So Kotaku unveiled what is likely the setting/hero/etc. for Assassin’s Creed III, and online reaction seems divided into two camps:
1.) The idea of an Assassin operating during the American Revolution is awesome;
2.) But what about Desmond?
Afterall, the overarcing plot of the Assassin’s Creed story demands an awesome epic conclusion with Desmond in 2012. But this is an example of how video game writing can be constrained by the gameplay, which is relatively unique to video games.
The problem with a Desmond-centred storyline isn’t a problem with Desmond himself. Some people don’t like his character, and I agree he comes across as whiny in the original Assassin’s Creed, but the following games flesh him out and make him more appealing (and his white hoodie is a nice modern equivalent of the Assassin robes). It’s not Desmond’s character that makes him unsuitable as the primary character in the next game in the series.
No, the issue with Desmond is that at this point in the series, Assassin’s Creed, as a family of games, does certain things. And one of the things that makes it mostly impossible to do what it does are automatic weapons, because while sneaking around and stabbing people and getting into awesome swordfights is terrific, it’s all more or less rendered obsolete by firearms. Indeed, the end sequence in Assassin’s Creed II, where Desmond has to fight his way through a bunch of Templars with the wrist blade, makes absolutely no sense. Why do none of the Templars have guns? Heck, why don’t any of them have so much as a frigging taser?
This is not to say that eventually we might see an AC game where the protagonist exists in an era where there are reliable guns. But it would demand being a wildly different game from the existing franchise in many ways. Arguably, Assassin’s Creed III‘s American Revolution setting is about as far forward as you can go in time and still use most of the existing gameplay of the franchise: multiple-shot rifles and pistols start showing up a few generations later, and realistically that’s the ball game for stabbing people as a raison d’etre. “All men are created equal – Sam Colt made them that way” isn’t just a cute saying: for Assassin’s Creed it’s the obelisk standing before the cavemen.
If you put Ezio Auditore in the Wild West, he would be one dead Italian pretty damn fast. And Ubisoft isn’t going to fuck with how the franchise plays in the final game of their flagship trilogy which, in best Douglas Adams fashion, is now five games long.
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While you wouldn’t be able to have swordfights per se in a modern setting, the Splinter Cell franchise shows that you can definitely have a modern stealth/actioner where the protaginist gets all stabby against guys with guns. Heck, there’s a whole sequence in The Professional where Leon takes out gun-toting thugs with only a knife.
But that’s not my point: of course you can make a stealth game set in the modern era. My point is that AC – which is a franchise that is as much about awesome swordfighting and murdering as it is about stealth – isn’t Splinter Cell, and Ubisoft rightly isn’t going to make AC3 differ greatly from the other games in the franchise. Down the line, possibly. But not now.
I think it’ll be ok. Ninjas did it in the 80’s.
Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation said much the same. But I think the way they do it will be not dissimilar from how it worked in Brotherhood. In fact, I think this will be very Brotherhood-y: going into the ancestor’s memories to get to the point that Desmond knows how to navigate the labyrinth/temple/hidden location (which, if you played Brotherhood and Revelations, you know where it is and why the American Revolution would be the right time period to explore) in the modern day.
Of course, at the same time, there’s probably going to be a single-player DLC for Revelations coming out on the 16th. And more importantly, all of this is likely to get lost, at least for a while, in the tide of Mass Effect 3…
I’d go so far as to say that AC is MORE about awesome murdering than stealth. The stealth only ever gets you so far, and even then, it’s more ‘style’ (not quite what I mean, but it’s a best-fit) than actual stealth.
My main hang-up (rationalized for by some pundits so far) is how it’ll impact the climbing aspect, which to me is as integral to the AC experience as anything else. I mean, I’m sure there’s SOMETHING to climb, but it won’t be as impactful as scaling the Sistine Chapel.
I would be quite happy to see an AC game where you can actually climb the trees. Moving through the forest canopy? That sounds awesome.
And at that point in time, they could get away with very, very large virgin forest. Including American Walnuts, which were huge. Also, the Appalachian mountains: The revolution wasn’t just fought in New England, and the plot will hopefully have you visiting Native American villages and what was then “frontier” settlements.
The pic I just saw features tomahawk, pistol, and bow and arrow, with the assassin kitted out in native american assassin garb.
It’ll do, pig, it’ll do.
Assuming that Ben Franklin steps in for Leonardo da Vinci as comic relief/anachronism generator, because of course he will, it would be easy enough to have Assassin Tertius tag along with Franklin on one of his diplomatic journeys to London or Paris and get in the urban gameplay that way.
This is probably the only issue that would make me actually stop and think about the plot of AC, which is kind of hilariously shitty. Also it just goes to show how incredibly stupid (and now limiting) the whole Animus framing device is. I would’ve been fine with just straight-up historical conspiracy ‘n stuff, but nooooo, we gotta have fucking aliens and Bro Douchebag, modern day protagonist! in the mix (Altair was even more insufferable for how much time we had to spend with him, and Ezio is every other Video Game Revenge Guy ever when he could have been Italian Han Solo).
