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I think it’s safe to say Assassin’s Creed has been a successful franchise for Ubisoft. I tried getting into the series some time after Assassin’s Creed II released. But I really struggled the first time I attempted this series. I beat the first two games, I played Brotherhood but never beat it, skipped Revelations and III and beat Black Flag and then I stopped for a while. I tried Origins and liked what I played but didn’t play it for long. I remember really enjoying Assassin’s Creed II and Black Flag and what I played of Brotherhood but for some reason, I would get burnt out on this series very quickly. Something just didn’t click with me, I guess. Black Flag was the only game I didn’t feel like I was pushing myself to beat but after that I had had enough. Well I recently had a hankering to jump back in so I played through the first game again and I can tell you I didn’t have to push myself to beat it so that’s a good sign I suppose. I’m also a little surprised at that fact and I’ll get into why in a bit.
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed was released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in November, 2007. A PC version titled Assassin’s Creed: Director’s Cut Edition was released in April, 2008 and comes with additional content. For this review, I played the Xbox 360 version on a Series X. I was initially going to play the PC version but after reading about issues with controller support on the game’s PCGamingWiki page, I decided against it. Assassin’s Creed is an Xbox One X enhanced game and it is one of the games to receive an FPS boost for the Series consoles.
A man named Desmond Miles is kidnapped by Abstergo Industries and is forced to use the Animus, a device designed to simulate genetic memory, by Dr. Warren Vidic and his assistant Lucy Stillman. In other words, Desmond is forced to recall the memories of his ancestor, Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad, a member of the Assassin Brotherhood during the Third Crusade. After it’s revealed Altaïr fails to retrieve an artifact from the Brotherhood’s sworn enemy, the Knights Templar, his master demotes him and orders him to assassinate nine targets to restore his rank and honor. As he eliminates his targets he learns of a conspiracy revolving around a relic said to possess god-like powers. Assassin’s Creed is a fictional tale with some characters based on actual historical figures and it also includes some notable voice talent including Nolan North as Desmond and Kristen Bell as Lucy.
I feel the plot is alright. I actually really enjoy the Third Crusade setting, atmosphere, and the concept of the Animus. You could say the game puts you in the shoes of two protagonists, although most of your time will be spent playing as Altaïr. That said, I do think Assassin’s Creed has some pacing issues and one aspect that contributes to that is the plot forcing you to control Desmond in modern times. As Desmond, you can walk around the different rooms, interact with some things, and talk to Lucy but there’s not much to do. These sequences are more or less designed to fill in certain parts of the plot which is fine. But from a gameplay perspective, they are boring and could have just as easily been conveyed through cut scenes. Despite enjoying the Animus concept and Desmond’s role in the plot, Altaïr’s story is easily the best part of the plot and playing as him is the best part of the gameplay so when the game simply plucks you out of that world to control Desmond, it can actually be annoying.
From what I understand, Assassin’s Creed originated out of ideas for another Prince of Persia game and in some ways, it does feel like a spiritual successor to that series. Assassin’s Creed is technically a stealth game although I feel it leans more towards action adventure. However, I think the way Assassin’s Creed handles stealth is somewhat unique. For the time it released, anyway. Unlike many other stealth games that center on hiding and/or sticking to the shadows, the stealth in Assassin’s Creed is related to your behavior and blending in, you want to remain anonymous. If you do let’s call it socially unacceptable things, you draw more attention to yourself. If you move slow and try to blend in, it’ll be more difficult for enemies to notice or detect you. One thing that makes the game unique is the synchronization bar. It measures your synchronization with your ancestor. It’s basically a way to remind you that these are all memories and I guess you could say it kind of acts as a health bar. If you lose all your synchronization or desync, you must restart from the last checkpoint. You gain synchronization by completing objectives and staying anonymous. You lose synchronization by dying and getting injured and by basically doing things that didn’t happen to the ancestor at the time.
The game features multiple open-ended locations; the Kingdom, Demascus, Acre, and Jerusalem. There’s also the city of Masyaf which contains the Fortress where the Brotherhood is located. The Fortress is where Altaïr can speak with his master and train. With the exception of Masyaf and the Kingdom, the cities consist of three districts and most are unlocked as you progress through the story. You can freely roam around these cities, climb buildings and structures, and complete objectives. Climbing is actually a big part of the gameplay. It’s a great way to get around and I would say the jumping and climbing work fairly well. Not perfect, but well enough to be enjoyable. It feels like Altaïr is partially magnetized to anything he can grab onto which makes jumping and climbing around feel somewhat fluid. Although, there were definitely times the character jumped in a direction I didn’t intend, screwing up what I was trying to do. All the jumping and climbing around, you might even call it platforming, is probably the most obvious showcase of Prince of Persia’s DNA.
