Assassin's Creed Japan

 

I'm sure there are many out there who heard about the recent announcement, paid a little glance over the shoulder at it and faintly smiled in the dreamy way we acknowledge that old wayward car tire lodged in the gnarled body of the park's local tree that has been there since childhood. An ugly thing objectively, overdue for correction, but some halcyon sliver of the thing we call 'Nostalgia' confines errant respect for the thing that reminds us of simpler, uncluttered days. Not many out there have been tuned in on the barking and cawing the creative suction well that represents Ubisoft studio to see what this actually says about the Assassin's Creed brand- because for whatever dark reason it is the words of the Ubisoft from yester year haunt the recess' of my mind like the knell of the dead clocking ever closer with each fraught night. With the announcement of this game, confirmed beyond a shadow by the reveal trailer, Ubisoft have finally admitted that they are out of ideas.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "Ubisoft are out of ideas? What was your first clue- did you even play the 100+ hour sleepwalk that was Valhalla?" But I've been tracking their decent into mediocrity much longer than that, seeing their collapse into the mid masters that now defines modern Ubisoft so spectacularly that it is a common sight to see any member of the community with any amount of investment in the industry scoff at the sight of their name. Just look at the like/to dislike ratio sitting under any of their YouTube announcements, the tide has turned- Ubisoft are being recognised for the backwards dinosaurs they dedicated the past decade congealing into. Now their entire business model is to serve as blackened coal fuelling the most most lazy and derivative aspects of the industry so slavishly that they were the first big studio to actively posit their dreams of throwing AI into the mix to do the devs jobs for them. (As if Watch_Dogs Legion didn't prove their games are soulless enough with active developers!)

You see, I remember all the way back in the halcyon, and long buried, days of Assassin's Creed 2 when we still used to think this was a franchise with direction and purpose worth speculating about. Do you remember that? When the creators still had grand plans about what the franchise represented, how it would explore itself going forward and what fans could expect. Yves even claimed the franchise had an expiry date, like the liar he's always been, implying that ever entry would serve as a stepping stone on an ultimate journey to completion. In that I remember very clearly an easter egg placed within the game by the developers hinting at directions they wouldn't take the franchise because they would be 'too obvious', and I'm sure you can see where this is going.

First off they've been very clear about how they don't want to go to any era in history overstuffed with Guns. Rebecca famously spouts how boring shooting is, and in the brief moments throughout the franchise we've dabbled in World War 1 and 2, the player has never been strapped up to the nines. Cars are also a no-no, as explained in some diatribe about how the trance-state of driving interferes with the animus data recall process of some other such trite- they don't want to get to modern, is what I'm getting at. And what else? Well they don't want to go to any time period that has been done to death such as- Feudal Japan. Because that would be a sign that this series which is based around exploring the wonders of history with a fantastical story stitched atop it- is losing it's touch and going for the low hanging fruit. Whelp- Ubisoft meet fruit.

Assassin's Creed codename red was revealed as 'Assassins Creed Shadows' in a CG trailer that I just can't bring myself to watch. Ubisoft stopped making interesting trailers around about the time of Unity, they've been wastes of time ever since. The point of the matter is it's going to star the Blue Eyed Black Samurai, as featured in the recent anime of that name, and a Kunoichi- because Kunoichi are awesome. (Unsure how historically accurate they are, but since when has Modern AC dev teams ever cared about 'historical accuracy'?) And you can bet your bottom dollar this reveal came with another patented Ubisoft collectors edition worth over a £100 because Yves hates us all and he wants us to know it. (Don't worry man, the feeling is mutual.) And needless to say, I have some thoughts.

First off, I couldn't care less to even engage with the miniscule outrage about the depiction of a black samurai- I've seen a tiny smidge of people even commenting on that and those who feed that nothing of a minority are actually doing more harm than they are even capable of when just ignored. Besides, such discourse distracts from the real concerns, such as- is this an actual game this time? I have to ask because the last such title, Valhalla, was a exercise in virtual torture stretched across over a 100 torturous hours of mind numbing nothingness. There was about 5 hours of narrative sprinkled across that disastrously bloated corpse of a game, and that was supposed to be the teams response to people's grumbles about how overstuffed Odyssey was! This one might just kill me off! (If I even get around to it. Don't even know if I can stomach this crap anymore, to be honest.)

