How Assassin's Creed III was the Most Disappointing Game I Ever Played 

Tell me Jay....... WHERE IS CHARLES LEE!!!???

All the criticisms on the combat system are valid, but on the other hand strangling guards with a Rabbit Trap 15 times in a row is one of the most satisfying experiences I'd had in a game, ever.

I blame this game for starting the Forrest Gump style storytelling where the main character is involved in every historical event in the period the game is set in, and is friends with every notable person during that time.

But Mr. Jay, Tomahawk chop is my death blow, I rest my case, your argument is invalid, now give me lee

The homestead missions were a highlight for me. Watching Connor as he built a small community of hard-workin' honest folk was one of the most heartwarming experiences I had playing a videogame.

Evil Connor be like: I don't want to know where Charles Lee is.

You know, it's funny that you mentioned that the developers assumed that you already knew these historical figures because I, not being from the United States, had no idea who these people were or how important these events are, with the exception of the declaration of independence, and I even only know some details of that. I had no idea that the part about the horse and the guy telling you where to go was so important, or that X and Y characters did X and Y thing.

One reason I dropped the series was because this game killed Desmond off then had the nerve to drop the Juno plot entirely a few games later. All that build up for nothing. Now the series is a zombified corpse thanks to Ubisoft.

Between this game and Hamilton, Charles Lee was really getting dragged through the mud in the 2010s

Can content creators please talk about how Ubisoft RUINED THIS GAME?! Back to 2019: they tried forcing their botched Remaster on people by REMOVING the Deluxe Edition from all official stores. I bought it on Steam and they invalidated my CD keys, and I can't get a refund either. Their custom support has been ignoring my messages for 1 month.

Character wise Connor was stoic and honorable. He needed a really colorful set of NPCs to make him compelling.

Haytham's voice actor felt like the saving grace for this entire game, his performance is just so good and tbh I had a crush on haytham because of it lmao

As one of the few modern-day story enjoyers, I am still absolutely *dumbfounded* at how they chose to end this story arc. I was upset back then, and I still am now. It's just incomprehensible to me that it not only got out of the writers' room, but it was fully acted, scripted, had entire levels and cinematics made for it... and for what, exactly? "Main character saves the day and kills bad guys but then has to Jesus himself too, wooooaahhhhh!" It's pretty obvious this game was rushed overall but the lack of care for the modern-day story is staggering.

MOM SO SAYS JAY JUST DROPPED A CERTIFIED 1H BANGER

To me, regarding the narrative, it feels like they were trying to write a novel, rather than a video game, as the game's narrative is written in a very literary fashion, like you would write an epic historical fiction novel. This was pointed out by Darby McDebbit, which is why AC 4 Black Flag begins the way it does, as a response to this, coming up with the term 'Time to Fantasy'. I actually recommend you instead go read the novel adaptation of this game, AC 3 Forsaken, which is told through the pov of Haythem Kenway. It is a fantastic book that is far better than the game that spawned it, in my view. The book addresses Haythem's internal thoughts and feelings on the events, including why he becomes so ruthless and kills his interrogation captives without a second thought later on in the narrative, which the game fails to do.

I don't have a problem with Connor having a fixation with Lee to a point (even tho it gets odd post the Washington reveal). Anyone can see that he's easily the worst. But Connor seems to think he's a bad influence on Haytham and... I don't know where he got that idea. Listened to the Forsaken audiobook a while back and unlike the game it confirms that Haytham is aware of the fact that he's not properly vetted the monster he plans to put in charge of the country. Lee was loyal to the Order but that's the only nice thing Haytham can say about him when pushed. Loved the detail that after his experience with Burch he starts to see all his life's work in a different light but feels it's too late to go back. But that doesn't gel with what we get in the game one bit.

13:14 yeah. And developed Jonathan cooper he lived ubisoft and then worked on Uncharted 4 and the last of us part 2. Best character animation on industry with motion matching 🔥🔥🔥

Oh we’re eating good today

47:03 "How do you make an antagonist seem justified if you don't give them a compelling argument.:" This sentence lives rent free in my head, in Jays voice. How many times have we heard it now?

