I said to myself, "Behold, I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge." And I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I realized that this also is chasing after wind. For in much wisdom, is much grief. And he who increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.
Whatever media we enjoy begins with an idea, simple or complex. Often we don’t realize just how large the extent of our idea may grow, as it becomes something much greater and complex than we ever envisioned as we continue to add on top of it, and as others try to interpret and adapt it with their own meaning. This is true for any of the biggest franchises that continue to be popular in today’s world, but little would anyone have known that a game as odd as Assassin’s Creed would explode in popularity and scale just the way it has, for better or for worse. I find it hard to turn my eyes against the incredible amount of advertisement, publicity and reception each new installment of this franchise receives, both positively and negatively; yet whenever I do so, I’m reminded of a distinct era of the franchise which is far gone, I dare say a simpler era.
It’s quaint thinking of Assassin’s Creed as it used to be, not the multimedia conglomerate it is now but it’s odd beginnings as an attempt to kickstart a world of alternate history where free will and security where at an odds with one another with the backdrop of an ancient advanced civilization looming over the conflict of the two. As time went on, Assassin’s Creed became less about this idea, as new creatives took hold of the franchise and took it on whatever direction seemed most appropriate for them at the time. The Assassins Creed of today is nothing at all like the franchise of yesterday and this game remains as proof of it.
The contrast of this game and its successors would make one believe that there is a missing link or gap in-between them, as the principal ties that bind them together is the name alone and the core of the experience in the surface. Assassin’s Creed is a game overflowing with new and interesting ideas, ones which tried to tell a new kind of narrative that was not only unusual, but also unheard of in its gaming landscape. It tried its hand at fulfilling its vision, yet it failed so ungracefully that the infamy of the game is all but the proof necessary to understand why no game would follow its lead afterwards. By its sequel, much if not all of the feeling of the original has vanished and only the very basics remain, yet that doesn’t mean that Assassin’s Creed was absolute in its failures.
The year is 2012. A bartender, Desmond Miles, awakes to find himself under capture by the pharmaceutical organization Abstergo. He has been taken captive for having belonged to a secluded community he knew as “the Assassins”, and because of this, the company believes that he holds the key to uncovering the location of an ancient unknown artifact. He can accomplish this unlikely feat through the Animus, a machine capable of decoding memories located inside his genes and allowing the subject to relive them as if he were his ancestor. As such, Desmond is able to travel to 1191 and relive the memories of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, a master assassin.
The Holy Land is at war as European Catholic crusaders face off against Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn’s forces in order to take control of the land. Among this conflict a group of assassins, members of a sect dedicated to the eradication of corruption in the holy land, are sent to retrieve an artifact of utmost importance to the creed. As the assassins arrive, so have the Templar Crusaders, and the leader of this group, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad reveals himself to his target, thus failing to capture the artifact and leading the Templars right to their home in Masyaf. After his failure, Altaïr is punished with the reduction of his rank as Master Assassin and tasked with killing 9 men in order to regain his former honor.
Most unique to Assassin’s Creed is its setting: The Middle Ages during the Holy War. Branching off significantly in tone from Prince of Persia’s Arabian Nights fantasy, Assassin’s Creed depicts a more brutal, dark and medieval take on the Middle Eastern aesthetic. It presents is world as a ruthless land of conflict and war, all intertwined and fused with the diverging and contrasting cultures of the Catholic and Islamic. The game’s focus on portraying a distinct and not widely explored culture and time period is part of the reason why it is so unique. However, what makes Assassin’s Creed truly stand out is its adherence to historical mythos and factual accuracies. The game tries its hardest to maintain the immersion it builds and truly involve the player in the historical period it is set in. It accomplishes this through a keen use of existing historical figures and organizations as part of its cast, such as the nine Templars whose date of death mimics that of the game, or the appearance and mention of King Richard and Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn. Next to this is also the game’s use of the Assassin’s creed and the Templar Order as its key figures for the conflict of its narrative, both of which truly make the story stand its ground within the cultural conflict of the times. The general accuracies but the permanence of fiction in its story is what makes Assassin’s Creed’s world so unique, as it is convincing enough to be immersive, but also fascinating and fantastical enough to create a real sense of intrigue.
