Assassin's Creed: Dull Legend
At the beginning of 2022, I decided I was going to make progress. Watching movies from my ridiculously long watchlist. Reading books from the ever-growing stack of books next to my bed. Trying to produce a little more, writing every day. And finally playing through my backlog of video games to try and beat everything worth beating in my weird eclectic collection. So I rolled up my sleeves, dusted off the PS3 and started with 2007’s Assassin’s Creed.
Assassin’s Creed’s tendrils have reached through the whole gaming industry - if that wasn’t apparent from the eleven sequels and the spin-offs and the movie and the books (maybe I’ll read some of them one day …), then it becomes clear within about an hour of starting the game. First, though we have a little tutorial with some faceless women that is for some reason the spookiest part of the whole game, and then we meet Desmond Miles. An ex-assassin bartender who has been kidnapped by an evil corporation that is using Desmond’s ‘genetic memory’ to find an artefact. The evil company - Abstergo - is using some freaky technology called ‘Animus’ that lets Desmond walk through the memories of his ancestor, the legendary assassin Altair. Inside the Animus system is the majority of our game - the set-up is a little simple but it introduces the world and Altair pretty quickly and just lets the player loose. You are a killer, you work for a group of assassins, you have a target. Kill the people that your master points you towards and save the Holy Land from the destruction of the Third Crusade. Get on this horse, use the painfully unhelpful map to get to the next town and then kill people. Easy.
Arriving in the next town to start hunting a target we are faced with a little collection of objectives that at first appears varied and interesting. You have to go and speak with the leader of the assassin’s bureau in that city to give you the scoop on the man you will kill. Then you have to wander around eavesdropping on a few guards here, pickpocketing plans and maps there, climbing towers to get a better perspective on the town and reveal more activities on your map. And … that’s it. That is what we spend most of the game doing. For the time that it was released, this is forgivable - a glance at other things released in 2007 shows us much more linear stories with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and narrower gameplay focuses in Mario Galaxy. I mean, the first Modern Warfare game released in 2007. Assassin’s Creed’s repeating of the same objectives in different places gives it some much needed meat and balloons the amount of playable content at the cost of quickly running out of fresh ideas and getting more and more dull. But the effect that this has had on other games makes me wince - how many games have we all tried that repeat the same objectives more times than you can count across a sprawling lifeless map? It feels like something that video games should have outgrown by now.
The more of the various objectives you clear the easier the assassination in that city becomes and for the first three or four targets I hunted every scrap of information I could to pull off elaborate kills with a perfect escape route that made me feel really cool. But by the fifth target, the game's efforts to create these larger than life cartoony villains for us to kill started to get stale and the combat system’s lack of depth meant that just doing the bare minimum number of objectives and then sprinting at the target and slogging through a long combat to kill him was the most effective and interesting way to play. And then the game kicks you back to the much less interesting story of Desmond in Abstergo that itself becomes repetitive and trite and you sit through some rambling dialogue until you can go back into the gameplay. But for some reason, Desmond sucks up all the character that Altair should have - I like Desmond, he has personality. Altair’s personality is stuck in “I’m very cool, I promise” mode.
The basic gameplay of Assassin’s Creed is fine. Fun, even. The wall climbing and parkour is pretty tight and instantly killing dudes with a hidden blade feels crunchy and satisfying. But if that was the whole of the game then I wouldn’t have written this little piece. Despite the introduction to the actual creed mentioned in the title stating that an assassin should always be discreet a good portion of the game (particularly towards the end) is spent in overly long sword fights in public that pose little threat to Altair. You stand there and wait for someone to swing at you, press counter and then immediately kill them with a snazzy execution animation that is old after the third time you see it. When enemies do land a hit it is usually either a cheap shot where two of the guards swing at once and you’re locked into a counter animation already or it’s because you missed the counter when you fell asleep. It feels like it could have been good combat, with weight and tension, but instead we get a slow and tedious system that’s like running through custard.
When the last target turns out to be a woman that is posing as our real target to allow him to escape and then we have to chase him out to a stronghold I was stunned at the change of pace. It felt like the game had held onto two amazing cards only to play them all at once and it did wonders for injecting some fresh ideas into the story. Then you’re forced into more tired combat; fight a small army, and then a templar with slightly more health and that’s that. The story becomes confused; you fight your master who was trying to work for global domination the whole time using a weird artefact that lets him replicate himself and at this point, the game feels like it is just trying to wrap itself up. I appreciated the effort that was clearly put into the plot, but the writing didn’t do enough to hold up the narrative. The ending is the weirdest part, though. Desmond comes out of the Animus, the Abstergo workers set off to pick up their artefact, only leaving Desmond alive so they can use him again in the same way. But Desmond has developed his own assassin powers like his ancestor and can see symbols drawn in blood around his holding facility. He sees some notes and scrawls above the bed he has been sleeping in and says “Who were they keeping here before me? What do they mean I wonder?” and then the credits roll as if the nonsensical writing that means nothing to us should be a big cliffhanger.
Admittedly the idea of Desmond Miles developing assassin skills by living through his ancestor’s memories, and the Animus concept in itself is very cool. In places being an assassin is awesome, and makes for those precious moments of playing video games where you smirk to yourself a little and feel badass. It makes sense that this game spawned a franchise that seems to repeat and redo as much as the objectives in this game - I enjoyed most of my time with Assassin’s Creed, although I don’t think it’s one I’ll be playing again!
I’m making my way through a Kingdom Hearts compilation disc at the moment, and feel I have a lot to say about it but first - I have just finished my watch through of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel … it’s been a complicated year.