Im not saying I hate Ac3 because I started playing Ac3 almost a month ago, and im a trophy hunter, so im currently platinuming it. I got through the main game, and im now doing the dlc, but my god, was this a pain to play. (And im not talking about the grind. im well aware of the grind. I've platinumed both origins and odyssey, for gods sake) First, the remaster is so bad that there were so many times that my game glitched out, and I wasn't able to get an achievement, so I had to restart my game by closing it multiple times. Even in the dlc after I killed a hoard of enemies, a cutscene played, and one of my enemies that were dead on the ground stood up and was t posing in the cutscene. Like WHAT!!! The point is, I agree with a lot of the things Jay said, but I did love the story, plus the homestead missions made me love Connor.

I got motivated to try out assassin's Creed for the first time by looking at the trailer for AC3, and so I found the first game and the three ezio games on a sale and so I bought them all and AC3 in one fell swoop. I was initially upset by the unexpected flashback mode of the story because I didn't see it in any of the advertisements and so I felt cheated out of enjoying a game set only in the past and being historical fiction because I love history. But I eventually learn to start liking the Desmond story set in a weird blend of science fiction and fantasy which makes me think of a blend of national treasure and Indiana Jones. However it all died with Lucy Stillman. She and Desmond were clearly meant to have children together and continue that special bloodline and have their own video game set in the present day. But Ubisoft dropped the ball by refusing to give her a pay raise or whatever that caused them to fall out and so they had to kill off her character because they could no longer legally keep her. But instead of a simple tragedy of a death that would have included abstergo finding them and shooting at them and one bullet tragically having her name on it, they killed Lucy off in a way that felt like a gigantic middle finger towards her character. Ubisoft browndozers justify killing her off by thinking her as nothing more than a traitorous bitch you deserved being killed for being a triple agent. One of my first clues that people are stupid in general by their lack of critical thinking skills. A critical finger would have realized that it's painfully obvious that making her a triple agent was a last minute cop out of an excuse that was thrown together in a matter of seconds. I apologize for my mistakes and run on sentences but that is because I'm using my microphone to do all the talking.

I agree with pretty much everything Jay said. I have only played the games and I was an kid when I played ACIII. At that age I was easily impressed by pretty much any story and was also really into history, so ACIII was right by my alley. Man, I was so dissapointed. I didn't really care for most characters. The history side lacked substance, it felt like a checklist of historical events, bery cheesy. Even though I enjoyed some missions. One thing that always bugs me is that AC games never actually focus on the Templar x Assassins conflict, ideologies etc. It never feels like writers sat down and tried to make a compelling narrative, like in so many other games. I felt the same in ACIII. I remember being one of the weirdos that really enjoyed the Desmond storyline, because it felt so wild to have a current day assassins VS templar conflict, even though the story itself was all over the place. Yet when ACIII ended I was legitmaly pissed. The ending was lame and lacks even a single drop of creativity.

I remember as a kid me and my brother spending hours just free running through the trees in the frontier because it felt so new and fun. Good times.

Currently in the middle of watching this video and I love it already! But I wanted to note a few additional problems that AC3 introduces to movement, that the Kenways later keep, before I forget. On top of High Profile being the climb button, it also needlessly replaces many of your normal, prescriptive jumps, while still retaining the button that's analogous to the Legs button from previous games. This means that for a slightly safer jump set, mostly constrained to prescriptive (calculated) landing targets and positions being more accessible, you pay with stupid amounts of volatility when you don't wish to instantly perform a prescriptive jump when in the middle of running and changing your directional input into the desired direction. This means the only way of mitigating it is having to point your directional input precisely where you need it needlessly quickly, or stopping and breaking all of your momentum to adjust it. - All while a jump/legs button still exists!! An even greater offender is the fact that Ledge Grabs aren't only simplified to require the directional input only, but they're made to be ONLY ACCESSIBLE IN FREEFORM STATES. This means that ANY jump, eject, or swing that prescriptively calculated a landing target of ANY TYPE will not let you freely grab anything during that airtime - Half of the potential of Ledge Grabs is therefore completely gone and arbitrarily depends on your context and geometry. And lastly, the greatest offender of them all - the Parkour Down. Considering that AC3 is actually the first AC to add a full on parkour down bias to the franchise, you'd think this would make for a revolutionary, very much needed feature in vanilla movement. (The definitive parkour mod for the old schools now absolutely blows this out of the water to insane extents, at least) So what's the catch, beyond the fact the game doesn't even bother tutorializing this? It lies in it's keybind, through idiotic context dependence and action priority. The way to induce this parkour down bias to jumps, either prescriptive or freeform, is by holding Empty Hand while executing a given jump, problem is that this is the SAME BIND AS AIR TACKLE. This is made even worse by air tackle still not requiring any lock on, and worst of all - taking FULL PRIORITY on the positive edge of your Parkour Down input, if a tackleable target is in range. This means that every single time you wish to enable it in the heat of the moment, you have to hope there is no guard around you that's going to steal priority on that positive input edge, therefore triggering a combat and escape sequence.

