Written by: Discussion
Date posted: May 7, 2023

Hello and welcome! Regular readers will know that the discussion format has been used in a few different incarnations on the site over the years, most commonly to revisit games first covered a long time ago. As it turns out, though, we haven’t actually done a bog-standard discussion review since [checks records] 2016.

For no particular reason, we figured it was time to have another crack at it, and today’s game is Assassin’s Creed, first released on Xbox 360 in 2007 and then on PC (and known as the ‘Director’s Cut’) the following year.

The action is set in the twelfth century, and follows our protagonist, Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad, a member of the Assassin Brotherhood, as he carries out a series of missions across the Holy Land during the Third Crusade.

Unlike some discussions on this site, which are clearly flagged for spoilers, we try not to discuss anything too plot specific in our reviews. We’ve again played it fairly safe in this regard this time around, but some minor details, particularly relating to events at the start of the game, are mentioned below.
 

Eh up, it’s Assassin’s Creed

Rik: So then, Assassin’s Creed! I think the exhaustive selection process was that you suggested a discussion, I put out a couple of possible names, and it was all settled quite quickly. But you had played this one, back in the day, is that right?

Stoo: Yep, I played it about 10-odd years ago. Then I made it about halfway through the second game, and ran out of steam. But I’ve been meaning to give the series another try. (Or at least some of it, there are about 400 of these now.)

Rik: For me, it had become the go-to franchise when naming a modern gaming thing I have no idea about. Although even that attempt at humour is itself now old hat.

Stoo: Right, now we should reference some sort of online shooter.

Rik: I mean, if I was to do a bad impression of a gaming YouTuber I would naturally reach for ‘man with Yorkshire accent introducing an Assassin’s Creed Let’s Play.’ But this first game came out on PC in 2008, and I read a review in PC Zone. So I probably need to get some new material.

Stoo: The first few games seem like viable candidates for us to cover. So I figured we may as well look at them in the right order (for once).

Rik: Indeed!

 

I do have a small monologue prepared

Rik: So before we proceed I guess we should decide on spoilers – I think we can avoid anything too big, but I don’t think the fact that there’s a modern day element can be dodged.

Stoo: Agreed, when it frames all the historical stuff.

Rik: I do remember a contemporary review agonising over this issue, and we do try to avoid spoilers in traditional reviews and discussions. But also, it’s no longer a hot new release, so I think these things can be relaxed slightly.

Stoo: Some shady organisation kidnaps [protagonist] Desmond Miles because they’re interested in his genetic inherited memories of Assassins vs Templars back in medieval times. We can say that much.

Rik: I was hoping you’d have a pithy summary! I think the whole concept of being in the present day, hooked up to a machine [the Animus] and acting out historical adventures, was one of the only things I really knew about going in. Desmond is some kind of surly, white-hoodie-wearing American; Altaïr is his ancestor (and American, too, apparently, despite everyone else speaking with an accent).

Stoo: Altaïr is also surly, and stabs people for a living.

Rik: You can certainly see the family resemblance. I guess it’s all a fairly useful device for getting the new player to understand everything: have a clueless kidnapped guy be put in a machine and have things explained to him along the way.

Stoo: Is he aware of all the Assassin stuff before he’s put in? I don’t recall.

Rik: No, he’s like: I’m a simple bartender, what’s going on… oh please, when is someone going to tell me what on earth is going on etc.

Stoo: I’m not a huge fan of the Desmond parts. I guess they help tie this game into a wider mythology (I do know Desmond comes back in the second game at least). But there is a lot of talking, and slowly walking around a white room.

Rik: Those bits reminded me of the (not very good) Lost game. You can’t do much, but it’s also surprisingly easy to miss stuff.

Stoo: ‘Press button to sit in chair and listen to beardy guy talk for several minutes…’

Rik: “Desmond, we simply don’t have time for this! But if you insist…”

Stoo: “Something something Templars something…”

Rik: “I do have a small monologue prepared!” [unfurls notes]. Aside from the self-regarding beardy guy [Dr. Vidic] there’s his female assistant, Lucy, who is slightly nicer to you. I put a note about her looking like Kristen Bell, but it turns out it is Kristen Bell…

Stoo: I recall her looking very different in AC2, which was briefly confusing.

Rik: Did they change the actor maybe?

Stoo: Think it was her again!

Rik: Ah, ok. I did find myself wondering during these sections whether it was just interactive cut-scenes or there were bits of game I was missing. I don’t think I did all the email hacking you can do.

Stoo: I think I missed any interactive elements this time through. I was mainly just hammering ‘press button to lie down and go back to the fun parts’.

