Ratonhnhaké:ton looks over Boston Harbor in 2012’s Assassin’s Creed 3. If you’ve ever wondered what Assassin’s Creed would sound like if written by John Updike on a bender, then have I got the game for you. Paired with these vignettes is a collection of monologues recapping Desmond’s former life as a puckish runaway who gets caught up in the hubbub of 20-something life in New York City. In an extended collection of first-person, 3D puzzles (yes, you can wear 3D glasses Revelations was published in 2011, after all), the player navigates abstract spaces (think a clumsier Portal) to uncover Desmond’s deep existential truths.
And I’ll go so far as to say that Revelations includes the best character work for Desmond, the unlikable protagonist who, for years, had dominated the franchise’s modern-day timeline. A messy fort defense system is only now, six years later, being refined by Middle-earth: Shadow of War. The bombs are a bust, but some ideas hinted at greatness. In their quest for a raison d’être, the designers grasped for something, anything that would distinguish this game from its predecessors.
This game takes a series known for graceful stealth combat and adds, of all things, bombs - yes, “bombs” is plural there’s a variety of explosives to craft and combust.Įven at the bottom of this list, I can’t bring myself to bully Revelations. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is, in some capacity, the exception. With each entry, a hero pairs a knack for parkour with a love of concealed blades to slaughter an entire political regime using crowds, haystacks and extreme heights to stay just out of sight. Assassin’s Creed : Revelationsĭespite (or perhaps because of) the constant threat of succumbing to franchise bloat and committing an expensive creative misfire, Assassin’s Creed’s designers have largely built their games around the shared and proven skeleton of third-person stealth combat. Įzio Auditore da Firenze directs apprentice Assassins in 2011’s Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. Update, October 2, 2018: Updated to include Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. A single series that spans swashbuckling pirates, Victorian-era organized crime, the plurality of famous Renaissance artists, a golden apple with the power to obliterate human life and, yes, of course, a boss battle that culminates with the graphic pummeling of Pope Alexander VI for no other reason than “the truth is out there.” Because for all of its overwrought melodrama and impenetrable conspiracies, Assassin’s Creed has spawned, consistently, some of the strangest, most self-effacing and ambitious AAA games. Odyssey’s release is a good opportunity to reflect on the series’ zigs and zags. This year, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey expands upon Origins with an even bigger world and a number of welcome gameplay additions. Great! A fresh start is what the series needs. Last year, Assassin’s Creed Origins served as something of a reboot, mercifully carving off much of the backstory that had calcified into a complex meta-narrative spanning the history of humankind.
Let’s take a moment to recognize that, of all video games franchises on the planet, this particular series about cynical, comical and controversial conspiracy theories somehow became a mainstream phenomenon.
If you remember one thing from this article, let it be this: The second Assassin’s Creed ended with the player fist-fighting the Pope in order to uncover the truth of an ultra-advanced, pre-human civilization on which our world’s religion is built. It’s easy to forget how audacious this series was and occasionally can still be. The brand is so ubiquitous, so familiar, that its core ideas - religion is a misreading of coded messages from an ancient, advanced race of technologists a shadow war between the champions of freedom and control has been fought over centuries by Earth’s greatest historical leaders and thinkers - have mutated from quirky and compelling to obtuse and intimidating to predictable and bland.
Over a decade since the first entry, Assassin’s Creed has ballooned into a mixed-media franchise that includes at least seven spinoffs, nine novels, 11 comics, a Michael Fassbender film, an in-development TV show and enough Pop! toys to fill a jam band.