Such a perfect representation of my thoughts on this game. I'm still so baffled at the praise the rooftop scene gets. Not to get it twisted, I do really like it. Haytham is always a joy to listen to, the templar ideology being touched on at all since the first game is great, and it is one of the few cutscenes portrayed well production-wise. Unfortunately, it is a perfect encapsulation of Ratonhnhaké:ton's stupidity during the main game. He stands there and listens to Haytham give his speech on the faults of the creed and then can't think of anything better to say than the 18th-century equivalent of "nuh uh, democracy stupid". I get so annoyed because we have seen better than this and both characters end up coming out worse for it.

I'm halfway through the video and boy did I go through a similar arc as you did with this game lol. Hyped pre-release, cope post- release, and rediscover and reevaluate many years after. It's the first full priced game I ever bought in college so it holds a special spot in my heart. Playing this game really feels like peeling an onion. It has so much content and mechanics that are so uneven in quality, many of them also hidden behind layers of unintuitive menus and out of the way map icons. I only found out how fun the Captain Kidd missions are, and how narratively fulfilling the homestead missions are, so much so they improve how I see the main story and Ratonhnhaké:ton as a protagonist, half a decade after the game's release. I do like how the game ended up though. Ratonhnhaké:ton managed to find his place in the newborn nation he helped founding, but his effort is futile in finding security for his people, let alone making a dent on changing the many other backward and hypocritical internal policies of the country such as slavery. All he could do was sitting on the empty land that used to be his village, wordless for the first time in the entire game for a hot headed man as he was, presumably like Ezio and Altair did before him, hoping for his work wasn't in vain and someone in the future will pass along his torch. edit: Almost forgot how bad the modern day ending is though lol. Awesome analysis as always.

I may not agree with many of your opinions butt I found myself enjoying the content either way, it is refreshing to se someone talk about problems with AC whilst at the same time being respectful and fair. commenting on this vid only case latest at the time.

Man, this is a great video! I highly appreciate that you can simultaneously appreciate what's great about this (and other) AC games, while recognising and naming the glaring weaknesses crystal clear. I just want to mention my peculiar perspective on the prologue: By a strange coincidence, I came to the game completely without any spoilers at the time. I wondered how this British guy I was playing was going to become a native American I knew from the cover. Then my brain was blown away twice in a row. I'll never forget that experience. After that, exactly as you describe, everything went down the drain. Media scholars in the future may look at this work and will see very clearly how fundamentally incompatible it is to deal with a certain subject (e.g. the American Revolution), and pursue the endeavour to create an entertainment product at the same time. With major productions now focusing on dopamine addiction and rejecting any narrative or thematic work in favour of online service models, it may well be that this game will occupy a rather unique place in art history: Here they have, maybe for the first and last time, somehow tried.

The pain of getting 93% completetion only for a damn bugged mail quest to waste it all. Didnt stop me from doing it all over again tho a year later

I just want to know why they decided to not play any ambient music when exploring the world. The OST is absolutely fantastic and outside from cutscenes, combat and the main menu you never hear it. It’s doubly strange when you consider just how frequent ambient music played in previous entries (and future entries).

An hour long video from Jay? Not long enough I say.

im south american, so im not that well versed in american history. AC3 tries shoving these people in the story as if i knew who most of them are. the problem is making that the central point of the narrative.

I remember the trailers before the game came out already calling the game a masterpiece, before reviews and the game were even out, that was such a red flag.

AC3 was really THE framework for narrative depth during AC's (arguably) best games, even though it was rather underwhelming, no... ANNOYING on its own. It would go on to innovate the entire Assassin/Templar dichotomy, and that would reverberate throughout the future of the franchise; for good or ill. That said, it was just a really annoying game to play for many reasons. There was this sense of ancient *human* history in the earlier AC games that isn't really there for the colonies. Around the American Revolution is when we really became "worldy" as people, and the world got a whole lot smaller than we thought it was. I think the narrative depth is where AC3 thrives, but a lot of its gameplay systems have immense issues.

