We’ve reach the city: The site of our first assassination. Without further ado, let us get started.
The core gameplay loop for the original Assassin’s Creed is fairly simple. First, we are assigned a target at the beginning of a chapter. With that target in mind, he investigate their wrong doings both to understand what wrongs they’ve committed and determine our avenue of approach so that we have a clean method of infiltration and escape. Then, after getting permission from the assassin in charge of the district, we perform the deed and move on to our next target.
In essence, it is similar to Hitman in the sense that it is attempting to create the fantasy of being a skilled and practiced killer, planning out and executing an audacious murder in broad daylight before disappearing into the crowds, impossible to trace. And part of that fantasy is, largely, in the planning and preparations that facilitate the mission’s success.
Unfortunately, the investigation missions, similar to the Modern Day aspects of the game, were widely criticized. In this case, the critics had stronger footing since the complaint was that these investigation segments were too repetitive. While I agree with the critique, I disagree with the solution. Rather than try to reiterate on the investigations and make them more mechanically interesting, Ubisoft would instead choose to do away with them completely.
In doing so, they lose a significant driver for that fantasy of planning out the murder to ensure that we can both pull in off and escape with our lives, taking the core concept in an entirely different direction. That said, I can’t complain about this part too much, because evidently there are forces on the design team that agree with me. Recent games like Assassin’s Creed: Mirage have started returning to this style of gameplay and structure, and I think they’re stronger for it, at least in this respect.
It makes me look forward to Shadows, when it comes out later this year.
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