Tag: Black Flag

Assassin’s Creed: Rogue – Underrated or Overrated?

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Assassin’s Creed: Rogue has been watching me stare at it on the PlayStationstore for at least the last six years.

An Assassin’s Creed game, one of my favourite series of all time, that I had never heard of before? What was this?

Well, that’s a little lie. I did know one thing about Rogue: the main character, Shay Patrick Cormac, was an Assassin-turned-Templar, hunting his former teammates and masters. I have to admit, that did pique my interest.

I had seen it go on and off sale as the years ticked by, while I moved onto newer games such as Origins and Valhalla, until I decided…let’s do it.

Jump in to an “old” Assassin’s Creed game that I had no inkling of and give it a go.

And…well, that’s what the the rest of this post will be.

The Craic and The Creed – My Time with Assassin’s Creed: Rogue

Now, the title of this post shows the general consensus of Assassin’s Creed: Rogue, mostly from the circumstances of how it came about.

AC: Rogue was released on November 11th 2014 onto the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

But wait, why those consoles? The newest generation was already underway with both Sony and Microsoft releasing consoles in 2013.

And come to think, wasn’t there another Assassin’s Creed game that came out in 2014, Assassin’s Creed: Unity?

The answers to those questions are “yes” and “yes”. Ubisoft was aiming all of their development cost and marketing on their seventh generation baby, but thought, “why not try and get some money from the people that haven’t moved over to the new consoles yet?”

And so, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue was born. And literally in the same month that Unity dropped its first trailer, eight months out from its release, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue began production. EIGHT MONTHS!

But anyway, the prevailing theory is that since Rogue was overshadowed by its older sibling, not to mention relegated to the previous generation, that the game is underrated.

However, when people that actually play the game and experience its story, it seems it’s overrated.

So, I will try and set out and find the truth…which undoubtably will be somewhere in the middle.

AC: Rogue…breaking new territory for the franchise? (Source: ubisoft.com).

***

When I first bought Rogue, I was actually quite excited. The main development team, Ubisoft Sofia, were the team behind Assassin’s Creed: Liberation, the PS Vita exclusive that was ported alongside the ACIII Remaster in 2019.

I played that thinking it was just be a throwaway little story with not too much expectation. Liberation turned out to be one of my favourite games of all time, easily surpassing AC3 and Black Flag in my ranking of the series.

So, with that pedigree, and that teaser of an Assassin-turned-Templar, I was interested to see where Rogue would take me.

The game is set during the Seven Years War, slotting nicely between ACIII and Black Flag in historical terms, and acts as a finale of sorts for the Kenway Saga.

And having come off the back of the resounding success that was Black Flag, Rogue takes everything from the previous game (including nearly all its assets), and crafts the tightest in terms of gameplay and visually one of the most striking games in the series.

The game splits its map into three areas; New York (as the sole city), The River Valley, and the North Atlantic Ocean. New York was previously featured in ACIII, so while it is clearly based off the previous incarnation, Rogue‘sinterpretation is geared with player traversal as its main feature.

Freerunning in ACIII isn’t fun to use because the rooftops are too far apart for seamless parkour and there are only a few washing lines per city block to use to sprint across the street.

In Rogue, buildings are more closely packed together, but also include a whole new set of traversal methods such as ziplines, fast ropes, and lifts, allowing players to easily move up, down, and across the rooftops at speed.

It also helps that the parkour is fast and fluid, getting rid of the stickiness of ACIII and empowering the vaulting animation (how many of you played through ACIII or Black Flag and didn’t know you could do some cool vaulting animations by holding the “drop” button? Check some of these out!)

There is nothing more enjoyable that hitting a perfect freerun across an entire city without stopping, and Rogue has that locked down.

AC: Rogue‘s New York is one of the best cities of the series (Source: amazon.de).

***

The River Valley and North Atlantic are the meat of Rogue’s maps, and also the thing that ties the game closely to Black Flag, as here the main course of traversal is using a ship called the Morrigan.

Rogue’s ship is smaller and more nimble than the Jackdaw, and houses better weapons such as puckle guns and burning oil, allowing for faster and more aggressive ship combat.