I've always felt like Connor (I don't know how to spell his other name) was wasted on one game. Personally, I was deeply interested in his blind devotion to the revolutionaries, and I've always felt like a follow up which displays him trying to cope with his idealism conflicting with the very real mess he made with the revolution would have been very interesting. We so rarely get to see plots that focus on indigenous characters, and Connor has so much missed potential because of how messy AC3 was. He deserves more time in the spotlight, preferably with a better story to tell.

Hey I'm that dude at the end! @1:05:13 Thanks so much for the shoutout, really appreciate it. This was super awesome and incredibly comprehensive. Your whole section on the American Revolution was top tier and I enjoyed it immensely. I definitely agree with you re: all the narrative problems. I always thought a big part of them stemmed from Charles Lee (i.e., one too many villains, diluted Templar position, poor integration with the American Revolution, etc.). I would've enjoyed seeing Ratonhnhake:ton's story begin with the death of his mother, and then end with the death of his father. Not Lee.

Great video Jay. I shared much of the same excitement for AC3 back in the day (even went so as to be one of the first games I preordered). A few years later after finishing the story, I returned to “collect all the achievements”, only to find what felt like 60 long hours of exhaustive content-and came to realise just why, unlike the previous games in the series up till then-why I had rolled the credits and left it behind. This game was the moment that the series just stepped down a peg for me, it had been building for years, inside and outside the animus: and the fact it tried to “end” Desmond’s storyline made me feel like that magic had suddenly concluded, meanwhile these new evolving combat systems and fairly dramatic shift in setting/characters felt like a rushed beginning. But then your video reminded me of those homestead missions, and while they were tedious at times, they ended up being some of the games more wholesome and worthwhile treasures. Keep up the AC vids!

The historical paradox of Connor being a Mohawk could have been handled really well if they did it right. Framed as a sort of greater good argument he makes to Haytham, he could have much more easily flipped it back on him. And his conflict with his childhood friend would have been more interesting that way too. They should have just leaned more into him being a Pariah to the people of his village at the very least

Great content and analysis as always, I can totally understand your take on this. As someone who came to it years later having played Syndicate as my first AC game, then gone back to some of the older games, then played Origins and Odyssey and pretty much loved all of them old and new, I was hesitant to play AC3 because of the intense hate it seemed/seems to get from so many people, but I wanted to see the resolution of the story set up in AC2, so I took the plunge and was pleasantly surprised - I really enjoyed it. I found Ratonhnhaké:ton to be a compelling, interesting character and actually a nice contrast to the flamboyance of Ezio. The story was interesting, the combat was fun, and the opening with Haytham and the reveal of the true nature of his character was fantastic. I can absolutely see the flaws, but I still like it a lot. Is it the best AC game? Far from it, but it's also definitely not the worst (cough)Valhalla(cough).

We need more game analysis like this, I'm seeing WAY too many people being blinded by nostalgia and pretending every single game from their childhood is a "hidden gem". This game was the beginning of the end of Assassin's Creed, with Black Flag being a final high note and goodbye.

Lee really did just get lost in the forest, get racist, and leave

I recently replayed this game, and it’s just so frustrating and tedious to get through. There are many things I like about this game, and even more things I don’t like. When it’s at its best, it’s incredible, and I recognize its ambition. But for the most, it just falls flat and is not a cohesive game overall. Great video for expressing a lot of my grips with it, and praising what does deserve it.

I agree with most of the gameplay complaints, but the story is something I will always stand by. The Templars in AC1 were morally grey, but still felt over the top evil. We watch them do the most horrific things ever and then in the Animus Room they are like "You see, I did this for the good of mankind". I love the complexity of AC1, but the comparision with AC3 feels unfair. In AC3 I actually felt like those Templars had a fair argument most of the time.

3:30 I once made a thread on Twitter back like 3 years ago or whatever, looking at goats in every Assassin's Creed game. Kinda fits in with talking about the simulation of ecosystems & one of the interesting things was that AC3 wasn't just the first game to feature goats at all, but it took until AC Origins for goats to be as high in quality (in design, animation, modelling, interactivity etc) as they were in AC3.