And on a more nuanced note- splitting up the combat and the stealth gameplay between two protagonists is a mightily ambitious move for a team that historically struggle to make any single play style feel substantive even when they come as a package. The last time they tried this, for Syndicate, both Evie and Jacob ended playing near identically to one another aside from functionally arbitrary weapon restriction. What has transpired within the development of then to now that they feel comfortable trying it all again? I don't trust them. Unless they've brought their systems so far up to scratch we're looking at Phantom Blood level of AI advancement- I can already taste the half-assed disappointment.

Some part of me took solace in the quiet between Mirage and now, hoping that the franchise had finally given up and we'd get a few years off at the very least. Of course that wouldn't be the case. Of course Shadows is out later this year. Of course it comes with prototypical Ubisoft nickle and diming. Of course it's going to be a disappointment. Only this time around this game has plenty of competition to contend with in it's genre so we can contrast and compare all the ways this feudal Japan will feel wanting. Ghost of Tsushima, Rise of the Ronin, hell- even Like a Dragon Ishin! I'll eat my hat if Ubisoft's Japan is anywhere close to as detailed as those that came before.

Oh, so Assassin's Creed is current gen now?

 Forgive my scepticism.

It is only natural that with the progression of society, technology and the world- everyone needs to pack up and move themselves along just that little bit in order to ensure they don't end up being forgotten about in the ceaseless march that is the coming future. Because as every techno-futurist bad guy cackles in the final act of every near future dystopia film- "Progress waits for no man!" And they're right. There's no putting the genie back in the bottle once AI art starts taking over and people find it some much easier than sitting down and making art for themselves. You can't just crawl back into the caves and relive the stone age all over again, unless you recreate the end of the original Deus Ex and literally EMP the entire world like the world's most paradoxically technologically savvy luddite. Which is all my way of saying that there's is no reason on the surface that any one should be surprised with the fact that Assassin's Creed Red is launching this year entirely on current gen consoles.

At least, most seem to think that 2024 is a likely release date for the game given how little we know about the title apart from the fact that it is Japan-set and thus the team are just waiting for the world designers to create a beautiful looking landscape so that the system designers can squander it all with the same heartless checklist content that Assassin's Creed cut it's teeth on all those years ago. Yes, you shouldn't worry. The world will lack character, the people personality and the story a script. Hell, if Valhalla turns out to be an indication on the direction of their writing, they may not even remember how to make storylines that guide the events of their scenarios anymore! But all that is exactly what we expect from the sheer mediocrity that is the modern Ubisoft development front- what I'm kicking the ball about today is 'innovation' What is it, how much of it does Assassin's Creed boast?

Because here's the rub- Assassin's Creed hasn't really innovated in about... ten years give or take. The technology that went behind making Black Flag what is was, with dynamic surfaces that generated real-time, was ingenious. I can't recall another Assassin's Creed which brought anything that took advantage of modern tech to that degree. Unity boasted some ascendant crowd tech that could produce emergent behaviour when stressed but... well... that never made it to the finished product. Since then all the games have been able to boast is ever bigger open worlds for the team to squander because they no idea what to fill them with. At least 'Watch Dogs Legion' has a really cool idea. The game was an unforgivably boring mess-of-a tech demo- but someone was trying at somepoint. I'm not sure that outside the work of the world artists, that can praise can be replicated for modern Assassin's Creed.

Every few years the team will change the way that the game's climbing works, jiggle about with the combat, throw in a half-baked RPG system- and the Assassin's Creed fanbase will claim without any hint of irony that this slightly differently packaged meal is the best the game has ever tasted. (Except for free running, I'm pretty sure we're all on the same page about free running feeling utterly depth-less in modern iterations.) The Ubisoft team have never had to break down the fundamentals of the franchise and figure out how to innovate and what to leave behind. You might compare this with the Bethesda rut of design which has become a topic of much discussion recently, but I'd argue Assassin's Creed is even more enclosed than even that. These games are echoes of one another, lacking that spark of individuality we pray for in franchise games. Even Yakuza have changed their games more than AC have!