 

Hide on the roof

Rik: Would you say it was a slow starter, even when you get to the Assassin bits?

Stoo: There’s a lot of introduction – that mission with two other Assasins that fails due to Altaïr’s hubris. Then the Templars attacking assassin HQ, before you settle down to the main body of the game.

Rik: Yeah, there are tutorial bits, prologue bits and story bits at the beginning, and you think it’s telling you how to play the game, but you don’t get to do so for a while.

Stoo: Ah yeah, there are some opening moments in the Animus that are just tutorial, you’re not actually in medieval times yet, right?

Rik: Yeah, with the blurry blue background, during which I repeatedly failed to gently push past ladies with pots. A few years ago I would have taken that as a sign the game would be too hard for me and given up.

Stoo: It could have all been condensed a bit: have Altaïr walk around some streets doing some easy tasks before his first mission, maybe. I suppose it was introducing a fairly novel concept – ‘social stealth’, which is different to sneaky-shadows stealth, so it does have to make it clear to players what’s expected of them. Like, guards don’t care if you stroll past them but may get twitchy if you knock over a lady with her pots.

Rik: I think that’s right, but you still sort of have to play the game proper in order to really understand it all, so a lot of what precedes that seems a bit long-winded and redundant.

Stoo: Right. The bulk of the game is doing assassin stuff in bustling city streets without drawing too much attention to yourself. And you have to play for like an hour before you reach any of that.

Rik: I’m looking at my early notes, and I wrote down – ‘Creed = don’t kill innocents, hide in plain sight, never compromise brotherhood.’ It sounded like the basic principles of the game itself, but it mainly serves to set up Altaïr’s early behaviour and disgrace. I wouldn’t say you hide in plain sight so much as hide on the roof. Or in a haystack.

Stoo: It seems to be mostly: guards go to a high alert status if you’re crashing into people or climbing walls, and they go hostile if they see you attack someone. Also, they ignore you completely if you stand in a crowd of scholars in white robes.

Rik: Yes, I actually quite liked the fairly firm rules that are set up. For example, hiding in those little rooftop garden hideaways stretch credulity a bit, but I always felt that I knew how to lose a tail.
 

Take me to the bureau

Rik: Just going back a little, even before we get to all that, there’s a travelling section, which I again found unrepresentative of the rest of the game. I wasted some time buggering about trying to avoid detection while climbing a tower out in the open world.

Stoo: Once you’ve opened up fast travel to all the cities, there’s basically zero point going back to the countryside bit.

Rik: Yeah, horse riding in games isn’t interesting as a mode of transport. (Ditto Gun, which we reviewed recently).

Stoo: You can look for flags (collectable items) but, like the ones in the cities themselves, there’s no actual reward.

Rik: Call me a heretic, but the game would have been no worse for just plopping you straight into the relevant base… ah, what do they call these in the game?

Stoo: Bureau?

Rik: Yeah, just take me to the bureau in each city, and then we can get going.

Stoo: I like a joined-up world, just give me a reason to roam the wilderness collecting tokens. Like a better sword or a new hat or something.

Rik: There’s nothing worth doing elsewhere. And the horse riding is tedious on its own.

Stoo: It’s fun to crash through a bunch of dudes on horseback. But more cumbersome to control. And you can’t take horses into the cities.

Rik: I was sufficiently discombobulated by all the build-up to completely miss all of the optional missions in the first assassination. I didn’t remember anyone pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of doing extra investigations, then I was a bit like, oh wow we’ve actually started now but I’ve already mucked it up. I went for the kill immediately, then tried to go back and do the ones I missed, not quite understanding at that point that they were all linked to the first assassination and hence gone forever.

Stoo: I’m not sure there’s much advantage to doing more investigations than required. A few tidbits of info like ‘he has guards on the roof’ maybe… But there’s no system of rewards or loot to miss out on.

Rik: I was going in with ‘XP rewards for grinding’ in my mind, so made sure to do as many investigations as possible from that point. If I’d realised how much repetition there was, for little reward, I might have done things differently.

Stoo: I tried to do everything for sake of completeness, but started skipping some of those investigation missions when they got tougher. I did all of the ‘rescue a person being roughed up by guards’ just for fun.

Rik: Yeah, same. But I was terrible at some of the investigations, like the pickpocket missions.

Stoo: I fluffed pickpocketing a few times by hitting the wrong button and shoving them to the floor by mistake. What I struggled most with was stealth assassinations where you have to kill like 3 dudes in 3 minutes. If any guards notice, you have to evade them, reset the Social Stealth meter, and start again.

Rik: Yes, again, it was the same for me.