AC3 was my intro to the franchise, heck it was one of the first M-rated games I ever bought for my ol 360... needless to say I was completely lost in the modern day plot, and I didn't even know what a Templar was when Haytham delivered that twist at the end of his sequence. And yet I was completely hooked. In hindsight, yes as a game it fell short, but that was my first time seeing any of the mechanics on display and I've been chasing that high ever since. The bayonet animations infected me with an itch for "melee fight with a gun" that nothing other than Black Flag and Unity have been able to scratch. I came to genuinely admire Connor when I did my 100% run and found all of his hidden character moments, I was captivated by this fundamental struggle between Freedom and Order (even though the franchise has never really delivered on the potential), the hidden blade cool factor, the power fantasy of carving through a squad of redcoats, the thunder and fury of a war I learned about in school (and it honestly helped me with my AP US History studies because it let my ADD-ass put a visual to all the boring names and numbers in the textbook). When people called it bad I never really saw where they were coming from. I still haven't played the Ezio trilogy which is a glaring hole, since I have played every other main installment of the franchise, but I can still definitely see how it was kind of... transitional I guess.

I love these longer form analysis videos I could listen to these for hours

My biggest disappointment was Unity. I was so excited after how good Black Flag was and the French Revolution was always my dream setting and it looked so good in the prerelease footage. And then release day hit, and it was broken and the story didn't care enough about it's setting. I'm still not over it. But I played 3 with the expectation that it sucked, because a friend of mine told me so. The game is far from the best in the series, but I still had a good time.

While I agree with a lot of your points, Jay (and they are beautifully laid out, mind you), I still love the game, faults and all. It's the first AC game that really grabbed my attention, I'm a sucker for hero's journeys (ElderGeek has mentioned that _AC3_ is the story of the _Star Wars_ Prequel & Original Trilogies set in the American Revolution), and I truly see myself in Connor. We're both outcasts and naïve idiots with anger issues trying to make the world a better place in our own way... and are too stupid to learn when to quit lol. This game has such an impact on me that the collectibles I have for it, like the figurine, flags, medallion and whatnot, are the only ones remaining in my small AC collection. Everything else I have sold a long time ago (a notable exception is the Edward Kenway paintings). The remastered version of the game is permanently installed on every PC I have that has sufficient power to run it at max settings with high FPS. I love this game for the same reason other AC fans have a fondness for _Unity:_ there's a certain _je ne sais quoi_ to both games that seemingly only makes sense and appeals to a select few.

The more often I replay all the games, the more I appreciate AC3 for what it is, and the more I get annoyed by Black Flag for its scale and lack of coherent story. AC3 wasn't great writing, but it didn't drag it out either, you can play through the entire game in a day. The atmosphere is honestly great, the town building was a very fun addition with lots of neat little side missions that most people probably never have experienced, and the only thing that truly ruins the immersion (other than the average-at-best writing) is the absolutely disgustingly poor voice acting on the native language.

8:40 this exact same thing happened to me on my first playthrough of AC III, I got stuck on 99% completion too! I was so frustrated I haven't picked up the game since for a replay, despite replaying most of the other pre-origins AC games several times.

I think I played AC3 for less than 7 hours in total and I all remember about it these days are: the controls were worse, the cities were worse, the forest was boring, the combat was annoying, and Conner was a shithead that was actively less likeable than the bad guy whom I would have rather kept playing as. I recall the straw that broke the camels back for me was when tried to have some fun in the same way I would have in AC2/Brotherhood; start as big a street fight as possible and keep stabbing until everything stopped moving. But then I found out that unlike AC2, guards in AC3 will never throw down their weapons and run away in terror because you just killed their 6 buddies in 4 seconds. And that at max wanted level the guards will spawn INFINITELY. The fact that I could just stand there in town with a 50 man pile of corpses on the ground and fuckers just kept spawning in to attack me until I got bored and ran off to find a way to lower my wanted level was so disappointing to me.

As always, your video delivers on all fronts. As with your Unity video this will serve me as a highly valuable ressource to point to when i talk with others about my gripes with each respective game in the series. I am specifially glad that you went into the downgrade of combat. It always frustrated me how barebones the combat was in AC3 compared to Brotherhood, especially with the messy animations, change from clashing swords to repeatedly deadly wounding enemies without consequences ( you described that very well in th segment) and the overall lack of variety. This actually set the precedent for combat in all later games. We will never see proper blade to blade combat after Revelations. The paired animation system of the first 4 games allowed for very clean feel and look of the combat. And im sad that we lost sad. A low point in that regard is probably Syndicate, with it's endless combos of weightless slashing and non-existent rythm. The only thing where i differ from your take is the cities of AC3. I just didn't find them interesting, be it visually, aesthetically or gameplay wise. Like all of AC3 they felt very bare bones, and the drab and muddy look, albeit realistic, was certainly a tough pill to swallow after the heights of Venice, Florence, Jerusalem or even San Gimignano. Oh, and big props for also mentioning the downgraded cinematography. People rarely talk about how especially the Ezio trilogie was very strong in it's presentation. Just the hanging scene from AC2 alone is leagues above anything in AC3.

