Played via GOG
Over the last holiday period I played Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag for the first time - despite me being a fan of the early titles near day one I've only recently decided to carry on beyond the Ezio games and my takeaways have been less than stellar. AC3 was a big, bold and dramatic ending to the original narrative and while it swung for the fences there were still plenty of minor issues dragging it back. Black Flag meanwhile sought to build off the worst parts of that game, giving us a ship mechanic that shoved the even further broken assassin gameplay to the side and a bloated slew of missions and story beats that barely coalesced at the end.
And so I came back to where my love for the franchise started and where I compare every successive game's quality. I won't pretend this game is perfect, but looking at this both as a point of comparison and in a vacuum it remains oh so easy to see why Assassin's Creed as a multimedia IP took off the way it did. You can claim this game is boring or bland or just too weird but take a moment to ignore the expectations, step back into 2007 where the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles promised so much to the gaming landscape and you might see something mysterious and magical.
I encourage you to go even further - turn off the HUD elements, the mini-map, everything cluttering your screen and just soak in the atmosphere. Each time you enter a new city or seek to explore new districts look out for the eagles, both visually and audibly. You'll find your viewpoints, you'll get to know the locations better and you'll find your missions without needing to open the map every 30 seconds. The gameplay loop feels so much less repetitive when you're not knowing what to expect to find or where to find it, even more so in the PC release with extra missions to pick from that aren't related to the eavesdrop/pickpocket/interrogate cycle you're sick of.
The atmosphere alone is so wholly unique too - a video-game based in the Crusades-era Holy Lands? What a brilliant idea, and yet one that remains so firmly unrealised in the medium. I can't imagine it's entirely an accurate depiction of the settings, but being surrounded by the languages, the accents and architectural styles you're certainly transported to a place resembling it all - if you can ignore Altair's North American accent that is.
Like I said, this game isn't perfect - combat can feel stiff and perhaps slow, despite the easy cheat method of equipping your hidden blade in fights and being able to counter at the last second for an instant kill on every enemy. Parkour can feel even more finicky despite the fact that apart from ACII this is the best the franchise ever feels in terms of control and player freedom for what to do and how to do it.
But the narrative - despite you being able to see certain beats coming a mile away - feels fully realised. I'm biased in that I love historical fiction with a conspiracy theory twist and the ideas this game raises is the perfect basis for worldbuilding a franchise, as we've seen.
Next I'll be playing Rogue, hopefully followed by Unity and Syndicate, alongside all the spin-off titles before properly jumping into the soft reboot with Origins. I love this franchise, despite spending dozens of hours in games I don't even really enjoy, but this game, the original, the first, is why I truly love it all in a weird twisted way.
Over the last holiday period I played Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag for the first time - despite me being a fan of the early titles near day one I've only recently decided to carry on beyond the Ezio games and my takeaways have been less than stellar. AC3 was a big, bold and dramatic ending to the original narrative and while it swung for the fences there were still plenty of minor issues dragging it back. Black Flag meanwhile sought to build off the worst parts of that game, giving us a ship mechanic that shoved the even further broken assassin gameplay to the side and a bloated slew of missions and story beats that barely coalesced at the end.
And so I came back to where my love for the franchise started and where I compare every successive game's quality. I won't pretend this game is perfect, but looking at this both as a point of comparison and in a vacuum it remains oh so easy to see why Assassin's Creed as a multimedia IP took off the way it did. You can claim this game is boring or bland or just too weird but take a moment to ignore the expectations, step back into 2007 where the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles promised so much to the gaming landscape and you might see something mysterious and magical.
I encourage you to go even further - turn off the HUD elements, the mini-map, everything cluttering your screen and just soak in the atmosphere. Each time you enter a new city or seek to explore new districts look out for the eagles, both visually and audibly. You'll find your viewpoints, you'll get to know the locations better and you'll find your missions without needing to open the map every 30 seconds. The gameplay loop feels so much less repetitive when you're not knowing what to expect to find or where to find it, even more so in the PC release with extra missions to pick from that aren't related to the eavesdrop/pickpocket/interrogate cycle you're sick of.
The atmosphere alone is so wholly unique too - a video-game based in the Crusades-era Holy Lands? What a brilliant idea, and yet one that remains so firmly unrealised in the medium. I can't imagine it's entirely an accurate depiction of the settings, but being surrounded by the languages, the accents and architectural styles you're certainly transported to a place resembling it all - if you can ignore Altair's North American accent that is.
Like I said, this game isn't perfect - combat can feel stiff and perhaps slow, despite the easy cheat method of equipping your hidden blade in fights and being able to counter at the last second for an instant kill on every enemy. Parkour can feel even more finicky despite the fact that apart from ACII this is the best the franchise ever feels in terms of control and player freedom for what to do and how to do it.
But the narrative - despite you being able to see certain beats coming a mile away - feels fully realised. I'm biased in that I love historical fiction with a conspiracy theory twist and the ideas this game raises is the perfect basis for worldbuilding a franchise, as we've seen.
Next I'll be playing Rogue, hopefully followed by Unity and Syndicate, alongside all the spin-off titles before properly jumping into the soft reboot with Origins. I love this franchise, despite spending dozens of hours in games I don't even really enjoy, but this game, the original, the first, is why I truly love it all in a weird twisted way.