To complement its sense of immersion, the main cities of Assassin’s Creed further its authenticity through its cutting edge and detailed look. The cities are very well modeled and feature plenty of detail to truly portray the ideal historical setting it develops through other means. It is thanks to the detail of the cities that the setting can feel authentic thanks to that and the sense of scale that the game pushes forwards. The cities in Assassin’s Creed are also reinforced through art direction, having them look distinctive enough to emanate a different feeling. Each city is assigned a main color pallet, with Damascus consisting of warm browns and oranges, Acre using cold blues and whites and Jerusalem with homely greens and tans. Their architecture also differs, showing Catholic or Islamic control of either city through their influence, such as with Acre’s gothic medieval churches. These styles also help convey the general societal view of the city, such as the prosperity of Damascus, the heart of Jerusalem or the poverty and ruin of Acre.
Accompanying the game’s art direction is Jesper Kyd’s excellent score for the game, which reinforces the game’s theme of the modern coming into contact with the ancient. His score is able to use a variety of instruments to reinforce this theme, such as combining more modern sounding strings or at times even synth with more traditional eastern motifs such as Latin chants, flutes, percussion and harp. The result of his work creates a truly unique atmosphere that perfectly fits the dark undertones of Assassin’s Creed and bridges the gap between the two eras the game is trying to convey.
Establishing a link between 1191 and 2012 is part of the binding design principle of Assassin’s Creed. Its depictions of modern day and medieval times are both greatly contrasted, using freedom and scale as a way to firmly establish its historical setting while also restricting the present day to create an overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia, which it accomplishes through the ingenious use of the Animus. This machine is able to utilize the Meta of videogames to further immersion and connection with the main character of the story. As Desmond feels trapped inside a location and inside a machine, so does the player and the contrast between the freedom of the medieval age with the slow and restricted nature of modern times truly makes the player feel like a prisoner. However, the Animus also feels restrictive, as it is no more than a machine giving the player the illusion of being in a certain time period. It’s designed in such a way so that the player is given a constant reminder of their purpose inside of the world and the nature of their experience, as the game itself and its limitations become the limitations of the Animus.
The artificial nature of the Animus is constantly reinforced through the game’s style and user interface. Often little bits of code will fly around the screen and used to highlight certain things. Loading screens consist of a mess of cool tones, turbulent clouds and floating random code where the player is left to roam an endless virtual space. The user interface is done in a very modern style, featuring simplistic shapes in blacks and blues as well as featuring company logos in a way reminiscent of modern operating systems. The ever-present nature of the animus inside of the game is another one of the game’s excellent ways of reinforcing its strong atmosphere and themes through art direction, in such a way that gameplay elements become a part of the story.
Another one of Assassin’s Creed’s novel ideas for integrating story with gameplay are its puppeteer controls. These controls work in such a way that each button press functions as a way to specifically interact with the world through one of the character’s body parts. In such a way, one button would correspond to vision, one for an empty hand, one for feet and one for an armed hand. These actions can then be modified to function in High Profile or Low Profile, allowing the player to quickly alternate between two types of actions as the buttons retain their same corresponding context. While it sounds complex, it actually works rather fluid within the game and helps the player feel much more in tune with their character’s actions as well as the fundamentals of Animus itself.
Helping the player feel in tune with the Animus is important for the medieval segments of Assassin’s Creed, as it creates a more distinct contrast with the present day. The way the alternate history future of Assassin’s Creed is portrayed is one of its most fascinating elements. The in-universe 2012 is a highly interesting one, as it directly contrasts with the ambiguous historical accuracy of the past and goes full on into alternate history. Its depiction of a dystopian future is most enticing to discover and explore, however only from the confines of computer screens, e-mails and other kinds of text logs. The world of Assassin’s Creed is very detailed in its lore and It’s very satisfying to discover and explore these details as the crafty prisoner that is Desmond, who sneaks and snoops around to slowly discover the plans of this corporation that is keeping him captive. The more the player learns, the more they piece together the themes and context for the overarching narrative of the story, which continues to explore the themes of freedom, security and free will. In such a way, Abstergo is the perfect villain for this kind of story, as they wholeheartedly represent the kind of oppressive atmosphere and overbearing reach that the present day story tries so hard to convey.