Incredibly impressive content Jay. I can only imagine how long it took to write this absolutely huge video essay, and thats before you even think about recording the audio and then editing an hour long video. You deserve masses of success.

13:40. THISSSSS. The final mission where you chase the dude was the only time I truly raged at a game, and I am not a rage gamer at all. Connor running as fast as he can only to come to a dead halt as he reaches out and grabs a merchant's tent or hugs against a wall. I felt absolutely no agency over my character. It was a game of hold forward and avoid all of the things Connor might want to glue himself to.

I may be looking at this game with rose tinted glasses but I really thought it shined back in the day. Not the narrative, mind you, but the gameplay was great for me. All the the animations for running, climbing, and fighting were the best I think Ubisoft ever did.

Everytime when jay posts a new video, its always a treat Love the analysis vods man.

Playing through this game on pc rn. Having my monitor’s refresh rate set to 165hz caused all the coaches you can hide in to just… not exist. It also cased a bunch of random barrels and boxes to pop in and out of existence, and corpses to stretch and bounce around. Had to set it to 60hz for the game to stop freaking tf out. Great video btw

Excellent video, well argued and on point, keep up the good work

Jay... I gotta say, just looking at this without starting the video, i'm a little nervous... But you've always had such a solid and reputable viewpoint that i'm engaged, at 0:01 seconds. That's your reputation, man!! Without being creepy, I totally dig you, Jay!!!

3 was disappointing. Definitely a victim of feature creep. But a lot of the stuff that worked in AC4, one of everyone's favorites, started here in 3 and were fleshed out, given polish.

At least this game gave me Haytham. I'll give it that much. Great points raised in this video. It was a game that was hard to get into especially since it came after our time with Ezio, and the historical setting of Rennaissance Italy, that was honestly more interesting to me. Still enjoyed the historical setting, but not nearly as much. And the less said about Ratonhnhaké:ton as a character, the better, in my opinion.

Connor Kenway is my favorite assassin hands down. 😢

I remember seeing the trailers and the ship combat and thinking “wow, I need to catch up on the series before this comes out”. So I borrowed a friend’s copy of Revelations. I got about an hour into it before I realised if already played this game three times before, got bored and have never touched the series since.

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AC3 was one of the best games I've ever played.

Only recently played AC3 for the first time as i always skipped it due to its reviews and it was a total mess. I thought the Haytham section was wonderful but then it immediately fell off a cliff and never recovered and the ending was so poorly baked and anticlimactic that i had to laugh at it. I somehow consider Rogue to be better in just about every way and that was basically a cheap asset flip

well damn Jay, are you a templar, bc while I initially disagreed with the title and setup, your explanations and calm yet convincing presentation really made me question my set beliefs..? lol jokes aside, AC3 is the first AC game I played (after Valhalla, but they're so vastly different it makes them non-comparable) and I genuinely liked it. granted, this was just a few years ago and without knowing anything significant about the franchise, I just dove into it like you would any other open world action adventure, so I didn't really have any set expectations or AC experience to compare it with. now that I've played almost all of them since, I can see some of your opinions here being completely valid. great thourough analysis, as usual!

22:26 intrinsically ezio combat system variety 21:20 camera lock strategies

While it's not the most disappointing game for myself personally, it definitely is one of them because AC3 was when the series was hitting its peak. After how incredible AC2 was and the spinoffs were just as fun, my hype was SKY HIGH for AC3, especially since it was going to take place during the Revolutionary War. I finished it in a week or two, and then I remember feeling very hollow. It just felt like Ubisoft bit off way more than they could chew and put too much and also not enough in the game at the same time.

Hey Jay, at 9:15 ish you mentioned the worst QTE - but can you be real with me now and tell me; is it better or worse that TR: Rise ?? Cause I gotta say imma doubt you on this one and go all on on TR Reboot QTE's. lets just throw the whole trilogy in.

AC3 is not in my top 5 of the series, yet it’s weirdly my most replayed. So seeing the title made me feel some type of way. But as always, Jay manages to convince me. Totally agree with a lot of the points laid out and shared similar frustrations. Even learned something new and came to see a different perspective. Another very well crafted video 👏

Is there a nest at 3:00 that disappears when Connor gets to the branch end?

