Eh, there's valid reasons to wear a hood when you're trying to have people not see your face. But you're very right... it doesn't exactly work out well when you're Ezio and running around with enough bespoke weaponry and armor to get confused for the Holy Roman Emperor. "Guards, guards! That's him! The one who looks like a king from all his fancy armor and has the crossbow slung on his back!" Later games just got worse with making you look totally not like a secret assassin. Like with Connor: "Yes, that's him! The Spanish looking kid dressed up like an Indian with feathers and stuff! He's the one who smashed the guy's head open with a fancy tomahawk!"
I could handwave/handcanon ezio doing it as some fancy trader's/middle/upperclass son setup, and there were probably enough hood-style headwear still around in the crowd to blend in. meanwhile in ac3 you run around in some fancy navy looking clothes in the wild and hooded in broad streets, but worse literally the only one wearing a
white hood or any hood at all. might as well stamp an assassin symbol on it so even densest bloke knows who you are. even desmond doing it made more sense, not to blend in but to hide from cameras etc.
It's pretty much the same way they did the old games with the crusaders. AC's writing has always been a meme in this regard.
Faction the protagonist supports? GUD!
Faction the protagonist's faction is at war with? BAD!
History is mixed on the topic or says the direct opposite? LOL ASSASSIN GO JUMPY JUMPY STABY STABY!
About the only two AC games where they didn't pretty much stick with this perfectly was Odyssey, and AC 3 though even in that they still made the protagonist's primary faction, the natives out to be these perfect people. It's shit writing and shit history, but honestly, I don't think most people play the games for the story anyway.
that's another thing that really started with ac3 (or brotherhood/revelations, but tbh I hardly remember anything about those besides ezio looking like a caveman in the last one), iirc ac1 had no metacommentary about the crusades and just templars being cunts or abusing their position. ac2 had the whole italian renaissance backdrop where people were constantly fucking each other over, so it wasn't that much of a stretch. meanwhile I still don't know what got connor's panties in a twist,
washington charles lee attacking his camp or something (and then ubisoft didn't even have the balls to portray washington that way which afaik would actually be more historically accurate), plus templars in general seemed like pretty reasonable people.
and then with black flag it didn't really matter anymore when some random bong stumbles about a hood and hidden blade and is suddenly an assassin.
what's worse is that it kinda ubisoft's writing in general, watchdogs 2 was already meh and legion went full retard trying to spin the assassins as some brave antifags "fighting back templar injustice" or some shit (and then deservedly got fucked over when brexit went through). wildlands was ok but they tried way too hard to suddenly spin the bad guy as bad because can't have a morally grey villain, but still was contained to a smaller scale, breakpoint is basically "google is 'suddenly' evil after it got taken over by a butthurt soldier out to destroy the world" (because what else) and the whole erewhon setup fighting "all assassins wear hoods" idea for the crown of stupid.
either they need to scale the whole "deep and realistic" shit back hard or get better writers.
Expecting the britbongs to be mad would imply their balls weren't ripped off and shoved up their ass by the very vikings Ubisoft wants to pass as "the gud guys".
wait, the vikings were woke
pakis "asians"?