Assassin’s Creed: Impressions
I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed for most of these past two weeks. I finished all of the main quests and only really have the Templar killing and flag collecting side quests left to do, which I may or may not bother with. I’d heard a lot of negative opinion about it, but in spite of that I’ve really been enjoying it. It helps that I’m a medieval history geek of course.
The environments are really nicely done and ever so immersive, and I love the little touches like the multilingual voice acting – at one stage I had people chasing me and shouting in three different languages. I especially liked making random townspeople think I was crazy – all the “What does he think he’s doing?” and “He must be crazy!” (and my favourite, “If he falls and hurts himself, I won’t help him!”) dialogues never got old for me. The beggar women drove me insane though. I might go on a beggar/drunkard/crazy person killing spree next time I play *cackles maniacally*.
Bad points: the tasks get repetitive and boring, the combat perhaps a bit too easy through combos (though some of the bosses still held plenty of challenge), and there weren’t subtitles, which made things more difficult for a game with that many accents.
I didn’t mind the futuristic component so much. I enjoyed the really clean, modern urban design of it to the extent that it was a welcome break from the medieval stuff. The conceit of the Animus meant that all the stuff like quests resetting, the HUD, health bars, GPS and so on were nicely explained away, which most games don’t bother with. I actually really liked that they bothered, because it was one less suspension of disbelief I had to make on my part (and it’s also consistent with the HUD not appearing in the modern sections, which is clever). The modern section also meant the introduction of more characters, which was good. Graphically I really enjoyed the game, and the controls were fairly good – though it kind of sucked that you didn’t have much control over all the cool stuff he did.
The parkour element was excellent, though the simplicity of the controls meant it consisted of just holding down R1+[x] and the left analog stick, which compromised the sense of doing any cool shit yourself (ditto these comments regarding combat).
I would have liked more historical notes. Maybe an Altaïropedia, or something – the whole Animus conceit would have made it fairly simple to slip in as a “guide to acclimatising to the memory” or something. Or maybe as unlockable bonuses for collecting the flags – which on the PS3 version I played, was pointless apart from something in and of itself to do. Surely they’d have a shitload of source material sitting around, after all.
I did like that they went the whole PC “Kill equal numbers of Muslims and Christians” route. Fighting for either side would have just been awkward, and having both factions attack us was appropriate given Altaïr was the lone wolf outsider type. Templars as bad guys makes sense – no one likes those guys anyway (though it was kind of a pain having them lurking around in alleyways waiting to attack you). I guess you could say it’s a half-assed Kingdom of Heaven way to go about it, but I think it’s the approach that works best for the modern player.
The weapons were pretty cool, though it would have been neat to have special weapons for each major assassination or for particular missions, to make the game slightly less repetitive perhaps. But I did enjoy the hell out of the hidden blade assassinations, sword combos were fun to watch (I especially liked the computerised voice of the Animus telling you in a cool voice “Breaking your opponents’ legs then selecting the hidden blade will kill them quickly.” – paraphrased a bit), throwing blades were useful as hell and the interrogation missions were probably some of my favourites. Fighting was fairly fun, in other words. Which was good, because if the entire game had been stealth that would have bored me eventually.
I understand why you can’t enter buildings, because programming all of that would have been an insane amount of effort, but it still kind of sucks that the buildings are in effect giant blocks sitting in the environment. The roofs are wonderfully detailed though, which almost makes up for it. I also understand why you can’t interact with the background so much other than in running/jumping/killing ways, but it would have been cool to be able to talk to random NPCs and stuff. Maybe I’d been playing too much Oblivion beforehand, because I wanted so bad to pick up and examine everything as well as loot the fuck out of everyone I killed.
I’m definitely looking forward to a sequel. It went a bit Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life at the end (I paid money to see that at the movie theatre, shut up), and admittedly it did seem like half-assing it with regards to an ending. Certainly it was a blatant sequel grab, but it worked. It also makes me curious for the game Mirror’s Edge, another parkour style game (this time set in a future city). Though I don’t think I’ve played a character that looks like me to that extent before, and that includes the avatar I made for Oblivion which is based on myself (I screwed with the head settings too much so it’s a bit pea-headed). Or my Knights of the Old Republic character either, come to think of it. Though neither game makes an allowance to make an Asian avatar, which I think is the problem… and that’s a post for another time.
My most random observation is that Altaïr is actually a kind of a bad assassin. He’s really quite distinctive and isn’t too good at the whole stealth thing. Plus he can jump over rooftops, climb church towers, kill 12 men at once and is effectively the medieval Jason Bourne, yet he can’t swim? What’s up with that? They even have a nice big river in Masyaf to practice in.
Anyway, this is of course my own personal bias speaking, but I’d love to see something like this set in Japan, with ninja. I’m thinking the Sengoku period, with a variety of urban centers to travel to and with a sense of variety and conflict. Certainly running around on Japanese style castle rooftops and stuff would be exciting. The only problem being that most buildings were rarely built taller than one story due to risk of fires and earthquakes, so it might lack a bit of variety. Still, I think it would be fun.
Oh shit, this turned into an actual review almost.