This may come from the perspective of a bitter fan, but I can’t help but lament the loss of the Assassin’s Creed identity. In truth, it’s a sentiment growing within a small contingent of the community. A feeling that has boiled since Origins, exploded with Odyssey and continued to rage with Valhalla. To truly understand this feeling, I wanted to sift through my own thoughts of the series. Through the highs and lows and everything in-between. More importantly, to tackle why so many hold the belief of Assassin’s Creed having an identity crisis.
The Roots of Assassin’s Creed
I think many can agree, the sheer repetitiveness of each yearly iteration of AC, led to burn out. Assassin’s Creed was due for a drastic shift. But, I don’t think anyone expected just how drastic this change would be. Today, Assassin’s Creed is filled to the brim with microtransactions, power levels, superpowers, monsters, damage numbers, and RPG mechanics. It’s forgone the stealthy approach and its action-adventure roots, in favor of a generic 80 hour, Viking warrior open world where enemies require 15 hits from an axe to die.
When you think about Assassin’s Creed, what comes to mind?
Do naval battles come to mind? Vikings and Spartan mercenaries? Or maybe damage numbers and level gated areas come to mind? Personally, when I hear Assassin’s Creed, the first thing that I picture is Altair and Ezio. White hooded figures racing across rooftops and scaling towering cathedrals. I picture the days of blending into moving crowds and bouncing between them organically. Or even waiting on benches, waiting for your opportunity to strike and slipping back into the shadows.
But at the forefront of it all, was a grounded narrative that tied Desmond to Altair to Ezio to Connor. A narrative dissecting the hypocrisy of the creed and the philosophy between order and chaos. Now? We have mythological quests bringing us to new realms and coming face to face with mythical beasts. Which, I don’t know about you, but I totally didn’t come to an Assassin’s Creed game to see Ezio fighting a giant wolf monster.
From Venice to Lunden
Assassin’s Creed was predicated on a simple premise. A premise providing players with free-flowing movement in a densely packed, urban environment. When I think of Acre, Florence, Venice, Constantinople, Havana, and Paris, these settings provided just that. The pure bliss and exhilaration that builds inside you as you run atop these rooftops, uninterrupted, fed into a significant portion of the overall fantasy. A fantasy further cemented with the incredible Jesper Kyd’s soundtrack swelling in the background. Venice Rooftops, City of Rome, Byzantium, anyone?
Point of the matter, when compared to the new entries, you can’t help but feel something’s lacking. There was a hidden depth in the older games parkour system with each tower or scalable building, feeling like a pseudo puzzle. With the Duomo di Firenze coming instantly to mind for me. You had to actually look and engage with the environment instead of magically being able to scale anything with no consequences. Now, parkour has been woefully stripped down, which seems directly contradictory against where the series parkour was trending after Unity. All of the flare and depth completely tossed away.
I think about how much larger these worlds have become, and this has compounded my feeling. Now, maps have become filled with dense forests, deserts, swamps, and rolling plains. These empty spaces have only served to impede parkour. Buildings in these time periods weren’t the tallest either and required no more input than pushing the stick forward, from the player. Giving very little incentive to climb them at all. Meaning, with the new RPG trilogy, players will spend more time on the ground, than on rooftops.
This just feels opposite to what this series used to hang its hat on.
Gone Are the Days of Social Stealth
One of the three, core pillars of the original games, was the implementation of social stealth. A system that allowed players to blend in with the public. These included monks, courtesans, or regular civilians, for example. Essentially, this provided a way to get into inaccessible areas without trouble. Although this certainly wasn’t the most realistic approach, social stealth helped with immersion. This fleshed out a more, fully realized world that required you to actively take part and engage with the people inhabiting said world.
Now, social stealth is an afterthought. One of the series core, defining features, completely removed in Origins and Odyssey. Fast forward to Valhalla’s marketing and you would assume the feature would return in a big way. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
Sure, social stealth did return in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. But the ability to fully utilize the mechanic was only regulated to a few areas in the entire game. The monks Eivor would blend into, dispersed far too quickly. Guards field of vision made absolutely no sense and they spotted you too easily. Again, giving players little incentive to even try a stealthy approach, because they all devolve into fights anyway. Also, the game doesn’t even allow you to wear your hood outside of these areas.
So, what I’m trying to say, is that all of this coalesces into a stealth system I don’t want to interact with. It’s no more than the typical, hide in tall grass and wait for enemies to come to you with a whistle, kind of game we’ve seen for years. The freedom of assassination, introduced in Unity and continued in Syndicates black box missions, doesn’t exist. Instead, we have the absolute bare minimum of stealth gameplay, which, for a game with the word ASSASSIN in the title, is downright disappointing.
Deities and Super Powers
Personally, this feels like the most egregious sin the new games have emphasized. Looking at the new trilogy from a glance and it’s practically unrecognizable from the franchise it claims to be apart of. In combat, characters glide around like they’re skating on ice, wielding swords imbued with fire. Characters can jump off the tallest towers and suffer no fall damage. While some, can fire multiple arrows in one shot and even control the direction their arrows can fly.
Don’t get me started with the superhero abilities offered with Odyssey, specifically. Take the Ghost Arrow ability for example. An ability that literally allows you to shoot arrows through walls. There’s also the always fun Spartan Kick, and an ability that allows you to slow down time. Couple all of this with these games having you fight various gods and mythological beasts, and all of a sudden, you have something at odds with what came before. Instead, adopting a formula that feels so commonly found today.
Of course, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with these decisions. But, I can’t help feeling like these decisions better suit a spinoff or a new IP altogether. The more fantastical elements of Assassin’s Creed was always rooted in sci-fi. Even the Isu, previously named, the ones who came before, were never this godly species. But, rather, they were vague beings, far more knowledgable than us, who simply lived thousands of years before our time. However, these new games, practically make them all-powerful beings.
Closing Thoughts
I understand Assassin’s Creed needed a dramatic change. Something to freshen up the staleness Ubisoft released, year after year until it crashed. However, these reshapings can happen without completely losing what differentiated your franchise. Change doesn’t have to come at the expense of what made your franchise great. I’m reminded of God of War 2018 and Hitman 2016, games that reflected, recognized what worked in the past, and sought to evolve using that as a jumping point.
There’s a stubbornness to stick with this new RPG formula while trying to sprinkle in components of the old games to appease long time fans. Almost like a jack of all trades, master of none. This shouldn’t be the case. Why are stealth, parkour, and the assassin fantasy, an afterthought, in an Assassin’s Creed game?
Instead of evolving the grounded assassin fantasy executed so well in Unity, we now have 3 games in a new trilogy recognizable in name only.
