Seldom do I write a review before finishing the game. Seldom is the wrong word. I NEVER write a review before finishing the game. It’s a travesty, a sin against human nature! But then times are not what they used to be *sad music here* After months of not being able to write a review, it is slowly sinking in that my current predicament translates to a continually mobile lifestyle. Mobile lifestyles don’t agree with desktop computers and so, in defiance of my principles, I must write while I still play. Otherwise, the moment I shut down and begin travelling, the game and the review have left my head for good.
This is especially so when the game’s an AC aka Assassins’ Creed. Being one of the many who have played every single game since the inception of the franchise (except Rogue) and finished all but one of those I’ve played, a review becomes not just a study of the present game, but a long comparison tinged with nostalgia.
Before I lose myself, let’s get down to the bare facts. The AC franchise has been accused of meandering for quite sometime now. Some say the last meaningful game was Revelations starring Ezio, while others would claim that Unity brought something back to the franchise. Whatever side you’re on, it’s hard not to argue that the last few years have seen their ups and downs. ACIII was easily one of the worst, while IV redeemed things a little. Rogue was more of a side-story (the first time the franchise went back in time actually) and Liberation HD was more of a PS Vita game. Unity raised a lot of expectations and the devs answered with everything they had. Sadly, that everything proved too much for most computers and coupled with glitches, made finishing the game a Herculean task. Further, it still kept the franchise stuck in the 18th Century, making many wonder whether it’d end before hitting REAL modernity.
Syndicate is a resounding answer to all of this. For one, it takes you into the 19th Century, the age of modernity, the age of man taking civilization to all parts of the world on the back of steam engines, telegraph lines and stage carriages. Again, you have an interesting experiment with two Assassins instead of one. A male and a female assassin not only break the monotony of grim I’ll-destroy-you figures (Connor, Shay, Arno) but also bring in both the caution and the joviality of Ezio. Further, the game is given the difficult task of making combat and travelling simple in an age when swords and horses are no longer to be found. This, as we shall see, the game does with admirable success. Storyline ? Character evolution ? Franchise evolution ?
Hold on, all of that is coming. Where? Look below!
Graphics and Environment
Unity was torn apart by critiques for showing teeth and eyeballs sans skin during the famous Arno-Elise kissing scene (and even later). Rightly so, because Unity took a leap in terms of graphics without preparing adequate safeguards. NPCs were multiplied tenfold (or hundredfold), buildings were suddenly 1:1 compared to real ones and AI was really intelligent all of a sudden. All of this made for great show, but it left way too much space for glitches (not the Helix glitches, real graphics ones) and errors. From bodies sticking out of walls to poor parkour to whatnot, Unity proved to be a comedy of errors. Such a comedy that many, including me, despaired of ever finishing the game on more than one occasion.
Cut to Syndicate and Ubisoft has learnt its lessons. For one, NPCs have been reduced a lot. Streets are near empty, and this makes for both good navigation and easier graphics processing. Secondly, the number of internally navigable buildings has been cut down a lot. Many buildings are navigable only during missions. Thirdly, the intricacies of the buildings, such as the multitude of balconies of the Notre Dame, have been done away with.
All this allows for a beautiful London without the chaos of Paris. Granted that this is meant to be so – London 1868 is the epicentre of imperial power, Paris 1789 is the epicentre of destruction of imperial power. That said, the city IS beautiful. The business-like grandeur of London has been brought out in beautifully recreated offices, warehouses and even living quarters. Roads are wide and spread out in geometric ways, giving much relief from the barricade-ridden labyrinths of Paris. The Thames – or the Silent Highway – has been recreated with every bit of the hustle and bustle you’d expect.
Markets, on the other hand, are few and generally don’t appear within missions. Crowded places are intentionally avoided, giving enough space to run and hunt down targets. Alleyways are not very complex, and generally open onto large promenades. All of this makes for a city that is a pleasure to go around, even when one is not in one of the well-recreated gardens or iconic places.
Now if we were to look closely at graphics, we would notice a slight stagnation. Faces in third-person are woefully lacking in detail. The game has coolly sidestepped the vexatious issue of women’s hair rendition by giving all women short hair, or in Evie’s case, a closely tied style. Not for Ubisoft the careful rendition of Lara Croft’s hair in Tomb Raider (one which changed in texture and movement with change in graphics). NPCs, as mentioned before, are fewer and one feels, lacking in variety too.
Cut-scenes, however, are well-detailed. Facial mapping has allowed expressions to mimic real life. Since the assassin pair provide much needed relief from the intensity of previous characters, a wider range of expressions is visible. Evie, in particular, has a range of smiles and smirks that give more life to her character than any Ezio-era female character would have.
Gameplay
Where Unity truly broke down was in gameplay. I remember vividly a mission in the docks where circumventing a pile of boxes caused me to be detected multiple times. Such problems, and the multiplicity of NPCs and debris everywhere made gameplay a terrible challenge. So terrible that Ubisoft had to release a 14GB patch to fix things. I’d never know if it did fix things because I never got around to downloading the whole patch.
