Yeah, not much really happened in the first one. Altair had his story which was cool. Not much of anything with Desmond. If you don't want to play the first one, you could just read up on it. Some stuff happened, but not too much. The Altair stuff is where you would mostly be lost. The desmond stuff in the first one was pretty nonexistent except for the fact that he was "playable" for a tiny, and I mean tiny percentage of the game.