Gaming Altair You a New One: The Assassin's Creed Series

Assassin's Creed 2 was more than a "mechanically fine" game. Perhaps it isn't obvious given the current generation of gaming, but at its time Assassin's Creed 2 was met with near-epic degrees of praise and consumer and critic acclaim alike. It delivered on the promises Ubisoft made but couldn't deliver on with the first Assassin's Creed and is responsible for the strong fan base that Ubisoft now merciless tries to exploit and abuse with market saturation.

But this didn't happen because the game was "mechanically fine." It happened because of the art direction of AC2 and the sheer production quality of the entire title. Voice acting, visuals, narration--and the music. Jesper Kyd's score is perhaps still, to this day, one of the best musical pieces the video game industry has ever produced. If you don't care about Ezio's story, okay fine. But Kyd's musical score tells a story on its own, and it's a thing of sheer beauty.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood followed up with everything that made AC2 great and gave us another incredible score (and treated us to the adrenaline rush that is the "Escape" theme). AC2 and Brotherhood delivered us some of the very finest moments in gaming music. Just incredible soundtracks, imo.

 

Yeah the music in Assassins creed is always great.(Well I cant remember what it was like in three.) My favourite is Black flag's theme and Shanties.

 

So very much agree. Jesper Kyd's hauntingly beautiful soundtracks for AC2 and Brotherhood are characters of their own. They provide an aureal backdrop to the proceedings that makes those games simply unforgettable. I don't think any other soundtrack in this series comes close in terms of atmospheric richness.

 

I just wish that Ubisoft would actually release most of the music.

For example, they released 25 tracks for AC3, when the game featured over 150 tracks!

AC1 had only 13 tracks, when there were at least 45.

I know it would be expensive, but Ubisoft can't lose money from releasing the music, can they?

 

Btw, Assassin's Creed Black Flag is currently free to download for Xbox One Gold members.

 

I already played it a little while ago on the 360. Prettier graphics aside, I don't think I want to go through it again.

 

They included a soundtrack disc in one of the versions of Revelations.

 

For the sake of argument, now that I'm caught up on Unity, here's my ranking of the series:

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood -- the perfect marriage of great story, gorgeous environment, and incredible gameplay
Assassin's Creed II -- top-notch story, incredible setting, only behind Brotherhood because of its gameplay advances
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag -- best writing in a long time, beautiful visuals, sailing, and series-best gameplay mechanics
Assassin's Creed -- still one of the best-looking games thanks to its gorgeous setting, and it best captures the sense of being an actual Assassin by making the assassinations such big setpieces, plus peak Vidic
Assassin's Creed: Revelations -- the writing starts to weaken, but it's a great setting and the core gameplay is really well refined, with Ezio getting a great sendoff
Assassin's Creed III -- underrated, with a gorgeous, compelling setting, great gameplay aside from a few undercooked segments, and really good character writing despite weak plotting
Assassin's Creed: Rogue -- weak writing, lousy main character, failure to do much with the setting, but perfect gameplay
Assassin's Creed: Unity -- gorgeous graphics, but mediocre writing and gameplay that veers between good and "why the **** would they change what was working so well for this?"
Assassin's Creed: Liberation -- good writing, but a port with mediocre graphics and terribly boring gameplay

 

Why do you think Connor was a good character but not Shay? Connor was an ignorant Moron who never listened to his wise father. Shay noticed all the flaws with the Assassin order and didn't blindly follow the creed.
He was also friends(well kinda) with haytham, and didn't murder him on orders of an old man who had filled new york with gangs and helped kill thousands. Funnily enough in my first playthrough of Rogue I hated shay because he was a traitor but after playing three I loved him.

 

Yeah, but there were still tracks not included.

For example, none of the Desmond's journey or Lost Archive music was released, despite being some of the most unique in the series.