I’m a big fan of Assassins Creed 3. Connor is a character I really connected with due to his more reserved nature and tragic backstory. I think it makes sense for Connor to be standoffish because he has been through so much. Connor’s unrelenting perseverance is amazing to see. Charles Lee even touches upon this before Connor shoots him. I do agree with some of your criticisms though and by no means do I think this game is perfect. The modern day really didn’t connect with me that well and the ending felt a bit underwhelming. To be fair the modern day of most Assassins Creed games aren’t very good and I think this one has the best modern day because it actually lets you play in it and interact with the outside world. The music of this game is amazing and provides a lot of heavy lifting on the emotional moments which I think really hit well. I felt genuinely sad about Achilles death even after everything we’ve seen him do in Rogue. I’d love to see a full game for Achilles to showcase his earlier life and history with the assassins because it is fascinating to me. The homestead missions enrich Connors character. I felt like he got to show off other sides of his personality the warmer and empathetic version of him that he just didn’t have an opportunity to show in the main game which yes is a flaw in the main story but it is still there you just need to dig a bit deeper to find it. The send off and funeral of Achilles was amazing as well as the wedding. I loved a lot of the homestead mission characters and it was so wholesome to see the found community that Connor and Achilles were able to build at the end of the game. This game has a lot of heart and loads of memorable moments supported by a beautiful open world a fun and addicting combat system and an extremely well written main protagonist along with the best villain in the series being Haytham. The voice acting is great especially Connor Haytham and Achilles. I felt remorseful for Haytham’s death even though objectively he is a bad person we still got to see him do good things and have a genuine connection with Connors mother.

The game jumped for a haystack, but squashed on the ground.

You know what, Jay, I agree with everything you said and I also enjoy the game. It is... primitive... but so is the story (if you take it out of the franchise entire it would be a fairly solid game for its time) and i love how perspectives meld - we see the same thing yet have different ways of talking about it. I love this about you - your honesty and openness. You're a light. :)

When I first finished AC3 I thought I missed something in the past games that explained where all this came from. There was a lot of side stuff I never did in the previous games and I thought it all got explained there. It’s so sad to now know that it really did come outta nowhere and I really did see it all as I was meant to and it never made sense

I'm just here to state I'm on of the few that actually adore this game, and Connor as a character. Call him bland, sure, but did you really expect the man to be skipping through a field of butterflies after watching his mother burn alive and then later find out that the man you're aiding in a war was also the man that wanted to get rid of your people? Let's face it, anyone who came after Ezio was gonna get disliked. I agree the gameplay had its fault, and I actually REALLY dislike how damn long the opening is with Haytham, but I still ended up loving the game and it made me cry at the end when we see Connor look out to ( what looked like an empty Homestead ) an then pull his hatchet out of the post, despite the fact his people still ended up having to leave the Frontier after all his efforts.

Love Love LOVE So Says Jay! Deep information on subjects you love, reminds me of TRO with his honesty. What a Wordsmith! 10/10!

It is interesting that I have the same thought process and agree on the arguments that Jay made on the game, but something about AC3 is different to me, it could be that I was invested in Homestead Connor rather than main story Connor, It could be how kind of it feeds of the power fantasy that you get because how much tools you have and see how badass Connor actually is as an assassin I think Whitelight said of I'm not mistaken his video is way older, if you see conner in different way other what the game is trying to show he is wayyyyy badass than he actually is In my opinion the game should be enjoyed on your own prospective on the second playthrough rather than what the game give you on the first

I was thinking that you might have covered the dlc for the game as well, any particular reason that you decided not to?

this was a very good and comprehensible video essay. i would put this along with whitelight's videos as the best essays into the franchise, its shortcomings and its magic.

I get Ubisoft wanted Connor to feel like an unstoppable killing machine, but it's pathetic that you don't even have to think during combat.

So did you like the modern day story in the assassins creed games or didn't you?

39:50 Okay it is a bit funny that it says "Temple University" right there, in the context of Assassin's Creed

35:50 what you said here is so true. I'm playing right now on PS3 and did all the homestead missions and already did the templar boat missions that is where you kill one of the major templar of the narrative. It's so stupid that they let such important plot points on secondary missions. Like this guy is a major bad guy on the wall on the homestead mansion. Other plot point that you can play out of order is the benedict arnold dlc, that I think is playable since sequence 8 until sequence 11, but when you start the mission connor refers a event from sequence 10 I think. They could've made a better job to play the missions in order.

