Assassin’s Creed III, the fifth proper instalment in Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise is due to release at the end of October. Hypable plays through the previous games in the series from the viewpoint of a newbie to the Creed’s universe to see what we hope stays and what we hope goes in the next evolution of Assassin’s Creed. This post contains spoilers relating to the original Assassin’s Creed game.
First impressions
I have never played an Assassin’s Creed game before. I’m even scratching my head to remember the last time I played a stealth game, or a game that focused around assassination. Skyrim’s hilariously poor sneak system hardly counts, does it?
Regardless, I still find it extremely satisfying to get around a problem in-game through subtlety and fooling the AI system rather than running in all guns (or axes) blazing, so perhaps Assassin’s Creed would be my kind of game after all. Yet I remained cynical as I booted up the first Creed game on my PC, wondering how long it would take before I muttered either “stupid console port” or “dumb NPCs,” or else slam my head against the desk in frustration at a stupid story, racial stereotype or glaring historical inaccuracy.
The opening cinematic of the original Assassin’s Creed game did little to dull my usual skepticism for highly successful triple-A standard games. Bad guys killing people. Brooding, buff, hooded protagonist looking on from atop a tower. Then it gets better; a neat play with camera angles and a clever use of a bell chiming made me sit up and take notice – this trailer was more than the usual “I AM BADASS” statement that usually drowns out any vaguely artistic messages or even any relation to the actual gameplay itself.
Every English teacher, movie snob and scriptwriter loves a good bit of symbolism, and the opening trailer, to my surprise, dealt out a nice little bit of imagery, cutting directly from a hawk to the main character.
I don’t need to go into the obvious connections between an assassin and a bird of prey here, but it was a nice little touch in the trailer that was satisfying to spot. But it got better as the protagonist, Altaïr, got going with that trademark loping gait of his, as he runs down alleyways, knocking empty pots from people’s grasps, climbing up walls, running along rooftops, and disappearing into a crowd of similarly white-robed people. I raised an eyebrow: that looked awesome, but I wouldn’t be able to do anything close to that in the game, would I?
Wrong. The reason I’ve gone on about the trailer so much was because it actually reflects Assassin’s Creed‘s gameplay. 90% of the game is a pot-smashing simulator. The other 10% is roof jumping and chilling out with groups of scholars that conveniently dress in the same colours as your character.
Desmond the bartender
First, however, Assassin’s Creed threw me another curveball. The protagonist isn’t really an assassin? He’s a bartender from the present day called Desmond? What?
I had to rapidly reassess what to expect from the game. Was it going to be part modern-day thriller? Was I going to be sneaking a machine gun into the 12th century?
I was introduced to the Animus, a machine which used my character’s genetics to effectively put him in the shoes of his ancestors. Altaïr is one of those ancestors, and there were to be no machine guns. After a quick tutorial in the guise of a simulation that involved plenty of pot-smashing, I started getting sucked in to the actual game.
Learning the ropes
Thankfully, the first level served as a second tutorial. The default PC controls were clunky and unintuitive, but I persevered, eventually getting to grips with holding down the left mouse button to go into “active” mode, using space to both sprint and blend in, and so on, but not before I’d accidentally assassinated a poor patrolling soldier in broad daylight in the middle of a crowd.
Undaunted, I proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes climbing ladders, scaling walls and jumping between roofs. I soon found that jumping off roofs scared the living daylights out of passers-by, so naturally, I went out of my way to do so several more times. I was also quickly introduced to Altaïr’s arch enemies – trees. I could climb sheer ten-foot high stone walls, I could survive three-story falls, but I could not jump into trees without being deflected by what must have been invisible tree ninjas.
I was introduced to the “leap of faith,” which was perhaps all I really associated with Assassin’s Creed prior to playing it: a dive off a plank from a ridiculous height, with a stack of hay to cushion the fall. In-game it looks insanely cool, and introduced me to another one of the main characters of the game: hay bales.
I drew to the end of the first mission (or “memory block”), which involved my character having to help clear out some enemies from the town, Masyaf. During the closing stages of the mission, my first major gripe with Assassin’s Creed arose. I got to a dead end, or what immediately looked like one. I stopped to consider what to do next, but before I could get anywhere, my character drew his sword and the game told me to press a button. I pressed the button, slashing through rotten wood and sending a dozen wooden logs rolling down onto the enemy soldiers below.
It was an unexpected moment, but being left to figure out what to do myself without being prompted would have made it satisfying rather than leaving me shrugging indifferently. The game could have just told me to “break the wood” or “release the logs” rather than spelling it out for me, if such a prompt was required at all. This might seem to clash with my previous assertion that the controls were too complicated, but here the problem wasn’t me knowing which button to press – it was that I wasn’t allowed to figure it out on my own. The constant hand-holding continued, unfortunately.
Assassin’s Creed did surprise me with the conclusion of the first memory, where Altaïr appeared to be killed by formidable nose beard guy. Another early welcome surprise was the inclusion of cutscenes, which weren’t too long, allowing me to spot “glitches” to switch cameras, and letting me control my character to a certain degree.
Having Desmond pace around restlessly whilst being talked to earnestly was always entertaining, as was having Altaïr stand inappropriately close to his superiors when they were lecturing him, jarring nicely with the dialogue. All silliness aside, the cutscenes were of a high standard for a game that released back in 2007, with solid animations, good voice acting and writing and, most importantly, they weren’t too long or frequent.
Adventures in Dasmascus, Jerusalem and Acre
After the tutorial level, I delved straight into the rest of the game, which consisted of a series of seven memory blocks interspersed with short sections in the modern day, back in Abstergo’s laboratory. This kind of varied gameplay environment lets me use one of my favourite words: juxtaposition. In this case, juxtaposing two starkly different settings made the historical parts of the story feel part of a much bigger picture. What Altaïr was doing was vitally important to Desmond, the doctor, and Abstergo in the present. It also provided a change of pace to the relentless rooftop running.
