It all started with RPGs. Sword wielding, dragon slaying dungeon crawlers where players got to save the land over and over again. Then with advances in technology these fantasy expeditions slowly crawled from underground to the vast expanses of the top-side world. With trends moving farther away from fantasy with each passing year it was only a matter of time before this free-roaming concept was taken to a new, more popular environment. The result? Grand Theft Auto was born! Freed from the shackles of earning experience and leveling up, the game became a smash hit. It seems however that things run in cycles here, so the latest GTA (San Andreas) had us earning experience again (in a way) and building up our character with various skills/statistics. Stick the thing into a medieval environment and you have a pretty natural follow up to the classic RPGs of decades past. And voila, this is exactly what Assassin’s Creed aims to do!

Sci-Fantasy?

Were it not for the huge Assassin’s Creed logo in the main menu, you’d probably think you started up the wrong game going by the first 20 or so minutes of gameplay. Instead of starting out in dusty Jerusalem the player is greeted with Matrix-esque bits of running code, artificial sounding voices and what can only be described as a worldwide system crash. As it turns out, the game actually takes place in the near future, with a huge corporation using the player to gain access to some information they need. The issue is that this information is stored in the player’s genetic code, hidden away in the form of genetic memories. How to get to it? By re-experiencing all of the less hidden genetic memories via a complex virtual reality device called the Animus of course!

It might look like this backstory is there just to confuse players, but it actually has a rather huge influence on the gameplay and many of the design decisions that were made during development. Like it or not, the automatic map system that Oblivion used didn’t really fit in with the time and place of the game. Same goes for the rest of the medieval games. There we have just grown used to seeing the maps and statistics screens as an outside tool and not an integral part of the game. In Assassin’s Creed that is not necessary however. Having a GPS system makes sense when you keep in mind that you are actually controlling the guy who is controlling the medieval assassin. And yes, even the control scheme takes the overarching story into account and makes us act as puppeteers of Altair (the player’s ancestor who stars in the Animus part of the game). In the end it is this fine attention to detail that separates Creed from the rest of current offerings – every question about the game world or why certain things happen the way they do has a simple, logical and most of the time obvious answer.

The life of an assassin

If you had to compare GTA to Oblivion, what would you say were their main similarities? Open-endedness, a vast game world and almost limitless gameplay approaches are just some of the things of the top of the list. What about the differences? Well, besides the obvious environmental disparity, it would have to be that GTA is more action oriented and follows a more modular approach – each task can be broken up into segments like driving and shooting.

So where does Assassin’s Creed fall on the GTA-Oblivion scale? Going by the introduction you can probably guess that the answer is “remarkably close to GTA”. Being an avid RPG player I was personally disappointed by this, but my action hungry parts of the brain quickly stifled most complaints .  Most, but not all. Even now, after having spent days upon end on the game I can’t help but feel that the open ended nature of the game is just a clever cover-up for the otherwise very linear approach the developers took.

Let’s take the first assassination you will be tasked with and put it under the looking glass. Having received the name of your target you’ll leave the safe haven of your HQ and travel by horse through the Kingdom hub and reach the city where your quarry resides. Here you’ll face your first problem – entering the city unnoticed. When you break it down you have exactly 3 ways of doing this:

So far so good. Now, once in the city the next logical step will be to have a good look around. From the top of the tallest building you can find obviously. With that out of the way you’ll visit the local assassin’s bureau, gain some leads on where to find information about your target and then get started with the meat of the gameplay – investigations.

Similar to how you entered the city, you’ll have “free hands” on choosing how you gather intelligence. Listening in to conversations will be the method of choice for pacifists, while beating a guy senseless will work for the more aggressive players. And for the sneaky amongst you, you’ll be able to pickpocket the victims for more information. Sounds just peachy, but only until I tell you that you can’t do any of this at your own discretion. Nope, the game tells you what you need to do and you can either move on to another location or try your luck/skill. If you don’t plan on doing every single investigation this isn’t such a big problem, since you can usually get away with doing only one or two per assassination, but for the completists out there things will become a routine even before you take the life of your first victim.

Anyway, with enough information under the hat you can then return to the bureau and get authorization to commit the glorious task of ridding the world of another bastard (or so your superiors would have you believe). This part of the game ends up being the complete opposite of the open ended investigation phase. Your target will always be at the same place and perform the same routine until you get it over with (with partial time restrictions in place sometimes). You will however have plenty of very unique approaches to dealing with the situation however. Will you walk straight up to him as part of the crowd and deal the lethal blow or does catwalking across roofs and then jumping down on him sound more like your cup of tea? Yes, performing the final blow can take some planning, especially since you have to do it the old-fashioned, personal way and stab him with a knife (Assassin’s creed and all). After the deed is done it’s a matter of getting away and hiding, but if you got this far you are probably rather well versed at that by now.

