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.

In the midst of the Third Crusade, we’ve been stripped of our rank and made novice once more. In the modern world, we’ve been kidnapped by an evil corporation who wants to use us for their own nefarious ends.

It’s not looking great, but we’ve been through worse.

In developer interviews, the developers at IO Interactive have said before the reason Agent 47 was given a barcode tattoo was so that the player had a way of determining which character on screen was the player character even when disguised. A core mechanic to the franchise is dressing up in different outfits, so the protagonist’s character design had to accommodate that.

And I use this example to explain why I’m so fond of Altair’s design in the original Assassin’s Creed. Like Agent 47, he needs to have an appearance that stands out from the crowd he is canonically blending into for the sake of the player. The combination of white robes, red sash, and visible armaments make it so that player always knows which character on screen is their avatar. As the franchise progress, this aspect of character design has held true. No matter which Assassin’s Creed one plays, the main character is always immediately recognizable by the outfit and silhouette.

What is still important is about Altair’s design is the often overlooked practical in-universe purpose for it. The white robes are designed to be almost identical to the robes worn by scholars across the city. Not only does this allow Altair to pass himself off as a scholar to avoid suspicion from guards, but it allows him to blend in with groups of scholars to bypass security discreetly. It’s a queue that I wish other assassins in later games took for their own designs: Outfits that stand out while still feeling as though they had practical purpose for the assassin wear them.

It makes for strong characterization.

So we made a few mistakes and… blatantly disregarded the core tenants of the very Creed that we swore to upheld. It happens, and certainly nothing bad can happen as a result, right?

Right!?

It’s no secret that the “modern day” elements of Assassin’s Creed were heavily criticized at the time of release. The common refrain was that players wanted to be the cool guy assassin from the third crusade, and not some whiny bartender from New York.

I’m not about to say that Desmond and that part of the franchise are some of the aspects of it. Personally, I think the modern day setting is “fine”: Serviceable, but nothing to write home about. However, regardless of how you may feel about it, it is a necessary component to the franchise. At the very least, even Ubisoft appears to understand this, for even now they make sure to tie each game to their long-running meta narrative in some way. However, such little time is giving to this aspect of the world and the overarching plots within it that it almost feels like the development teams are embarrassed that the have to include them.

As much as I enjoy the Ezio trilogy and much of what follows it, I look back on this original Assassin’s Creed game, often thinking that it was a mistake to capitulate to the naysayers who railed against the meta-narrative that frames the franchise. I confess to some degree of hubris as I write that, since clearly history has vindicated Ubisoft’s decisions when crafting the blueprint for the franchise going forward, yet I can’t help myself. I can’t help but wonder what might have happened if instead of trying to jettison the modern day setting, they refined it, taking feedback while staying true to the vision that I suspect was originally there. (And I could very well be wrong about that.)

With regards to this original game, that is a theme the plays out repeatedly in my thoughts on it.

Now that we’ve spent so much time solving murders, we get to start causing them. That’s right. It’s time to go back to the first game, released in 2007, in one of Ubisoft’s longest running franchises: Assassin’s Creed.

While setting up to stream Assassin’s Creed, I was actually surprised at how difficult it was to access it. Somehow, it holds the distinction of being the only game in the franchise that was never ported to, released on, or remastered for modern day consoles like the PS4 or PS5. That meant that if I wanted to play on console, using my capture card (which would be ideal for me), then I would have to dust off my PS3, unhook the old PS VR setup on it, and hook up my capture card. Not impossible, but more trouble than I wanted to go through.

That’s when I remembered that I had, at some point through an Twitch Prime giveaway or some other such deal, acquired a copy of the game through GOG. I remembered the horror stories of Ubisoft games from back in that era, and the performance issues resulting in the horrendous DRM attached to them. Since GOG is renowned for being a DRM-free platform, I figured this would be my best shot at avoiding those and similar issues.

Unfortunately, I was incorrect. Even though I was running a game from 2007 on my modern PC with an NVIDIA GeForce 3080 inside of it, I was experiencing unbearable freezing. It only took a few minutes of playing the game to make itself known. Thus, I had to do a bit of independent research to uncover what might be causing it.