And yet Assassin's Creed Red is said to be the first game so transcendent in it's ideas that past gen consoles just can't run the thing- and I struggle to understand why. I mean, first guess is probably that the team are creating all textures in native 4k- easy guess there, but what about everything else that makes a game- tick? Well, I guess they could try and up the density of their crowds (Valhalla was surprisingly reserved on that front- which I guess matches the time period. But then, even Odyssey wasn't mind blowing in that regard.) Maybe we'll be able to ride horses through cities, something that hasn't been possible since Brotherhood, but now with an SSD being a requirement that seems like something of a no-brainer. But do either of those sound worthy of a next gen jump to you? What actually would?

Personally, I would want an Assassin's Creed that pushes the gameplay systems further than they've even been before. Sprawling stealth levels, dynamic AI characters who surprise and overwhelm, dense streets packed with character and activity, giant set pieces that don't just create an illusion of scale presented in tightly conducted hallways of action. (Valhalla knows what I mean there with it's endless 'siege battles') And most of all, I want to see the current gen taken advantage of in a way I'm not expecting. This is the age of experimentation with the current gen, of pulling of things we never even considered being plausible. I don't want all that potential squandered in favour of 'ray tracing on characters eyes'- which is exactly what I already know the team are going for.

This is why I consider the coming abandonment of last gen consoles to be smokescreen and illusion. It's a headline designed to convince the world that something substantive is being conjured up in the mines of the Ubisoft content factory, when in truth their slathering new make-up brands on the same desiccated corpse of a product and praying no can peek through the layers of foundation at the flaking enamel beneath. But I've been through this enough to know, Ubisoft doesn't change. They never change! As much as I want to have hope for them, for their many franchises that I once loved, I can't just bury my head in the sand and pretend I don't see the exact same crap from them that I've seen for the past ten years. And the worst part of it all? They're successful. They sell millions each game. Which means no matter how bad things get, they'll always keep their lamentable quality standards.

What will it take to change things at Ubisoft? A rude awakening, no doubt. When that bizarre project manager quit, upon whose shoulders the blame for the repetition of Ubisoft products where placed, I knew the culture wouldn't change. The roots were set too deep, his cronies has already changed the kind of developer that Ubisoft was. That is why removing any head here or there isn't going to reboot the company any more than jumping to a new set of hardware is going to automatically revolutionise their game. No they're going to need a shock to the system. A trauma. Something they'll never recover from. They need to have a financial failure! Of course, such a failure would immediately be used an an excuse to axe 25% of the workforce, so I can't even advocate for that either. It's just a lose-lose with Assassin's Creed and Ubisoft, isn't it?

Assassin's Creed Red: Where this crazy train ends

 For now.

Assassin's Creed Overload

 If I ever hear the words 'Hidden Ones' again, so help me god...

Do you remember the age you were when hearing about not 1, not 2, not 3 but 4 new upcoming Assassin's Creed games would have still been exciting? Do you remember that? Because I can distantly recall a moment before Valhalla, before Origins and before Unity when that would have sent me spinning around the moon. Now it makes me groan as I picture a market totally saturated by low-effort, rapid production, video games that slowly drown out the sense of the world with their incessant repetition and squandered creativity. Ubisoft is not a big enough company to successfully pursue 4 major projects at the same time whilst giving them all significant enough amounts of attention to be the games they are meant to be. Assassin's Creed is going have what little life the games still had in them sucked dry. This was a grim showing from the Ubisoft teams.

It's such a shame as, there was some genuine excitement bobbing about a brand new Assassin's Creed game that was coming to bring back the franchise to it's roots, a game that was codenamed Assassin's Creed Mirag- wait, that was the full name? (Damn, Ubisoft leaks are getting wild; I wonder if there's a single development team in that entire company that doesn't have a direct line with leakers... It really does make it hard to surprise anyone nowadays.) But all that excitement seems kind of muted thanks to the dual fact that we have absolutely no gameplay proving their affirmations that this is an Assassin's Creed game back in the style of the old games that we loved, and that there will be twenty million other Assassin's Creed projects getting in the way of this singular one which is supposed to be good. Having your cake and eating it at the same time is really what's going on here. Ubisoft want to reach out to old school fans, stroke their RPG fans, bolster their mobile game fans, and wrap them all in a merciless Metaverse designed to trap you in a never ending dance of hooded murder hobos.