The overbearing reach of Abstergo against the freedom of the Medieval Age sets a clear contrast that precedes the themes of Assassin’s Creed. Fundamentally, the narrative of this game is based around the life long debate of freedom against security, of knowledge and critical thinking against dogma and submission. Altaïr’s own journey to kill nine men explores the nature of this conflict, as knowledge of the supreme can lead to greed, or denial. The game explores the nature of the Assassin’s own creed, which involves killing for a greater good that they themselves have imagined, yet accomplishes most of the same goals as their adversaries. Whether either side is justified is up to neither to decide, and this drives their conflict forwards. Each one of the men are interesting characters that find themselves at a conflict of whether their actions have any justification, and no matter how much Altaïr believes it is greed or corruption, the men hold their stance and offer logical reasoning to justify their actions. Because indeed their actions might be justified in their eyes, but their lack of faith in
humanity allows them to think that trampling over their freedoms for peace is the right way. These characters further the debate of the conflict, each in their own way through actions and dialogue, creating a true ideological debate within the game.
On one side, the Assassin’s creed represents the idea of liberating the mind from the status quo. They believe that rules are meant to be broken when they exist to favor one individual, and that a third party must exist to liberate men from dogma and learn to think critically of their masters. They use murder and chaos as a means of freeing the populous, but to what cost? Their actions are ambiguous in nature, and whether their goal has proven success is not something they can decide, after all, no one man can be judge, jury and executioner. They are similar to the Templars in that regard, as they only enforce what they themselves believe to be right and not some absolute moral code. By spreading their chaos, the Assassins can only perpetuate war and conflict at the expense of inner peace from whoever understands them. It’s the trade between individuality and collective peace.
On the other side, the Templars represent a general idea of collectivism. They believe that one man can and must forge the truth for others so that they have something to believe in, since they understand that the absence of a God stops a higher power from giving that reason to humans. They despise war as they believe that human nature is what drives it and therefore their nature itself must be eradicated in order to achieve true peace. As true nihilists, they believe that there is no inherent happiness or peace in humankind and therefore they must create it as a brotherhood of righteous individuals. However, their goals can only be obtained through power and control, which makes these men turn towards greed and corruption in order to benefit their own interests. No man can decide what is absolutely right or wrong, but they would rather create an illusion of right and wrong in order to breed happiness from the dust.
What is important about these characters is that they both seek peace in all things, yet look for different means to attain it. The Assassins think that peace must be obtained through freedom in all things, and that when men are free from dogma and led through reason and critical thinking they can achieve inner peace and create outer peace as a result. The Templars on the other hand believe in the opposite, that peace cannot be naturally obtained by humans and that they should create peace by controlling the thoughts of humans so that they are driven by peace and not themselves in a perfect, utopic collective society. This is at the core of the reasons why Assassin’s Creed is so interesting, as it presents a deeply interesting and nuanced conflict with equally interesting with their own unique morals that are debated and reasoned through the conflict of the game. The game does a very good job of developing its characters as well as its themes through its writing, and that is the most important thing about this game, however, it is not the only thing.
After all, ideas cannot exist on their own merit and their execution is why they matter to us to begin with. For that reason alone Assassin’s Creed fails at what it’s trying to accomplish, because its execution is where its ideas go to die, or at the very least, leave plenty of room for improvement. For all its interesting aspects and ambitious concepts, Assassin’s Creed is a deeply flawed game that needed more time in development before it could be fully realized.
On the positive side, Assassin’s Creed is a very good looking game. The graphics compliment the art direction and truly help it come to life thanks to all the detail that the developers put into its textures, models and environments. The game’s shaders and lighting also function really well and give the game a photogenic realism that can really immerse the player in its setting. These elements combined together make for one of the best looking games of 2007, one which still holds up graphically even today and even looks better than its immediate successor. The graphical problems with the game lie up close however, especially with the basic and stiff faces and facial animations. To hide this however, the game employs very basic cutscenes which rarely ever get up close to any of the characters, showing the game entirely from Altaïr’s perspective.
Visuals aside, Assassin’s Creed’s free running movement is about as liberating as it was at the time, and even today, it’s still fun to roam around the city and climb or traverse whatever structure in the city in a fast and effective way. This was truly a very unique thing for the time and it gave the cities in the game a sense of verticality and three dimensions, as the game evolves platforming to a new level. Free running is satisfying thanks to the greatly fluid and detailed animations of the character, which give him a sense of weight to all their feats so that the player can feel more in control of their actions. And despite the ease of running around the city, there is still a certain degree of precision and control that’s required to do so effectively, meaning that there is enough challenge to keep the player interested in their actions. However, despite all the ease, the game can be very finicky when it comes to deciding what the player character does in order to keep the animations fluid, which can lead to failure and frustration.