Lo and behold, the solution was fortunately fairly easy to find since it’s a common issue with the PC port. Even the “DRM free” GOG version calls out to a server that has, in the years since, been taking offline. Several users recommended disabling my internet connection while playing, a fix that is not viable when my intent is to stream the game on Twitch. Thankfully, after still more digging, I found a solution on YouTube, which recommended making a change to configurations on my computer.

With my issues resolved, and a renewed disdain for Ubisoft and its business practices in my heart, I was finally ready to stream Assassin’s Creed. So here we are!

We’ve done it. We’ve stalled long enough for Franziska von Karma to storm into court with the evidence we need. Now we have everything we need to achieve our Turnabout.

And that’s all she wrote. I won’t lie, as much as I enjoy these games, I find myself mildly exhausted after playing them for so long on stream. We will eventually to Trials and Tribulations, but I need a break. So instead, in celebration of one of the newest sets in Magic: The Gathering, we’re going to play the original Assassin’s Creed.

From solving murders to causing them we go!

It’s a tough call. We don’t know whether to plead Guilty or Not Guilty, but we need to make a decision one way or the other. Too much is at stake for us to say “Farewell, My Turnabout”.

I like how we have to walk such a razor thing tight rope between stalling so that we can buy time, pumping De Killer for information so that Edgeworth can use it to convict, and making sure to do it without tipping him that we’re doing either one. It makes for a satisfying plot beat and climatic witness in the game’s finale.

Which, speaking of, is coming up next time. At last, we’re at the end of Justice for All.

If we win, Adrian Andrews will be put to death for a crime she didn’t commit. If we lose, Maya will be assassinated by De Killer.

It’s looking like a lose-lose situation, but is there still time for a Turnabout!

Continuing the tradition of wildly implausible witnesses, starting with the parrot from the first game, we are now taking witness statements and testimony from the actual murderer who committed the crimes. Sure, he’s not the one who planned it all out, but he’s still a professional assassin.

And in a delightful twist, even though his testimony favors our case, we still need to break his statements to try to figure out if there’s a workable plan from what we’ve gathered. If we can’t, we may just need to decide which scenario person we want to see suffer for Matt Engarde.

Let’s just hope it won’t come down to that.

After bring so rudely interrupted by my computer crashing in the middle of our recording, we are back with the final trial of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice for All.

Normally, this would be where I comment on how all of the threads of the case are starting to come together for the big finale where we solve everything, but this time it’s different. We already know everything, including who the culprit is along with how and why he did it. Those threads have already been resolved.

However, there’s still a tension in the air. I don’t think anyone playing this is wondering whether or not Phoenix Wright will find a way to both defeat Matt Engarde and save Maya at the same time. This is exactly the kind of game where everything works out in the end. Instead, the tension comes from figuring out how we’ll thread the needle to get to that point.

And the game is, right now, doing a great job in establishing that tension of we can work through it later.

Welp. It looks like our guilty client was caught paying off the assassin who performed the hit. How on Earth are we going to argue our way out of this?

Truthfully, we weren’t going to finish anyway so I can’t be too upset, but it is vexing that my computer completely crashed and hard reset in the middle of the recording.

Oh well. Next time, we’re actually going to finish Justice For All.

After a brief interlude with Adrian Andrews to hear her part of the story, we’ll finally be ready to face Edgeworth in the final trial.

I didn’t consider this when I first recorded the episode, but one of the more curious aspects of this case is the way that it inverts the typical Prosecutor/Defense relationship in the Ace Attorney games.

Normally, it’s the Prosecution that is going everything it can to secure a guilty verdict, pulling any dirty trick and manipulating facts and testimony to better suit their story. Old Edgeworth and Franziska do it all the time, because they’re convinced that it’s the only way to win, and that winning is everything. Which is why, as the Defense, it is usually up to us to break through their tricks in order to expose the truth of the case.

However, this time the opposite is true. Edgeworth is confident in his prosecution not because he’s resorting to cheap tactics and fabrications. This time it’s the opposite: He knows he’s correct, and can simply rely on the facts and evidence as presented to make the case. With the truth on his side, victory is almost assured.

Except, with Maya’s life on the line, we can’t afford to let that happen. Which means that we are the ones resorting to lies and dirty tricks to prolong the trial as much as we can. Ace Attorney doesn’t play this card too often, but when it does it works. The mechanics don’t change, yet in this new context they take on a whole different texture and flavor that adds to the work overall.

It’s a large reason why this case is so well remembered.