On the downside, assassins. As in, a lot of the gameplay is stealth (not my taste) and the entire impetus of the plot is about, well, killing people. I will give it this, though; death is far from depersonalized in this game (well....at least for named characters!) The game confronts head-on the idea of ending a life, ending a story. It doesn't try to minimize the irreversible nature of what that is.
First off, a brief background. Ubisoft came out of the Prince of Persia remake, which like Tomb Raider emphasizes movement through the environment -- what they are calling "parkour" these days. It combined this with the stealth gameplay of, well, Metal Gear Solid (no-one wears a cardboard box quite like Solid Snake). And then -- what really put the game on the map -- lots of story, well-acted characters, and a bunch of well-researched historical detail.
They are up to something like eight games now. It isn't easy to count, what with long DLC campaigns, stand-alone games that are so short they might as well be DLC, special editions and "Director's Cuts" and 2.4D spin-offs. Unlike a lot of other properties, however, all of the games, movies, and other media are in canon and make up a single story.
You play as...
Well, actually, you are technically this fellow:
(Desmond, doing his best Keanu Reves "Whoah.")
Desmond, according to the backstory of the Assassin's Creed series, is reliving the genetic memories of some of his ancestors via technology known as the Animus:
Which, incidentally, is one of the cutest diagetic explanations I've seen for an in-game HUD. In any case, you start the historical part of the game as this guy:
Haytham, a delightfully snide British Templar who takes ship to America to look for artifacts of a long-vanished precursor peoples. Because in the current timeline, a massive solar flare is about to wipe out all life and the Templars and the Assassin's Guild are still squabbling over the ancient lost technology of the Precursors that might save everyone.
You got all that?
Unfortunately you play as Haytham for only one short hour. He'll be back, though. And so will that ship they spent so much time detailing.
Because, as I said above, this was my attraction to the game. I've been on at least three wooden ships from the age of sail; The Balclutha, The Cutty Sark, and the replica of HMS Bounty in Saint Pete. And, yeah, there's probably lots of errors in the game version but it looks good to me. Similarly, I've been to Colonial Williamsburg and done the usual crawl-for-commemorative markers around Boston, and nothing in the game looked immediately "off" to me.
(The above is a decade or two before the Revolutionary War).
And it should not be a surprise that historical people pop up every now and then, but they keep it to a dull roar -- it isn't quite Magic Schoolbus territory here.
Anyhow. Your avatar switches from Haytham to his half-Mohawk son, Ratonhnhaké:ton, as a little boy:
And you get to spend time exploring a Kanien'kehá:ka village with some excellent Iroquois Confederation style longhouses. As well as exploring the woods, in what forms a sort of belated tutorial for the stuff you were doing as Haytham for an hour or two already. Plus hunting and trapping, laying out in great detail activities that there is no actual reason to ever do in the main campaign.
Soon enough Ratonhnhaké:ton is a teenager and he gets a vision from the Precursors that causes him to seek out one of the last Assassins in the Colonies for a little training in....well, again, all the stuff he's already been doing all game.
Lots of people have criticized Ratonhnhaké:ton/Connor as being colorless, and many have singled out the voice acting. I do not. I think he is a fine actor, above and beyond his facility with his many lines in his native language (the voice actor is Crow, actually. But the actress playing his mother is Mohawk -- Kanien'kehá:ka, as they would prefer.)
There's an interestingly subtle bit in this voice acting. When Connor skins an animal he has hunted, he murmurs a word that is not translated. Well, if you were paying attention during the Young Ratonhnhaké:ton scenes, his childhood friend uses the same word several times. The word is there subtitled; "Thank you."
Connor gets involved in the Revolution as a way to protect his village, and to no-one's surprise but his own the Colonists are no better. The village is destroyed, he is forced to kill his best friend and his own father, and....oops, did I forget to say "SPOILERS!" And then we duck back to the present day to a confusing mish-mash that also ends up a bit of a wash. Well the world is saved, there's that. And Desmond dies, which many people would also call a bonus.
But, seriously, I could have skipped all the present-day stuff. Sure, it is a cute excuse for how all the data presentation of a modern AAA is actually diagetic; Desmond is getting the mission markers and the handy way enemies glow red and all that stuff because the Animus computer is putting it in. It even rationalizes the currency (as one of the other characters explains in a side note).
