Assassin’s Creed has grown into quite the franchise. What began as an exercise in open-world gameplay mixed with intriguing storytelling quickly became a massive yearly series. Ubisoft did a great job improving the series with each new game, while further expanding on the mythology of the centuries-long war between the Assassin Brotherhood and the Templar Order. Last year’s Revelations was met with lukewarm reception, with few big changes to the formula, a tower-defense minigame that was more tedious than fun, and an aging combat system. With Assassin’s Creed III, expectations were high. The American Revolution, and the addition of a brand new protagonist with Native-American ties, promised an exciting conclusion to Desmond Mile’s story arc in the present day.
Yet an exciting conclusion is what the game failed to deliver on. Numerous bugs, bland character development, and an anticlimactic conclusion turned what should have been a satisfying conclusion to the Desmond Miles arc and instead left me wanting much more.
A young Connor comes face-to-face with Charles Lee.
Assassin’s Creed III puts you in the shoes of a young man named Ratonhnhaké:ton, who later adopts the name Connor. Being half-Mohawk and half-British gives his character a fresh and unique perspective on the American Revolution. A stoic but fierce warrior, you follow Connor from his childhood growing up in the small Kanien’kehá:ka village to adulthood. An attack on his village puts him on a quest for vengeance for Charles Lee, a general in the Continental Army and Templar, and leads to his eventual upbringing and induction into the Assassin Order. Along the way, he crosses paths with many other historical figures from the period, most notably Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, and George Washington. His quest to protect his people eventually forces him to get involved in the American Revolution, and he plays a key role in famous historical events such as the Boston Tea Party and the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Connor was into extreme rock-climbing before it was cool.
The open-world gameplay of previous entries has been preserved, with notable improvements. Fast travel can now be accessed directly from the map, making it incredibly easy to travel long distances in a short amount of time. It’s an extremely useful feature, given the amount of distance between any two places. Additional fast travel destinations can be unlocked by exploring the Underground sections of each city. These portions replace the hidden platforming stages of previous games, although it has less platforming sections and involves searching for the numerous exits. While not as exciting, they are still an interesting distraction and doesn’t involve spending large amounts of money to open up shortcuts.
You can now hunt animals in the Frontier.
The Frontier adds a new gameplay element into the series: hunting. Animals such as beavers, bears, foxes, cougars, and elk can be hunted at any time, and appear in various areas throughout the enormous Frontier. New tools such as bait and snares provide the player with options with how to capture each animal. Depending on the method with which you kill an animal, the quality and therefore value of their pelts can either increase or decrease. For example, killing a deer with your bow and arrow is the easiest way to hunt them, but the arrow would damage the pelt too much. Killing the deer with your hidden blade however, while much more challenging, is cleaner and preserves the pelt’s quality. The pelts can then be loaded up from your Homestead and sold to stores, which will net you a neat profit. It’s a fun distracting from hunting assassination targets, and is a well-thought out feature.
Probably the best side quests are the privateer missions, which have you controlling Connor’s ship the Aquila in navel warfare. Missions include various scenarios, from defending other ships from the British Royal Navy, to blasting a Fort with your cannons. Upgrades are also available to your ship, such as a reinforced hull and stronger cannons, to make the missions more exciting. In addition to these naval missions, there is a very fun side quest involving William Kidd’s treasure. These missions have much more variety, from infiltrating a British fort to exploring a sunken ship, and are a rewarding distraction.
Getting 100% synchronization is also easier thanks to a new checkpoint section. In previous games, failing a single optional objective forced you to replay the entire memory again and get everything perfect. Thankfully, this game now includes checkpoints throughout each memory, meaning if you screw up completing an optional objective, you can just revert to the last save and save yourself the hassle of starting all over again. Replacing the Villa from previous games is the Homestead, which will become your primary source of income. People living on the land can craft goods that you can sell off to stores in other cities. The economic system implemented is impressive and surprisingly in-depth, though admittedly, I found little use for it at the later stages of the game. Optional side quests also allow you to level up each settler, increasing the number of items they can craft.