Yeah, I do not have much fondness for AC outside of 2’s excellent gameplay (I really should finish it and Brotherhood sometime). But even then, I feel Arkham City does a lot of what AC does (traversing a sandbox environment, stealth gameplay, etc.), only better and you’re Batman, with a relatively better story and significantly better combat. Maybe that comparison doesn’t really hold up, but it’s how I think of it.
So I haven’t played any of Assassin’s Creed, but isn’t Desmond unaware of his heritage in the first game? Wouldn’t that alone make it hard for him to be running around stabbing guys in the present day/near future? I would say make it impossible, but then he’s being forced to relive all the times his ancestors climbed buildings and stabbed people.
It is sort of implied that all this time in the Animus is also having the effect of training him in all his ancestor’s murderous skills.
If by “implied” you mean “stated outright,” then yes.
I was going to say ‘explicitly stated’. Then I realized you’d handle things.
Hehe – Sorry, been awhile since I’ve played whichever one he starts running around and beating people up in the credits.
Off-topic, but the time period I’d really like to see in an AC game: 1890s America. Parkour-leaping through immigrant neighborhoods in NYC! Stabbing amoral robber barons in their overfed gullets! Gilded Age adventure with a young Teddy Roosevelt! That would basically make me lose ALL my marbles.
I think you could easily go up to at least the Industrial Revolution in England and still plausibly do swordfights and stabbiness–guns weren’t so common in urban settings as all that.
Honestly, it’s probably not until about the 1920s or so that you start getting into trouble with firearms. I could easily see a Victorian/Edwardian era setting before they’re forced to end the series with Desmond–assuming they actually want a full Desmond game and not just have him be the lead in the latter half of the last game or something.
Every time I see the Downey Sherlock Movies I think AC AC AC AC
American Revolution sounds cool, but I think it would have been better if they bumped it up 25-30 years and set it in the Napoleonic Wars.
Though if Ben Franklin is actually in the game I retract my statement. Because Ben Franklin is awesome.
I wonder to what degree the firearms problem could be dealt with simply by keeping the modern gameplay in a dense urban area. The advantage of automatic weapons is primarily an advantage of range, and an urban area could theoretically remove that advantage using short alleyways and corners for the Assasin to dictate a melee engagement. The swordplay element would be harder to recreate, though theoretically, some sort of disarm ability and an unarmed combat system might work; I’m not sure here. Finally, as far as escape and evasion, some extemporizing about the unwillingness of the Assasin’s opponents to fire into crowds of civilians would permit the use of passersby to force enemies to either a) lose track of the player or b) attempt to catch the player rather than shooting from afar. Construction and scaffolding could even provide a lot of the vertical adventuring that AC usually employs (see Mirror’s Edge for an example of what that might look like).
There’s certainly some room to wonder if the flavor of AC would still be there (it starts to sound a lot like the Arkham series), but I don’t think it’s entirely out of reach.
@gnosis Maybe they’re saving the Napoleonic Wars for the next game.
I don’t think those are the two camps, MGK. I think the two camps are
1. The idea of an Assassin operating during the American Revolution is awesome;
2. The idea of an Assassin operating during the American Revolution is stupid. Why does every game have to happen in America?
I’m new to systems that can actually play Assassin’s Creed… but I’ve played my way through the first two, and my first reaction to this was severe dissappointment, because a large element, to me, of those games was the fun of being able to run around through the fantastic architecture of urbanized environments of the Middle East and Europe. Eighteenth Century America doesn’t really have all that much of that yet.
That said, I have started warming to the idea. And will be completely turned around and get onboard 100% if they get Nicholas Cage to voice somebody in the game, because why not put a map on the back of this Declaration of Independence, too?
“Why does every game have to happen in America?”
Besides the brief Desmond parts in AC1, none of the AC games take place in America.
“So I haven’t played any of Assassin’s Creed, but isn’t Desmond unaware of his heritage in the first game?”
It’s been awhile, but If I remember correctly, Desmond was raised on an Assassin commune, but said “Nuts to that action” when he was told about the grand conspiracy and fled to… become a bartender, of all things
I forget who originally said it, but the way I remember the Colt quote is: “All men are created equal, but Sam Colt made them the same size.” And yeah, Shivs MacStabbedy is going to have a hard, hard time of it when he throws down against a dude packing a Peacemaker.
You know what they say about the guy who brings a knife to a gunfight…
Personally, I think that someone at Ubisoft really really really likes The Patriot.
The sad thing is there’s so much of awesome history that could still fit with AC gameplay and make sense but they went with the American Revolution. Personally I think they are just trying to cater to Americans who clearly are only concerned about themselves.
What I want? Chinese Boxer Rebellion. Just fits on so many levels.
I predict that only part of AC3 will take place in America. Maybe New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, but then Paris, possibly London, and possibly a Caribbean sugar port.
The fact that the era is the Revolutionary War doesn’t mean that the game is about the Revolutionary War– the war is just the backdrop. There might be some battlefield scenes (like how the siege of Forli, and the attack on Montereggioni were handled in the previous games), but I predict that the game is mostly going to be about climbing around in an urban environment hunting for plot coupons– very few Revolutionary War battles were actually fought in cities (not even Brooklyn, Germantown and Bunker Hill were built-up areas at that point).