It's strange, the only thing I remember of this game is the time I air assassinated a guard from the trees which made me clipped inside of a rock and was stuck inside of it. That classic Ubisoft quality.

I played all the Desmond games back to back as a friend of mine lent them to me while he was enjoying the newly released Black Flag. I had a great time, especially with Brotherhood. I was also a kinda completionist (didn't got all the flags in AC1, but always collected all the feathers in the other games for example). I already started to get burnt out around the end of Revelation and the collectibles and hunts of AC3 were a nightmare and killed my enjoyment. Tree parkour was refreshing, but just okay. I really hated that they killed Desmond. It killed AC for me. I only started to get into the serie after the hopes from the Mirage announcement made me want to get back into AC.

No way people are playing that remaster. Even without comparison it looks terrible... Just like the AC2 remaster. Ubisoft sucks at remastering, AC3RM literally has the AO removed from the grass and for some reason they slapped this warm yellow filter over everything. Oh and the plastic faces are definitely remaster only, the original looked a lot better. Oh and btw, Altair killed civilians he interrogated, Haytham strikes me as more traditional in that sense.

honestly, this game grew on me A LOT. I too was super disappointed, but over time it's managed to become one of my favourites in the franchise. it fell short from a lot of it's potential, but it also laid the groundwork for some of the best game mechanics in some of the future titles, and I adore it for that

As someone who plays the game on day one. The game is mild. But managed to gain a lot of hype because it is very super good prequel. The game simply focuses too much on the story's progress as the novel. So it has a lot of flaws as the proper game. The good thing is this game gave Ubisoft a major opener to other possible games. Ubisoft nearly tarnishes all of these.

The interesting thing is that, even when I agree with most of your points here, AC3 is still one of my favourite games in the series. Assassin's Creed has - at least to me - always been sort of a "two steps forward, one step back" franchise even at the best of times, it's the series that I love even though no single game has ever truly lived up to its potential. Each of them has some grating lows and some dizzying highs and how much I enjoy any given game in the series always depends not just on the balance of highs to lows but also which of these aspects I happen to care more about. Anyone's ranking of the AC games feels a bit like a Rorschach test because beyond Black Flag and AC2 being considered the high points of the series, people have wildly different opinions on when or where this franchise has been best, and I think that's in large part because there's always way more potential for greatness in the games than they actually deliver. Really love your videos, it's wonderful to see some genuinely thoughtful content on these games.

This game was the peak of the AC franchise in terms of public interest.

36:00 Jay you start talking about how much of the main protagonists story was relegated to side quests - In my opinion, this was a studio reaching out and testing audiences; Are they more interested in Finishing the game, or Learning the games Lore? I really think they rolled the dice on this one, but I also believe that every studio that exists owes homage to Ubisoft for this bold risk.

Yeah…. I was so disappointed in 3 that I didn’t enjoy 4 at first and had to go back and play 4 before I actually enjoyed it. Now it’s my second favorite in the series

So I saw your video and understand how you feel. It's not perfect, but for me I still have a soft spot for it. I was at San Diego Comic Con when it was first released. I also met the man who voiced Haythem. Again I get why it left you disappointed, but I can still find enjoyment in it

I have 2 big conflicting thoughts from my first playthrough back when it first dropped. 1st. I have to thank this game because its responsible for me aceing a hard Honors Revolutionary War history final in Jr. High I didn't study for well enough for. Mainly because I was too busy playing Ac 3. So many questions were met with "oh hey I was there. I know that." 2nd. The xbox360 verson for me broke so bad the game crashed on the final cutscene. I could never beat the game.

There were a few things that were tedious in this game but in my opinion it was and still is the best Assassins Creed gave I’ve played. Now that said Valhalla is really good too as many others are.

Hytham's story arc is one of my favorites in the series

I'm in the minority, but AC 3 and Rogue are my favorites til this day.

In all fairness regarding Haytham giving Charless Lee control, I haven't played the game in a while but I'd assume Lee was just hiding his real motivations and was just playing along with Haytham. People lying and hiding their true intentions is pretty common and there are people in real life who do such things. I'm not sure if the game handles grey morality well, but it goes to show that story critique is so much more subjective than gameplay and the comment on, "people online saying the game handling grey morality well", kind of proves my point. I even read a blog by a mutual of mine who likes AC3's story and thinks Connor is well written character. I would probably play this game again to get my perspective on the story but I just don't care about AC enough, I already loathe the overarching plot of the series. Nothing you do in the games even remotely matter in the grand scheme of things because the bad guys win anyway.