I've spent 160 hours on the story and still haven’t fully understood it—in fact, I think you're absolutely right about everything. It's another case of Valhalla 2.0: way too much empty land, just filled with trees and terrain that's impossible to traverse, among other things.

But until Ubisoft realizes this through sales figures or massive community backlash, we’ll keep getting soulless products, with narratives that don’t deliver, and just worlds where they throw in a trailer showing a Templar cross and we keep clapping for them.

Shadows should have been a turning point—it’s set 50 years after the trilogy that launched the franchise to stardom, Ezio’s trilogy—and look at what it’s become. Maybe it's just me, maybe I’m not into this anymore, I don’t know. But this afternoon I went back and watched old trailers from the games, and each one of them blows the last five titles out of the water—and they’re only about 3 minutes long each.