Nov 15, 7:34 am
Unless you’ve been hiding in a conveniently-placed hay cart for the past year or so, you’ll be aware of Assassin’s Creed. So I’m not going to talk about the hype, or the speculation (if you want a good primer, check out Kitt’s interview with the game’s producer Jade Raymond here). I’m just going to talk about my own personal experience of having played the game over the past week. So without further ado, let us begin. Please note, this blog contains a few spoilers.
Skipping over the tutorial (we’ll come back to the control system later), you begin the game looking through the eyes of a barman named Desmond. Our Des awakes in the present day in a clinical lab within the offices of the security-conscious Abstergo corporation. It seems he’s being held captive by shady scientific sorts who want access to the genetic memories of his forebears, which they’ll be accessing via a bit of coercion and a peculiar device called the Animus thank-you-very-much. Using the Animus, Abstergo sends Desmond back to the Third Crusades, to live the life of his ancestor Altair.
Here in the heart of the 12th Century Holy Land is where you’ll find yourself immersed for the majority of the game. You join Altair, a member of the secretive Hashashin sect, as he’s given the task of ensuring peace. This peace will come at the cost of assassinating nine men who each have a hand in ensuring the Crusades continue. But what connects them? And in this constantly shifting world of factions and invasions, is everything quite as it seems?
Where Assassin’s Creed thrives and frequently ups the bar for video games is the way in which it portrays the environments and the way Altair moves through them. The game is teeming with beautifully re-created, atmospheric environments on an enormous scale. And they’re not just nice to look at - they’re fully interactive. Want to reach the top of that tall building? Grab onto a window ledge, a railing, a protruding brick, jump off a crate, dive from a roof, grab the top of an archway, tip-toe across a wooden beam or ... hey, y’know, find a ladder. There are very few areas you cannot explore to your hearts content, both within the three distinctly different cities (the Christian Acre, the Muslim Damascus and the mixed Jerusalem) and in the Kingdom that lies between.
This isn’t the usual platform game fare where you’re bouncing across a bunch of mass-produced blocks, painted with building textures and made to a uniform-size to serve the game design. In Assassin’s Creed you really do feel as though you’re making your way around, through and over an organic world.
And it isn’t merely the way Altair attempts to reach his destinations. It’s the style with which he does it – as a whopping 6,000 acrobatic moves flow smoothly into one another, with no clunky animation. That the game manages to maintain the in-control feel of Prince of Persia at the same time is no mean feat. Altair’s hands and feet always find realistic holds as you steer him up buildings and over rooftops, his robe flowing realistically behind him.
Even in combat (with its “mere” 1,000 fighting moves) you’ll rarely see the same animation twice. Just when you think you’ve seen every rather graphic and satisfying counter kill, a new one shows up and breaks some legs.
I literally haven’t seen any game with this kind of animation fluidity. The only downside is that once you’ve tasted the Assassin’s silky moves, you might find it hard to go back to less fluid third-person-ers: I played the Uncharted: Drakes Fortune demo this week and, while I enjoyed it, found it jarring that the main character moved like a wooden drunk in comparison to Altair.
Of course, jumping around might get a bit dull if you didn’t have goals, and within the three cities (each of which is separated into three districts), tasks await you. First up you’ll want to hunt out the local high points. Finding these gives an epic panoramic view of your surroundings and updates your map with the locations of other nearby tasks.
At their most basic, these other tasks include saving citizens from persecution at the hands of the city guards. Each citizen you save turns the tide in your favour, allowing you to befriend groups of scholars (with whom you can blend to pass guards) or vigilantes (who’ll slow down anyone pursuing you). You’ll also need to pick-pocket, eaves-drop and interrogate your way to more information about your intended assassination target. These clues include additional details for your map, hints as to which angle to approach from, information on how to gain access and so on.
You don’t have to take on all of the tasks, and how you go about them is up to you. To play through the game doing the bare minimum might take you anything from 12 – 16 hours. Choosing to pursue all of the leads obviously takes (a lot) longer.