Unfortunately this occasional change in the gameplay was required. By far the largest problem the original Assassin’s Creed has is how amazingly repetitive it is. Most of the 24 hours I spent with the game consisted of Altaïr trying to assassinate nine individuals.
For each target, I had to enter a new part of the city (Damascus, Acre and Jerusalem were each split into poor, middle and rich districts) and gather information. This was done through eavesdropping, pickpocketing, intimidating and gaining information from fellow assassins, who set challenges – timed assassinations, smashing merchant stalls and rooftop racing – for my character to complete.
There were six ways to gather intel for each target, but it was only necessary to complete two or three of them. Unfortunately, when it comes to gaming I’m a completionist. Not only did I feel compelled to complete all six of the missions for each of the targets, I also completed each city’s optional tasks – climbing viewpoints (approx. eight per area) and saving citizens from evil guards (around ten per area).
Every time 15 of these minor goals were completed, Altaïr got another slither of health, providing enough of an incentive for me to be happy to continue with them. After I’d gotten up to 20 HP however, the health bar wouldn’t extend any further, leaving me feeling slightly grumpy that I couldn’t continue to improve my character by going out of my way to complete the repetitive optional content.
Like a broken record
The pattern went something like this: sneak into city with scholars, visit Assassin’s Bureau, climb viewpoints, save citizens, complete missions, visit Bureau, assassinate target, run away to Bureau, visit boss guy in Masyaf, go up a rank, gain new skill/weapon, and repeat.
Doing that a few times might have been enjoyable, but to do it nine times made it feel like a grind. Thankfully the fast travel system comes into play when you need to visit cities for a second time, which allows you to bypass the dull rural environments of the Kingdom.
As the story advances, the guards become more aware of your presence and it becomes trickier to complete everything in stealth. In fact, at the climax to the game, the focus is not on assassination but head-on combat. During combat you can fight with your short blade (mildly useful), fists (when interrogating), sword (always required) or your hidden blade (to finish off enemies when they’re down).
At first, the swordplay feels fluid and satisfying, with two different kinds of sword attack, plus the ability to grab and step forward, but as soon as I discovered the safety of passive mode during combat, it quickly became stale. In defensive mode, Altaïr can brush off enemy attempts to grab him, he can dodge attacks and he can counterattack. All of these require timing to execute, but all are very effective, allowing you to gradually take down dozens of guards with limited risk.
Furthermore, counterattacks are effective against every enemy you encounter in Assassin’s Creed. If you wait for long enough, the guards will attack you, one-by-one, and counterattacks can easily dispatch each of them. Defensive mode is like “easy mode”: certainly not the most enjoyable way of fighting, or the quickest, but it’s by far the safest.
If used sparingly, kill-cams can add to the drama of combat, but here, by being effectively taken out of the fight every ten seconds or so, any sense of fluidity and urgency in combat was lost. I vastly preferred it on the occasions where combat continued when a killing blow was dealt: everything felt much smoother, more satisfying and more natural. It was disappointing that combat was imbalanced and yawn-inducing when the developers made it such an unnecessarily large part of the game.
Journey’s end
Back in the 21st century there were no such problems. Desmond was an angry, petulant slob, who couldn’t even bring himself to break into a jog rather than shuffling around the laboratory at a painfully slow pace. Each of these breaks between the memory blocks could be completed in two minutes or 15 minutes, depending on how deeply you delved into the dialogue. Eventually I found passwords for three different laptops, uncovering Abstergo’s true goals. Disappointingly, Desmond’s discoveries did not lead to any fresh dialogue from Dr. Vidic or his assistant.
The historical story ended with the *spoiler* betrayal by beard guy, and the claiming of one of the Pieces of Eden, devices which allow the bearer to control minds. The Piece of Eden gave away the locations of more of these artifacts, which greatly interested Dr. Vidic in the present day. In the final act of the story, Desmond used Altaïr’s Eagle Vision ability (which allows him to see the allegiance of people) inside the lab, which revealed some creepy scrawls on his bedroom wall. Who wrote them? What do they mean?
I’m looking forward to finding out.
Was I converted?
My overall impressions of Assassin’s Creed were positive. The gameplay is good, fun, and allows for varying ways of approaching problems. Even after assassinating umpteen bad guys, there’s still a little rush of adrenaline as you push the crowd aside and reach towards your target. The cities are impressively huge. The first time I saw Damascus, sun shining down onto its walls, countless buildings stretching into the distance, I whispered “wow” to myself. It’s not often that games do that to me.
The core gameplay elements were well executed: the free-running, the pickpocketing and assassinating, the multi-levelled settings, a hint of metaphor and a rich story in an environment full of possibilities. But it’s too easy to apply the old cliché: you can have too much of a good thing.
Take the eagle imagery for example. It hits you around the face throughout the game; eagles circling towers you need to climb, hawks screeching as you perform leaps of faith, “eagle vision,” and even “Altaïr” loosely translates from Arabic as “flying bird” or “flying eagle.” Instead of the imagery remaining subtle and powerful, it turns into a glut, spoiling the overall effect. The same applies to the rest of the gameplay. The first installment of Assassin’s Creed had all the elements to become a classic, but without variety it fails to hit that high mark.
I remain optimistic for the other games in the series. It must have been obvious even to the developers that they could take the same elements but make a much better game, without all that repetition; that’s what I hope the next installments will bring.
What did you make of the original ‘Assassin’s Creed’ game?
Part 2 will cover Assassin’s Creed II.