I’m with cardbross — our historical Assassins have so far been the Order’s legendary figures. Essentially, they’re Batman, but stabbier. Taking out a group of heavily-armed opponents is part of the genre (think stealth approach and well-placed tactical smoke bomb). I think you could work the mechanics and setting to balance the advantage of firearms. What would be trickier would be justifying the swashbuckling, kill-streak style combat.
Thinking on this some more, the obvious solution is: Make everyone as bad a shot as they are in most action movies. Then, a Hitgirl-style wade-through-the-baddies-nonstop assault can work, and that’s basically the gun equivalent of AC combos.
Actually, the real protagonist of all the entire series is the historical settings. Ezio had more depth than Altair, but ultimately the game’s all about neat set pieces and screwing around with history. A Desmond-centered game around a bland futuristic NYC would be boring unless somehow the developers came up with a new take on it besides antiseptic gleaming white (Mirror’s Edge) and cyberpunk gritty (Syndicate) or both (Deus Ex: Human Revolution).
We’ve already seen the future before, and played it. We’d rather play the past.
Well, they said AC3 would end Desmond’s story, so I’m expecting this game to also be the inevitable modern AC everyone’s waiting for. Way I see it, you’ll probably switch between the two characters and go to a lot of the same places in two different time periods. Go save Philadelphia or somewhere from the redcoats, then go walk through modern day Philadelphia as Desmond, sneaking to get something that the first character left behind, etc. etc.
I think it would work pretty well if they make Desmond’s story sections short little story bursts, like Altair’s sections in Revelations, but have them play pretty differently from the main story parts because of the modern guns and technology.
AC1 had a very repetitive game mechanic.
Is this fixed in the later titles?
“The sad thing is there’s so much of awesome history that could still fit with AC gameplay and make sense but they went with the American Revolution. Personally I think they are just trying to cater to Americans who clearly are only concerned about themselves.”
Seriously, people are aware that this is the first game in the series to take place in North America, yeah? Like, did a memo get missed or something?
“AC1 had a very repetitive game mechanic.Is this fixed in the later titles?”
Yes. AC1 is basically a tech demo for the movement and city modelling. AC2 turns it into an actual game, with some variety to the missions and a fun story and characters. AC:Brotherhood extends that game by another 20 hours or so and adds a unique multiplayer mode. AC:Revelations refines that game and multiplayer, taking the mechanics about as far as they can go.
I’ve really enjoyed the series, but I agree that this is the right time to refresh everything. I find it heartening to read that the AC3 team has been working on it for 3 years. I was worried that it would be like AC:B and AC:R — a yearly release that just tweaks the underlying engine.
As we get closer to the sections of history that are very well-documented, the frequency of assassinations will begin to break immersion on its own, regardless of the state of firearms technology or availability of urban environments.
Having a few extra killings in the time of the Borgias might not distort the fabric of history. At least, ignorant folks like me can overlook it. If 20-30 critical people got assassinated during the revolutionary war, wouldn’t the United States look a lot different?!
Play it forward a little, and it gets worse. Almost every modern assassination is regarded as extremely noteworthy. Prevent JFK’s or MLKjr’s, and who knows what the world looks like! Or, kill Castro or Brezhnev or someone and who knows what the world looks like.
The point is: add or subtract any single interesting, modern assassination and history is borked.
Like a lot of games, the easiest way is to treat bullet wounds as an inconvenience. Give the assassins some kind of bullet-stopping armour (blessed by Chief Sitting Bull, created by Dr. Richard J. Gatling – mash up history to your heart’s content) and you’re all good.
After all, a sword to the face isn’t much fun, but my AssCree experiences have seen Altair / Enzio catch a few of them.
Regarding the American Revolutionary War: I think it isn’t a bad idea, but I’m amused by a white man in a white outfit being the best of the Native Americans.
“Having a few extra killings in the time of the Borgias might not distort the fabric of history. At least, ignorant folks like me can overlook it. If 20-30 critical people got assassinated during the revolutionary war, wouldn’t the United States look a lot different?!”
I think one possibility is to take a historical time period and have multiple settings within. For example, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries there was a whole bunch of high-profile assassinations of national leaders by the Anarchist movement- American President McKinley, French President Sadi Carnot, Spanish Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, Austrian Empress Elizabeth, Italian King Umberto. More assassinations were attempted as well. With some screwing around with history, we can say that a Desmond ancestor was behind it.
A very fascinating article in the Economist about the anarchists: http://www.economist.com/node/4292760
Having seen the trailer now for AC3… I think it’s actually pretty interesting. I still would have chosen a different time period but the American Revolution is still pretty good.
And one of the things that makes it mostly impossible to do what it does are automatic weapons, because while sneaking around and stabbing people and getting into awesome swordfights is terrific, it’s all more or less rendered obsolete by firearms.
Yes this is exactly why the two Batman Arkham Asylum games failed completely and were terrible oh wait.