Assassin's Creed Unity - Review

The first Assassin’s Creed game made for the next gen systems is here, but does Unity create something new and fun, or is it more of a division of ideas?

Assassin’s Creed Unity tells two tales, one of Arno a man raised by a Templar who becomes an Assassin and you, a nameless, faceless initiate who is helping find answers in the modern day war of Templars and Assassins. The problem with the second story is that you have nothing to do, outside of hearing voices of the people who are guiding you and with the odd times that Abstergo, the big bad modern day front for the Templars, pop their heads up you are thrust into variations on Paris throughout the centuries. You are provided almost little context for why you are doing it, unless you start to dig around through notes and histories of characters in the game.

The other story, the larger of the two tells the tale of Arno Dorian, a man who seeks to find the killer of the man who raised him. Arno was a boy visiting the palace at Versailles with his father when he met Elise and while those two played and caused some mischief Arno’s father was killed. After being taken in by Elise father, Arno was raised and grew up to be a bit of a trouble maker but when his surrogate father is killed and Arno is arrested for it, he spends the next few months learning how to fight like an Assassin. If much of this sounds familiar, there are a lot of similarities to the story of Ezio from Assassin’s Creed 2, which does lessen the impact of Arno’s tale, but one area where the tale does pass its predecessors is with Elise.

Elise was born into a Templar household and was being groomed for that life before Arno had even entered the picture and even after he joins the Assassins, Elise and Arno still have a connection they can’t shake. Of course it takes them a while but they do agree they love each other and as you progress through the later part of the games and you see their interactions, you can see that these characters have a rich history. It also helps to illustrate the point of just how amazing this game can look at times, with the characters looking incredible in cutscenes. Of course this is an Assassin’s Creed title and while looks are important they are not the most important.

Since the very first game, people have loved climbing up to the top of a building and moving around with ease, but there was a problem with getting down. You either had to climb down manually, which was not the fastest of options, or search for a haystack to leap into. Either option took time and broke the flow of the game, thankfully Assassin’s Creed Unity does take steps to fix this, with the all new free running system you can now select up or down, depending on which way you wish to go. There is nothing that will beat climbing up to the highest points, getting a good look around the city and then leaping from there down to the ground, but now at any point you can climb down just as fast. The problem still remains when the character will grip onto something you did not plan to touch, or climbing the wrong way but overall it is a much improved system then in years past.

Another area that the game has over the others is pure scale, the entire city of Paris is at your disposal. At any time you can venture into the catacombs or run through the centre of a house or even Notre Dame, without a load screen to be found. Inside spaces are hit and miss, any area that was used as a mission is filled out with lots of things around, but interiors without a purpose are usually the same no matter what part of the city you enter into. But that does not mean you should not enter into those spaces, because if you did not do that, you would miss out on some great missions. While the missions in the story are fun, some more than others, the city this time feels more alive than before, at any point as you wander around you can discover things to do. The citizens of Paris all have things that they need done, some of them are simple, some more of a challenge, but be warned, there are a lot of them. People on the street will have their money stolen by a thief, or they may find themselves being harassed by revolutionaries for various reasons. There are even missions that allow you to play detective and sort through facts and details to find a killer.

While those missions are fun, you can also play missions with a friend, or 3 friends and you can experience even more of what the game has to offer. The co-op missions can be simple things like taking items Templars have looted from Notre Dame, with the 4 player missions providing you with a whole new story and characters to interact with. While playing on your own, a single mistake may not cost you the mission if you can correct it in time, playing with 3 other people means that you need to work together. Lone wolf tactics don’t work here and whenever I had the chance to do something I thought could work, I had to discuss it with my team, because if it failed it could mean the end of the mission for all.

Another aspect that the game has, which is new this year are the Time Anomalies, a few times through the story, your “real world” handlers will inform you that Abstergo are looking for you in the Animus, so you need to leave the current data world and head to a new one. The first time this happens you land before the Eiffel tower exists but people are happy and free, the second time is when the Nazi’s have taken Paris and you need to scale the Eiffel tower to escape.  These missions are fun the first time around, but when you get back to them again, you simply need to collect random glowing “data” to get a score and then leave before the time runs out. Along the way you can rescue other Initiates who have gotten stuck, but doing that over and over again is pretty draining.

So while the game has taken great steps forward in how you move and what you can do in the game, it still has a few problems it can’t shake. Story has always been an issue with the Assassin’s Creed titles and here when we are at 7 in the console field, as well as multiple handheld games there is an ever increasing amount of backstory available and if you are coming into the series for the first time, there is almost too much. The problem is, since the end of the main modern story with Desmond back in number 3, the modern day tale is just not interesting, I mean without a single focal point there is little reason to care about the fight. Again the story from the Paris side is very similar to that of AC2, which also dampens the overall story appeal.

Story is not the only part of the game that suffers, the Anvil engine does a wonderful job of recreating Paris, with amazing detail on building and scenery, but once you start to look at the people you will notice issues. When you are at scenes where a thousand people are gathered around, you will see the same character faces, costumes and colours many, many times in that single area. There is nothing you can do about it either, you just have to accept that it exists in this manner. The other problem with the npc’s is that they randomly change clothes, positions and even actions as you get close to them, at one point I saw a character walking toward a carriage, simply appear on top of it, walking to the end and then appear at the bottom and still walking as if nothing had happened.

The other problem that the engine suffers from is that when you first enter spaces that have lots of details and characters present the game drops frames and stutters, something you will notice when Arno is running. There was even instances of clipping where I was getting stuck in random spaces, even in the middle of a table, that I could not fix without reloading. It also has the distinct annoyance of having multiple coloured treasure chests in the world that require you to use the companion app or the Initiate website to unlock, walking up to one and being told to leave the game to do other things just breaks the experience.

After last year’s incredible Black Flag, Unity had to hit a lot of marks in order to be a true next generation Assassin’s Creed title and while it takes a lot of steps in the right direction, it is not quite there yet. A engine that can’t keep up with the vision as well as frequent attempts to get you to leave the game for other options show that Ubisoft are unsure of what they want to do.

The Score

7.5

Review code provided by Ubisoft

The Pros

+Paris is an incredible location to explore

+The enchancement to free running keeps the pace going all the time

The Cons

-Movement problems from the past games remain

-The engine struggles to keep up with the amibitous world