Editorial | Assassin's Creed 12 years later: "Everything is permitted, nothing is true"

By Sam Coles:

Assassin’s Creed is generally met with a resounding sigh these days, due to its over saturation with its release schedule. However 12 years ago (my god) Assassin’s Creed was a new an interesting idea, with a lot of flaws but I could dismiss those flaws because of its unique ideas and a setting that was not often explored. I want to talk about why the original Assassin’s Creed is special, and honestly it is rather fitting with the upcoming release of Assassin’s Creed III Remastered (at the time of publishing), so let’s get into it.

When I first played Assassin’s Creed when I was 14 years old I was completely oblivious about the future narrative nonsense, I thought it was just a romp set in the Third Crusade. However when I first boot the game up I was met with confusion, now the idea of the narrative where you relive your ancestors memories is an intriguing one, but it is a shame it’s rather boring in this game with its execution. The thing about Assassin’s Creed it could have been a self-contained story in different time periods with the overarching Assassins vs Templar plot, but this future narrative is a bit of a mess. The future narrative was such a mess even Ubisoft themselves don’t really acknowledge it in later games, as it is more of a footnote in the more recent instalments.

Assassin’s Creed’s gameplay was an evolution of what Prince of Persia laid out, for good reason as it was conceived as a Prince of Persia game with the subtitle Assassins.  You have the free running mechanics that make traversing the roof tops of the Holy Land easy, although bear in mind that the controls are rather stiff in this game as it was the first in the series. The free running feels great when you get into a rhythm, where you leap like a Gazelle across rooftops as you push your pursuers to the ground.

Combat is rather simplistic even from a young age I could see that it was shallow; it’s not necessarily a bad thing as the flashy animations and crunchy sound design keep it interesting. If you get caught assassinating someone they will surround you, you can take down 20 guards by standing there and hitting the counter button. It does make the scenario rather absurd, as you see one man standing with over 20 bodies strewn across the ground. This is something they have remedied in later games, as you have to actually attack your enemies, rather than standing there pretending to play a more violent version of chess.

The meat of Assassin’s Creed is well… being an assassin, similar to Hitman, you slowly learn about your target in each city. These people are despicable humans, from slave traders to genocidal maniacs. You first travel to a specific city get the name of target and then have to do various missions to learn about them, such as eavesdropping, pickpocketing and tailing. Now this sounds fine on paper doesn’t it? However the problem is you are doing the same thing over and over, where it can get tiresome but I find it works fine if you play it in bursts.

When you learn all you can about your target you must assassinate them, and the game for the most goes “It’s up to you, I don’t care as long as there is a hidden blade in their windpipe”. It’s this free form approach that slowly disappeared after Brotherhood, where the hidden blade became a contextual button press instead of an actual weapon in your arsenal.

Now it sounds like I’m mostly being negative about the game so I can hear you ask “Sam why do you like this game”? Well it’s just the overall visual presentation of the world, even nearly 12 years this game still looks beautiful. If you ignore the horrible character models the game’s world looks spectacular, the amount of detail in each city is astounding plus the breath taking countryside in between the cities is wonderful. I don’t say this often about game from 2007, but this holds up very well visually and when you play it on an Xbox One X it is magnificent with the enhancements to 4K.

Assassin’s Creed may not be what it once was now, but the original game still has a special place in my heart. It’s stuffed with flaws and questionable design choices, but it presents itself so well that I can’t hold that stuff against it. If you want to experience the origins (no pun intended) of the series then I would highly recommend it, just bear in mind its age.