 

Haytham talked a fine game, but he was a murderous, arrogant idiot; you were supposed to notice. Connor was a great character because he had a lot of anger inside, but was ultimately a quiet guy trying very hard to do the right thing and build a community at the homestead. He also had to balance the push and pull of his native and colonial heritage, neither of which quite fit him, and ended up as a man without a home in either community because of his commitment to trying to do the right thing. He was basically Steve Rogers as an Assassin, which makes for an interesting and compelling character type. The storyline from point A to B was underwritten in III, but Connor's character journey was really well developed.

More on Shay later.

 

The problem with Shay is that he's a thin character. He's just this young, cocky, obliviois doofus until all of a sudden he's monologuing about how the Assassins don't have the right to make any decisions and he's suddenly desperately concerned with doing the right thing, which only he knows. It's an underwritten turn for a character who never manages any real personality, and most problematically, it's done via a story that dodges every hard question it can. Rather than dig into the competing philosophies of the Assassins and Templars, individual liberty vs. order imposed by a self-selected authoritarian elite, it just presents a bunch of Assassins who happen to be massive jerks who never explain themselves and a bunch of Templars led by Benevolent Captain Jesus, who never enagages any of the issues. Shay never actually has to grapple with any political or moral issues, because nothing good about the Assassins is ever presented to him, and nothing bad about the Templars is allowed to intrude on his carefully constructed narrative. The result is a singularly boring character, with an inconsistent and underwhelming personality and no meaningful conflict.

 

I can see those points. And young Connor definitely had my interest...but then the game skipped ahead several years and we went from the anger, engaging Connor to this mild-mannered man who just wants people to live with him in his Oregon Trail-like environment.

The writing in AC3 was definitely shoddy, especially compared against the previous well-written Ezio trilogy.

AC4's writing kind of made up for 3's absence of engaging quality, but the game was hindered by too many absurd "follow person X through crowds and don't you dare let anyone see you!" missions. Rogue borrows what made AC4 a good game and leaves behind the things that didn't work (such as these ridiculous following missions), but the north Atlantic just isn't as fun an area to explore as the Caribbean was with Edward.

Speaking of which, with Black Flag being a free download for Xbox One, I went ahead and installed it. Having played it previously on the 360, I am definitely noticing the difference in visual quality...but Black Flag was gorgeous to behold on last gen too. Black Flag's music from the get go is gripping and gets the blood pumping. It really is the only recent AC title that lives up to the quality standard set by AC2/Brotherhood.

 

Black Flag's theme and shanties were basically the only memorable tracks from the game except for Stealing A Brig. III's soundtrack was much better.

I actually really liked Haytham. He's my favorite character of the Kenway saga, but probably because of Forsaken. I don't think he was an idiot but he was definitely a bit arrogant. He made the Kenway saga (or at least III and Rogue) blur the lines between good and bad.

 

Was it ever explained why there was a virus in Shay's memories?

It seems like they jsut sort of dropped that point, unless I'm forgetting something.

 

I never noticed that until now. I guess it was assassins trying to hide what can only be described as "Derp"

 

Just finished the Kenway Saga and I would rank them as such:

III = Black Flag > Rogue

Rogue lacked new ideas and was a bit of a short story compared to the other ones. Sure, Haytham was in it (that's always a plus) but still. Rogue did however refine the gameplay and graphics. So it wasn't a bad game but the others are much better.

 

Minor fun fact for fans of Star Wars and AC:

In 3 of the games, the sound effect used for Boga's whistles has been used.

The sound can be heard at the start of this video:


It was used in AC1 in the Kingdom, AC3 in the Frontier, and AC Rogue in the River Valley. I can only assume it's meant to represent some animal, though what I have no idea.

 

Yeah, I've heard that sound in a lot of things. First thing I always think of is Boga.

 

Any idea what kind of animal it comes from?

 

I don't have any factual info on it but according to someone on the internet in a "Star Wars book," a dolphin, Tasmanian devil, dog, and coyote combo were all used.

 

The latest Creed game is coming this Friday, anyone plan to pick it up? Of all the versions to date, this one looks the most interesting to me right behind Black Flag.

 

Though I've been a long fan of the series, I think I'm going to wait and see. Maybe I'll pick it up next year or so.