What I hate about Assassin's Creed.

The sad thing is, I really wanted to like Assassin's Creed. I watched all the dev diaries for the original and dreamed of owning a copy (my parents were rating-nazis) and being a medieval-era assassin badass. That is, until I heard the plot and concept which is, of course, bat-shit crazy. The genre can be described as sci-fi/historical fiction, and should therefore be based in reality, except there isn't.

I originally believed it to be pure history based on the pride Ubisoft took in it's period-accuracy. But, in point of fact, the real main character is modern day Desmond Miles who is descended from the characters Altair and Ezio. And he magically lives their lives through a machine called an animus which somehow reads his family history inside his own DNA. Of course, anyone with a teaspoon of knowledge about DNA will know that this is total bullshit. DNA is an owner's manual for your body, not a written family history. Since AC does not take place in a fantasy setting, this should not be possible.

Besides, even if it was possible, if it's a memory of a real person, why is it in third-person and open-world? a person's memory is only the extent of the record of his senses and experiences, giving the player the ability to do whatever they want and the ability to see behind the character shatters this illusion.

Besides canonical issues, I also have a problem with the gameplay. As a long-time Prince of Persia fan I expected something more from Ubisoft than what AC has. On the PC version of AC2, all I need do is hold down the spacebar and the right mouse button and Ezio will do the rest for me. on the first platforming section I had trouble partly because of the bullshit instructions they give you, but mostly because I expected it to be harder. I expected to sway on the bar like I learned to do in Prince of Persia, instead I just held two buttons and the rest is done for me.

I had high hopes for Assassin's Creed but instead Ubisoft has dissapointed me with a game that makes no sense at all. What makes less sense is how popular this franchise is. I don't get it.

Tags: Assassin's Creed 2, Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

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Matt Polen

August 12, 2011

I'm going to take issue with your first point. While you could definitely classify the Assassin's Creed series as science fiction/historical fiction, the fact that a work fits conveniently into a genre does not by any means force it to adhere strictly to all of that genre's conventions. To address your criticism of the "science" that the story is based on, I'd like to point out that there are two types of science fiction. There is hard science fiction, which focuses on scientific accuracy, and soft science fiction, which doesn't. Since, as you pointed out, the animus is an unrealistic piece of technology, AC would be classified as soft science fiction. However, that doesn't necessarily make it bad - scientific accuracy obviously wasn't something the developers strived for, so we shouldn't include that as a criteria when we judge quality.

To respond to your points about historical accuracy, I would say simply this: as far as we know, there wasn't a real Assassin's Guild outside of the small one during the crusades. So if the developers decided to go with complete historical accuracy, there really wouldn't be much of a game or story, would there? But they do go to great lengths to accurately recreate landmarks and works of art from those periods and, whenever possible, to use real-life people as a basis for characters.

Regarding your point about giving the player the ability to interact with their environment, even though it is a "memory" with fixed events, I will respond with my understanding of the in-universe continuity. The people behind the animus system found that simply forcing these people into their VR system and combing through their memories was met with resistance and did not achieve their ends. The subjects became more cooperative and the process went along better when they introduced "video-game-like" controls to the system. It's actually kind of a neat little meta-commentary on games.

In reference to the controls, I somewhat agree with you, though I wish you had been more specific. There are times when I am climbing or running on rooftops when my character completely disobeys me and ends up sprawled on the street below. However, I've come to find that there are two "levels" to game play in Assassin's Creed. There's the casual and the expert levels. Once you get the hang of it, all of the kinks kind of work themselves out. And the controls have actually changed considerably from game to game, so you might want to specify which controls you're talking about.

In my opinion, the reason why AC is popular is simple: there aren't a lot of games made like this. It's not an RPG and it's not an FPS, so people tired of those genres might be drawn to a game like this. As far as open world games go, I believe it puts Rock Star games to shame. The story is great, Ezio is a fantastic character and we can't forget about the revolutionary multiplayer.

I'm not saying you can't hate Assassin's Creed. You're more than welcome to do so. Just wanted to make some clarifications. If you can't tell, I'm a huge fan.

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David Serrano

October 22, 2012

True, the premise that genetic memories of past lives are embedded in our DNA was a stretch. Given the fact that some religions are based on the concept of reincarnation, along with the experiences and work of people like Brian Weiss, it probably would have made more sense for the premise of AC to be the Animus could access memories of past lives through hypnosis and or lucid dreaming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Weiss