Another concept that works rather well in the game is it reinvention of stealth gameplay. Rather than trying to avoid detection by line of sight, Assassin’s Creed has the player blend in to their environments through their attitude and performance in front of crowds in a system of social stealth. Through a mix of high profile and low profile actions, the player can remain hidden in the face of guards and carry their deeds without being noticed. Each one of these styles has their own limits and advantages, so learning how best to manage each action within both styles is part of the challenge of playing the game and really makes it interesting. The game also entices the player to use the environment to their advantage or to notice it to avoid a disadvantage, such as using certain blending spots to escape from a chase or noticing guard behaviors and crowds to successfully blend in.
The game’s notorious assassinations are also a good idea in concept. Collecting information in a non-linear fashion that allows the player to then piece it together and formulate a strategy of how best to assassinate a target is a fun concept and leaves plenty of room for experimentation in terms of how the player approaches each individual target. This way, the player can use the information obtained to try multiple ways in which they can approach and kill their target without being detected.
However, the game fails in a certain key areas that really make the assassinations less fun than they should. For once, there is little to no room for experimentation, as the game practically spells out the best way to kill each target with the very few pieces of information that are actually useful and only a couple of predetermined approaches work when it comes to assassinating a target, meaning that the player can’t experiment. Besides being restrictive, the assassinations end very quickly, meaning that the actual time spent doing the most interesting part of the game is rather short. There is also little to no consequence if the player is spotted by their target during an assassination. If they do, then the game forces the player to combat the enemy directly and fight a group of guards instead of try the mission again, something which they can do without much effort making them wonder why they even tried to approach the target with stealth to begin with since a frontal assault remains as a more time and effort effective means to complete each assassination.
The reason a frontal assault is so effective is because of how unbelievably easy the combat in Assassin’s Creed is. The balance is heavily in favor of the player by giving them an overpowered counter move that instantly kills all enemies and doesn’t require much precise timing to pull off, meaning that most encounters lack tension and challenge as the player merely waits for an enemy to attack so that they can counter them and have an instant, highly guaranteed kill.
And the player is going to want to use that counter, because the combat is otherwise extremely boring. There is only one method of attack which the player must repeat until the enemy is dead, meaning that combat becomes extremely repetitive as a result and there is not enough enemy aggression or mechanics to make it more interesting, as the game only offers simple dodge, counters or grabs to make it more interesting, however still not as effective as simply attacking or even countering. The problem with any of these other methods is that they only make combat take longer to finish, which is counteractive to the player’s interests as the basic mechanics of combat in this game are simply not fun. Besides that, there aren’t any varied enemy types that would give the player incentive to change up their usual tired strategy of countering every move, while more advanced enemies only require the player to press a button to do a grab break every now and then.
To further its own stealth mechanics the weapon types in Assassin’s Creed are minimal, only offering a Hidden Blade for stealth assassinations, a Sword for combat, Throwing Knives for long range kills, Fists for interrogation and a Dagger for frankly no reason at all. Even with such few weapon types, they feel incredibly redundant, as the only useful weapons that the player will use constantly are the Hidden Blade and the Sword, as they are their primary means of attack, while smarter players will be able to play the game with only the Hidden Blade. Throwing Knives are somewhat useful, but still very uncommon to use if the player uses their resources correctly, and Fists are only ever useful for Interrogations. The dagger is completely useless and the player will not find themselves in a situation where they would be willing to use it.
Adding onto the utter simplicity of a game with such scale, the actual gameplay of the investigation missions in the game are beyond mundane as they rely on performing incredibly simple tasks that don’t evolve in challenge or complexity as the game goes along nor have enough inherent challenge to be fun on their own merit. Aside from that, they offer no meaningful storytelling or contribution to the game’s themes or aesthetic and offer barely any reward for completing them, as most of the things the player learns during an investigation are not useful at all for the main assassination mission or simply repeat information that the player already knows, making them utterly redundant.
