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Freedom Returns to Assassin's Creed in Syndicate
We got our hands on a recent build of Assassin's Creed Syndicate and had a ridiculous amount of fun.
Evie Frye perched on the roof
© Ubisoft
I have a tumultuous relationship with the Assassin’s Creed franchise. I spent a ludicrous amount of time with the first game, which says a lot about what I’m willing to put up with for the potential overall experience that a game can provide. Assassin’s Creed 2, undoubtedly one of my favorite games of all time, was devoured the second it entered my hands that fateful Christmas in 2008. 36 of my next 48 hours were spent inside Assassin’s Creed 2, with my only regret being that I didn’t savor the experience more.
Brotherhood was exceptionally solid as well, but it was technically a side-game, so I didn’t pay it as much attention as I probably should have. By the time that Assassin’s Creed 3 came around, I was ready for the next main game in the series. I don’t think I’ve ever been as disappointed in a game as I was with Assassin’s Creed 3. The first 6 hours are entirely separate from the rest of the game, and felt devoid of all personality that the series had developed over the last three titles. This is where I fell off the Assassin’s Creed love train. I played some Black Flag – and it was good – but with the overall content of Black Flag and the way that Unity was handled, I couldn’t help but feel that the series was falling further and further away from what I had grown to love.
But if my hands-on time with the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is any indication, it just might be the game to flip me back to loving the series.
Grappling hook in action!
© Ubisoft
A game of contrasts
“Assassin’s Creed Syndicate as a game of contrasts,” said the game's producer before I sat down to play. This is true in the setting and character development, as she was referring to, but it’s also true in the gameplay narrative that the player creates themselves.
The franchise has always been open-world, allowing you to explore the world, and theoretically execute upon missions however you like. It wasn’t really though, looking back on it. Sure, you could run wherever you wanted, but the gameplay didn’t fully allow for you to execute on your wildest dreams. That’s now more of a possibility than it ever was before – and that’s exciting.
Assassin’s Creed has always had a pretty robust parkour system. Holding the right trigger and runing forward would essentially auto-climb anything in your path until you were where you wanted to be. But there wasn’t necessarily a fine control that allowed you to execute Splinter Cell-style sneakery. That was fixed in AC Unity, with parkour up/down buttons assigning a more fine-tuned control, and has been fully embraced in Syndicate.
It feels right now. It isn’t just about climbing to the building and getting to the other side anymore. Now you have the freedom to climb up, go around a window so that the guard doesn't see you, and then pop back in when his back was turned to get him. It’s situations like these that allow - and require - a precision that wasn’t found before.
Plus, just as an aside, there’s totally a grapple launcher, and it's sweet. You can use it to launch your way up to ledges and even across large gaps. It makes the movement extremely fluid and speeds things up a little bit, which goes a long way to combat the slower pace of the finer parkour movement.
Throwing knives are no joke
© Ubisoft
Three ways to go about it
Now, here’s where those contrasting play styles start to matter. I arrive via boat as Evie Frye, one of Syndicate’s sibling protagonists, and immediately run off. I use the grapple launcher to get up to a perch and begin the mission…only to be presented with three options of how to kill someone. These are three pretty general options. It’s not telling you how to play, but rather giving you a guideline to follow so that you aren’t completely lost.
The three options were presented as follows: steal a key to do it stealth style, let a friend in a fake guard costume pretend to kidnap you (which is a cool new mechanic), or free the constable and start a brawl. I, naturally, chose the latter, despite being advised that it was the most difficult. Oh, but it was the most fun.
Forget everything else. Rushing in with a massive crew and overrunning an old Victorian building is super fun and a ridiculous sight to behold. For the sake of it, I played the demo again and did the other options, finding that the new mechanics worked exceptionally well and were nothing short of flawless when executed in whatever freeform style I was feeling at the time. Want to do it stealthy? The parkour allowed for me to attack it however I wanted, and actually execute on that without having to worry about the interface holding me back
Syndicate’s improvements don’t redefine the gameplay, but they do take a giant leap forward toward revitalizing a franchise that was heading into stale territory. Our demo was only been a small section of a massive open-world game, but it went a long way in giving me a glimpse at what the game could potentially become. And as someone who has only seen the series get further and further from the aspects of it that I loved, this vision of the future is exciting. I’m looking forward to being an Assassin’s Creed fan again.
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