Looking through this thread and every other AC thread, I am pretty sure it isnt the franchise that is looking cynical.
True maybe for my part, but I don't think we should be surprised of overly negative feedback over the assassin's creed franchise at this point when it stopped to have anything meaningful to say or bring a few games back, and proceeds to have shadier and shadier business practices tied to it's games, not even counting the mess that was the Unity release on PC (or Ubisoft's PC release habits in general, which is going to be fun for the next one now that steam refunds is a thing).
At some point if we kinda want ubisoft and these games to go forward and stop being served crap yearly, roughing them up doesn't seem like an unnecessary thing (especially looking at a majority of the posts here. Honestly are we just gonna let them slide by every year ?)