But, you know, games have been putting in these extraneous elements all along. Myself, I think the best analogy is the black drapes in theater. It is accepted those aren't part of the stage reality. And within a few scenes, your mind just edits them out. I don't think we need an explanation for why icons show up over the heads of the people appearing on screen. We just accept and get over it, like we get over the fact that all the sound is coming from a couple of speakers.
Well, at least it didn't over-reach itself as far as Jurassic Park, The Game. Seriously, look up that in-game health meter. Words alone can not do it justice. Plus, the computer enhancements of the Animus just beg the question; if Desmond is the only one who gets radar-like tracking of all the enemies within range, what the heck is Haytham using?
Seriously, shitcan the present-day stuff. I feel like this is another "Sorceror's Stone" problem; the designers couldn't believe a modern player would immerse themselves in a historical setting unless there was some sort of "no, but you are really an ex-bartender in modern New York" back story. (The next games in the series, they meta they meta by making the player play as a player of a historical game.......!)
Anyhow, so much for story. I'm not going to try to elaborate gameplay here, except as (as the above was intended) in service to reviewing how well it works and where it does not.
The game is inconsistent. Fractally inconsistent. The only thing it is consistent at is being inconsistent at all scales, all levels, in all ways.
It manages, for instance, to pull off the feat of simultaneously having too many controls, and too few. There are at least four different keys you might have to hit to "launch an attack." But both "run" and "climb" are the same key -- meaning running down an alley is an exercise in suddenly turning mid-flight to try to scale a fruit stand and getting shot by the pursuing Irregulars.
"Space" is both "walk fast" and "mount a horse," which also leads to many amusing moments in the crowded Boston streets. And "E" is used for "drop down" and "interact" and "give orders to an assistant" meaning if you happen to have another guy along on a mission you have to keep parking him out of command range just so you can open a damned door.
This nonsense reaches it's pinnacle at animal combat. I don't know why, but this is at least the second game I've played where wolves are mysterious animals that transcend the rules of combat; if they get too close you go into a quick-time event. Hit "parry" (yes...the "E" key, once again, and may the Father of Understanding guide you if you happen to be fighting a wolf near a door) and then wait for the game to flash a random second key at you. Miss it and you probably die.
Normal combat isn't bad. You can button-pound and do pretty well. Better is to wait and counter, then you can apply one of three options...which work out differently for different enemies but oh well. And then there's a nascent form of the Arkham games "string" where you can sort of move from one enemy to another and put them down faster that way. I think. The manual is unclear and so is gameplay.
There's a dozen special weapons and they are largely ass. Flintlocks are almost as slow to employ as a bow, and tie you up in a reloading animation if you aren't careful. The poison darts are amusing but also too slow. Somewhere in that mix is the ability to throw coins to distract street urchins, and to set animal snares...more on that in a moment...but when you get down to it, the only weapon I used more than once is the rope dart. It functions like a lasso and there is nothing better to stagger the special opponents who otherwise shrug off your attacks.
Since I am a cherry-tapper by nature I got into the habit of attacking ordinary soldiers with bare fists only (which the game claims isn't killing them. Except when it does).
Anyhow, inconsistency. There's inconsistency in introducing mechanics. Sometimes things are given a tutorial. Other times you are dropped into the middle of something with completely new special rules and instant-death if you don't figure them out. Like Ratonhnhaké:ton's vision quest; all of a sudden you are low-flying eagle and you need to figure out the movement controls before you smack into a tree.
The game is extra-fond of putting in special conditions without any warning. Like when a method you'd been using -- that you've even been specifically instructed to use -- suddenly without warning doesn't work on one mission. Back to the last save point for not being psychic.
And the tutorials themselves. When they happen, they take two forms; either they explain in detail something you'll never need again, or -- instead of tutorializing a new mechanic in a safe environment the first time, like most games do -- they "tutorialize" by throwing you into the middle of a typical use of that mechanic with all guns blazing, then cover half the screen with cryptic pop-ups that (badly) explain how the mechanic works.
Like the Aquilla.
It isn't enough there's stealth, combat, a trading system, a sort-of crafting system, they also throw in naval combat. It's the bane of modern AAA games; too many different things thrown in, perhaps in the hope that someone will enjoy at least one of them and proceed to buy a second game from those idiots.
So the game puts you at the tiller...in a crowded harbor. Then the game attacks...with forces nearly as strong as any you will ever encounter in the main campaign. And once you've digested all the special boat mechanics...you use it once more and never need to see it again.
