Last year Ubisoft launched the twelfth major game on assassins Creed Series, Valhalla. The series has moved forward since the launch of the first game in 2008 and, although the journey has had its good points, there is one thing that the series has been slowly losing: good and consistent writing.
While each individual game may have a perfectly adequate story, we have long since lost the sense of the overarching storyline. And that sucks because the writing of the first game proved to be very promising. In fact, I would say that the writing of the series was not really good or showed a lot of potential since the first game.
Say what you want about the original assassins Creed, but actually tried to deliver a bigger Assassin conflict against Templars – a war between two morally ambiguous sides that actually believed in something. The agonizing speeches of the victims of Altaïr, although they acted in a rather clumsy way, still sound more interesting and speak of a more internal character than anything that came out of Cassandra or Arno’s mouth:
“You would kill us all, for no other reason than what was asked of you … Do you see the irony in all of this? No, it still doesn’t look like it. But you will. “- Talal
“You take the lives of men and women, with the strong conviction that their deaths will improve the fortunes of those left behind. A lesser evil, for a greater good? We are the same. “- Abu’l Nuqoud
“We will see how sweet the fruits of their labor are. You do not free cities as you believe, but you condemn them. And in the end, you can only blame yourself. You, who speak of good intentions. ”- Guilherme de Montferrat
In particular, the long conversations between Desmond and the Templar Warren Vidic in the first assassins Creed, although misdirected, (making the player stand and listen to both is a terrible way to make an exhibition.) at least tried to sell the idea that both sides had ideologies:
Vidic: Your ancestors almost had the right idea, Mr. Miles. If the death of some people – bad people, nothing less – could save the lives of thousands more, well, it seems like a small sacrifice.
Desmond: What do you mean “almost”?
Vidic: They haven’t gone far enough! To use a somewhat tiresome analogy, corruption is no different than cancer. Cut out the tumors, but stop treating the source and, at best, you are saving time. There is no real change without comprehensive systemic intervention.
Desmond: Chemo for the masses.
Vidic: Education. Re-education, to be more precise. But it is not easy and it is not always necessary.
Desmond: Let me guess – you have a better solution. So what is it?
Vidic: That would be revealing.
The post-unity assassins Creed games had their moments, but none came close to saying something so definitive about either side. Instead, they were concerned with showing us literally anything but that.
Part of the problem is that the series has increasingly focused on the Precursor race and its Piece of Eden artifacts. This means that the real conflict that was at the center of the series – the Assassins against the Order of the Templars – was not only not elaborated, but it was not even addressed in some time.
We are in 12 games in the series and they still haven’t told us what the Templars want. Not the historic Templars or the Order of the Ancients, organizations largely composed of villains from Saturday morning cartoons, but the modern Templar Order. What is your goal as an organization? Or by the way, what is the killer’s goal? What they Does or would you like this does not involve cleaning up the Templar group du jour?
When was the last time one of them said the Assassin’s Creed? Or did you examine what it meant? Interpreting the Creed was one of the pillars of the series for the first four Assassins or more, but then they seemed to forget about it after Edward’s pirate adventure.
Perhaps I could offer a small suggestion on how the series could get back on track. Ubisoft showed us a character that could be a perfect introduction to modern Assassins and what they’re doing – a character that doesn’t even appear in assassins Creed.
Inside Watch Dogs: Legion, the backbone of the game is the ability to select any random Londoner and recruit them for your squad. Ubisoft is monetizing this, offering the ability to bring characters from other Ubisoft universes to DedSec via DLC, including the previous one Watch dogs games and the assassins Creed Series. Okay, they can’t bring any of the Assassins you’ve met before, since most of them are historical figures who would be quite visible walking down a modern London street (or at least, I’m assuming that is the internal logic). So, they had to create a new, modern British Assassin for you to play:
Meet Darcy. She is a member of the modern British Assassin Order, and we know nothing about her other than the little that was shown in the Ubisoft pre-release video. But looking at your conceptual art is enough to spark your imagination. She is admittedly an Assassin, stylized in that curious “hackpunk” style typical of Watch dogs, with an absurdly long hidden blade on one side and a … I mean flare? … from the other.
I’m not saying that Ubisoft should do this randomly Watch dogs DLC character a main character in the next assassins Creed games. But she could at least tell us something about modern day Assassins: the weapons they use, how they incorporate social discretion into the crowds, perhaps what role technology plays in their adventures.
Certainly, in the information age, the conflicts between order and freedom that the Assassins and the Templars represent would be more gray and complicated than ever. So exposure us this conflict, Ubisoft. Use Darcy – or anyone, I accept anyone – to tell you and give this series the interesting philosophical advantage it had at the beginning.
Or, you know, we could have another very penetrating episode of Where is Carmen Sandiego? and neglect any kind of meaningful modern narrative to play as Layla again. I know which one I prefer.