Since 2007 , The Assassin’s Creed franchise has spawned six main installments, three portable spin-offs, six supplementary mobile games, a wealth of graphic novel accompaniments, and even three short films. Ubisoft have made a superb franchise only to be given a brilliant revival in Black Flag.
So we’ve compiled 3 Awesome Moments That Defined Assassin’s Creed which will help you decode why it’s become one of the most successful video game franchises of the current generation. Please feel free to jump in with your comments on all aspects of the series.
3. Your First Flawless Assassination
I’ll take a wild stab in the dark (with a pun fully intended) and assume that most people ended up getting spotted at the last minute, or otherwise fumbled their approach to kill in the first few games. This was mainly due to a lack of visual systems accurately telling you where you were in relation to the enemy, as well as animations that favoured the more open-world aspects of the game as oppose to the rarer small corridors or indoor markets.
However speaking of market stalls, one of the first assassinations the game has you do is approach a man who is milling around amongst a swarm of innocent people. Like a hooded Agent 47, you make a beeline straight through the crowd, and using the hidden-blade casually gave him a cheeky one in the kidneys, before disappearing into the furore of gasps and swarming attention the crowd exhibit upon the discovery of your deed.
Moments like this were sublimely iconic, and although Ubisoft’s trailers for the games leaned more heavily on taking your enemies on head-first, those of us with a penchant for some ultra-slick ninja-embodiment always at least tried the silent approach first.
2. That First Viewpoint Synchronisation
For many the first Assassin’s Creed was a system-seller, being that a combination of exotic locales, rooftop free-running and hidden-bladed assassinations was all too much to pass up.
Some still regard the first AC as something of a misstep due to its reliance on repetitive build-ups to the main missions, however what completely sold me on the franchise from the off, was the gorgeous vistas you get to inhabit. ‘Synchronisation’ is the gameplay element of darting up the side of the highest building in a given area, prodding a corresponding button, and having the camera whoosh away out and around as you take in the phenomenal amount of man-hours that must have produced such an insanely detailed cityscape.
Sitting there comfortably as you breathe in the ancient world(s), a sudden thought of “but how do I get down!?” sinks in, just as the game prompts you dive into a tiny bale of hay that was some 250ft below. Cue the introduction of the now infamous eagle-scream sound-effect as you deftly dove down, Jesus Christ-posing as you went, into the all-catching safety of the hay, or even just a pile of grass. You were after all, in your mind at least, Lord of The Skies at this point.
1. Calling In Your Assassin Reinforcements
Brotherhood remains one of the strongest, most easily-revisit-able entries to the series. Taking the solid locales and advanced mechanics of Assassin’s Creed II, what was layered on top were more brilliantly fun missions for a game engine that was in its prime, and an abundance of infectious remarks from fan-favourite Ezio Auditore de Firenze.
However the biggest addition was that of a ‘Contracts’ mode that put into play the idea that you were actually building the Assassin Order you’d heard so much about in the present day. Sending assassins off on various errands and separate missions in a managerial-style was a slick way of advancing the influence of the player in the world around them, without forcing you to play through a load of what would surely have been recycled environments, somewhat akin to the moon bases within the inaugural Mass Effect.
The biggest benefit of all of this behind-the-scenes-tinkery was that in battle you now had a button specifically for calling your reinforcements in. Queue many instances of being The Boss-man, nonchalantly strolling through a compound as guards around you are being roundly ventilated. As well as this, if you needed a target taken care of from a distance, a quick tap of the button would yield the iconic Assassin’s Creed eagle-cry, and one of your guys would drop in out of nowhere to take them out. Amazingly fun stuff.