First we do have a pretty cool looking cinematic in Assassin's Creed Mirage. It's Baghdad streets seem eerily reminiscent of the origins of the franchise; Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus, with a bit more of the richness and volume of Revelation's Constantinople. Our new hero is a Valhalla alum, just as the leaks teased, meaning we already know his story is going to end with him becoming a master assassin just like Ezio's did; but considering we're on the whole 'play the hits' train, I can understand why the team went for symmetry there. Stealth is said to be the focus this time around, which means a renewing of the all-powerful hidden blade and the need to run as well as fight; which this trailer plays some lip service to. I just wonder if it's not just a bit too familiar. (Hah, this is a Ubisoft game, so I suppose that's kind of the Modus Operandi, huh.)

What I mean is; we've already explored a couple of settings eerily familiar to this one. When we look across the skyline of Baghdad and we can see many shapes similar to Constantinople, obviously because of the architectural heritage of the places. Even the Assassin's Tower, where we'll be taught how to stab good by the mentor character portrayed by Shohreh Aghdashloo, which the Ubisoft team wanted us make sure that we knew, looks similar to Masyaf from afar. There's going back to where it all began and then there's re-treading the grounds we've already walked before, and the gaming community has already been forcibly fed that bitter pill after the whole 'The Last of Us Part 1' debacle. (At least I don't think Ubisoft have gone quite so crazy that they're going to start throwing 70$ price tags at us. They'd be opening themselves to war if that were the case.)

But that's just one of the projects that Ubisoft are eager to drown us all within. There's also the big new RPG style Assassin's Creed game flying our way that is going to be set in Ancient Japan! Yes, after all this time we're finally going to that one time period that Ubisoft said they'd never travel to because it would be too obvious. (Of course, that was before they hit a slump and started pissing people off.) It's called Codename Red for the time being and... that's about it. No word about what they're going to do with the game to try and claw back some interest, especially now that they've faffed around so long that people have 'Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice' and 'Ghost of Tsushima' to compare it against. Honestly, their 'RPG done light' style of development is kind of emblematic of everything wrong with Ubisoft as a company; so the less I see about it, the better.

Oh, and then there's Assassin's Creed Codename Jade... we're really doing the 'codename' stuff, huh... Here is a game set in old China, and it's a mobile game. Oh no. The team were very excited about this game, enough to actually show some in-engine gameplay where they wouldn't dream about such disclosure when it came to the real games, Mirage and Red. They also were so excited to talk up a big game about how it's going to be the first Assassin's Creed game where you get to make your own character, that they screwed up and lied with that very statement. The first game to do that was the short lived mobile bomb, Assassin's Creed Identity; and this game is just a reattempt at that sort of project only with considerably more resources thrown into it. Isn't it telling when even Ubisoft can't tell the difference between their own products...

Then there was Assassin's Creed project Hexe; a game that we're already seeing people declaring their favourite looking game out of the line-up. Kind of upsetting, given that all it showed off was a twig-made Assassin's Logo hanging alone in the woods and literally nothing else besides. Hexe means 'Witch' in German; great, big whoop. If you literally can't even be bothered to share the time period, why announce the damn thing? This is like Bethesda gabbing about The Elder Scrolls Six when the game was still probably more than a decade away; there's nothing to talk about! Oh, and of course there's also Assassin's Creed Infinity which is their whole Meta-connected platform so they can try and hook people into a never ending live service that is going to be crammed full of MTX that will start small and then begin to build until it gets unbearable, normal folk will be driven away from the service for greener pastures and the game will continue to be supported by whales until it ultimately withers because of lack of general interest. There, I just summarised the entire to-happen lifespan of that crappy idea; can we scrap it now and pretend it was never announced?

Taking on too much at once is a recipe for screw ups. And even if every game turns out to be the very best that Ubisoft can possibly manage, which is 'above average', it will just lead to Assassin's fatigue even more than we're already seeing. Just as with the MCU, people get tired of the same thing too often; and this is looking like an oncoming army of the same thing upsettingly regularly. Even if they had just announced Infinity that would be concerning enough on it's own. But one game looking back, one looking forward, one for mobiles and one for mystery? Who exactly is going to make all of these games? Your staff? Because unless they've all sold their houses and families and grown four sets of arms, that seems unlikely without working their whole bodies to nubs. At the very least I can say that Mirage is trending towards a direction I like in theory, because we're still yet to have any tangible gameplay, and everything else... it all sounds like Ubisoft is heading towards a brick wall at high speed.