Assassin's Creed Unity is Dumb

This is getting out of hand! Now there are four of them.

Many out there, born and bled Assassin's fans all, would point to merely one source when you quote 'the downfall of Assassin's Creed'. The place from where it all seemed to fall apart and everything we once thought was perfect would be spat back in our face as a poor attempt of a facsimile on better times, that only worked to cheapen the previous series' highpoints and colour the fall from grace that would follow. That game was Assassin's Creed Unity, and it is dumb. Personally, I think the rot started setting in much sooner than that. Afterall, Assassin's Creed Revelations was seen by many as a pointless addition to a finished story when it was announced, and when it launched that was pretty much confirmed; the only real resolution it achieved for the narrative was giving Ezio a happy ending. Then there was Assassin's Creed III, a game so divisive that most people can't even put their fingers on the improvement required to make it the masterpiece the game felt a hair's breadth shy from. But Unity was a mess, and from that point the real scrutiny started on the Assassin's Creed model, both inside and out of Ubisoft, which could very well go to explaining how we are where we are today.

When we come to Assassin's Creed, you have to first understand the atmosphere around Unity. People were losing their minds over yet another instance of an Assassin's Creed game going the extra mile and changing things up beyond just a location switch. (>gasp< someone cover modern Ubisoft's ears, the might blow a brain vessel!) Previous Assassin's Creeds had always made an effort to put something extra in the trailer to get fans interested in the vast contrast from how the last game played to how this one might, Assassin's Creed 2 had the dual hidden blades, IV had the boats, et cetera. But perception around these additions shifted from "This will revolutionise the entire formula, egads!" to "We're getting a hook on the Hidden blade and a half-hearted tower defence mode? What are you on 'Revelations'?" But what are little gimmicks and slight additions to the time-honored Assassin tool set when compared against something seismic: like a multiplayer mode?

God, you cannot imagine the fervour following the revealed Multiplayer mode, and it was dropped with a cinematic trailer too, meaning that people had literally no idea how the thing would shape up and their little imaginations could run away from them and do the marketing on the studio's behalf. Could we customise our Assassin? Would we be free roaming with friends? How will missions change to handle this balance? Could Co-op content be played with one person? Questions flew by the community and were met with nothing but coy silence on the team's part, but it was all just seeped with an air of excitement, as everyone just assumed whatever we got would be the best that it could be. (Ah, more innocent times) It should have been telling from then how we'd hear nothing substantial on this mode until launch, and how from this point discourse would be solely on the main story.

You have to remember that at this time I was the sort of rube who swallowed up all of the marketing material with gusto, which means I have acute memories of watching the interviews with various members of staff gushing about the game, or the actors who wanted so badly to live up to fan expectations. (my heart actually weeps for them. Everytime I think about this game I feel so bad remembering their excitement.) From this time I remember hearing about the storyline, Arno Dorian would search for this father's killer and be adopted into the family of a young girl to become her step-brother. Afterwhich they would grow up and become lovers. (Wait, what?) I remember that plotpoint being my very first tinge of "Well that doesn't sound right at all". How can you fall in love with someone you've grown up around as a literal sibling? It sounded stupid. But I just figured the team would figure out how to make it all natural and romantic. They're big, paid, developers afterall, they have to know what they're doing! (Spoilers: They largely didn't)

So bugs. Whenever we talk about Assassin's Creed Unity the conversation always ends up with the bugginess, because this was a game clearly in need of a few more months, heck a whole extra year, in the oven. The updated engine wouldn't render consistently and correctly, the mutliplayer mode felt like a take-on with pathetic customisation and no female Assassin option because, (it's too hard to code female walk cycles on top of male ones) crashes galore, lighting issues, there was just a general sheen of unpolish slathered over the entire product. But for me all of that is merely the icing on top of the cake, because I was used to buggy games and in fact I was lucky enough to avoid all of Assassin's Creed Unity's worst. What really stank to me was the raw game underneath because, unfortunately, it sucked.

The gameplay was supposed to be a step-up, a bold leap forward from anything we'd experienced before, but instead I just felt like almost everything had been dumbed down or had lost it's soul. Climbing for example, one of the key tenants of Assassin's Creed, had these new automated animations introduced into the formula to make things more 'fluid' and 'attach to walls from any angle'; but it ended up just limiting the simple mastery in learning the rigid, but reliable toolset from AC 2 onwards. As a result, we'd never quite get the platforming challenge sections again which coloured a lot of Assassin's Creed 2's content between assassinations. (It was some of the only ways in which this series changed itself up) Then there was the combat which introduced 'combat levels' in order to make things more challenging. All this ultimately served, however, was being an introduction point for premium currency and microtransactions in order to buy new gear; a rot which has been with the series ever since. (So thanks for that, Unity) And then there are the Black Box missions, an attempt by Ubisoft to recreate the freedom of Hitman levels with targets that have multiple approach angles and free-from level structure. The only problem being that Arno, as with every Assassin's Creed protagonist, is an immortal murder machine so taking away any mission constraints just meant that players could work up and kill the target, then leave, with practically no resistance. (Glad they bought back that failure of a mission structure philosophy for Valhalla.)

Finally, there was the storyline, which I was most excited about and which disappointed me the most. The narrative attempts to tell a story about an unlikely truce between the Assassin's and the Templars which falls apart in no time flat, set in a backdrop of the French Revolution. The stories sound like they might saddle up close together, but in practice they are almost entirely separate with the connections between the two being coincidental at best, robbing this series of the historical romping aspect that makes it so engaging! Worst of all for me, however, was Elise. Arno's Step-sister turned lover who just happened to join the Templars when he became an Assassin. What a brilliant opportunity for the game to lean on from the Assassin's Creed III story of exploring both sides of the conflict. We'll get the chance to totally explore what draws two kindred spirits in opposite directions so that it'll break our hearts when their differing parts ultimately collide. Except no. Elise is just a Templar because her Dad was and Arno is an Assassin because his Dad was; there's no scenes of genuine philosophical conflict or warring opinions. In fact, Elise and Arno barely interact at all beyond a few catty remarks and ill-suited bouts of romanticism. By the end I cared little about either of them, and having learnt nothing about Arno's later life I don't feel that burning curiosity which I had with Edward Kenway or Ezio Auditore. I found no depth in any of the characters, such to the extent where I cannot remember anyone but the lead two because they were on the box.

So Assassin's Creed Unity was dumb, through and through, and it was so at the utmost detriment of the game that could have been underneath it all. I, along with so many others, had this perfect dream of what Unity could have been, and the disappointment we came to feel when it floundered on that goal would colour the relationship between old school fans and Assassin's Creed from then on. Even as some fundamental aspects improved and the series itself shifted and morphed into the pseudo-RPG monster it is today, the worst elements started in this game just festered into what would become the series' worst missteps. I'm not going to call Unity the route of Assassin's Creed's downfall, because I think that award goes solely to the heads in the Ubisoft office, but Unity was the manifested omen that told everyone exactly what these games were seeking to be for the foreseeable future. So chalk this series up to another good thing going that Napoleon ruined, the dick.