Recap: Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed is a game I always wanted to play and knew I would love. However, I never felt a huge urge to play it as I had seen a lot of the story already. Then - I saw the trailers for Assassin's Creed III/Liberation and was incredibly excited to play the new games. I decided to try to play the preceding games by the release date of the new one and document them here as a recap for anyone else who's planning on getting the game(s) this fall. Spoilers will be in italic. 

Story 

When the story starts, you are instantly throw into the game as an assassin with a multitude of commands being thrown at you. It's almost impossible to keep up and you die quickly. As it turns out, you are actually a guy named Desmond who lives in current times but has been hooked up to a machine called an Animus. The Animus allows you to relive the memories of your ancestors and Desmond comes from a long line of assassins. He is being held against his will and sent back to the Crusades era to unlock a memory of his ancestor, Altair. 

Altair is a very prominent assassin but after failing a mission and causing the death of a colleague because of sloppiness, his rank and tools are taken away. Altair needs to start from the bottom and assassinate nine targets in three cities (Damascus, Acre, and Jerusalem) order to have his rank restored.

As you begin to assassinate your targets, you learn that many of them have reasons behind the things they are doing and Altair begins to question his mission. The master of the assassins tells you that they are all part of the Templars and their mission is to create a new world order. This reinvigorates Altair and brings him more in line with the Assassin Brotherhood than he ever was before.

Meanwhile, in Desmond's world, he learns that the company that has kidnapped him is also part of the Templar group. They use the Animus to discover the location of ancient treasures and secrets that give them power in modern times. In between Animus sessions, Desmond also begins to be able to snoop around the area he is being held. He is able to find access codes and read the emails of one of the people holding him, Lucy.

Back in Altair's time, he finally takes out the last Templar only to learn that there is a tenth - his own master. When he goes to confront him, he finds that the master has taken the treasure for himself - a Piece of Eden - which allows it's owner to control minds. The artifact only partially works on Altair so instead of succumbing to the control, he is able to fight his master. This Piece of Eden, is one of many hidden around the world. Once the master is defeated and Altair gains control of it, the other locations are revealed.

At this time, Desmond is unhooked from the Animus as the kidnappers have the information they need. They are going to kill him but Lucy points out that they may still need his help in the future so it would be good to leave him around. Desmond has the ability to explore the rooms he's held in again and begins to see hidden markings on the walls and floors. And this is where the game ends... 

Game-play 

The game play is pretty straight forward. The buttons are fairly easy to figure out and there is always a guide in the top right corner of your screen to remind you of what the controls are (they change if you hold right trigger). There are a variety of running speeds and Altair is pretty responsive to the control sticks. I did encounter a few buggy things though. If you are targeted on a person, it's very difficult to control your camera angle which is very frustrating. This happens a lot when fighting a group of guards and I've often had the camera behind some scaffolding or other obstacle that completely obstructed my view. I also found that Altair didn't always go where I was directing him on the climbing missions, even if it was a spot he could go to. All in all, some things were a little clunky. There were a few instances of half-my-body-is-in-a-building but I didn't seem to get "stuck" as I thought I would. I heard this got figured out for the sequel and I hope that's true. 

There are two ways to "level up." The first is by doing the objectives in your mission. If you do a certain number, your health will increase. The second way is by completing an assassination challenge. You will have a skill or weapon restored each time you are successful with that. The game itself moves pretty quickly. You have a minimum you need to do to advance and you can do more on top of that. Since I was trying to play through the game in a short amount of time, this was a nice touch although I tried to do most of the challenges (except collecting items). At first I wasn't going to do all of the "Save the Civilian" challenges unless they were directly in my path but I quickly learned it was a good way to increase your health bar as well as practice fighting. After I doing a few in a row, I could feel the movements getting smoother which definitely nice. Sometimes you get to take out a Templar as well (even though I wasn't intentionally trying to collect things). By the last few cities, I also stopped doing insider challenges. 

I really loved the Bird's Eye View challenges. As a climber, it was fun to climb in the game and look for what would make a good hold. The sweeping shots of the cities were beautiful. I did mess up the leap of faith a couple of times but the game still counted the objective complete which was nice. I also like that there are a variety of buildings to climb within each city as well as various architecture styles. 

Review 

The Taste of Power trope at the beginning was a little painful. It's always hard going from all powerful to novice. However, it was great to slowly learn all of the many skills that Altair has as an assassin. The objectives of the game can be a little monotonous. It's clear that you will have a pickpocket, an eavesdropping, an assault, an informer assassination, an informer flag challenge, civilian saving, bird's eye view challenge, and key assassination in every city area. The differences among each city and little nuances keep the game from getting stale but a little more variety wouldn't have hurt. 

The more interesting part was definitely the bigger story of why these assassinations are important and which side is actually good vs. corrupt. It's also interesting to wonder why such ancient memories are important in modern times and the way clues are slowly dropped through out the game definitely kept me trying to solve the bigger puzzle as I played through the story. 

I really loved the concept of the game as a whole. I thought it was very original and the modern vs. historical aspect of it made it seem relevant. My biggest problems with the game had to do with just the gameplay dynamics. It seems like they had this fantastic concept but then rushed to get it out without doing testing and troubleshooting. My next problem would just be that I wasn't a big fan of the idea of blending in. I know you're supposed to be a stealth assassin but I don't have a ton of patience to tip toe through crowds. I ended up spending most of the time jumping around the rooftops since it was the quickest way to get around without being seen. This paired with the knife throwing (there are occasional roof guards) ended up solving the problem pretty quickly. 

Since the whole point of this recap series is in anticipation of ACIII, I've also been watching and reading all about that. I recently saw a video that talks about how they used old maps to recreate Boston and New York. I thought this was really interesting so I went on Google maps and looked up Damascus, Jerusalem, and Acre and compared them to the maps in the game. Each city, although much larger and different now, definitely had an "old city" that closely resembled those in the game. The Google map couldn't zoom in too closely and the cities obviously have shown some deterioration throughout the millennium but it was a nice touch that I will look forward to exploring further in the future games (which take place in cities I've actually been to). 

Now time to start AC2 - anything I should keep in mind? I'm excited to see if they've fixed the issues I listed above.