The Assassins Creed franchise burst onto the scene with 2007s Crusades-based jaunt simply titled and Assassins Creed, promising players plentiful versatility and verticality as you go about your business, as well as providing satisfyingly stealthy ways of dispatching key targets on a grand scale with a hidden blade, favouring sudden and cerebral movement over reckless button bashing amidst upfront encounters. Assassins Creed has since blossomed into a gargantuan franchise spanning many historical periods from The Crusades right the way through to the Industrial Revolution, as well as becoming larger and more complex along the way. The argument put forward here is that Assassins Creed has steadily sought to rid of what made the franchise great to begin with in the service or exploitation and RPG elements. But first a little history primer.
To start off, the first Assassins Creed had players playing as Altair, a trained Assassin who’s an underling to the notorious Al Mualim and charged with going out into the market towns of Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus to kill 9 Knights Templars in order to regain the status he had lost at the beginning of the game. Horse riding speed limits aside, Assassins Creed offered up a remarkable take on history that was far-removed from the familiarities contextualised in 2007 such as the prominence of WWII shooters and space marines. Although somewhat stymied by the “present-day” aspects, Assassins Creed gave you the freedom to explore ancient cities and learn about historical figures in an exciting and captivating new way. From these humble beginnings, Assassins Creed grew tremendously in popularity thanks in large part to the first game’s sequel Assassins Creed II and its exquisitely rendered Venetian Renaissance setting, the charismatic protagonist and its story that drew you straight in as Ezio Auditore De Farenze as he tries to avenge the death of family members by tracking down those responsible. Assassins Creed II was very strong with likeable characters and witty dialogue being the true stars of the show. Two related follow-ups in the form of the co-op-focused Brotherhood and the finale of Ezio’s story with Revelations. Those two games greatly enhanced the groundwork of Assassins Creed II, polishing up the visuals in pristine fashion and making the gameplay more workable and fluid with boundless fervour and bountiful beauty at the fore. Ubisoft would continue their ceaseless momentum with their history-trotting adventures in the somewhat divisive American Revolution-set Assassins Creed III alongside then-PS Vita exclusive Assassins Creed III: Liberation, the nautical popular pirate’s life outing in Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag, the tepidly received French Revolution in Assassins Creed: Unity-as well as jointly releasing alongside Assassins Creed: Rogue, and then to top off the original set of AC games with the bawdy and brawly Industrial Revolution of Assassins Creed: Syndicate. Ubi would then take a year out to peddle the dreadful Assassins Creed film with Michael Fassbender for 2016, all the while working their tail off to produce a grander and far more ambitious Assassins Creed-what would turn out to be 2017’s Origins-which donkey-kicked the series from the 19th century right back in time to Ancient Egypt-featuring RPG-like elements, tougher enemies and health bars to deplete. Yes, this is where the debate begins, because what on earth was Assassins Creed: Origins really but a betrayal of what it is to be an Assassin? The progress the series had been making up to this point may not have come on leaps and bounds, but Origins decided to throw out the rulebook and go way back in time to effectively start the series again, stripping out both the imperfections of the games that came before as well as countering them with a more luxuriously excessive experience. Nothing is condensed anymore in Origins, it’s far-removed from the GTA design that came before, but this is detrimental because while previous Assassins Creed games had lots of map markers and tedious missions-the structure made for a more accessible experience. But because the PS4/Xbox One fad is to make gargantuan open-worlds that span hundreds of hours of gameplay, Assassins Creed has slavishly followed suit, offering intimidating open-world design that further accentuates and embellishes all the tedium and busywork. Just because everyone else does it doesn’t mean you have to but in this day and age if money says it’s a great idea then it’ll be done with no questions-like when a mob boss wants somebody whacked-you do it or you’ll get whacked. With a bigger game comes more varied opportunities to pursue missions and quests however you see fit. But Assassins Creed has gotten too carried away with the aforementioned fads and now it thinks it can be way more than an Assassins Creed game, kinda similar to how Ghost Recon games have just gotten bigger and now the ghost is revealed to be a fluffy white pillow-because you don’t need to be stealthy anymore. In Origins you have to battle enemies in numerous way and one particular way is to run up to them and whack them over and over again until their health bar is drained completely. Ok, so Ubi is just catering to the “appeal to a wider audience” BS that vacuums away the franchise’s speciality so that ultimately more money can be made, but in doing so the name of “Assassins Creed” in the title may as well be called something different say “Mercenary’s Creed”, old Pandemic Studio personnel may not like it, but the name would certainly be of greater accuracy than Assassins Creed given how Ubisoft are abandoning the definition of what an assassin is. As related to other game franchises reinvigorating their formulas, DOOM is one of the clearest examples out there. Back in 1994 when DOOM came out, the tactics for clearing enemies was simply point a gun and shoot-whereas in DOOM 2016 your tactics are akin to leaping about like a harassed monkey in a cage, you have to survey and attack with knowledge of your