Here comes the BOOM.
Combat has also received a new overhaul since the last game. Previous games ran into the problem of fights being too easy; all you had to do was hold the right trigger, spam the counter button, and lock onto the next target. Wash, rinse, and repeat. In Assassin’s Creed III, counters are now timed-presses that slow the action down and allow you four options on how to continue: push, break defense, counter-kill, or special counter-kill using whatever projectile weapon you have currently equipped. Connor’s dual-wielding fighting style allows for multiple kills and different weapons combinations.
So what’s keeping me from flat-out declaring this game as the best in the series?
One of the biggest complaints about the game is how buggy it is. A lot of these glitches are minor and don’t actually affect gameplay, but they are noticeable enough to distract from the experience. Transitions between sequences and cutscenes are sometimes awkward and abrupt, with audio suddenly cutting-off or music continuing into loading screens. Graphics sometimes “pop” or create unrealistic movements, with characters arching their necks far past their natural pivot or things such as weapons and bodies floating in mid-air. During my playthrough, Connor shaves the sides of his head near the end of the game. Immediately after the cutscene however, the game glitched and his character model retained his previous hairstyle. It’s a minor graphical hiccup, but it’s one of many signs that the game lacks a technical polish.
Controlling Connor can be either a joy or a pain. For the most part he controls the way you want him to. As soon as he starts free-running however, things get difficult. Awkward controls have him running or jumping off in the wrong direction, and often while free-running, he’ll unintentionally run up buildings or trees. Riding on horseback is a joke. The horse is just barely faster than running on foot, but the horse will constantly fight for your control. Horses seem to be afraid of jumping off of 3-foot high cliffs, and if they hit a rock while galloping, they just start spazzing out or running in another direction. Fast-travel is definitely the way to go in this game.
Hold still.
Combat, while somewhat deeper than previous games, still feels shallow. Once you get used to the new mechanics, it becomes too easy to just counter-kill every enemy on screen. Introducing guns into the mix sounds like the logical step forward, but you’re forced to rely on lock-on targeting, and trying to manually aim is awkward and slow. The weapons wheel now takes you into a separate menu, which for me slowed down the action too much as I tried to find each weapon or tool I wanted. It slows the pace down, especially when you’re in the middle of a fight and need to get out your bow. Recruiting new Assassins is back, and this time, mapped onto the left bumper, making it easy to keep track of your recruits. Each recruit now has a specific skill-set, from “bodyguard” to “sharpshooter.” It brings much more variety than simple nameless Assassins that you call on to simply kill your target.
The story of Assassin’s Creed has always been the biggest source of enjoyment for me. Watching real-life historical events twisted to fit into the Assassin’s Creed lore is tremendously fun to watch. The writing is superb and well-researched, considering the amount of historical data that is in the game. What I love about the story this time around is that it definitely blurs the lines of good and evil much more than its predecessors. Revolutionary heroes, and indeed the entire Revolution itself, is presented w
ith no nationalistic slant, and offers a very grey look at our country’s history without making it seem totally anti-American. Without all the glam and glorification of the American Revolution, we are offered a rare glimpse at the hypocrisies and questionable choices of our Founding Fathers. This carries into the portrayal of the Assassins and the Templars, who up until this point were clearly defined as good and evil respectively. Here the Assassins are shown to be hypocrites by murdering targets, and the Templ
ars are shown to genuinely want to save the world through their rule. It even hints at the possibility of Assassins and Templars working together, though their differing ideas on freedom makes any truce short-lived. The portrayal of Native Americans is done with respect, with Ubisoft hiring consultants and native speakers to get the language and culture just right. It’s a testament to how well Ubisoft treats its history.
