Assassin's Creed

My Assassin's Creed franchise run (of the pre-Syndicate games) started earlier than intended when Ubisoft in July (I think it was) announced that on September 1st they would again decommission online services (i.e. anything that requires an online connection, including the redeeming of unlocked Ubisoft Connect rewards) of a selection of their older titles. At the end of August, Ubisoft postponed the decommissioning by a month, allowing me to finish all of the affected AC titles in time.

Beating the said games' single-player campaigns before their online features had died mattered mostly just for Brotherhood (at least for the versions I have of the games on Ubisoft Connect): the first game didn't have anything extra, the second game had its online features ripped out a year ago already, and Revelations had only 2 single player rewards to redeem and its DLC had been delisted from stores and made non-redeemable more than a year ago. Assassin's Creed III and Liberation HD were also on the list but the remastered release of AC3 -- and Liberation as its DLC -- were not affected. Those I will be playing at a later date when I continue the franchise run.

I also ended up actually buying the games I didn't yet have earlier this year instead of using Ubisoft+ like I had planned. The service would have been slightly cheaper but I came to the conclusion that, while technically possible, playing so many Assassin's Creed games back to back in two months would have been too much. And indeed, it took me almost two months to play just the first four titles of the series (at 100% sync).

A rough beginning for the series

It is odd that of all the Assassin's Creed games, Ubisoft has remastered AC3 -- why it and not the very first one? AC1 might not be good enough of a game to spend resources for a thorough remastering but they could have at least added subtitles in an update. I could understand what characters were saying just fine but seeing foreign names written in text would help immensely in remembering them and show how they're spelled in the first place. I reckon Ubisoft got a lot of feedback relating to the lack of subtitles because in the second game, from-this-game-continuing present day protagonist Desmond Miles notes how nice it is for the Animus machine to finally have subtitles.

Desmond was born into the Creed though he's not an Assassin: he ran away from his in-hiding-living family and thought the Templars were just boogieman stories, not real. At the start of the game, Desmond has been kidnapped by Abstergo Industries (who I already knew to be the bad guys from having played later titles). Abstergo need Desmond for the Animus because he is a direct descendant -- and thus has the genetic memories -- of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, an Assassin who lived during the Third Crusade and who hid something Abstergo desire. Desmond can relive Altaïr's memories but the Animus doesn't allow one to simply jump into any memory at will: the person has to synchronize first; relive earlier ones. And that's where the game comes in.

Desmond is quite cooperative; he doesn't know or care about the everlasting conflict between the Assassins and Templars. I in fact thought he was lying, playing ignorant and just waiting for the moment to strike. Desmond does eventually understand the trouble he's in though. I liked that the game does zero hand-holding for the present day sections. There's isn't anything huge to learn but it was fun to discover how you can do little investigation when no one is looking.

I was surprised how the present day plot ended in a place clearly expecting a sequel. But then I remembered that's how the new games have been as well for the present day: never a definite ending; always open for a continuation.

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

Altaïr is a skilled assassin but he has not internalized the Creed. In the tutorial mission he displays his misunderstanding to the point that he almost botches the whole thing. As a punishment he is stripped off his rank and tools, and is made to re-earn them. Makes you wonder though: How did he get his rank in the first place? Shouldn't the Brotherhood maybe check that the initiate they're promoting is aware what the Creed means?

But since Altaïr apparently cheated on his assassin exams, the player gets to learn about the Creed with him. There is actual philosophical depth to the Creed and its maxim. I was not aware of that before: the newer games I had played hardly dwell on the tenets of the Brotherhood. The maxim was evidently borrowed from a 1938 Slovenian novel Alamut by Vladimir Bartol which was a major source of inspiration for the game in general.

Writing in AC1 is almost humorless: everyone has their serious face on all the time. Ubisoft Quebec's games (Syndicate and Odyssey) may have had more humor than how the Montreal studio usually writes the series but even Origins and Valhalla had comedic reliefs. The seriousness does fit the first game's washed out colors and jagged visuals though. I wasn't expecting a 2007 game to look amazing but the low saturation (which I guess was pretty common for the era) was still a slight surprise.

The same Ubisoft open world from the very beginning

The massive content bloat of the series is not yet around in AC1 but it is not any less repetitive -- maybe even more so due to the lack of variation. You do the same thing so many times repeatedly: Ubisoft probably could have cut out half of the assassination targets without the game losing any substance. Then there is the open world area called the Kingdom that separates the game's city locations from each other. Its whole purpose is merely to add travel time (no fast travel outside main mission endings) and hold collectibles.

And the collectibles in AC1 are such a completionist-hostile feature. On Xbox 360 there were at least achievements for picking up all the 420 flags and killing the 60 Templars scattered around the world. But on any other platform there is no acknowledgement whatsoever. And the only aid the game provides for finding them is stating how many there are in each region. Even with a 3rd party map you can end up scratching your head trying to find a flag you accidentally picked up hours earlier.

A challenge to enjoy

I humored myself by thinking that maybe I could play the game with mouse and keyboard but when the tutorial started teaching me about low and high actions determined by the holding of right trigger, I decided not to even try. I figured that they had translated it 1:1, RT for right mouse button, which would be one foreign kb/m control scheme and trying to rebind the keys would be a mess without knowing how the game plays. I didn't actually check, however, so it's possible that it's by default something more standard than having to hold down RMB to run. But controller worked well enough for me.

I noticed a whole lot of features that have become polished later on. For instance, hiding places and haystacks don't have the same magnetic pull, and getting into them in a hurry can be frustrating. Another example: pole-to-pole chain jumping has no auto-aim; it is very easy to jump off. Doing that over water is also fatal because Altaïr can't swim: a fall into a body of water is loading screen time -- hope you did something that made the game save recently.

Lack of drop assassination I found annoying as well. It's such an easy way to get your primary target in the series -- worry about the possibly ensuing chaos afterwards. But without it I found myself often engaging a dozen people in addition to my target. And open combat... it is janky as fuck.

I had trouble with timings, understanding what Altaïr was doing, why my parry didn't work, why attack didn't connect etc. I feel the sole reason I managed to beat the game was the generous amount of synchronization points (health) that you're given when you've done everything. The game also tries this sort of escalation of action in the endgame by making you fight through like 100 enemies. I didn't really feel like an assassin at that point; more like some sort of sword hero.

Altaïr can wield different sized blades in open combat. The hidden blade is not much use because it can't block stuff. However, if you can pull off its narrow-window counterattack, you will one-shot any target as if you had assassinated them. I surprised myself by succeeding at it against the final boss.

Assassin's Creed is a rough title, almost a tech demo level of a product. But it is easy to improve from -- and what an improvement Assassin's Creed II was! More of that in the following post.