Is it just me, or should computers be better by now?

Why is it a gaming computer that costs near-2000 dollars can still have problems when it runs a 5 year old game? This seems like a problem that shouldn't exist anymore.

People sometimes talk about how they expect the future to have flying cars, people taking jetpacks to work, hoverboots, houses on the moon, laser guns, that sort of thing, but even our basic technology is all kinds of flawed!

Damn flying cars, I'd rather have a computer that worked reliably before I put my life on the line in something run by one.

Still amazed we get on planes.

I'm posting these things everywhere because I like to get feedback, even from random people.

My books-in-progress can be found here: http://www.fictionpress.com/u/683697/Shadowflame66

If you happen to see this and want to take a look, I'd appreciate it. Feedback in the form of reviews there, e-mails, in comments here, or any other way you feel like are even more appreciated. ^^

Alrighty... I've seen a ton of ideas and theories thrown around recently, and I'm interested to know what other people think.

I'm gonna start with giving what I know / think / believe about this whole thing. And if you don't know about this yet, well, this contains serious spoilers, but go ahead and read on if you want.

Desmond Miles is the main character of the series. He is Subject 17 to be used in the Animus, the device which uses the DNA of the subject to read their genetic memory and examine the lives of their ancestors.

Subject 16, name as yet unknown, came before Desmond. We know little about him. Apparently he was very smart, able to hack the Animus and leave coded messages for whoever came after him, under the Templar's noses. Lucy knew him, from working with him and the Animus. And, according to her, he went insane, couldn't remember who, of the hundreds of lives he'd lived, he was, and kept seeing things, becoming able to access his genetic memory -without- the Animus.

He left information for whoever came after him, which he referred to as "The Truth". When peiced together, it shows a video of Adam and Eve running from something. On their way up a tower, they look through a window and see other people working in a forge-like area, supervised by a figure holding an Apple of Eden.

They get to the top of the building, and the woman looks at the man and says "Adam, I have it!" holding up a Peice of Eden, an Apple. The man says "Eve..." Whereupon she looks beyond the camera and yells "Look out!", something we can't see happens, and the video cuts out, leaving a blank screen with morse coding that reads "Eden."

This video is titled "Subject 16, Session 12", I could be wrong about the session number, but the point is that this was an Animus session, except it was following Adam, of Adam and Eve.

What else do we know... Desmond appears to be suffering similar effects as Subject 16, as he is thrust back into Altair without being in the Animus. He witnesses his own conception, at which point, the camera stays on the woman, not following Altair off the tower, since that's the end of Altair's DNA input.

Altair is, most likely, alive, possibly alluded to by Codex Page 30, where he talks about his impending death, the fact that the Peice of Eden he has, The Apple, might be able to forestall it or prevent it completely, and him saying he's going to take one last look at it.

In The Vault Ezio discovers, he speaks to Minerva, who tells the story of The Ones That Came Before, who created humans and controlled them. Humans "betrayed" them, turning against them, and they fought, though the humans won because there were too many.

There was an event where, apparently, the sun nearly destroyed the earth, killed almost all the humans, and almost, or all of, The Ones That Came Before. This is told both by Minerva, and by one of Subject 16's messages, which stated "fires from heaven destroyed them."

And, apparently, it's going to happen again. Now...

I'm pretty sure Minerva's story is heavily biased on the "betrayal" part. I think they tried to just control humans, and Adam and Eve managed to break free and take a Peice of Eden with them, somehow. They were likely, technically, the first Assassins. This is more interesting because it mirrors the Biblical story, where the Apple of the Tree of Knowledge is described as something that contains great knowledge and would make a man closer to a God, and Eve took it, ate of it and gave it to Adam.

It's likely a similar story here, the Apple granting them here, however, freedom from the effects of the other Peices of Eden, something we know is possible since Ezio was immune to the Staff while he held the Apple. And what they see at the end of The Truth video is likely a God, that is, one of The Ones That Came Before, coming after them, as they appear afraid, and looking behind them, the whole video as they're running.

The thing that escapes me is that Minerva -knew- Desmond was there, or would be there, depending on how time works in the Assassin's Creed world. She spoke directly to him when Ezio found her. This makes little sense, as everything has been pointing -away- from religion up to this point. Thus, they can't actually be -gods-. It actually points to them being, basically, aliens, or something like it. So Omniscience is a strange quality I don't get.

But perhaps everything's connected somehow, like a horizontal timeline. I mean, Altair, Ezio and Desmond all share the same scar on their face, you even see Ezio get it. And Adam's face in The Truth video is not shown, so perhaps even he has the same? There's just so much inter-connecting...

Anyway... This is what I've gotten from this game's story so far. I'd be interested to hear if anybody else has comments or questions on it, and I'd -really- like to hear other ideas about what's going on.

Aliens, human creation and enslavement, artifacts of control, unaided genetic reading, time fluxes and possible ends of the world... This story's gettin' crazy!

I've yet to post anything here, but I've been noticing something recently that's been getting my attention more and more. Now, it's not anything new, but I'm finding it to be an increasing problem in certain areas, and I like to refer to it as the Hollywood Sickness.

The entertainment industry has many faults along with all its good qualities, as we all know. But the one I'm talking about here is the startling rate at which effort usually declines once something is popular. We -all- know examples of this. One thing, wether it's a movie, game or something else, gets big, and suddenly there's a lot more of it coming out, and often times, all of this extra stuff is made for the reason of money rather than having more of what made the thing good in the first place.

There are exceptions, of course, as there are to any rule. But looking at some examples I can't help but be a little worried as the industry of gaming becomes more mainstream. Just look at the Wii and how much it's affected by this. Good games that have been made with effort, like Zelda and Mario, have still been there, but how many extremely similar iterations of Wii Sports and Wii Fit do you think we'll see?

Look at the MMO game of World of Warcraft. The vanilla version was new, it was big, and it was good. And it's had some good additions since then. Burning Crusade added new races... But no new classes, most of the upgrades from vanilla to BC were good, but not much -new-. Currently, WoW has added -one- new class since the original World of Warcraft came out, and there are no plans to add another. Sure, they revamp, refine, rebalance, and it'd take a lot of work to add more classes, but isn't that worth it?

Or, with over 11 million players giving them 15 dollars a month, paying 15 dollars for recustomization of one character, 25 dollars to transfer one character from one realm to another, 10 dollars to change the name of one character, and 30 dollars to change one character from one faction to another, not to mention each person who buys the game also buying two expansions... Is Blizzard just tossing out what they need to to keep the money flowing?

It's a trend we've seen over and over in all areas, and like I said, it's not new. But there needs to be something to keep "cashing in" from being too big a part of this industry. Or do you want to be playing Original Game: Volume Two: Version Four - with two new maps, at some point in the future?