Similarly, there is hunting. You are tutorialized in how to spot spore, how to set a snare, how to use bait. And there is, as far as the main campaign goes, no point in it. You never need to hunt. You can get a little money, but you get a lot better money by riffling the pockets of those annoying soldiers who took umbrage at the way you cantered your horse past Faneuil Hall. And what are you going to do with money? I finished the game with the same weapons I started with. About the only useful things you can do is bribe town criers to claim the guy who just murdered a squad of redcoats outside Faneuil Hall was actually a totally different looking guy wearing a wig.
(Yes...that is exactly how it goes down, with the help of Sam Addams himself.)
Oh, right. You could also buy snares and bait, as those are consumed when you use them. Or you could just air-assassinate your way through the forest. And I have to tell you, it is really really satisfying to leap down at one of those annoying wolves from a handy tree and stab the damned thing to death with the wrist blades.
Well, the AAA game creators aren't entirely wrong. It distracts from the main gameplay and it is rather annoying that the game forces you to engage with all their wonderful little options at least once before you put them aside. But if you've gotten bored with the main campaign, some of them are actually kind of fun.
No, I don't mean chasing lost pages of Poor Richard's Almanac all over town. Or ever, really, hunting, although I can see the draw. My favorite, oddly enough, was the naval combat. I guess I'm in good company there...the next game out was Black Flag and you can guess what that's all about!
And homestead missions.
There's one of the side mechanics -- again, parts of it are un-skippable -- where you befriend various craftsmen and farmers and so forth who are down on their luck and let them set up near the house you share with your mentor in the ways of the assassin. You've eventually got a whole little village there, with sheep being sheered and babies being born and all of that.
There end up being all sorts of little side missions where you help them out with their troubles and record their activities for an ad-hoc history and purchase lumber from one to give to another to make barrels which you then send off to a merchant in Boston to make more of that money you never use for anything.
But I liked it. I mean, I came to this for the history, and for the interaction. And it ain't Colonial Williamsberg, but I enjoyed interacting with Mr. and Mrs. Colonial Diorama and watching them go about their daily chores.
That, the time spent with young Ratonhnhaké:ton at his native village, and interactions with some of the more colorful figures of the Revolutionary War, were really the high points of the game for me. Oh, yeah, and on that latter. The game is quite balanced and not terribly whitewashed. There's no Hall of Presidents gloss on these people; Franklin is a letch, Washington is clearly confused and borderline incompetent, Sam Adams has a slave and understands well the meaning of realpolitik, and Revere is an annoying back-seat driver.
Did I mention I like annoying characters? These people, like Haytham in the first part of the game, are wonderfully annoying and I enjoyed every moment I spent in their company. Now tell me more about older women, Ben.
And there's more to say...bugs, inconsistent application of many gameplay elements (sometimes something will show up on the HUD, sometimes it won't, who knows why.) But I'm going to conclude with the elephant in the room.
As I get older I am confronting more and more mortality. Specifically, my own, but it has grown into not wanting to see anyone's life end. AAA games can be hard for me. In the same way of real-world push-button warfare, most of these people show up only as a brief spray of pixels. Although I've spoken before of the impact of, say Skyrim, where after a battle you are presented with the remains of their lives; their meager possessions, the warm cot they'll never return to, the book they were reading and will never finish.
Assassin's Creed III has the same mobs, presented largely without distinguishing marks (even the mooks in Tomb Raider 2013 had more interesting dialog to give them a sense of independent lives.)
The named characters, on the other hand...
Besides the fact that the assassinations are up-close and bloody and not terribly glamorized -- well, at least not to my tastes -- there is an interesting little mechanism the game includes. After a major kill you have a...conversation.
It takes place in a strange cloudy world away from the action. The recently murdered is entirely aware that he is deceased. But he has this chance to explain himself. Few if any use this time in some attempt at redemption. Everyone is a hero in their own mind, after all. And this is a gray-on-gray world where the worst of the bad guys have very, very good explanations for what they did and pity you for not seeing it the same way.
Heck, often enough you agree with them! But this is an in-your-face confrontation with mortality, in which a man gets a chance to sum up his life and his accomplishments, have his heart briefly weighed against the feather of Maat (sorry...been reading a lot of Egyptian mythology lately, or hadn't you heard?)
The last Templar Connor kills is not a catharsis, not a victory. It is only the end of a tragedy that took a whole game to unfold. And both men are capable of realizing it...in one of the most graceful moments of the game they share a drink, recognizing their shared humanity, before the end.
The Balclutha has a steel hull.
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