Overview

A game that has traversed the entire world to establish its towering magnificent presence to gamers and non-gamers alike is the Assassin’s Creed series. With its twelfth installment releasing soon, it is interesting to note how the game has evolved and adapted in the last decade to keep the players hooked throughout. Being a perfect amalgamation of history, fantasy, mythology and science-fiction, the game has entranced the users by its realistically etched complicated world.

The incredibly complex story that grips the player since the beginning, initially revolves around the protagonist Desmond Miles. He is kidnapped by an organisation called Abstergo who make him access the memories of his ancestor, Altair through a machine called the Animus.  Altair belonged to a cult called Assassin’s Brotherhood who were at war with another organisation called the Templars. The aim behind accessing the repressed memories was to procure an ancient relic which Abstergo required for their own ulterior motives. Rummaging through the enigmatic past of different people to finally get a hold of the relic, later called, the Apple of Eden, is essentially what drives the narrative forward.

Game Evolution

The first game released in 2007 follows the story of Desmond Miles as he navigated the Holy Land in 1191 AD.  It was famously renowned for the stealth mode that it provided. The mode had different abilities to blend in with the crowd or wander through the city from high vantage points. Though the game laid the foundation for an upcoming adventure gushing with wonder, it had some fundamental flaws. One of them was the way the gameplay was quite repetitive, with the exception of the final battle.

Assassin’s Creed 2 proved to be a complete game changer. Set in the Renaissance era, the character being played was Ezio and the story picked up from where the first part ended. A major breakthrough came in the form of a massive improvement in the physics engine of the game. It allowed the user to experience exciting movements with the physical body of the character with appropriate physics applied. A significant leap also came with the introduction of the concept of Parkour. The phenomenon of Parkour revolves around moving from one point to another in the most creative way possible via negotiating obstacles by running, climbing and jumping. Assassin’s Creed 2 was one of the first games to utilise and fully explore the possibilities of Parkour, adding onto the thrill of the gameplay.

The ability of the second instalment to completely entrap the viewer in its world was mainly possible due to the incredible graphics that it employed.  While roaming through the cities of Rome, Italy, Florence or Vatican, the abundance of details made the world deceptively realistic to drown oneself in. Furthermore, as the game has progressed, the graphics have improved with each instalment.

The story of Ezio was a huge success enabling the conception of the next two games, namely Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and Revelation which followed the story of this character. The two major developments came in the form of introduction of the multiplayer game mode and a minigame dubbed Den defense. While the multiplayer mode was a success, Den defense which involved Ezio defending against the waves of Templars wasn’t received as well.

The final instalment to conclude the parallel story of Desmond Miles was Assassin’s Creed 3. Though the game wonderfully flourished in terms of the plot of the story, it lacked in some other avenues. With a cumbersome learning curve of nearly 7 to 8 hours, it brought a major change in traversing the environments as it allowed one to explore vegetation, architecture and even water. Philippe Bergeron, the mission director of the game says, “We added trees [into cities] to be able to bridge the gap between architecture, vegetation, and more architecture,” he explains. “These ingredients helped us create a slightly more organic looking city, and that paved the way for games that came after.” While the inclusion of a variety of terrains made the experience more interesting, it also sprouted a certain disconnect with the story that was progressing.

The next instalment, amongst one of the most successful ones, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag was able to coalesce the disconnected elements to conceive a more coherent gameplay. “I remember one of the first questions the team asked me was ‘How do we mix Assassin's Creed fantasy and pirate fantasy?’” Jean Guesdon, the Creative Director at Ubisoft Montreal recalls. “And to me, the answer was we needed to come up with one coherent and unified game. I didn't want to have an Assassin's Creed game on the ground and a pirate game at sea.” Vividly known for its naval battles sprinkled with turbulent storms and ships, the game truly opened up a new terrain beautifully.

Since the story of Desmond Miles had ended in Assassin’s creed 3, the subsequent narrative of the game greatly dwindled. The makers did include another layer of complexity by infusing the player as a part of the narrative by eliminating a separate character to use the Animus to access the memories. However, the plot still could not match up to what the makers had fashioned earlier. Hence, in the successive games, what kept the players hooked was mainly the experience of discovering a massively believable world in different eras.

The subsequent games also utilised the idea of an ‘Open World’, similar to other games such as GTA. In this concept, apart from the main objectives of the game, there is immense freedom given to the player to explore different territories dispersed with collectibles and objects.

Another major revision occurred in Assassin’s Creed Origins when the game was entirely redesigned in terms of combat, equipment, progression and what not. Origins and its successor Odyssey required long hours of gameplay from the user and hence, the addition of role-playing elements and other changes were needed. “I feel that [in previous games] we were focusing a lot on the minute to minute,” Julien Laferrière, a producer at Ubisoft Montreal says. “Okay, I've got beautiful, fluid animations, when I plunge my hidden blade in an enemy, it's really satisfying, and stuff. But I feel like Origins brought a very satisfying hour to hour gameplay. We reward the choices of the player, but from a gameplay perspective, not only from a tactical point of view, but really in terms of the time investment that the player is making into the game. You have a long term plan, you have a long term strategy for your character based on the gameplay style that you like, and the game really rewards you for it.”

The upcoming instalment, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is geared to provide the players with an entirely novel and refreshing experience. With another territorial addition in the form of the polar regions, it is set to include a non-linear narrative to keep the players glued to their controllers.

Dissecting the game

The majestic saga of Assassin’s Creed is baffling yet intriguing. Dissecting the dynamics of the game to understand some of its key points can help one gauge the reasons behind its raging popularity.

Firstly, the kind of pattern of each successive game building on to the narrative already laid earlier has been followed nearly throughout the series. This accumulation of parallel storylines has gradually made the entire plot extremely rich and intriguing. What sets it apart is the way disparate elements of the story are connected and those connections unravel as the game progresses. Though this can make the story unfathomably complex, it has been carefully crafted in such a way that the user doesn’t feel overwhelmed. Employing tools of effective storytelling such as simplifying the story, feeding the user bits of information and so forth helps the makers achieve this. A similar kind of method has also been applied in the popular television series: Game of Thrones.

Another interesting aspect about the series is how a plethora of real world events have been integrated in the plot, mostly with a twist. Some instances are how the machine Animus uses a person’s DNA to access the memories of their ancestors. This fantastical idea is based out of reality as a person’s DNA actually contains traces of memories from their descendants. Another example is how the cult of Templars is actually based on a real organisation called Knight Templars which existed. Using different events from History while modifying them gives the story a connect to the real world, allowing it to not completely simmer away in a fantasy.

Though the series has been highly praised and acclaimed, it has certain problematic features, especially for children or teens who might end up playing it. The idea of living the life of an Assassin is highly enticing yet morally convoluted. While the game justifies the actions of the Assassins around the idea of ‘killing some to save thousands’, the actual intricacies of assassination and its moral implications are highly debatable. Furthermore, to an impressionable young generation, the influence of such games, especially in shaping their ideologies can be catastrophic. The addictive nature of the gameplay, cleverly designed to engross the player certainly doesn’t help. But, perhaps, one of its major cons also prove to be its greatest strength. The enigma behind assassins, murders and all things gory is unsnarled as the player gets teleported to different eras. Jean Guesdon says, “This is why Assassin's Creed is so beautiful to me. It's a universe that can morph; assassins never were the exact same through the time periods. And so we have ways to keep creative, to keep the values - the more important iconic elements - while actually assessing, accepting, and embracing the specificities of each time period.”