Not all fans welcomed the storytelling choice, but the developers saw a potential threat to the franchise’s future and felt compelled to act.
For Assassin’s Creed 3 the team made the controversial decision to kill Desmond Miles. The protagonist’s death sparked significant backlash within the fan community.
In an interview with FRVR, creative director Alex Hutchinson recalled that, between the numbered entries Assassin’s Creed II and III, the studio released a couple of additional projects:
The issue with success is that it prolongs things. So Ubisoft… inserted two more games before we could finish [AC3]. Between [2 and 3] they released Brotherhood and Revelations. Brotherhood was originally planned as DLC, but it eventually became a full-fledged game.
The storyline was growing ever more intricate and tangled. Alex explained they didn’t want Assassin’s Creed to suffer the same fate as the RTS genre — where the most devoted fans demanded extreme “super-hardcore” features. That push toward greater difficulty alienated the wider audience and, consequently, led to falling sales.
The AC team feared that if they didn’t move on from Desmond, fans would constantly point out lore inconsistencies and keep referencing elements shown years earlier in older titles:
We didn’t want the same thing to happen to AC — you know, those obsessive fans who try to control everything and claim, “But in that game, 17 years ago, this happened.” […] Essentially, the advantage of Assassin’s Creed, or even Far Cry, is that there’s always a clear entry point for new players, so you don’t get the feeling you’re missing out.
Therefore, Desmond’s death became a means to revitalize the series and opened the door to exploring the past and the exploits of other assassins.
Source: iXBT.games