As soon as the name “Assassin’s Creed” is spoken a shiver runs down the spine of many players, but for each it has a different meaning. Those who have known the franchise only in recent years tend to identify the good or the bad of modern gaming in the Ubisoft open world, and no matter what new mechanics are introduced or which artistic whim is implemented: for some it will be beautiful, while for others it will be forgettable. But how did it get to this point?
With the Assassin’s Creed brand, you come close to a paradox: if on the one hand these are titles that base their lives on historical events and which lead the player to deepen them even through the excellent Discovery Tour introduced with Origins, on the other Ubisoft seems struggling to read another story, his personal one, in a videogame market that has seen plenty of similar situations.
It is enough to mention Tomb Raider to realize how history is a spiral of events that repeat themselves albeit with small changes due to the specific context. Tomb Raider and Assassin’s Creed are in fact united by the same destiny, with an intense serialization that soon led to a saturation in the eyes of fans, with very similar chapters to each other despite the changes of setting. The breaking points with the public, however, occurred at different times: if critics and audiences began to feel the weight of the events of Lara Croft with The Last Revelation (fourth chapter), for Assassin’s Creed things went differently, because often the care of the new historical settings has somehow managed to patch up the repetitiveness of situations. Sooner or later, however, things became more critical for both franchises and curiously the technical problems due to the landing on new systems were the ones that sanctioned the real crisis.
Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness and Assassin’s Creed: Unity are in fact united by the same destiny: they required a total restructuring of the franchises, the one we saw in Ubisoft with Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla, while with Tomb Raider through the reboots. But what was Assassin’s Creed before you felt the need for a major change?
The original 2007 chapter signed by Patrice Désilets was simply something other than the contemporary chapters, a title with big edges on the gameplay side (like most of the first works) but with a unique charm of its kind due mainly to the dichotomy narrative between present and past, united thanks to the memories inherent in the DNA. This ingenious ploy produced a number of disarming ideas and launched a brand that on balance still seems to maintain the characteristics to become immortal.
Our 3000 years of history (actually even more if we consider the mythology created ad hoc, starting with the Isu) were gutted far and wide, with a plot as long as the world between Templars and Assassins. Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad soon became as iconic as Lara Croft and the parkour fashion exploded all over the world, not to mention Ezio Auditore and his very Italian verve that made him conquer the highest steps on the podium of the most beloved characters.
To Assassin’s Creed willy-nilly we owe a lot and a lot of what we see in our beloved video games comes from the research carried out by the development team, from the loading systems of the various areas to the AI that managed the crowds; but as happens with every big fashion, in the end the exploitation of the mechanics to the point of excess has led to the situation that still today makes many gamers allergic to the open-world formula.
The “nothing is real, everything is lawful” soon gave way to only the second part of the sentence and the new trilogy, although capable of achieving extraordinary commercial success, remains light years away from the original ideas. The return to contemporary history with Layla Hassan was undoubtedly welcome, but it has opened enormous gaps in ludo-narrative coherence. In a certain sense it could be said that the last chapters of the saga have often drawn from what was most popular in mass culture, including inspirations such as the Viking one and mechanics such as “greater customization”, role play systems, multiple choice dialogues , customization of the equipment and so on. It is precisely with this new trilogy that, although it has proved successful, authorship has begun to disappear.
Authorship is a very abused concept: to clarify, we could consider it as the percentage of the choices of the director or of the team in charge that have passed the publisher’s screening. The higher this percentage is, the more we can talk about authorship: a striking example of authorial work is certainly Death Stranding, with Hideo Kojima who, free from constraints, was able to express his idea of a video game almost without obstacles, not caring about trends. For a ten-year series or in any case for one that rests on rather granitic narrative bases, the addition of mechanics unrelated to the context must be carefully considered and if it clashes with everything else it should be abandoned. Or at least this should happen in the ideal world because in reality it often doesn’t work that way.
A striking example comes from Respawn Entertainment with its Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order which, inspired by Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, added the “bonfire” mechanic so dear to From Software. So, every now and then it happens to meditate in these checkpoints, recharge your energy and maybe unlock an upgrade, which is ok, but all the defeated enemies come back to life without a reason. In the decades-long context of Star Wars, the reset of reality has never been taken into consideration and it is certainly not enough that this mechanic works from a gameplay point of view. What is missing is a context that could easily be inserted with a small cutscene in which landing ships placed the soldiers back in their positions when exiting the meditation.
This example can be traced back to the latest Assassin’s Creed trilogy in which mechanics from other franchises were inserted without context. Odyssey, for example, has added multiple choice dialogues into a narrative that involves remembering the memories of one’s ancestors, and it’s an element that simply shouldn’t exist. Desmond and Layla (and consequently us) are spectators of something that has already happened, with no possibility of influencing the past. Since it is also possible to lie to one’s interlocutor then, the contradiction increases dramatically.
At a certain point, it was decided to implement in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla also the change of gender of the protagonist, with the same narrative background and lived events: nothing to say about the integration of this choice, which obviously tries to respond to the needs of freedom. and videogame representation increasingly necessary. But this aspect is in contradiction with the historian of the saga and with the idea of a clear authorial line, even rewriting the rules of Assassin’s Creed: Origins, released only three years earlier.
In fact, in Origins, there was something similar but with radically different implications. Layla Hassan decides to relive Bayek’s story using her DNA, but to find out more about her story, at one point she turns to his wife Aya, reliving her memories firsthand. In this case, Bayek and Aya are two distinct characters who obviously have two different DNAs, different backgrounds and stories as well as different purposes. What was an authorial feature has therefore become a choice of customization that pursues noble purposes but which inevitably undermines the depth of the characterization of the characters.
Basically, three categories of players have been created: the first is represented by the die-hard fans of the franchise, those looking for a light adventure in the folds of history and even now, after dozens of chapters, they love the game. exploration of those boundless maps; secondly, there are those who have become allergic to the shopping list-style open-world formula, and see the work as a triumph of more of the same; finally there are the most demanding fans of the first hour, those who have always adored Assassin’s Creed but who see the reasons for their dissent in the aforementioned decline in authorial quality.
As revealed by Assassin’s Creed Celebrations, in September we will finally know what fate the saga will meet, and Ubisoft’s eyes seem to be on Assassin’s Creed: Infinity. This project has all the necessary characteristics (if confirmed) to bring the brand back into vogue: smaller adventures and a serialization which, however, this time would see the optimal integration of the game mechanics with the visited era. Little is known about this project and the only information we have comes from the revelations of Jason Schreier and from the statements of the CEO of Ubisoft Yves Guillemot: it would be a live-service video game, with experiences dedicated to individual protagonists located in different historical eras. If you like, a definitive Assassin’s Creed.
This future would fit perfectly with the initial idea of the saga imagined by Patrice Désilets, a continuous journey through our history, certainly fictional, but full of charm and in which the player becomes an integral part of the most important events of humanity. Assassin’s Creed: Infinity, as the name suggests, could sift through any moment in history and beyond, even taking us to a distant past where Adam and Eve sought freedom from the ancestral Isu civilization. The success of the project, on the other hand, goes from how Ubisoft is willing to invest resources and new ideas to make its vision homogeneous in the main mechanics and above all consistent with the principles of the saga. But when the brand in question bears an immortal name like that of Assassin’s Creed, hope is the last to die.
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