Assassin’s Creed Review
Played on Xbox One (base)
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal
Released 13th November 2007
While it's not the originator of the open-world formula, Assassin's Creed and its whole franchise stand to be one of the greater examples of the early open-world blueprint. It's quite hard to get into the video game industry without hearing about the giants that operate it like Nintendo, EA and Ubisoft, and their 'golden goose' series. While Nintendo has Mario and EA has FIFA, it'd be fair to say that Ubisoft's favourite child is Assassin's Creed. However, before it became one of the highest-selling video game franchises of all time, reaching over 200 million sales by September 2022, it had to start somewhere, and so it did with its 2007 release.
Before Assassin's Creed, Ubisoft released a critically acclaimed game that was beloved across all of Europe: 'Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time'. With immediate plans to develop a sequel, Patrice Désilets ended up bringing the whole creative process in a different direction. First, the project became open-world, making most of the hardware possibilities of the 7th generation of consoles that had just premiered. It wasn't long after that Désilets came across historical material that references the Order of Assassins and Hassan-i Sabbah - a religious and military leader who led the Order. Gameplay-wise, the game evolved from being a linear experience to having an open world that was highly interactive yet historically accurate with the player's superhuman feats of agility. Narratively, the game also developed; starting off as an assassin bodyguard to the prince, to becoming a second-highest Assassin, seeking to be the group's leader, with a tinge of sci-fi DNA technology. Because of this sci-fi element, Ubisoft's marketing was sure that players would be upset if the game didn't propose an authentic, medieval experience, hiding its sci-fi components in the initial 2006 E3 reveal trailer. In fact, it wasn't until it started getting closer to the game's launch date that the team began teasing and revealing the futuristic element of the game's plot. What proceeded, also marked the beginning of an overused franchise as Assassin's Creed averaged out around 7s, 8s, and 9s out of 10, was awarded 'Best Action Game' multiple times, and even managed to knock Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare from the number 1 spot in sales in the UK.
Story
The story of Assassin's Creed is quite mediocre - it's not bad but it's not good. The main plot is that our protagonist, Desmond Miles, is kidnapped by a powerful conglomerate, Abstergo, to fuel their research for an ancient, powerful relic, by sending Desmond and his memories back to his assassin ancestors. From there, you follow Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, a master assassin whose arrogance leads him to lose his rank and is forced to regain it by eliminating high-priority targets. Across the course of the game, you'll visit multiple cities like Jerusalem and Damascus with the goal of assassinating the Templars. At the same time, you slowly uncover the truth about the Apple of Eden, your connections to the Assassin Brotherhood, how retellings of history are warped, etc. I almost feel like deducting points due to how plain Ubisoft has managed to make the game, despite having one of the strongest premises and ideas I've seen. You essentially play as a time-travelling Assassin, and yet somehow, they managed to numb it down to some monotonous dialogue exchanges and timid action. As I said before, it's not a bad story, but you're not missing much by skipping out on it with how unimpressive this game can get.
The highlight of the narrative is the superb fusion between science fiction and historical fiction. This, unfortunately, gets slightly poisoned with mythological/supernatural elements. This third component of the story feels forced and out of place with the overall coalescence of themes. Having played nearly all the games in the series prior to my replay of the original, it is safe to say this flaw that I find unpreferable isn't a one-time thing, as it not only reappears but remains as an omnipresent narrative catalyst for the rest of the series - definitely not for my liking.
Gameplay
The gameplay was relatively enjoyable. Assassin's Creed and the majority of its successors feature a very similar gameplay format in which the player has 4 standard interaction options, with another 4 unlocked when holding down the right trigger on controllers. Interact, Attack, Sprint, Jump, etc. are all bound to the 8-button combinations, which inadvertently allows the player's inputs to smoothly flow from one another, with later instalments making that more apparent. The reason I say this is because some, if not most, of the movement in this game feels heavily sluggish. When free-running, your character would occasionally, unnecessarily decide to climb an unclimbable wall, instead of grabbing onto a nearby ledge or diving into one of the hiding huts, as intended. This odd set of incorrect inputs does break apart that smooth feeling of assassin acrobatics that were teased in the trailers, however, on the rare occassion when it does work, it feels incredibly satisfying as you hop between rooftops, and beams and commit other impressive parkour.
In addition to the movement, you'll also need to do a fair bit of assassinating. This game truly nails that feel of being an assassin as it expects you to complete mini-side missions, such as interrogations, eavesdropping, etc., to gather intel on your target, their location and how much security they've got. This great feeling does get undermined by how each mission is structured. The game expects you to perform these hit-and-run attacks as, no matter how stealthy you were to get to your target, you'll be punished by engaging with a chase sequence across the whole city, repulsing the player's intent to play methodically. The lack of assassination styles also does hurt the gameplay design as you essentially have to walk up behind every target to kill them as air assassinations have tricky placement prerequisites and things like a ledge or hiding-spot assassination hadn't existed yet. The repetitive mission structure and lacklustre differentiation in gameplay and level design also become detrimental flaws. As the game progresses, each area either consists of scattered towers in open fields or bustling, yet copy-and-pasted cities.
The pacing is another major issue that gets uncovered as the game progresses. While it's mostly fine throughout, it falls drastically towards the end, consisting of waves of enemies you need to battle with a combat system that is monotonous and unsatisfying to use, and a "boss fight" which is essentially a higher-health enemy that teleports to a new location every few hits - remember that all of this happens in a game that focuses on stealth and "assassin" work. The final issue I had with the gameplay was the questionable intelligence of the AI. The NPCs would walk into walls and other NPCs, run around with no goal or objective and have weird shifts of emotion, erratically changing between fear, anger or shock. While you could argue that it was the limitations of 2007, Crysis, Uncharted, Modern Warfare and Halo 3 didn't suffer from these issues despite releasing the same year.
Characters
The characters were middling. From start to finish, the game is populated with caricatures that come across as basic and yet have fascinating dynamics, all before having it retconned with the dialogue. There truly are some intriguing developments and arcs of personal growth such as a master betraying a student and their teachings, a set of deceiving antagonists, a protagonist that goes from arrogant and egotistical to humble and wise, a protagonist that starts doing right by those he failed, etc. However, that all gets undone by how unfulfilling the voice acting was, how overly dramatised the dialogue was and how boring some of the cutscenes and story moments were up to that point.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere worked great at first, but as the game progressed, the effect that the visuals and audio had got quite numbing. The relatively drab colour palette of greys and browns initially was overwhelmed by the superb and realistic depictions of cities like Acre and Jerusalem. Whether the historical accuracy was pinpointed or not, the experience I had walking around these bustling cities was heavily immersive. The soundtrack also felt quite enigmatic and alluring with its recreation of the music from the Holy Land's 1100s, as it also contained sparks of these futuristic/sci-fi sounds, immensely complimenting the tone of the story. However, the more I played the game, the more these effects wore off. The artistic design started to become unsatisfying to look at and an eyesore as the environments felt replicated, with little to no standout features. The OST had also become insignificant and quite unmemorable, blending into the miasma of formulaic soundtracks of the mid-to-late-2000s.
Story - 6/10
Gameplay - 5.5/10
Characters - 6/10
Atmosphere - 5/10
Subpar
While it was a standout title in 2007 and gave rise to an immensely popular and entertaining franchise, Assassin's Creed has aged quite poorly in a few departments, such as its gameplay, making its previously embedded flaws like its storytelling, slightly more apparent.
