By Nick Jaccaci ’18, Contributor
You may have seen the Tower of London, whether in real life or on TV, but have you ever gotten the chance to climb the building during the height of the British rule, when the sun never set on the Empire? Unless you have a TARDIS or a time turner, then you most likely have not seen the fortress during the 19th century. Do not lose hope yet though, for video game developer Ubisoft has provided a solution for your plight with their latest installment of the Assassin’s Creed franchise.
In case you are not aware of the series or you forgot about it, Assassin’s Creed is a video game series that revolves around exploring an alternate history that is practically a mirror to ours and a secret war between two factions. Thanks to an advanced piece of technology called “the Animus,” one can use their DNA to relive and experience their ancestor’s memories. Most of the games revolve around the player living through the life of their assassin ancestors. “The Assassins” are one of two groups fighting in a secret war throughout history against the Templars. The Assassins fight for the freedom for everyone, while the Templars believe in order through controlling the population. Obviously, these two ideologies clash often. If all that wasn’t confusing for you, it gets even worse. In this alternate history, humans didn’t evolve from apes by themselves. Humans were assisted by a God-like species in Eden, a civilization tens of thousands of years older than the first recorded civilization in history. This species made them for slavery and used special artifacts called “Pieces of Eden” to control their slaves. However, despite their near limitless power, these powerful beings could not save themselves from a catastrophe caused by the sun. Solar flares destroyed the precursor species yet some humans survived. Nearly everyone, except by the Assassins and the Templars, has since forgotten about this technologically-advanced world. The Pieces of Eden are scattered throughout history, whether in the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy or France during the Revolution. Each game revolves around a race between the Assassins and the Templars to get the Piece of Eden first for control or its protection.
Story: The game takes place in 1868 during the Industrial Revolution in the heart of London. The story begins with the two protagonists planning their attack on some of Crawford Starrick’s henchmen. In case you were wondering if I somehow messed up with the amount of protagonists of the game, there are two playable characters: Jacob and Evie Frye. These twins who came to London are both playable outside of missions and have missions dedicated to them. Jacob is a reckless and arrogant character, always shooting first then asking later. Jacob is the one who usually takes down the more important figures of the game, such as the assassination targets. Jacob is more focused on building up his gang, the Rooks, and destroying Starrick and his gang, the Blighters. Evie is the smarter of the two by a landslide. She’s often planning raids to secure precious information while trying her best to stick to the original beliefs of the assassins. She is the one focused on getting the Pieces of Eden. Most of the time however, she ends up cleaning up after her brother makes another incredibly stupid choice. In the first mission with Evie, you are trying to get a Piece of Eden, but the lab in which the Piece was getting experimented on blew up. Evie barely escapes. The story itself is extremely basic: the leader of the Templars, Crawford Starrick, is oppressing the city. As Assassins, you must defeat him and his gang, the Blighters. After beating the game, I realized that I didn’t enjoy the story because of the plot. In fact, I felt quite disappointed on how the game’s story played out. Some parts were too sporadic and confusing to find a coherent reason for your actions, while other times being so simple, it’s child’s play. What makes the story so fun to play is all of the interactions between the other characters. Whenever Jacob and Evie work together, they have hilarious moments. Usually these moments are Evie quoting some famous figure, such as Plato, and Jacob pretending to know who or what she’s talking about. There are other funny moments scattered around, like whenever Jacob meets with the head of Scotland Yard and “the master of disguises” Frederick Abberline, their dialogue always revolves around Abberline’s failure to disguise himself well. There are also moments when Jacob’s brash decision-making and charisma puts him in trouble. For example, one of Starrick’s henchmen, Pearl Attaway, at first makes an alliance with Jacob in order to help rebuild the transportation scene in London after it went down the drain (I do not know why, it’s one of those confusing moments). In one of the later missions with her, it is revealed that not only is Attaway working for Starrick, but she is his cousin. Jacob, feeling betrayed and hurt, finally decides to terminate their relationship. There are also famous figures in this time period as well. Frederick Abberline, as previously mentioned, was a key part in the Jack the Ripper case in the near-future. Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens are in the game and distribute missions to you. Karl Marx is in the game, fighting for the rights of oppressed workers. Even Queen Victoria makes an appearance!
