Ezio and the early legacy

If one character built this franchise, it is Ezio Auditore da Firenze. Assassin's Creed II in 2009 fixed the first game's repetition, gave its hero a family, a home and a decades-long arc, and turned Renaissance Italy into a playground of rooftops, canals and conspiracies.

Brotherhood took him to Rome and let players recruit and train their own Assassins, while Revelations sent an older Ezio to Constantinople and closed both his story and Altaïr's. That trilogy is why the early series endures: it proved an Assassin could carry character growth, humour and heartbreak, not just a target list. Almost everything after it — bigger cities, brotherhood management, a hero whose life you follow from youth to old age — is still answering the standard Ezio set.