TIME EXTEND
Assassin’s Creed
Ubisoft’s overture was one part method acting, one part madness
By Jeremy Peel
Publisher Ubisoft Developer Ubisoft Montreal Format PC, PS3, 360 Release 2007
History records, with a questionable level of accuracy, that Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad hated the water. Poke even one of his toes into the Barada River, and the synchronisation bar that measures your commitment to recreating the events of his life drops straight to zero. The man would stick a blade into a English crusader in public, but a bracing swim in the waterways of Damascus? Far outside the bounds of possibility, academics agree.
It’s fair to assume, then, that Altaïr wouldn’t be fond of a naval metaphor. But 13 games into a cycle of constant iteration, the Assassin’s Creed series is the quintessential Ship of Theseus. Going back now to the 2007 game that started it all, there’s almost no part that hasn’t been replaced in the years since. There’s the occasional mannerism that’s familiar: the rhythmic way the assassin shifts his weight during a climb, and his bird-like bearing on a spire. But even those with an intimate knowledge of Assassin’s Creed’s past decade would find themselves off-balance in Patrice Désilets’ strange first experiment.
This is a supposed stealth game in which there are no tools for distraction; in which silent takedowns are finicky and escalating street fights the norm; in which you thunder into town on horseback then methodically work the alleys for information. It’s contradictory, frustrating, and fails to live up to its central fantasy – but is beguilingly different to the games it birthed.
By his own admission, Désilets has a tendency to reinvent the wheel. In Assassin’s Creed, his first step was to redescribe it. The row of small white rectangles in the top-left corner on the screen may resemble a health bar, but they actually symbolise your tether to Altaïr’s memories. Take too many hits, or dole them out to civilians, and you’ll lose your connection. Not as a punishment, per se, but because that’s not how the man lived. Save some innocents or clamber up a church and suddenly you’re starting to resemble Altaïr as his friends knew him. Success in Assassin’s Creed is an act of roleplay – even if, for the most part, it involves simply staying alive. Or avoiding water.