whereabouts. The timeframe between DOOM II and DOOM 2016’s release is a lengthy 22 years, whereas the Assassins Creed franchise from its foundations to its latest is 11-years, so Assassins Creed has made incremental strides towards its evolution whereas Doom has been in gestation long enough for many of the entries to feel different from one another. Now 2018’s God of War does seem like it has betrayed some of what was established in the original God of War series. Kratos is supposed to a mad and vengeful warrior of Sparta, but in the latest he has a son and Kratos doesn’t resort to raw anger as much because God of War is too busy trying to impress with The Last of Us’ cologne. Yeah God of War smells good and will be taken for a dance by many PS4 enthusiasts, but Kratos has sacrificed himself just to be something he is not. Psychopaths cannot simply change into calm and patient family men because they knocked out a pubic louse. In all Assassins Creed feels like it has betrayed the simplicity that it once had for trend-heavy open-world frolics. Sure Origins and Odyssey are very impressive, but this in turn makes Assassins Creed a me-too, too afraid to be something familiar and great because of how money talks and gets what it wants. Mentioning and rebutting the DOOM and God of War series has aided in showing how evolutionary steps taken in a franchise can turn them into outright betrayals because growing up usually means going along with a crowd in order to get along. |
The Assassin’s Creed series has been around since 2007 and in that time has pumped out almost as many mainline entries as there have been mainline Final Fantasy games. If that’s any indication as to the immense popularity the series has, as well as the motivations of Ubi$oft then we can almost guarantee that Assassin’s Creed isn’t going anywhere fast. The fact that the series isn’t going anywhere fast is also an indication of my viewpoint of the question posed in the title of this article. The fact that the series has largely remained unchanged over its 13-year run, besides becoming increasingly bloated with pointless extra features, is an indication that I do not believe the series has completely betrayed its roots.
Cast your mind back to the original Assassin’s Creed, an open world third person stealth title where your main goal was to assassinate a series of high-profile targets whilst slowly learning more about the formation of the Assassin’s and the Templars. It was a simple enough premise that despite being a tad repetitive at times was incredibly fun. What really put the series on the map was 2008’s Assassin’s Creed 2 which provided greater mission variety, a more charismatic and interesting protagonist, more interesting gameplay mechanics, a game world better suited to the style of gameplay the series was going for, and lots of side activities to keep you busy. It is Assassin’s Creed 2 that served as the template for the series going forward and even in the more recent entries of Assassin’s Creed Origins & Odyssey the gameplay design of Assassin’s Creed 2 is still at the very core of the experience. Of course, there have been changes made over the years with Origins & Odyssey having the biggest shift in game design the series had seen since Assassin’s Creed 2. The introduction of mechanics more commonplace in RPG’s like skill trees and branching questlines as opposed to the more mission based, GTA-esque game design of earlier Assassin’s Creed titles may indicate that the more recent Assassin’s Creed titles are straying from the series roots, but on the contrary I feel that they are just being tailored to the state of the current game market in an attempt to increase the lifespan of a game, and appeal to a larger consumer base. To put this into perspective, a title like 2016’s DOOM is still considered extremely faithful to the series roots. But despite this the game has more in common with shooters from the era it released in than the games it is a sequel to. Gameplay has been completely overhauled to fit in with 21st century expectations including the ability to aim up and down, levels are traversable by climbing, you have skill trees, upgradable weapons, puzzles, and so much more. The original DOOM titles were just about holding the fire button down and strafing until everything in the room was dead, whereas modern DOOM does not adhere to this gameplay structure and instead actually requires some tactical evaluation of the situation. If you play DOOM 2016 like you play DOOM 2 for example, you won’t last 5 minutes. Whereas, if you play Assassin’s Creed 2 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, you will notice that the games largely play in largely the same way. Sure, new gameplay mechanics have been added in and others removed, but the difference between the two games is relatively minor when you consider the age gap between the two titles is not much shorter than that of DOOM 2 and DOOM 2016. Another comparison could be made between God of War 3 and God of War 2018, a much shorter span of time between titles this time yet still a much starker difference between titles than that of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and even a title as recent as Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. Gameplay innovations and including features popular in other titles is not necessarily a mark of a series betraying its roots. Whilst in some cases it absolutely can be, in the case of Assassin’s Creed I do not feel like it is. Especially when you take into account how similar all of Ubisoft’s open world franchises are to each other, and how all of them have taken strides to include many of the same popular features (for better or worse, I’m looking at you Ghost Recon Breakpoint) yet all of them definitely still feel distinctly like their own franchises. Hass Assassin’s Creed changed to fit expectations of modern gamers? Yes. But does that mean it has also in turn sacrificed what the series is at its core? No, because that core is still largely unchanged from the series’ first few entries. |