Assassin’s Creed is at a drought of content main missions are completely basic and only serve the purpose of advancing the plot, while also offering little character progression or actual storytelling that the player can get attached to. Even then, the actual content of these missions are hardly related to the story of the game aside from the information learned from the investigations. Besides main investigation missions, the extra content of Assassin’s Creed is lacking because of how they share the utterly basic and mindless nature of the main content and while they do offer character progression as an incentive for the player to do them, the Health Bar upgrades they offer are already useless because combat is so easy to begin with since the game’s own regenerating health and good use of dodging mechanics make them not worthwhile in any way. All side missions are also exactly the same one, which involves saving a civilian from guards, an act which becomes so utterly repetitive that the player quickly and easily loses interest in doing them.
The only other content that the game offers aside from these missions involves collecting things, an act which is utterly draining for the player. While getting all viewpoints is a novel act, especially because it allows the player to witness the scale of each city and challenges their free running and climbing skills a little, it becomes quickly repetitive and tiring after doing it over and over. The only other things to collect are flags and Templar kills, which are scattered throughout the world by the hundreds and unmarked on the map. These are literal useless collectives that don’t require any challenge to unlock and involve a mindless tiring process of looking through every nook and cranny of the world just to find them, only to then feel insulted by the lack of reward the game offers for taking your time to collect them all.
These missions contribute to the game’s horrendous pacing and structure. Each assassination feels like a completely repeat of the last thanks to how basic the missions are, which make the small differences between them completely surface level, thus making each process of assassinating a target feel exactly the same as the last. Besides that, the game’s structure becomes easily predictable, as each assassination follows it to a tee, meaning that without changing its structure nor giving the player any variation within missions, the gameplay of the game becomes a single string of events that repeated over and over until it’s finally over.
As for the interesting content of the game, which are the assassinations and story, the game does not distribute them well enough along the course of the game to keep the player interested. They are placed only at the beginning and at the end of long gameplay segments and boring repetition, making them a novel reward for the player’s efforts, but essentially uninteresting. This is especially the case for story, as the game dumps its most interesting pieces of plot at the very beginning and at the very end, leaving most of the middle of the game as a repeat of what was already established.
The plot of the game also suffers greatly from some of the worst voice acting coming from the main lead. While the writing and dialogue of the game is fine enough, Altaïr’s voice actor makes it come across as something much worse because of his monotone and overly brooding tone, thus making his character’s development along the course of the journey feel insignificant because of his lack
of inflection or mannerisms. The rest of the performances are only just fine, if not mediocre, however at least few of them stands out. Malik’s performance works really well and gives plenty of emotion and depth to his character, just like Al Mualim and the other present day characters with the exception of Desmond.
When it comes to the present day, while the story is highly fascinating, it is also entirely possible to be missed due to how cryptic some of its clues are for finding information. All of the info in the game is obtained through computers which the player can hack to after certain key events, however, the most important source of information in the game can be almost completely missed because of how little the game alludes to its existence and how thin the window of obtaining it is, leaving the player locked out of most of the story in the game because of a simple mistake that they didn’t realize they even made.
And the game ends in one of the most abrupt and unsatisfying ways possible as well. While I do commend its conviction towards ending a game in a depressing note where most story threads are left untied, it feels less like a deliberate artistic decision to deliver a message over how the Templar authoritarianism is able to succeed in the modern age and more like the franchise is trying to leave things open for its eventual sequel 2 years later.
In that regard, Assassin’s Creed II at least managed to pick up the pace from this low point and evolved into a game that was an improvement in most of every regard from this game. However, even with its improvements, it lacks a lot of the edge and interesting ideas that made the first game so interesting. The first entry into the Assassin’s Creed franchise a very interesting, weird and unique one, however most of this uniqueness goes to die in its uneven execution which left plenty of room for improvement. Sometimes I think that this was the intention, as the developers knew they could fix its problems for the sequel, however, the result is still a game that has an odd mix of ideas and solid direction contrasted with the reality of the actual product.
I’m sometimes ashamed to admit that I’ve played this game more times than I’d ever want to, three to be precise, but even then I still can’t stop coming back to it. Maybe it’s the very specific charm of this game, which remains as fascinating as it was then ten years later, even with all its flaws. I personally wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone unless they already had a desire to play it, because its flaws are not meant for those with little patience. Even with these flaws and considering how much the franchise has diverted from its heart to become something grander but meaningless, I can say that each time I come back to this game I see something. I see the work of a group of people who wanted to do something unique, something they thought was interesting, and no matter how flawed the end result was, it still matters more to me.
That is something that can’t be said about every work of art, and for that, I give it merit.