Stoo: I’d spend ages following some guy around, and there were always guards nearby. So then I’d try killing some guards before triggering the mission, to clear a space to work in, but then more would saunter along and get suspicious about the bodies.

Rik: It gets a bit muddy about what the perfect kill is meant to look like. I found it was mostly down to luck when I got away with one of those missions.

 

The fall-breaking properties of haystacks

Rik: Is it controversial to say this game isn’t really about pulling off stealthy assassinations where you get in and out without anyone noticing? All of the big kills [i.e. the final assassination of your target] seem to involve a bit of a dust-up and fleeing from a million guards, no matter how much intelligence you gather.

Stoo: Oh yeah, the big kills are not stealthy at all. It was me vs eighty-seven guards, every time.

Rik: The only times I felt vaguely sneaky was stabbing the odd archer on a rooftop. Also in the street crime missions where you sneak up behind one guard and off him quietly before starting a fight with the rest.

Stoo: Oh haha, I’d charge up and do a running stab on whichever goon looked toughest for an instant kill. Then fight his flunkies.

Rik: I was surprised there’s not more window and door breaking to get into and out of buildings. There was one comical indoor mission where I just kept going round in circles, over tables, on walls, trying to find an exit.

Stoo: Sometimes you have to find a clever way of climbing over a wall I guess. But if you have to sneak into a place, you normally just go blend in with those handy scholars to get past the guards.

Rik: It’s an outdoor game really. Climbing up towers and jumping across rooftops.

Stoo: The parkour stuff is pretty good – and generally the fastest way to get around.

Rik: That’s when the adrenaline gets going – after a big kill, fleeing as fast as you can, keeping moving. That’s the signature moment of AC for me. That and the climbing towers and taking in the sights (which also serves to highlight potential investigation and side mission locations).

Stoo: The tower climbing is memorable, yeah. The game goes quiet if you climb up far enough, the city street sounds replaced by wind. You realise, oh shit, this is actually really high up. (I am bad with heights in real life, it affects me in games too sometimes).

Rik: Yeah me too, on both counts. I’d say the fall-breaking properties of haystacks are grossly overestimated here.

Stoo: I used the rooftops to get around from one map icon to the next, although I tended to try and fight my way out of trouble instead of running. This meant… lots of fighting.

Rik: It almost doesn’t feel natural to be at ground level. I had ‘get noticed = bad’ in my head, but you can duff people up quite easily, it’s not one where you’re easily overpowered.

Stoo: Being noticed is rarely that bad, except for in those certain missions where it means START AGAIN.

Rik: And possibly watch quite boring unskippable cut scenes over again. But yeah, I ended up relaxing into it all, rather than thinking, ‘if I knock this lady’s pots over then I’m dead’.

Stoo: And combat is actually fairly easy, once you get the counter-attack. You can fight goons all day.

 

Klonking people with a sword

Rik: I was going to say that part of me will always be impressed by a game where you approach a city from the outside and then can explore it fully inside. Either approaching on horseback, or even sitting on top of a spire, I always thought, wow that looks good! And we can actually go there and look around. It might be a generational thing, from remembering when a genuinely realistic looking open world was just not possible.

Stoo: The recreation of these medieval cities is certainly impressive, it must have been extensively researched. Winding streets, big landmark buildings, people bustling around, and you can roam it freely or go climb something to enjoy the view.

Rik: Unfortunately, beyond their visuals and general vibe, a lot of what you do is the same in each one.

Stoo: Right, and we’re coming into one of the big criticisms, I think – the same formula repeating for each chapter of the game. Go to some new city section, climb towers, do side missions, do the Big Kill. You do this, what, 8 or 9 times?

Rik: Yeah. Then you almost think, well maybe it was best they didn’t throw me straight in, if it’s like this all the way through. I sort of couldn’t quite believe how repetitive it was. To the extent that some things are exactly the same: not just a similar format or style, but literally the same, right down to stock phrases uttered by different characters.

Stoo: It really needed to either break up that repeating pattern, or be about a third shorter.

Rik: And I understand the PC version had added variety in this regard.

Stoo: Yeah more investigation missions, right? Or more different types of them, I mean.

Rik: Archer Assassination, Escort, Merchant Stand and Rooftop Race are PC exclusive, apparently. Escort is quite good fun, unlike most escort missions in games, where you protect a dozy companion who dies easily. This is just an excuse for some ground level fighting.

Stoo: It’s not too hard to keep the guy alive.

Rik: A bit of variety I guess, by the standards of the game, but it’s still a case of rinse and repeat, until the very end, when there’s quite a bit more open combat.

