LogFAQs > #922371210

#25: Assassin's Creed

To me, Assassin's Creed 1 is the awesome book that later gets turned into the hollywood movie that is Assassin's Creed 2 and onwareds.

While the gameplay gets vastly better in certain sequels- the parkour, stealth, and combat all have a solid core but are frustrating in the details- I firmly believe this entry must be played first. All of the original mystery and wonder of the game is spoiled in the first 20 minutes of AC2 and every AC game since.

Why am I locked in this lab? Who really put me there? What is the nature of the animus? It can't be what they say it is. What is this society Altair is a part of about? What are these people I'm assassinating, and what is their plan? Their goals seem so different! These answers are slowly revealed over the course of the game, in contrast to Ezio's uncle broadcasting 'oh yeah, we're all in a SUPER SECRET SOCIETY and we're gonna go stab these guy over here' to anybody who will listen 20 minutes in, or the "assassins" of AC3 that just wander the streets with massive cleavers. Basically, AC1 is the only game where I can totally buy the secret society of assassins actually being a secret.

The Holy Land during the crusades is a great, and in retrospect bold, setting and supports that aura of mystery.

I love the soliloquies your targets give as they die. They're abstract- a litle literary, a little philosophical- and that's what makes them good. Dropping away the background and giving them a private conversation with the protagonist is artful. Later games sort of try those speeches, but miss why they're amazing, and are usually restricted to "ugh, I can't believe you killed me. you suck."

Altair (sorry, I mean Altar) is a great character. I get why he couldn't stay the face of the franchise, but he was perfect for this first game. I neither buy into whimsical assassin protagonists like Ezio or Edward nor enjoy flat ones like Connor. Altar starts out as an irresponsible jerk, and the entire game is framed as a journey of repentance for his mistakes. He's inquisitive, constantly questioning his targets as well as his leader, which parallels the player's lines of thought. While he's never truly a good person- as a hardened assassin he never thinks twice about silencing someone he just interrogated- we see him piece together a moral code over time.

Assassin's Creed parallels the Mass Effect series for me. They both originally came out in 2007 with high production values and delicately balanced narrative gusto with playability and led to successful franchises. On top of that, their first entries both contained insane optional collectibles that killed my compulsive need to 100% complete games.

The biggest parallel is that subsequent entries slowly melted away the realism and upped the fun. But I think if there is a direction for a series to move over time, that is it. What's that phrase? "there is no double jump in real life", but that doesn't make it bad gameplay.

Even today, as far as I can tell, both of their most recent entries have devolved into unsatisfying romps of pure gameplay without a good story carrot. Anyway, Assassin's Creed is difficult in frustrating ways- the later segments are unfun in how good guards get at spotting you (it's harder to hide because the guards know you're the worst) and alert mode takes forever to leave, and I hate accidentally running 3 feet up a wall and then jumping backwards, but this is just one of those amazing games where the gameplay combines with the story so well that I think it shouldn't be passed up.
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You did indeed stab me in the back. However, you are only level one, whilst I am level 50. That means I should remain uninjured.