Should any of the guards or troops spot you up to no good, they’ll do everything in their power to cut you down. A handy indicator on your HUD shows how aware of you they are, ranging from unaware, suspicious, searching, to having found you and being about to poke you with the pointy end of their swords. At this point you’re stuck with the conundrum of fight or flight. Whether to stand and take on the guards using the timing-based fight system (that gradually increases in complexity as the game progresses), or to attempt an escape by breaking your line of sight with the enemy and finding somewhere to hide (a roof garden or hay cart, for example). Given Altair’s free-running abilities, regular sandbox gamers might assume that “escape” is the obvious choice. But the guards aren’t stupid - they’re almost as capable of climbing ladders and jumping between buildings as you are, and won’t give up the hunt without having a good try.
Once you’ve done your investigating and tracked down your mark, it’s time to bring his life to an end. As with the other tasks in the game, this can be done in a variety of ways. Using the crowd, the environment, the information you’ve gained and - invariably - your hidden blade. Each of your victims gets a chance to tell their side of the story through an interactive cut scene played out as the Animus freezes time at the moment of death. Rest assured their tales and motivations go a lot deeper than the average videogame bad guy.
Then you just have to escape.
So let’s talk about the control system. It works in two tiers, low profile and high profile (activated by holding the right trigger). The face buttons use a “puppeteering” concept, with their uses changing depending on whether you’re high or low profile. One button stands for your head (used for all looking functions), one stands for your weapon hand (used for all attacks), one stands for your unarmed hand (to activate shoves, throws, grabs), and one stands for your feet (for jumps and sprints).
Obviously, low profile is the best choice if you want to stay as stealthy as possible, letting you perform simple pushes and attacks. However, when the going gets tough, pulling the right trigger to go high profile transforms your “hand buttons” into counter attacks, dodges and grab breaks. It sounds confusing and it does take a little bit of getting used to, but once you do you can’t imagine how you would have coped without it.
Because Assassin’s Creed’s control system means fighting or escaping is a relatively stress-free experience, you do sacrifice some of the finer player-control. For example, you move around at a run in high profile mode. Hold down the “feet” button at the same time, and Altair switches to free-running. Run him into a wall and - if there are hand and foot holds (anything sticking out more than 2 inches, remember) he’ll climb as best he can. This means there isn’t a desperate need for precision in getting from A to B. This isn’t a game about timing the perfect jump.
Some would grumble that this is “dumbing down”, but it’s actually very well suited to the game as anyone followed by a horde of angry guards will attest. Your mind becomes more focussed on the strategy of your actions rather than how to press the jump button at exactly the right moment to clear a gap between buildings.
If anything, Assassin’s Creed reminds me less of Prince of Persia and more of Crackdown (Crackdown with a story, no less). The gorgeous cities and the areas surrounding them are a joy to behold, with load times quite well hidden by an interactive Animus sequence. And though you may spot the odd visual glitch, the game is undeniably beautiful and sets new precedents in terms of environment and art design. True, I did raise a grumble when I found out that – gasp – Altair had a perfect American accent - but this is explained in the plot through the Animus having Babelfish-like powers (plus he’d probably have spoken Arabic, and subtitling never really appeals to the mainstream).
Reviews of the game have been split so far - some 10s and very positive comments, and some lower ratings. But with any game that has generated this much attention and been in the works for so long, that seems inevitable. People (including journalists) build their own perceptions of what the game will be and how it will play, and if it doesn’t match up then so help it!
A game on this scale might not be pefect - some of the side missions can be a little samey (though if you immerse yourself in the story and the settings this becomes less of an issue), some of the guards can be a little un-observant (though this is essential to properly balanced gameplay) - but overall, Assassin’s Creed is a game that deserves your attention. For its ambition. For its uniqueness. For its art.
The game is released in the UK tomorrow, so check it out and make up your own mind!
