Assassin's Creed Retrospective - Can a Game Feel Too Gamey?

Assassin's Creed was an odd game to say the least. It was ambitious, promising a compelling stealth focused gameplay but was let down by poor variety of missions and an unbelievably daft menu interface for the PC version. Despite its flaws, it was a  promising game that set the stage for sequels that were major improvements. It took advantage of the whole Dan Brown conspiracy theory craze back story that managed to spread virally across the internet.

This part of the story was more interesting, but it was all just a big tease in the first game

Even before the game was released, it captured the imagination of gamers in its recreation of the medieval holy land. The whole ‘you’re not really in the holy lands twist’ was sort of spoilt when a voice actress spilled the beans on it in an interview, but it was so Dan Brown, that people were quite engaged with speculation about the plot of the game. Ubisoft did an excellent job marketing this game(you’ve got to give them credit for that). Did it live up to the enormous expectation? No.

The game revolves around the memories of Desmonds(a bar tender apparently, former Assassin himself) ancestor, Altair, who is an Assassin in the medieval era. There are two things which was most pronounced about this story. One, Altair was a first class doucehbag. He was arrogant, killed the innocent and disrespects everyone else. I like that the game tried to put you in the shoes of a protagonist that was different, but the way he came around in the game was just too, ‘convenient’ and quick. It wasn’t a believable flip at all.

Everything was very binary. It really wasn't all that dynamic. Press A to get past the guards

Second and perhaps what they did they best, they gave you the idea that Desmonds world is set in the current day of the world we know it. Being stuck in a laboratory with no real view of the outside world, your only hints were the conversations you had with your captors and the little brief moments when you got to peek at notes around the lab. You will quickly discover that this isn’t really the world we live in and that there is a conflict between the Assassins and this mysterious new order.

Which is all extremely cool that they were able to pull this off. If only the actual game was as compelling as the subversive plotline of the overarching story. Much of Assassin's Creed gameplay revolved around doing ‘gamey’ missions that will unlock the main assassination missions if you do enough of them. Which sounds like a precarious idea to say that a game feels too 'gamey' but in the case of Assassin's Creed, it is an uneasy mix when Ubisoft tried to fit such missions in with an immersive game world.

Lots of fine detail in the cities.

Completing these mission didn’t feel like you were interacting with this dynamic world or affecting the cities. It didn’t feel life like at all. Which is quite contrary to the graphical quality and the amount of effort Ubisoft put into adding in precise, small details in the cities. The city looked authentic, right down to the doom sayers warning of the crusades and what not. But the missions let down the immersion of the visuals and audio.

The cities are gorgeous, if only there was a fun game in it

It was all really just complete mission A and get a bunch of NPCs who will stand there and block guards(the most useful mission type that had gameplay significance imho). There were about six different type of missions and this lack of variety added to a common complaint of the game feeling too repetitive.

To Ubisofts credit, they've somewhat reduced the repetitiveness with the newer games with more variety and adding the more 'meta' managing your Assassins chapter in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Have they finally managed to make Assassins Creed a good game rather than just a pretty tech demo? I don’t know, you’ll have to tell me if you’ve played them.