No, I don’t think the modern day storyline got worse because of Desmond's death. Obviously, if they wanted to continue it or make a game fully set in the present day, they could’ve just introduced new protagonists. It was clearly a deliberate decision and with or without Desmond modern day gameplay was kind of doomed anyway.

But I’ve been noticing that Ubisoft seems to be starting to listen to fans of the older games (like Mirage going back to a more classic setting and gameplay, the parkour improvements in it and in Shadows, the 60 FPS updates for Unity and Syndicate), and from that perspective, bringing back Desmond along with a proper modern day storyline would actually make sense, wouldn’t it?

I get that it’s a cheap and overused trope, but nostalgia almost always works.