I think you're right. It's right about the time thatTTG said:even more major spoilers...
Ezio gets to the Villa
I absolutely am a sucker for all the meta-story elements (Desmond, Templar conspiracy, etc). And I think that stuff is all handled well. But the Ezio stuff just falls off a cliff early on and never gets its head back above water.
I really love the game overall, but it could have been so much better. Obviously any developer would love extra time to polish up a game, but this is one case where I think some extra time early in development to flesh out the Ezio material would have paid off in spades. The fact that they had to chop all the Forli material and southern Florence material from the final game, combined with the unusually high number of bugs (for a game of this quality) tells me that this really needed more time in the cooker.
I'm sure if you asked any developer, they'd tell you that their game was released earlier than they would have liked, but for a game of this caliber, this is one situation where the extra time really would have paid off in terms of the quality of the experience. Sadly, however, from a business perspective, I'm sure the extra time wouldn't have paid off any greater in sales. So ultimately the artistic integrity of the work suffers because of simple economics. It's a shame.