Stoo: From what I saw of AC2, it doesn’t have quite such a repetitive formula. I didn’t reach the endgame of AC1 this time, but I do recall a lot of fighting.

Rik: Yes, it does involve klonking rather a lot of people over the head with a sword.

 

Trying to be philosophical

Rik: Did you find yourself investing in or following Altaïr’s story much?

Stoo: Somewhat. It’s interesting how he realises his targets thought they were the good guys, bringing peace and order. And he starts questioning himself more.

Rik: I think him becoming less of a dick as things progress was my main takeaway. I have to be honest and say a lot of the rest washed over me.

Stoo: Right. Something something seeing the true nature of reality… nothing is true, everything is permitted… I think it’s trying to be philosophical.

Rik: I think if the tale itself had been a bit more interesting to me then the repetition in the game would have bothered me less. But whether it was the beardy modern doctor or the beardy old assassin, I did zone out at points.

Stoo: Altaïr finishes a mission and goes back to his boss [Al Mualim], who dispenses wisdom. I got the basic idea of Templars wanting to bring order through control and Assassins being more about individual reasoning and freedom. Beyond that, the attempts at deeper meaning kind of got lost in Al Mualim’s monologues.

Rik: I was vaguely aware of Templars appearing at random and being fairly hard to beat, and that this meant something in the wider context, but it wasn’t keeping me glued to my screen. Was there anything else you wanted to mention?

Stoo: I did want to say that the ‘present day’ bits were less frequent than I had remembered, which is good. But I wasn’t fond of how the hi-tech stuff intrudes on the historical sessions. For example instead of health, there’s some nonsense about your memories becoming desynchronised. Plus, when you want to just leave the damn game, you have to quit twice!

Rik: Yes, that’s a pain.

Stoo: Once out of the Animus into the present day, then again to actually exit.

Rik: Did you ever lose your temper with one of those persistent beggars or drunks?

Stoo: PLEASE I’M SO HUNGRY! JUST ONE COIN I BEG OF YOU! Yeah, the game basically makes you hate the poor and needy.

Rik: A drunk threw me into the sea once, which was annoying. Especially as you can’t swim.

Stoo: Right, because you’re carrying three swords and ten throwing knives.

Rik: I never got the hang of those, I ended up just throwing them by accident.

Stoo: Me neither. Also, it took me way too long to realise if you have throwing knives equipped, you use the shorter sword in close combat (which apparently has some pros and cons vs the long blade).

Rik: There’s a knack to the combat, but no great art to it.

Stoo: Block lots, counter-attack… You can get more adventurous if you feel like it. Also throw dudes off rooftops for lolz. I realised after a while combat is rarely difficult, it’s just time consuming, and it might be better to run or hide rather than fighting ANOTHER dozen dudes.

Rik: Especially as there’s no power-up reward…

Stoo: Or loot to gather. I do think the game would have benefitted from resources and equipment.

Rik: Yes. Here you just get new powers and weapons at fixed points in the game. Meanwhile, I don’t care about collecting flags for the sake of collecting flags.

Stoo: Letting you choose weapons, or buy stuff, would add variety and give you more of a reason to hunt the maps for secrets. (Again, I recall AC2 introduces some of this).

Rik: I don’t want to say it feels rushed, but it definitely seems quite hollow at points. It’s like they hoped you’d be impressed enough by the cool bits to not notice.

Stoo: There’s the framework of a great game here. But it needed more content beyond that same repeating formula.

 

Summing-up territory

Rik: Are we heading into summing-up territory?

Stoo: I reckon so.

Rik: What say you?

Stoo: Decent game, not quite excellent. Parkouring around the cities of the Holy Land is a highlight, the action is quite slick, but the stealth stuff… maybe just amounts to ‘don’t act like a tit in front of guards’ a lot of the time.

Rik: I was glad to have played it, and found it quite stylish and impressive in parts. The rooftop chases are definitely a highlight. But I was probably more disappointed in it, the longer it went on.

Stoo: Yes, after a while you realise it has nothing more to offer.

Rik: The stealth wasn’t as clever as I thought it might be, although ironically that actually helped me get to grips with it all.

Stoo: If not for the purposes of this site, I’m not sure I’d ever have wanted a second run through.

Rik: At the moment, I’m not massively intrigued by the prospect of playing another AC game, but that could change in time. Are you going to go back to the sequel?

Stoo: I reckon so, it’s kind of unfinished business for me. Doubt I’ll catch up on the rest (pirates, Victorian London, Vikings, 1970s Swindon).

Rik: What about a score for this one?

Stoo: 7/10?

Rik: I was between a 6 and a 7. But let’s be generous.