Consider yourself, a mess
Consider yourself, a catastrophe
These games have all gone, so wrong
It's clear, they're, screwing as all along
I was part of the Assassin's Creed cult for a very long chunk of my gaming life, to the point where I was picking practically every game up on launch day, consuming every single bit of juice out of each title as they launched, and happily diving into the various surrounding material each and every entry. I had totally bought into the lie that this was a 'grand and epic story' being told around history by some sort of 'master narrative craftsmen' over at Ubisoft, imaginary virtuosos that were slowly constructing their very own Marvel Cinematic Universe of gaming. If you've ever wondered why I go so hard on Ubisoft and their machinations whenever they appear in front of me, that is the exact reason why. I've been part of the grift and rode it for so long that it took a genuine shock to the system for me to look back and realise the games that I was playing were becoming more of a mess each entry. Or rather, it took several shocks to the system, because a slew of poor Assassin's Creed games straight really took me out of the loop and had me analyse the series I was dedicating so much time to, and without that introspection I might not have broken out of that rhythm and I'd be just another mindless Ubisoft drone defending these games to the death.
The first game which really shook me for how bad the overall quality of the series was would have been Assassin's Creed Liberation, but I don't know if there's enough time left on this green earth for me to succinctly break down my feelings on ACL, so I'll start with the last game and move backwards. The last Assassin's Creed I bought on launch day was one I really picked up on autopilot, because at that point my firm faith in the series had shaken and I was beginning to question my own hype. That game was Assassin's Creed Syndicate, and it would be the first game of the series to be set in my homeland. (Although, obviously, not the last) It's an uncontrollable hex on the gaming public: if a game takes place in somewhere you're familiar with and/or visit frequently, you're just that more inclined towards the game for no other reason than the morbid curiosity to see how badly they butchered your land. (Or got it right) That's the reason I'd pick up The Getaway, GTA London, and the reason I've been interested in Watch Dogs Legions, but previous disappointments such as Syndicate have helped me stay my hand.
But what was the problem with Syndicate? Really? (How long do you have?) To seek its root we'd have to trail back to the marketing and Ubisoft's insufferable ability to overpromise their own abilities to the point where everything they say now automatically becomes suspect. Remember that this game popped out just a few years after Unity, a game which was a buggy disaster, so fans were generally on edge for the franchise anyway. Then the marketing started coming out and it was... questionable. I remember most vividly talk about the new horse and carts that players were seen riding and having fights upon, making this seem like Grand Theft Auto but in the Industrial age. Imaginations raced of action-movie style fights at high speed across London, but then other questions started being asked such as: why was this just a screenshot? Why not show any of this stuff off in gameplay? Is it because it looks much better as a still and in gameplay it's really stilted, boring and underused? (spoilers: It's exactly because of that.) Eventually we'd actually get to see one of the three carriage fights in the game shown off in a gameplay trailer, and it didn't live up to the stylised, touched up, screens that we'd been sold. Another feature that was in the game, but not as we hoped it would be.
Then there was my favourite part; all the discourse about the dual protagonists: Evie and Jacob Frye, the twins from Croydon. Ubisoft were foaming from the mouths to tell us about how interesting and diverse these two were; Jacob the brawler and Evie the old-school Assassin. Each would inspire totally different styles of gameplay. A brand new stat system would ensure that playing as Jacob would be an action-fuelled romp across London whilst Evie would encourage shadow-hugging stealthy escapades. Which, as you can imagine, ended up just being a bunch of hot air because the twins both had exactly the same abilities as one another and their little 'stat boosts' were near entirely negligible. (Plus, both had some odd missions that specifically encouraged you to play in the other's style, as though trying to make sure you'd notice how they played almost identically to one another.) In the team's defence, however, they did at least make it so that the two characters had separate animations. (But then, they really had to after the marketing fubar around the last game, when the team claimed that they couldn't make a playable female protagonist because it would require new animations and the team were too lazy for that noise.)