Syndicate provided me just two patches of 2GB and 300MB. From the very start, gaming was simple and error-free. Your character would naturally circumvent boxes, jump over chains, be able to slide under obstacles and in general, do everything Ezio or Kenway could without too much button-mashing.
Button-mashing is a problem though. Pressing three buttons for a leap of faith, or jumping down from buildings, is something that is a bit unnecessary. Matters, however, have been drastically simplified on other fronts. Lockpicking is no longer a mini-game. Instead, you simply hold down “E” like you held down “Shift” in Ezio-era games (or “E” in later ones). Climbing buildings, however, gets the greatest makeover courtesy of the rope dart.
This simple thing allows you to hit R and move from one roof to another (or from ground to roof) using out of the blue ziplines. Ziplines ? Remember Revelations, remember Ezio being taught to use those to travel quickly and take down guards underneath ? Those ziplines make a reappearance, and with a vengeance. This time though, they are totally under your control. You move where you want, when you want and in fact, how you want. No longer are you stuck at one spot wondering which side to move to to get the next foothold. No longer do you have to be spotted and stoned/shot down to the ground while climbing buildings after doing your stuff. No longer, and please gulp down any water in your mouth NOW, do you have to climb towers to get to sync points. Stand below the tower, hit R and voila! You’re at the sync point. Syncing thus becomes something you can do even while proceeding along another mission.
This has its pros and cons. Pros would include not having to waste time jumping about and being able to disappear from the scene in record time. Cons, as many longtime gamers would feel, would be that the concept of parkour has lost a lot. Buildings were indispensable parts of the parkour mechanic, and without them, you’re left wondering whether you’re not really Lara Croft creating lines to move from one landing to another. One also wonders whether this allowed the creators the freedom to cut down on the detail of the buildings. All looks hale and hearty, but if you’re not going to painstakingly climb the buildings, what is the point of adding detail ? Could this be a step backward in terms of the creative effort put into the game ? If it is, I’d rather see rope darts removed than the buildings progressively turned into Soviet-era blocks (unless the next game IS in Soviet-era conditions).
Coming to combat, we notice a similar easing of the tools. The mechanics of Unity are more or less retained, focused as they are on counters than on actual attacks. However, gone is the era of the sword and the crossbow. Instead, now you fight with kukris (short blades of Indian origin which are there entirely courtesy of Arbaaz Mir’s son), cane-swords and revolvers. Revolvers add the unique novelty of shooting non-stop without reloading. Kukris and cane-swords however, make combat a lot less flashy. Perhaps this is meant to be so, since most of the fights in the game are between street thugs (oh yes, you’re a street thug as well, coming to that!). Yet somewhere the novelty of fighting with a long sword and a short sword is lost. One type of weapon causes slashes, the other thuds. That’s it. Somehow you yearn to return to the age of swords, when hand-to-hand combat really made sense and the protagonists did not ALL belong to the wrong side of the law.
The range of throwables remains fixed. You have the smoke bomb, the hallucinogenic dart (that word!), the revolver, the throwing knife and voila (or Volta), the voltaic bomb. The voltaic bomb is a shocking (yes) bomb that disables targets and can even kill them. Developed by Alexander “Aleck” Graham Bell, this bomb acts as a backup to the smoke bomb. Sadly, things like the cherry bomb are not replaced, and there is practically nothing to send people in a different direction.
Assassination therefore involves walking up to them and stabbing them (Good morning dear Si…..ahhhh), falling on them from above, pulling them from windows or wooden gangways and sneaking on them from behind. You can also attract them and dispose at your convenience. Nothing fresh or interesting here, except that everything works far better than in Unity.
Any discussion on gameplay would of course, require a paragraph on travel. Travelling is important in London. Everyone travels to work, to meet friends, to make business arrangements, to buy groceries and to murder people. You usually go to murder people, and this requires speed. What do you do ? Get a 19th Century taxi – a carriage. Syndicate’s greatest addition is the carriage, which turns London into a 19th Century Watch Dogs’ Chicago or GTAesque Los Angeles. You race carriages, you assassinate drivers, you ride on top, you ride inside, you jump on them from above, you climb on them from the side, and most importantly, you use them to move as you’ve never done before. This isn’t promotional material speaking, it’s really that awesome. With broad streets and a huge city, the rope darts and the carriages allow you to really enjoy your time the way you’d do in any modern day world game. Indeed, this sets the game apart from virtually every other period game!
Characters
Another interesting change is the character lineup. Jacob and Evie represent twins who tend to have very different goals. So different that most of their discussions turn into banter and leg-pulling. So much so that NONE of the missions involve them actually working together (remember I’ve not finished the game yet, so NONE SO FAR would be better).