“You should see my other horse.”‘
Connor provides an interesting take of the American Revolution as a conflicted man concerned with the safety and survival of his people as foreigners invade and pillage their land. I felt very sympathetic to his plight and his dedication to his people. His character is no Ezio, and lacks a certain charm in his bland portrayal. In fact, he almost comes across as whiny, and spent a lot of time complaining about the people he frequently helps out. Yet I admire his selfless sacrifices in his hopeless quest to preserve his people. Other than Connor, some supporting characters lack development, especially Charles Lee. The entirety of Connor’s journey centers on his determination to kill Charles Lee. Rather than a big climactic showdown, *SPOILER ALERT* we’re given a frustrating chase through the Boston docks and ends with out the player engaging him in combat at all. A quick cutscene later shows that Lee flees into a tavern, where Connor tracks him down and finally ends his life. Aside from the disappointment in not being able to control the assassination at all, the biggest question is WHY Lee would flee into a bar, bleeding profusely and being pursued by an Assassin. *END SPOILER* It’s such a jarring moment that throws out everything up until that point straight out the window.
The most anticipated event of all is the conclusion of Desmond’s story. Picking up immediately after Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Desmond and his team arrive at the Grand Temple somewhere in New York, a First Civilization site that supposedly holds the key to saving the world. With the clock ticking until December 21st, 2012 and Abstergo lurking around every corner, the modern-day Assassins must find a way to activate whatever is being kept inside the Temple. The modern-day sections tease at the possibility of a full-fledged game taking place in contemporary times, yet these ideas are never fully realized. Significant characters appear in these sections, such as the return of Warren Vidic and the long-awaited appearance of Daniel Cross, a familiar name to those who read the comics.
Who ate the last Snack Pack?
What struck me as the most disappointing was the ending. Right from the first game, it was set up that a massive event was going to take place on December 21st, and that Desmond was the only one who could prevent it. It was hinted multiple times in each game that Desmond was the key to the whole thing. Both Ezio and Connor served as conduits through which the First Civilization could communicate to him and offer him cryptic hints. Everything was in place for what should have been a game-changing climax. Yet somehow, it managed to fail on many levels. The biggest twist that *SPOILER ALERT* Minerva was manipulating events in history over centuries so that she could return and rule over humanity *END SPOILER* completely changes everything established up until that point about the First Civilization and the upcoming disaster. It’s such a massive curveball that it had me scratching my head right up into the credits. What added to further disappointment was *SPOILERS* Desmond’s fate and the halting of the solar flare that should’ve killed off everyone. Desmond ends up being a pawn in Minerva’s schemes, using the coming danger to force him into bringing her back to life. Desmond’s sacrifice gives way to an extremely quick cutscene explaining that the Earth survived, robbing the viewer of an emotional catharsis after 5 games of anticipating a great disaster and seeing Desmond as the hero he was meant to be. *END SPOILER* While this leaves the future of the franchise open, it leaves many more questions. *SPOILER* How was the solar flare stopped? Is Desmond really dead? What will happen to Rebecca, Shaun, and William now that he’s gone? And what exactly is Minerva going to do now that she has returned? *END SPOILER* Such an anti-climax left a bad taste in my mouth.
I want to love Assassin’s Creed III, I really do. The naval missions are so much fun that it could be considered a separate game in its own right. The mission variety and open-world gameplay provides challenging missions and invites exploration for hidden collectibles. And of course, the story is well-researched and so much fun to experience. Yet, I can’t ignore the numerous bugs in the game that after three patches are still not completely fixed. It’s as if Ubisoft shipped an incomplete game before allowing time for all the kinks to be worked out. In addition, the ending was so unsatisfying to me, especially after everything hinted at in previous games. Assassin’s Creed III is the most divisive in the franchise both in gameplay and story. While there is potential for future games to expand on the events of this game, Ubisoft failed to deliver on what could have been a satisfying conclusion to one of the most ambitious stories in gaming history.
Daniel’s score: 7.5/10
What does the future hold?
*Note: I was unable to properly cover Multiplayer to include in this review. The Multiplayer mode from Brotherhood and Revelations returns in Assassin’s Creed III with new modes and more perks than before. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re getting sick of FPS matches.
Mahou Tofu 