Marketing venom would shoot all across this game's veins, with half truths and veiled lies slowly infecting every vestige of this game so that anything fans might look forward to, they'd end up disappointed by just when laid against the false expectations that Ubisoft built up by themselves. In fact, the only thing which played out exactly as the team suggested it would might have been the train-home of the twins which would move around the Circle line through gameplay, just as advertised. (I really did love that home. Great idea.) But what of the things that Ubisoft kept for the game itself? Such as the story? Ubisoft were very cagey about this, merely stating that both twins would play a big part and that the industrial age would serve as a true backdrop, as opposed to the last game where most of the time it felt like you were just hopping across the revolution doing your own thing whilst history was happening in the next room over. This even resulted in one unforgettable gameplay walkthrough for me, where Evie sneaks up on one of the main targets and kills them, only for the storyline censors to kick and change the dialogue so that it reads: Evie "Tell me where the >Mcguffin< is!" Bad guy "... No." Bad Guy then immediately dies. I'll admit, that was funny. Unintentionally so, but I'll take what I can get.
But how do the twin actually play out in the full game's storyline? Well, I guess spoilers ahead for those that haven't played, but if you haven't by now I can only assume you're pretty much uninterested at this point. Okay, so the funny thing about Assassin's Creed Syndicate is that it plays out as an ordinary Assassin's Creed game only with a curiously self-deprecating eye cast at itself that isn't there to provide broader prospective, but it merely there to be contrarian for the sake of meaningless conflict. Let me explain. So just like any game from this series, Assassin's Creed Syndicate proposes a society wherein all the key figures of the age are members of an illuminati-like secret organisation known as the Templars, who are working together from their separate spheres of influence to guide society in a direction better suited to mass control. Or at least, that's the mission statement, as the games have gone on these people have retained their influence but goals have shifted from the clever society-shaping goals to the esoteric "I'll use my resources to mind a magical space artefact that can do wizard stuff. Don't know why I had to be in charge of the steel factories in order to do that, but here we are."
This is the world that Assassin's Creed Syndicate situates itself in, thus as you can imagine the game mostly revolves around the Assassin's going around to these heads of industry and killing them before their vision can reach fruition. But with a twist. For you see, every time that Jacob Frye murders someone, Evie Frye turn around and admonishes him for acting brashly. You see, now after 6 mainline games, it's irresponsible to go around killing heads of industry without taking into account the effect that will have on the industry in question. "Kill the head of the train line? Well then people will lose their jobs and entire workhouses will be shut down." It's a point, I guess, but hang on; that's what we've been doing for the entire franchise! I mean, the idea always was that these people have to go, and that their deaths would serve the world better than leaving them around, no? So what's the solution? Placing their own Assassin-friendly replacements to take over? Because that sort of sounds like trading one subliminal dictatorship for another. I ask because Evie never provides an alternative, she just complains because that creates the perception that she's the thoughtful one and Jacob is the brash one. Except when she does the exact same thing herself in her missions near the end because... character growth? I guess you could argue that was meant to be her 'journey' (learning how to let go of responsibility?) but it comes across as entirely misjudged and antithetical to all the plots that came before.
You might think it strange that these compatibility issues between character and narrative were the thing which launched me out of Syndicate, but when tossed ontop of all the other elements that made the game, it was more like the final straw. It made Evie seem annoying and Jacob feel stupid all in the same swoop, so what was there to enjoy about my time with the game if I wasn't there for the characters, the gameplay wasn't what it could have been and the story was generic? Exploring the city? Sure, the world builders at Ubisoft are unmatched in their craft, but £60 is a lean price for a virtual tour game. Which isn't all to say that Syndicate was an abomination, in fact I think it was ultimately the best of it's engine generation, but it was still a disappointment, and that made me realise how that was the feeling I felt coming away from every Assassin's Creed at that point. Disappointment and frustration about games that never seemed to hit their fullest potential in any individual field, and an overall narrative that was moving along so slowly it might as well have been non-existent. And that, in my roundabout opinion, is why Assassin's Creed Syndicate is dumb. Jacob had cool sideburns though. I'll never knock the sideburns.
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