It was an innovative series at a time where we still got them frequently, and while seemingly intended to be a trilogy, they chased dollar signs over prestige. It's hard to say they made the wrong choice there, but the animus made a lot more sense in the context of a trilogy with a beginning, middle, and end. For my money, Unity was the best game in the series and came out in one of the the weakest years for video game releases giving it a really good chance at an award, but it was a technical mess, especially at launch. I don't think I agree that Arkham Asylum has much DNA in common with Assassin's Creed.

For which year? After the few Assassins Creed games, they were similar in gameplay, so not really worthy of GOTY for most. Not every good or popular game can win an award. The best chance of winning could have II, Brotherhood or Black Flag. I've looked at best rated games of the year for those games on Metacritic (I could not find a way to sort lists on OpenCritic).

Assassins Creed 2 (2009) - 90:

• Uncharted 2 - 96
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare - 94
• GTA China Town - 93

Assassins Creed Brotherhood (2010): 89

• Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 98
• Mass Effect 2 - 96
• Red Dead Redemption - 95

Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag (2013): 88

• Last of Us - 95
• BioShock Infinite - 94
• Super Mario 3D World - 93

The Assassins Creed games are fun, but not a juggernaut in gameplay or otherwise. They were never these massive perfected games, standing out as the pillar of gaming. If you have competition like Uncharted 2, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Last of Us, and come with the same formula again, then you can't expect to win awards for being the best game of the year.

Screw the awards...I mean, starfield won "most innovative game" for being exactly the absolute opposite of that.

I actually disliked AC until Origins. That was nice, and odyssey is my favourite. Malaka!

The animus-thing is probably the only part that strings them together to call it AC. But for me, it was always the annoying immersion killing part.

Maybe they should just ditch the whole Animus plot.

I think if that was going to happen it would have happened after AC3.

Personally I'm glad the Animus is there, it makes it much easier for me to suspend disbelief about so many things in those games. I wish AC3 hadn't messed up Desmond's story though, I wanted a cool conclusion, rather than having Desmond get Poochied.

Is it? All of the games are mid gameplay stretched out way too long/thin for their own good, with meh plots that they can't even stick to. They threw away Desmond so the longer term story is basically non existent and they kept ruining with the pacing running modern world stuff anyways. The entire franchise is a fat 7ish out of 10, even if some of the games have little sparks of aspects to them being a little more interesting, they never managed to hit all the nails on the head at the same time.

I wish more games copied the way AC Odyssey did waypoints/exploration, I quite enjoyed that system =w=

It's not inherently related to the post, but I think it's one of the things in assassin's creed games that was executed well but seemingly largely unrecognized/forgotten

I might've cared more about the franchise if they didn't have their shit Ubisoft DRM on PC.

Animus

You're right about AC2, especially since it's a relatively quiet year for hits (2009) so getting a nomination shouldn't have been that hard. That said, it has a lot to do with who is voting, money spent on promoting the game, etc., and I'm not sure it would have won GotY even though it might even end up on some people's top games of all time.

Fun fact, apparently same year Minecraft released. Lol (I looked up a list, that and LittleBigPlanet are my favorite of the year).

ive never played an assassins creed game but i will try going through them all at some point