For what it’s worth, I’m not one of those dedicated fans, although the series has always been of interest to me. And yes that’s even after witnessing Jade’s demonstration first hand at E3 2007 with Altaïr leaping from a church steeple, falling 100′ or better, and landing silently and unscathed into the back of a hay wagon. I still remember that clearly, and, somehow I always felt like the AC series had this odd conflict of interest of sorts, to where on the one hand you have well choreographed fighting and well-crafted stories, but on the other you have these characters with super human endurance and agility that are parkouring their way through history. FYI, and for better or worse, the “hay dive” is alive and well in Unity.
But hey, every game has its pet peeves and things that, at an individual level, you just have to forgive or overlook to be able to appreciate the overall experience and product — the AC games are no different. The problem with Unity though, is that it’s highly unpolished and downright buggy right now. For such a major franchise with this much hype and time and budget, it’s disappointing, and I hope Ubisoft is questioning the practice of making this an annualized series. On the brighter side, patches are a reality of modern gaming, and whether it takes six days or six weeks, I’m sure the numerous bugs are being investigated. Personally, I have yet to experience any game-breaking or freezes, but I do have an immense amount of clipping, tearing, and some framerate woes too, although not a suffocating amount of the latter. Other miscellaneous glitches revolve around the AI, such as that of neutral NPCs just losing their minds and running around, bumping into walls and things. I had no idea what was going on with them but their view and posture was locked in one position while they slide about the ground — really weird, but, ha, the other NPCs paid no attention to them. On that note, the enemies with guns paid no attention to the crowd either, firing right through them in attempts to hit me. Unity is of course not the first next-gen AC title, but it is the first on the new Anvil engine, and perhaps that and the timetable for release are at the root of the issue.
Regardless, I spent the majority of my time thus far in the single player mode. The story is about Arno, a young boy who witnesses his father murdered at a very young age. Years later, as tensions begin to rise in Paris between the classes, Arno is given a chance to direct his abilities and philosophies by joining the Assassins. It’s Assassins vs Templars again, but with new characters and the French Revolution serving as the major historical event.
As with previous games in the series, players are given a large sandbox, in this case, a large area of Paris in the 18th century, and are invited to explore. With the series’ famous climbing/parkouring gameplay, Arno can rapidly climb up practically anything. Control-wise, this is done with the triggers, left stick, and A and B, but there’s little strategy or skill needed here. With no stamina meter or balance mechanics to worry about, you can basically button-mash your way around with the speed, agility, and balance of a superhero. I admire the views from atop of the city’s tallest buildings as much as anyone, but I think this aspect of the game needs to be re-imagined next time, as it is now it just feels uninspired.
While not realistic, the climbing/parkouring stuff is the fastest way to get around, that is, until you unlock some fast travel points. You may find yourself as I did referring to the game’s map regularly, which isn’t a bad thing per se, it’s just got a lot of useful info on it. Story Missions are marked with an exclamation point, shops and “hidden” chests are marked, as are co-op missions and side missions, too. You can track any of these points with the press of a button which in turn adds a marker in the HUD to help you find what you’re looking for efficiently. Be aware that the HUD, by default, can get really cluttered at times — you can customize what elements of the HUD appear in the options. The Eagle Vision, activated by pressing Y, has a brief cooldown timer but it’s extremely helpful for tagging persons and objects of interest. There are several ‘mystery’ scenarios in which Arno is tasked with gathering clues and coming to a conclusion, i.e. accusing someone of murder. Eagle Vision helps you locate all relevant objects readily, leaving you to just analyze the facts.
Combat is significant gameplay element and I thought it was handled well. The parrying system makes for some cool looking animations and the variety of weapons (melee and ranged) and finishing moves that can be unlocked adds a lot of variety. This variety extends to how you want to develop your assassin, from appearance to ‘type’ for co-op missions too, be it more of a support role or a ranged attacker, etc. I liked how the co-op missions were marked in the map along side the story missions, allowing you to mix up your play time between the two modes.
Adding in some co-op play is helping me as I have realized that I am struggling to stay invested in the story and characters, which is something I faced with Black Flag last year, too. The characters are less interesting than the story, but the story isn’t all that captivating either. Arno’s tale of retribution is pretty interesting, even if a little typical, but I never felt connected to him or the others. The historical angle usually doesn’t do much for me, or at least not in most time periods, such as 18th century Europe.
But that’s not to say the effort in making a convincing atmosphere was off (although it seemed to my un-tuned ears that the spoken accents were more British than French), in fact the city of Paris looks pretty great. I’m not sure I have played a game with so many NPCs walking about either, giving Paris a lively feeling, although upon further inspection, things aren’t quite as they seem. The NPCs may look the part, but they are more like empty props than real characters. Most won’t pay any attention to you (unless you start getting violent), but take for example a painter who was working on a portrait of someone posing for him. You can stand, even clip right into these characters and neither reacts as though anything happened. Parkour over their heads and jump down right on top of them, and most won’t react. It’s probably asking too much of current hardware to “get more out of” these NPCs, and if it’s a question of having a greatly reduced number of more realistic NPCs verus what’s offered in Unity (a large amount of “dumb” ones), I would actually take the latter.
And with that, I’ll take to the summary to wrap up…