Jacob is, following Edward, a reckless man who believes he can turn the world on its head. His behaviour is carefree, without concern for the problems it might cause in the long run. This is amply borne out when, after two great missions by Jacob, the next involves Evie mopping up things. Yet Jacob’s cocky charm allows us a person who breaks away from the monotonous intensity of previous characters. Ezio had a certain joviality about him (remember his chat on the ship with Suleiman in Revelations ?) but Connor, Arno and Shay were all impossibly serious. Edward had a certain recklessness, but it seldom came down to banter. Jacob however, combines Edward Kenway and Ezio Auditore effortlessly, allowing us a glimpse of the unreformed, easygoing selves we were introduced to so long back.
Evie, to be honest, is a complete surprise. It is hard to make a girl jovial without going into stereotypes and sexual innuendo. Ubisoft makes no attempt at making her jovial. She’s self-confident and serious. In a way, she is the successor of Arno, without however, the freedom to work with an understanding lover called Elise. Jacob is hardly the understanding, petite, lovely, red-haired, beautiful, (okay okay fine), Elise. She follows her father’s instructions and teaching, causing her to look for what is really important to the Assassins (such as pieces of Eden, which are now referred more as Precursor Artifacts). Jacob ? He is going about liberating London by creating the biggest underworld gang ever! (More on this in the Plot section).
Characters apart from these two are, thankfully, quite interesting. Admittedly Dickens looks like a professor, Darwin a harried professor and Nightingale a tired maidservant (oh you bloody elitist Ari!). Yet they have enough in their expressions and their quixotic preferences to keep the story chugging along. Henry Green is the best of the lot, playing the part of an Assassin who’s good at everything but assassination (“field work” as he calls it). He also has a crush on Evie, and a lot of contacts. Results are that he is generally involved in missions involving her, and which have some amount of background involved.
The rest of the characters can be classed as ordinary folk, and goons. Ordinary folk are just that, people who lived in London. They have their specialities, but are not really admirable. There is also the police, but well, they are the police. Finally, the goons. Jacob runs one gang, the Templars run another. So you fight for territory the same way you’d do in say GTA San Andreas. Goons fight goons and cause destruction. If you were an assassin from the time of Altair or Ezio or even Kenway, you’d be banging your head on the wall.
Plot
Finally, the plot! Plots have typically tended towards becoming vengeance sagas in which you eliminate each person in the Templar’s circle before going for the Templar. Twists to these were provided by Rogue (Shay) and Revelations. However, the remove-the-inner-circle story remained the same. It still does, simply because it allows for a series of assassinations to be carried out.
Put simply, Jacob and Evie are free-spirited assassins who are tired of their part of the creed and set off to take over London. In London, Green mistakes them for people sent by the Order and helps them defeat the Templar Starrick. Here comes the catch. While Evie is working towards finding the pieces of Eden to defeat the Templars, Jacob is thrashing his way across London. He cooks up a gang called the Rooks, captures boroughs from the Blighters (aye, the Templar goons) and thus goes about clearing the streets of London the same way Ezio did against the Borgia. Many of the assassinations serve both purposes – getting Evie closer to the Shroud of Eden and getting Jacob another chunk of London.
The problem however, is that all of this is really not something that the Order orders. Where is the Order ? Relations between the Order and the protagonists of AC games have rarely been friendly. Barring Ezio, all have had trouble, with there being demotion (Altair), quarrels (Connor), cynicism and criticism (Edward), desertion (Shay) and excommunication (Arno). Yet they all involved the Council in some manner. Here, these two go about using their blades without ANY sanction from anyone.
Worse, they aren’t even concerned. This, perhaps, is because both of them got their assassin badges as part of their upbringing. They take it for granted. Thinking about previous protagonists, you notice that none were raised in the Order (Altair excepted perhaps). They came to the Order with specific needs and specific goals. They learned to follow the Creed with specific problems and lessons. Not so with these two – they treat their Assassin IDs as something that simply exists. Worst, Green doesn’t seem to have any idea that they are here without sanction. In the age of the telegraph, the London branch is in the dark about the whereabouts of the Crawley branch and its two assassins who have moved to the London branch. What joy!
Despite such glitches, the plot does manage to keep you somewhat hooked. The intermingling of business and politics is shown clearly, and this detracts from the usual lineup of political actors. Perhaps this is fitting in the age of global capitalism. What is not fitting is the lack of any twists and turns till late in the story. Even then, none of it is of a life-changing nature. Nothing changes the tone of Jacob, which makes for stark contrast with Ezio. Nothing modifies the objectives at hand, which again makes for stark contrast with some previous titles. Everything is so hunky dory, you wish Ubisoft had hired better writers.
Conclusion
Assassins’ Creed : Syndicate is a game that takes some of the good from Unity, mixes it with some truly ingenious stuff fitting to the 19th Century and then forgets some of the essential stuff. Indeed, what is added with gameplay is taken away a little with graphics and, for those who contemplate, by the story too. The result is that the game is Assassin-grade because you have the blade, not at all Creed grade and Assassins’ Creed grade because it brings back much of the joy -repackaged and modified of course – of the days of Ezio and Edward.