Mechanics: Assassin’s Creed is a series which revolves around three ideas: stealth, fighting, and movement. Stealth is activated when you press the A button and pull your hood up. When in stealth, you are harder to detect and make less noise when you move. When crouched, walking to the edge or a building makes the protagonist hug the wall and peer around the side. Later in the game, Evie has a special ability to turn “invisible” while standing still while crouched. Evie becomes impossible to see unless an enemy is standing extremely close to her. Fighting in this game is quite different than previous installments. Since the new social norm for the Industrial Revolution is not to carry a large sword at your side, the combat much more up-close and personal, using your fists to take down enemies. The combat is similar to the Arkham series, almost just like Batman and his fluid fighting style. While fighting, you can perform multiple brutal finishers to kill up to four enemies at once. Finally, movement and parkour have been changed to become much quicker. In previous games, the protagonist can climb up buildings and anything with height, but couldn’t get down with ease. In Assassin’s Creed: Unity, the protagonist couldalso parkour down a building. In this new installment, a rope launcher was added. By pressing the left bumper on the controller close to a building, the protagonist fires a rope to the top then being pulled up, reducing climbing speeds from ten to fifteen seconds to even a minute of larger structures to one or two seconds. This might not seem much, but when you have almost no health left and there is a small militia of Blighters is on your tail, it comes to launching yourself up a building to survive. You can also use the rope launcher to move from one building to another. In order to do so, you have to shoot a rope between two buildings and then zip line across. This is also extremely helpful when trying to escape inside a train station or in a large fortress like the Tower of London. There are three new features that separate this game from its predecessors. They include levels for characters, carriages, and the Rooks. Levels and leveling up is something that is done relatively quickly. A mission provides around 250 to 4000 experience points, depending on the importance in the story, and every 1000 points you get limited access to an upgrade. Upgrading one of the two protagonist is quite simple. The earlier in the game, 1000 experience should unlock an upgrade. Later in the game, it can cost up to 6000 experience. Upgrading your character either affects their statistics in fighting or health, or adds new features like the previously mentioned camouflage for Evie. Carriages are used to get around London quickly, reducing a five minute run into a 30 second drive. There are cart races to test your driving skills, either against other AI drivers or even a train. The last new mechanic is the Rooks, your personal gang. The Rooks start as level 3 henchmen, and only two can follow you at once. They are pretty much an extra hand in a fight. With the Rooks, you can tell them to wait or follow you. What is useful is to tell your Rooks to wait and stealthily enter a facility owned by the Blighters, once inside, you can use the right bumper to make the Rooks fight a Blighter and then, with the distraction in place, you finish your objective. At the end of the game, the Rooks are now level 9. You can call different types of Rooks, and can lead five of them into battle. Something that is fun is being able to call a carriage full to the brim with Rooks at a moment’s notice and watch their reckless driving as they try to get to you as soon as possible.
Graphics and Design: Since Assassin’s Creed comes out yearly, there are similar animations and basic textures from the previous Assassin’s Creed: Unity. There are higher buildings and smoke stacks, making the world much more brown and gray. The environment and what the inhabitants of the city look like depends on which part of London you are in. If you’re in Lambeth, then the houses are struggling to stay standing and everybody there looks like they just finished a full day’s work at the factory. The houses are spread out considerably and there are many workspaces among the buildings. The only reason you would find anyone with class there is if you stole their carriage as they drove by. Compare that to the City of London, where the apartments are so close together that the alleyways are tunnels built into the buildings to reach the center of a complex. Some streets in the city are so tight, moving slightly off the road while driving result in some city dwellers having their days (and legs) ruined. In these parts of town, the colors are like what you’d expect to find in New York or some large metropolis: many large signs, posters and advertisements on the wall, and everyone is dressed-to-impress. Even the Thames River gets its time to shine with a surprising amount of missions to complete in the area. There is a varied amount of enemy type, four in total, that you will stumble across in the street. Each one is detailed and thoroughly thought-out. The audio in this game is perfect. There is ambient music while you climb up buildings, people singing drinking songs in the bar and train stations, and sound effects that add a whole new level of brutality to the fighting. You might be fighting for dear life, then hear the sound of bones cracking as Jacob twists someone’s leg so they look like the letter L. It is a disturbing image, but it’s the sound that really gets to your head and makes you remember what you did to that person.
Verdict: This game is a refreshing change of pace for a series that long needed it. Not only is London great to explore, but the characters in it are almost better than other characters seen elsewhere in media. The fun activities (as well as a special surprise towards the end of the game with Churchill) contribute to it being one of my favorite games I’ve played in a long while. However, a weak story pulls away from the overall experience. Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate on the Xbox One, PS4, and PC is now $40 on Amazon. If you like the franchise at all, London, or history in general, then this is a must-play game.
This game was reviewed on a Xbox One. I give this game a rating of 9.5/10.
Image Source: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/81136/20150901/victorian-london-comes-alive-new-assassins-creed-syndicate-trailer.htm