While the ocean isn’t as vast as Black Flag’s, I feel it’s actually an improvement over the previous game. Ship battles feel more active, you can get snuck up on from behind as passing ships form alliances and swarm you, and uniquely in this game, enemy ships can board the Morrigan.

Ubisoft have been trying to replicate the ship combat for over a decade now, both with an estimated $850 Million “AAAA” dumpster fire Skull and Bones, and eventually a complete remake of Black Flag, dubbed Resynced. Yet they literally have all the ingredients and fixes in here in a now twelve-year-old game!

One thing that I truly love about Rogue are the locations. Black Flag’s Caribbean setting was a beautiful blend of lush green, pure white sand, calm blue sea, and pastel-painted cities. It was a veritable rainbow of bright colours.

Rogue does the opposite. In the North Atlantic, pale icebergs stand tall against a churning grey sea, with a dark black sky and swirling Northern Lights above. Small settlements and shipwrecks dot the coast, grey marks jutting out against the harsh landscape.

In the River Valley, the twisting waterways makes great use of earthy greens and browns, making the location feel muddy and wet. And New York, while more colourful than in ACIII, features a pale-blue sky and heavier shadows.

If Black Flag was an explosion of colour, then Rogue is monochrome, using blacks, whites, and greys to make it one of the most visually distinct AC games of the entire series.

So, with fast and fluid traversal, the BEST ship combat of the series, and distinct locations that feel unique to series, I can say with confidence this game is underrated.

The frozen North is unique in Assassin’s Creed, not seen again until AC: Valhalla (Source: gamestar.de).

***

However…

I want to stress the development time again. From ACII up until Syndicate, there was an average development time of 1.5-2 years. From Origins to Shadows, each game had an average of 3-4 years of development time. And Ubisoft Sofia knocked this game out in EIGHT MONTHS!

So, when I moved into criticising this game, know that this is not a slight on the developers and creators, who did their best under incredibly tight deadlines.

Now, the story. AC: Rogue has one of the best set-ups that an Assassin’s Creed game could have; an Assassin who experiences a moral crisis and aligns himself with the Templars. It’s a great hook and twist on the usual Assassin/Templar story, and is a natural follow on from the morally ambiguous tales in ACIII and Black Flag.

Rogue only has six sequences with around four missions in each. That is ridiculously short, and so concessions had to be made in regards to the story. We get no introduction to our main character, Shay Patrick Cormac, other than that he is an Assassin.

Shay’s big moment is when he is sent across the ocean to Portugal to uncover a mystical artefact buried under a church. After touching it, the artefact sets off an earthquake, destroying the city and killing thousands of innocent people.

When Shay arrives back in the New World and tells the Assassin Mentor Achilles what happened, his is dismissed and gaslit, as Achilles plans on finding more of these artefacts.

This pushes Shay to stop the Assassin’s from discovering these artefacts, with the other Assassin’s trying to kill him.

It’s a weak pivot, making the Assassin’s look ridiculously evil and arrogant, with Shay being the only one to see the full picture and everyone else acting so unreasonably that the Templars seem righteous by proxy.

Haytham Kenway returns as Shay’s Templar Master, and he is as charming and cruel as ever (Source: dualshockers.com).

***

Early on in the story there is a standard training sequence of shooting, being stealthy, and hunting, each taught by a member of the Assassin Brotherhood. It could have shown that Shay is the newest member of the Brotherhood but not fully inducted yet, so not as dogmatic as the rest of them.

The first two assassinations in the game, when Shay is still part of the Brotherhood, are on aging Templars, one who is dying of tuberculosis. Shay is unnerved by murdering these two men, killing them when they could have died in peace, but this thread doesn’t last long.

The Assassins have a hold over the New World, and are employing gangs to do their dirty work. They antagonise and threaten the residents of New York, they steal weapons and cause havoc with the Redcoats (with several civilian casualties), and eventually start producing nerve gas to use on enemies, but these are just little beats in the story.

I dream of a story where Shay sees the veneer of righteousness in the Colonial Brotherhood chipping away to exposing a rotten heart, corrupt, hypocritical, and straying from the tenets of the Creed. That would be the perfect reasoning to show a switch of allegiance.