Remaining out of sight can be important depending on your goal or what’s happening but you don’t really have to stick to the shadows or anything like that to get places or even to remain anonymous in most cases. There’s some areas in each city that Altaïr can’t just stroll into but he can blend in with scholars to get passed enemies and as long as he doesn’t initiate violence in view of foes or outright attack foes, he’s basically safe. Enemies patrolling rooftops will be suspicious of you if they see you moving along the rooftops but evading foes isn’t usually very difficult and each city consists of numerous hiding spots you can use to vanish or evade pursuing foes as long as you break their line of sight first. You will have to assassinate people and there are ways to do this quietly or without drawing attention and when you do kill people, it’s always wise to move away from the bodies because enemies will be suspicious and can easily detect you as the culprit.
Altaïr can punch people, grab and throw people, tackle people, and use three weapons; a hidden blade, sword, and throwing knives. I find killing people with the hidden blade to be immensely satisfying and I think part of the reason why is the animations. For its time, I would say Assassin’s Creed showcases some excellent animations. It’s also why I find the combat to be enjoyable. You can whip out the sword and use it to attack enemies and pull off some cool what I call finishing moves. In general, I found the sword combat to be fun but not particularly challenging. As you progress through the story, you unlock new equipment and abilities and once you unlock the counter attack, most fights are easy to win. A successful counter will often result in a cinematic camera angle showcasing the move and often times it will be a finishing move with Altaïr fatally stabbing the enemy. Tougher enemies appear as you progress but I can’t say the fights ever get more challenging. They just seem to go on for longer.
Assassin’s Creed has problems. It’s way too formulaic and extremely repetitive. In fact, it’s so repetitive I honestly question how the game released in this state. It really is insane. Furthermore, the amount of flags in this game is ludicrous. Flags act as a form of collectible and there’s over three hundred to find. It’s beyond excessive. There’s also sixty Templars to find and kill. Unless you’re an achievement hunter or completionist, I would say the flags and Templars are not worth seeking out.
There are things in Assassin’s Creed I feel can be cut outright or streamlined. For one thing, the Kingdom feels completely unnecessary. Once you leave the Fortress and the small city of Masyaf where it’s located, you enter the Kingdom and outside of revealing the map, finding flags, and killing Templars, I don’t see the point of navigating this environment. Those are not good reasons in my opinion. I’m all for exploring in games but there needs to be good reasons. Interesting and fun things to find, see and do. It does act as a hub of sorts with exits taking you to the cities but most of the story beats don’t take place in the Kingdom. Luckily, you eventually unlock the ability to instantly travel to a city of your choosing after leaving Masyaf. The Kingdom is also where you can ride horses which is easily the fastest way to get around this environment but outside of that, the horses serve no purpose in any other part of the game. The developers could have cut out the Kingdom and horses without compromising the plot in any meaningful way. You can’t even ride horses in cities.
Once you finish the tutorial segments or in other words all the early sequences that show you the ropes, you’ll get into the meat of the game and learn the formula very quickly. Enter a city, complete side missions to unlock the story mission, complete the story mission, rinse and repeat for every district. As I mentioned before, I didn’t feel like I had to push myself to beat the game this time around and it’s surprising just because of how repetitive it is. Don’t get me wrong, I was basically zoned out most of the time, just doing the same shit over and over again without much thought, but I wasn’t struggling to get through the game if that makes sense. Each district features View Points which are buildings or structures that can be climbed and once you reach the top, you can synchronize and clear a part of the map revealing some side missions. I’d also like to add that, for some reason, these View Points are placed around the Kingdom where there are no side missions.
The side missions reveal information about your target and I get what the developers were trying to do here but I never found any of this to be truly helpful from a gameplay perspective. The story or assassination missions feel like mostly scripted sequences of events. After arriving at the location of your target, you watch some cut scenes and then you can go about your business and assassinate the target however you see fit. And I found it easy to just rush in and get it done every time. Once the target is killed, you must make your way back to the Assassin Bureau in the city without enemies coming after you and then you travel back to the Fortress to receive your new equipment and abilities and then travel to the next district to do it all again. Rinse and repeat for most of the game.
So you might be thinking a lot of games have you repeating a formula over and over again. There’s usually a core loop. And you would be correct. However, a lot of other games also offer more variety, more things to do, and more options, more ways to accomplish things. Each district in Assassin’s Creed features the same exact side missions or what the game calls “investigations”. For the sake of argument, I’ll refer to all of them as side missions and most of them aren’t very challenging. Save citizens, complete an objective for an informer, eavesdrop on conversations, pickpocket people, and interrogate people. These are all blips that appear on the map. You will sit on a bench and simply listen to a conversation to complete an Eavesdropping side mission. You will listen to two people talk to each other and then follow one of them and pick their pocket to complete a Pickpocket side mission. You will listen to a person ramble on and on and then follow them to a secluded place before beating them up to complete an Interrogation side mission. Citizens will be harassed by enemies or guards in specific spots around the cities and saving them unlocks scholars and vigilantes. As mentioned earlier, scholars allow you to easily get passed guards and vigilantes can slow down or block pursuing enemies. Informers will task you with assassinating specific people and collecting flags within a time limit because Ubisoft seemed to be obsessed with flags during development.
