A new time period, a new protagonist, and new consoles promise to usher a new era for the Assassin’s Creed series, but does Unity manage to deliver? by Murali Venukumar
Familiarity breeds contempt; or at least that’s how the old adage goes. I’ve tried approaching Assassin’s Creed: Unity with new eyes, but it’s near impossible to separate it from the past. The past, in this case, is an endless stream of Assassin’s Creed games looking to capitalise (pun intended) on the success of the first titles in the series. The weight of history is sometimes difficult to shed, especially as gamers have grown ever more jaded, seeing through flimsy bi-annual iterations and lore diluted with overuse. The series, as it stands, is in danger of becoming another yearly release, troubling absolutely none of the end-year GOTY chart builders. Some would say it has already crossed that line.
Is Unity any better? There’s no easy answer. They’ve done the right thing going back to their roots, with Unity’s story vaguely shadowing that of Ezio Auditore from the Assassin’s Creed 2 arc. Set around the French Revolution, the game follows Arno Dorian from childhood on as he seeks to avenge the death of the father figures in his life. Naturally, the Assassins and Templers are in the thick of things and Arno’s journey has sufficient depth to it that it’ll hold your interest for the 15 hours it should take you to complete the story. Is it Ezio good? Not really, but it’s probably the closest Assassin’s Creed has come to capturing the glory days.
Shadowing Ezio Auditore’s saga isn’t necessarily a bad thing, given that the AC2 arc was home to two of the best games in the series. Sadly, Unity is also saddled with its Ubisoft heritage. In order to optimise resources and development time between its many studios around the world, Ubisoft seems to have made it a point to share assets, and even design schema, between projects. The largely lamentable result of this approach to game development has been the tendency of all Ubisoft-developed open-world games to have checklist after checklist of collectibles for you to find in the game world.
Assassin’s Creed: Unity is unfortunately no different, stuffed as it is with knickknacks to collect and doodads to find. It doesn’t add much to the core single-player story, but it does give newer players an excuse to explore Paris a bit more than they would have otherwise. Old hands will feel a distinct sense of déjà vu, having gone through the same gameplay beats in everything from Watch Dogs to Far Cry 3 and every Assassin’s Creed game in between. The good news is that some of the extra side-missions are fully voiced and are passable distractions when you want to take a break from the main story missions. The modern-day sections of the game have been neutered, mostly restricted to some well-produced cutscenes.
At the core of the game, however, is a new city to explore. Paris looks gorgeous in most instances, helped along by the added horsepower of the new console generation. While not rendering at 1080p on either console, the game still manages to look strikingly beautiful most times. Sadly, the art direction just isn’t matched by Unity’s underlying technology.
The frame rate has an unpredictable penchant to drop, and there’s nothing that kills immersion more than egregious pop-in. A future patch may fix these issues, but the pop-in and random LOD (level of detail) issues really don’t do the game any favours, especially with the series teetering on the precipice of irrelevance. And boy do they take a toll in the long run. You know there’s a serious problem when just clambering on stained glass in one of the game’s otherwise stunning buildings drops the frame rate to single digits. It just shouldn’t be acceptable for games to launch in this state, especially on new consoles where player expectations are naturally high.
On the plus side, the art direction is absolutely brilliant. Everything from the period costumes, to building interiors, to the now to-scale recreations of famous landmarks around Paris, looks exquisite. The updated Anvil engine does wonders with the period architecture, making iconic locations such as the interiors of the Notre Dame impressive indeed. Just wandering around the city and looking at all the detail is probably worth the price of admission alone, but again, the pop-in can ruin your experience at random. There’s a clear mismatch here – an obviously silo-ed approach to development that should have set warning bells ringing long before release.
Anvil’s crowd rendering is another stand-out feature, even if the individuals that make up said crowd are only equipped with rudimentary AI and repeat themselves far too often to sustain the illusion. The French Revolution was a time of mob justice, and Unity hammers that point home by front-loading the city with hundreds of NPCs. Especially creepy (in an intriguing way) is seeing them meet out Parisian mob-justice to the unfortunate nobility. The game would perhaps have been better served with reduced crowd sizes, freeing up precious processing power for use elsewhere.
As with other games in the series, it tries not to take sides, instead playing both sides of the conflict as almost equal offenders in their own way. Mission design has also changed for the good, eschewing the set-piece-heavy corridor approach of Assassin’s Creed 3 for something that’s more reminiscent of the first couple of games in the series. You’re given more freedom to plot and plan, and more freedom in your approach. That said, the missions themselves are still more of the same. Mileage and tolerance will vary, especially for those who’ve been playing the series regularly for the past few years.
Ubisoft may need to rethink its approach, especially since there’s precedent for sales to flag for franchises with a yearly release cycle.
The updated locomotion system also gives you much needed flexibility in how you complete missions. You can now crouch, for one (hurrah). It’s a game changer, at least in the way you approach the game world. Combat is a slight improvement over a system that has been regressing since the Ezio arc. The smooth countering and focus switching was somehow lost between games, and replaced by an overly clunky system that relied more on dealing differently with the classes of enemies you were facing than beating them in style. While the combat in Unity isn’t as smooth as it could have been, especially with respect to counter-chaining, the good news is that you have more combat options at your disposal, along with better on-foot control.
Traversal mechanics are also improved, but you’ll still have occasions where Arno misses open windows or leaps to where he shouldn’t. Chimneys and smokestacks also tend to slow you down for some reason, which can also be problematic. It’s unsettling that a series that was founded on parkour is still struggling with a perfect implementation.
Assassin’s Creed: Unity is a tough game to reconcile with. It’s meticulously researched and constructed, accurately portraying a fractious period in French history, while at the same time being counterrevolutionary to a fault.
While the game may get you down with its technical performance, what may be even more damning are the conventional gameplay beats it refuses to look beyond. It’s design by committee, and it shows.
VERDICT
Paris is a sight to behold, but Unity sticks too close to series conventions to make this a must-buy. Add to that a bevy of technical issues, and you’d be best served to pick this up later at a lower price.