why Clay would choose to draw the Nazca Lines is anyone’s guess, and Ubisoft, of course, never explains. Does it mean that the lines were actually created by the Isu? Do they mark something important? Considering we’ve never had a game set in Peru that explores this, we still don’t know. More likely is that it’s just creative set dressing from Ubisoft, but it still raises many questions.
Eve
Particularly in the Ezio trilogy, frequent mention is made of Eve, the first woman. We see her and Adam lead the human rebellion in “Assassin’s Creed II’s” flashback, but Subject 16 also references her repeatedly as though she’s the answer to all their questions. Somebody clearly forgot this along the way, however, because we still don’t know why Eve was so important, aside from leading the humans in the war. Subject 16 himself is supposedly one of her ancestors, which is how he got that video to show Desmond, but since Clay completely disappeared from the continuity in “Revelations”, we might never get an answer about who else was descended from her.
Jesus
The early games regularly used religious imagery. From Altaïr encountering the Biblical Ark of the Covenant to Ezio going tomb-raiding underneath various, important cathedrals, it looked like Ubisoft wanted to lift the lid on the TRUTH about Christianity. But they must have gotten bored, because after Ezio, this stopped mattering. Though there were many hints about Jesus himself potentially being a human-Isu hybrid, or using Pieces of Eden to perform his miracles, Ubisoft never completely explained all this – and what it DID explain, it explained through cryptic puzzles. A game about the life of Christ would be fascinating, but we’re not sure they’d be brave enough to actually do it.
Juno
She’s reappeared in recent games to an extent, showing up very briefly in “Odyssey’s” “Fate of Atlantis” DLC and then in “Valhalla”. But what happened to Juno, who was set up to be the real main villain of the franchise? Well, unless you read the “Uprising” comic book series, you’d have absolutely no idea, because she was killed off and swiftly forgotten about. “Uprising” might be a good comic run, but the fact remains that Ubisoft absolutely should not have killed its primary antagonist in a comic book that plenty of people wouldn’t have even known about. And they also made the mistake of not replacing Juno with another villain, leaving the games floundering until the addition of Basim.