Instead, Shay’s entire reasoning for turning his back on his brothers is that he made an earthquake happen and they didn’t believe him.

Once he escapes the Assassin Homestead and settles in New York, Shay just ends up falling in with the Templars. While there is a slight hint that they are manipulating him behind the scenes, the Templars that Shay interacts with (who all have cool character designs) never get enough time to develop personalities.

It’s the same with the Assassins. In that training sequence I mentioned before, it felt like they were setting up different skills or archetypes. Liam, Shay’s best friend, is a strong fighter and the best shot. Hope uses gadgets and stealth to get close to a target. Native American Kesegowaase is fast and uses the environment to his advantage. But that’s just in cutscenes, and never in gameplay.

Master Assassin Kesegowaase hunts Shay in the River Valley (Source: assassinscreed.fandom.com).

***

They could have had Master Assassins hunting Shay just as Shay is hunting them, using his new-found Templar connections to force the Assassins into the open. Luckily, when Shay does square off against his former mentors, each mission is tight and focused, with a set-piece showdown.

One has you locked into a brutal sword fight in a bombed-out fort. Another has you leading a battalion of Redcoats against an Assassin raiding party. One has you dodging sniper fire amongst icebergs and rock formations.

My favourite is a street battle that morphs into a mansion infiltration, then into a midnight chase through the New York streets and up onto the rooftops.

That sequence shows the updated traversal at it’s best. It felt exhilarating to dodge gunfire and smoke bombs, getting dropped onto the street and see the Assassin leap over rooftops ahead of me, cutting through shortcuts and up lifts to get ahead of them, and finally getting close enough to perform an Air Assassination.

But these flourishes of greatness are let down by a story that is at the doorstep of great ideas, but never fully gets to show them or explore them. Shay becomes a Templar for no other reason than they are against the Assassins. There could have been more done with his worldview, shaped by what he has seen, and slowly coming around to the Templar cause. But no, it’s just the Templars are against the Assassins, so make an easy outfit to join.

For a long while, the Assassin’s don’t even realise that Shay is alive. He’s out destroying their infrastructure and their influence and they don’t even realise he’s doing it. Shay intervenes in Assassin contracts, destroys hideouts, is hunted by gang members (which are all interesting inversions of regular AC gameplay) but none of it matches to the story.

And that’s the main kicker. For all the greatness of the gameplay, the fighting, the ship combat, and the beautifully-designed world, the story just can’t match it. It’s short and shallow, with only vague gestures at greater points, and that’s why this game is overrated.

Wait, now I’m confused. Which is it? Underrated or overrated?

Shay has such potential, but doesn’t get the time to develop (Source: adventurecorner.de).

***

Looking back, it seems like such a weird reason to release Rogue when it did. Black Flag was a cross-generation release, why relegate a game solely to the previous generation?

Why go up for an ambitious new approach and open-world in Unity, when everyone is basically wanting Black Flag 2.0? Why not make a trilogy of the Kenway Saga, building on all of the feedback from ACIII and Black Flag?

But the timing of the next-generation of consoles forced Ubisoft’s hand, and therefore doomed Rogue. I wouldn’t actually be surprised if this started as a handheld exclusive, similar to the final Ezio game, Revelations, which was initially designed for the Nintendo 3DS, before being bumped up to mainline release.

And yet, for its shortness of length and disappointing character development, I enjoyed my time with Rogue. The interesting setting, the faster movement and combat, the return of ships, and some of the most unique missions in the entire series make me remember it fondly.

We get to see major characters from the previous two games, Achilles, Adewale, and Haytham, and get to see them all kicking ass one last time. We even get a little tie-in to Unity in the epilogue, with Shay assassinating Charles Dorian.

It’s a fun mini-adventure, similar to Liberation, not an epic era-spanning adventure of other main AC titles. If you’re looking for a must-play lost gem in the back catalogue, this is not it.

But if you have an itch to return to a classic AC game, re-experience the excellent ship combat, and have a few hours of fun, then I can heartily recommend Assassin’s Creed: Rogue.