I keep using a disappointed tone, but so far nothing I’ve said was bad… The problem is that you’ll be doing what I just described all over again for every single assassination you have to do. That’s right – you’ll have to go through the whole “enter city – scout – get intel – kill” routine every single time. If this was a 5 hour adventure that wouldn’t be such a problem, but unfortunately the decent length of 18 or so hours feels slightly stretched out because of this. The game does help ease the issue by allowing instant travel later on (Animus to the rescue), but that doesn’t make the rest of the game feel any less stale after doing the same pickpocketing trick for the 50th time.

The Animus

With games like this the controls can make or break the entire experience. Just think how much more enjoyable the GTA series is on the PC with mouse aiming than on the PS2 with its (moronic) auto aim feature. To the relief of many, Assassin’s Creed has one of the most perfect control schemes ever seen. Every action you will do feels natural, and since blending in with the crowd is a major part of the game, you have direct control of how eye catching your moves are. You can walk around slowly, brushing people aside and acting like a commoner, or you can press  down the right trigger button and switch to “exposed” mode. Here you’re running by default, holding down the B button knocks people out of the way instead of gently steering them out of your way and holding down A does the exact opposite of blending in – it activates the free-running mode.

Free-running is probably one of the game’s biggest trademarks. If you have seen any of the trailers for the game (in our recent Launch day preview for example) you must have “ooh”-ed and “ahh”-ed at  the various stunts Altair does on a regular basis. Leaps of faith from dozens of meters above ground, jumps across alleyways and climbing vertically on walls with the help of window niches, extruded bricks and wooden supports all looked amazing and to be frank, complex. Free-running takes care of that issue- just by holding down the A button and pushing the left analog stick in the direction you want to move is enough to do all of the above. The system is clever enough to decide what you actually want Altair to do, and save for the odd occasion where Altair will jump to his death instead of grabbing a window ledge it works perfectly. Too perfectly in fact – I might be in a minority here, but I like to work hard to do the cool stuff seen in games like this. Don’t get me wrong, looking badass simply by running around with a button pressed is great and all, yet I can’t help but feel like I am watching a movie and not playing because of that.

The rest of the action is equally impressive to behold and simple to get used to. Swordfights with 10s of guards at the same time are perhaps taking the whole thing to far (Altair is after all an assassin, not freaking Conan the barbarian), but at least the whole thing is fun. Holding down the right trigger will make Altair block most of the incoming blocks, and it is up to you to release the block and attack with X or to press X at the exact same moment somebody attacks you, initiating a (usually fatal) counter-strike. The same natural principle applies to pickpocketing, moving in the crowd and pretty much anything you can think of.

Pushing the limits

Even watching still shots of the game it’s not hard to see that it can look breathtaking. At its worst the game looks considerably better than average, while at its best few games can compete with it. The scope of things is pretty revolutionary – there are several full sized cities in the game (Jerusalem, Acre, etc.) and they are all bigger and more detailed that anything you have ever seen. Hundreds of alleys twist their ways between the surprisingly unique looking buildings of the medieval bastions of civilization. And once you are in a city there are no loading times whatsoever – this is further emphasized by the fact that you can climb on a spire and see the whole city lying at your feet so to speak. And yes, the level of detail that can be seen from up high rivals the one seen in the streets where there are dozens of vases, flowers, loose tiles and other intricate details seen.

But that is not the highlight of the game technologically. No, it is the animation of every character in the game that takes the center stage. From Altair, over the guards to almost every passerby, their movements are as natural as they get. And it’s not just the individual animations either – NBA/NHL developers could learn a thing or two from Ubisoft about how to make the animation transitions seamless to the point where you can’t tell them apart. You’ll never see Altair jump from one animation to the next. No sir, he will always react like a real human being and move from one position to the other like a true athlete.

As for the audio, it’s right up there with the rest of the technical stuff. The voices of the characters have a distinctive American accent (especially Altair), but game offers a valid explanation for that (this being a simulation and all). The music on the other hand isn’t Americanized and instead makes use of oriental themes to paint those final strokes on the picture.

Conclusion

We were all expecting a revolution of sorts from Assassin’s Creed, and while this didn’t happen, the end result is at least evolutionary. Just looking at the technical side of things one can’t help but wonder how the Xbox360 (or PS3) are capable of delivering the content, be it the fluent animation or the huge cities. Even the gameplay in itself is amazing, albeit a bit repetitive towards the end. That doesn’t deter from the overall quality of the title however, which sports more polish than any other recently released title. A must buy for any next-get console owner!