If you care about Assassin's Creed's ongoing story, the latest comic series is your best bet

The Assassin's Creed games seem to have lost the plot, but it turns out it's just hiding in the comics series.

Assassin's Creed has an ongoing plot, in case you've forgotten that. The oft-derided modern-day sequences of the first five core games chained together into a science fiction storyline which overlapped slightly with your historical adventures, and was, supposedly, the point of all your actual gameplay - but pretty much vanished after Assassin's Creed 3.

Interestingly, it looks like Ubisoft's ready to tie a bow on the whole thing. Titan Comics has been carrying the overarching Assassin's Creed story along now that the games aren't doing it, and the latest update from the publisher suggests it's all coming to an end: Titan is shutting down two of its four Assassin's Creed comic lines and merging them into one, all-new series.

This new Assassin's Creed comic series kicks off on February 1, and will be written by Dan Watters and Alex Paknadel, with art from Assassin's Creed game storyboard artist José Holder. It brings together the Assassin's Creed: Assassin's and Assassin's Creed: Templars books in one package, continuing the stories of characters like Charlotte de Cruz and Black Cross.

More pertinently, the new comic promises to "culminate a key storyline from the Assassin’s Creed video games, kicking off with the Phoenix Project (featured in Assassin’s Creed Unity, Assassin’s Creed Rogue and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate) - a Templar plot to unlock the ancient secrets stored in the DNA of a precursor race".

You know - that thing Abstergo's been doing since the first Assassin's Creed game? The whole reason any of the games and most of the extended universe happen? Yeah, that's nearly done.

It's indicative of how little Ubisoft has come to care about its original narrative that it's going to end the whole thing in the comics rather than an actual Assassin's Creed game, but I wonder if this tells us something else, as well. Is Ubisoft ready to launch a new Assassin's Creed storyline? Will the next Assassin's Creed game, which may not release till 2018, reboot the franchise entirely?

I love Assassin's Creed and I hope Ubisoft won't abandon the enormous extended universe it has established for the franchise - but I'm pretty happy to see it taking a decent break and hopefully coming back refreshed and with a better understanding of its own strengths, so maybe it's forgivable.

Anyway, even with Assassin's and Templars shuttering you can still get your Assassin's Creed comics fix from Titan with the Last Descendants - Locus and Awakening series, which are set top continue.