So that’s it. That’s what you do in Assassin’s Creed. That’s everything. Anything that deviates from the loop or repetition are specific story missions that appear in the beginning and end of the game. I’m well aware many open world games feature side missions scattered around their maps and many of them are the same or similar but there’s usually more to them and they’re more enjoyable. At least in the games I’ve played. There’s nothing particularly challenging about most of the side missions in Assassin’s Creed. And that’s the strange part. If you’re going to make the player repeat the same shit over and over again, at least make it fun or challenging. The Informer objectives and saving citizens probably offer the most challenge and most enjoyable gameplay out of them all. As far as challenging goes, that’s more or less related to getting detected and fighting off enemies or evading them. You’ll encounter tougher enemies as you progress but as I mentioned earlier it’s not hard to win sword fights nor is it super difficult to evade foes.
The cities also lack variety. On the surface, the only things that stand out to me that differentiates them is some of the colors and NPC costumes and models. Each city basically feels the same but with different layouts. These are maze and grid-like cities with numerous people walking the streets, sitting on benches, some are carrying stuff, beggars will approach Altaïr begging for coins, and some people will shove him around which can actually become annoying. To remain anonymous, you’ll want to walk and you can gently push people out of the way as to not knock them down or make them drop what they’re carrying. Guards will block access to certain areas and it’s usually obvious how to get passed them. You can either find another way in, use the conveniently placed scholars somewhere nearby to get passed them, or distract them by killing a nearby guard.
Everything you need to do in this game either feels scripted or obvious and typically doesn’t offer much in the way of options. Nothing exciting happens dynamically which only makes the cities or worlds feel boring and lifeless. You won’t see guards chasing pedestrians, nobody else will be riding horses around the Kingdom, and there’s not many buildings you can go into. There’s also very few reasons to actually be stealthy. Informers will require you be stealthy to assassinate certain targets and after assassinating a story target, you have to get back to the Bureau without guards on your ass. That’s about it. You only have three weapons and depending on the situation, sometimes you can get detected just as easily killing someone with your hidden blade as the sword or throwing knives.
When it comes to the presentation, some aspects look dated now and pop-in is definitely noticeable but, overall, I think Assassin’s Creed holds up fairly well. As I mentioned before, I think the animations look great. Despite the similar style of the cities, there is a good amount of detail pumped into them. I’m not a huge fan of the desaturated colors but I do feel the presentation does a good job at capturing the atmosphere of the time period or at least conveying an atmosphere and tone I would associate with the time period. From the way people look and dress to the audio work, it’s all very well done for the most part even if the differences between the cities feel cosmetic only. The gameplay is accompanied by a solid soundtrack composed by Jesper Kyd and although I got tired of hearing some of the same tunes over and over again, I felt the music compliments what was happening on screen nicely. On the technical side, I encountered one crash and once again, I did play this on a Series X.
Assassin’s Creed is not a game I would normally go back to. I only did this time so I could review it. The sequels, or at least the ones I played, are vastly superior. I like the story, I like the Animus concept, I like the setting, and I like the atmosphere and while the gameplay has its moments, Assassin’s Creed is mostly a repetitive slog to get through. There are definitely some interesting ideas in here but the execution is terrible and in my opinion the game’s issues only become more noticeable as time goes on and as more sequels are released. Not to say all the sequels are perfect but I know the ones I played are much better. I knew what to expect going into this so I was prepared but I can definitely see some newcomers just outright quitting well before reaching the end and I wouldn’t blame them. There’s a serious lack of variety and I am amazed that the game released as it is. So much of it just feels copied and pasted. It’s like the developers designed one city and then copied it, pasted it, moved things around and changed the NPC models. That’s basically how it feels to me. I also question if some elements just weren’t finished or fleshed out as intended. That’s not to say the game is all bad. I think actually assassinating or killing people can be fun, I enjoyed the sword combat for the most part and the free running and climbing and jumping around is good stuff. But again, it has all been improved in the sequels.
I find it hard to recommend Assassin’s Creed. Maybe if you can get it for under ten bucks. It’s not a terrible game but knowing what comes after only exposes its issues even more. In today’s world, I don’t think it’s a great representation of the franchise and I would recommend anyone looking to get into the series for the first time start with any other game and then come back to this if at all interested. For the time it released, it showcased some neat ideas and concepts, most of which have been improved and expanded upon in the sequels. Assassin’s Creed does mark the start of a popular video game franchise and it’s interesting to look at now but I can’t say it’s aged all that well. Check it out if you’re interested but just know this is far from the best the series has to offer.