Banner Photo Source: store.epicgames.com

Assassin’s Creed: Liberation – Discovering a Classic

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I’ve just finished playing Assassin’s Creed: Liberation, originally a PlayStation Vita exclusive, now bundled with the recent Assassin’s Creed III remaster.

It feels refreshing and fun to go back to a game that uses the old AC formula, but with a new location, story and character.

And even after a short time playing it, Liberation is probably one of my favourite AC games, easily passing III and Black Flag in my ranking of the series.

So I thought a little breakdown of what I loved about it, and hoped to spread the good word to some AC fans that may want to return to something with a classic feel.

Ragin’ Cajun: Why I love Assassin’s Creed: Liberation

  1. Scope

As mentioned previously, AC: Liberation was originally released on the PS Vita in 2012, to tie-in with the mainline entry ACIII. With the smaller hardware, reductions were needed to be made, but every change seems to benefit the game.

Instead of an intensely expansive world, Ubiosft Sofia (creators of the Prince of Persia HD release as well as the AC spinoff, Rogue) decided to keep things small and contained.

New Orleans and the Bayou, the two main areas of the game, are comparable to AC2’s Florence or Venice than the sprawling maps in ACIII (here is a forum thread of players calculating the size of the cities).

Smaller design leads to more intimate and detailed sections of the map, and allows players to get quickly attuned to their surroundings.

The churches of New Orleans, with their towering spires, become waypoints, allowing players to orient themselves to the location without having to pull the map out every few seconds.

It’s similar to the original Assassin’s Creed in that regard; a small contained map with distinct areas and easily identifiable landmarks. It helps the city feel rich and unique, directly because it is smaller.

This direction of scope is even found in the story and characters. While ACIII spends almost five whole sequences setting up the tragic backstory and family dynamic of its lead, Liberation does it in less than thirty seconds, with only around ten lines of dialogue.

It’s a masterstroke of character and lore-building and gets you right into the story. So let’s talk about that next.

Despite its smaller scale, New Orleans feels as detailed, polished, and “living” as later games in the series. (Source: ign.com)

2. The Story

Written by veteran narrative designers Richard Faresee (who worked on Revelations and III) and Jill Murray (who worked on Black Flag, its expansion Freedom Cry, and recently Shadow of the Tomb Raider), Liberation is one of the more unique narratives of the AC franchise, with it winning the Writer’s Guild of America Award for game writing for 2012.

After the Ezio Trilogy, Assassin’s Creed started to play with the formula for its stories. During AC2, Brotherhood and Revelations, the Templars were moustache-twirling bad guys worthy of a Saturday morning cartoon.

From ACIII to Unity, the mood shifted to portraying the Templars and Assassins as two side of the same coin, with more in common than what separates them.

Liberation follows this theme, but takes it even further, having a fun meta narrative within the story.  Liberation is in fact a game created by Abstergo Entertainment, a video game branch of the Templar company, wanting to push their propaganda onto the public.

Your game signal is ‘hacked’ by an Assassin, who tells you the Templars are hiding the truth. The Templars doctor the events to suit their purposes, so you have to hunt down a ‘glitch’ known as ‘Citizen E’, who then reveals the truth behind each edited scene.

It’s a cool idea, echoing the interrogations and glitches from the first Assassin’s Creed, of a world beyond the one we are perceiving, of secrets and subterfuge that some of the other games have lacked (looking at you, Unity, where nearly every NPC knew who the Assassins were).

The ‘Citizen E’ missions add an air of mystery and suspicion to the narrative, making the player question Aveline, her allies, and her enemies. (Source: assassinscreedwiki.com)

The “Full Synchronisation” elements (where players can complete extra challenges during missions) are well thought out and aren’t just added difficulty. Ever since the concept was introduced in Brotherhood, I’ve felt that this was the most ‘game-y’ aspect of the series and didn’t  fit either with the mission or the previous freedom of gameplay choice.

Here the Full Syncs add to the narrative, giving hints to the main character, Aveline’s, backstory. For example, the first assassination of the game (and possibly Aveline’s first assassination) isn’t with a hidden blade but with a musket stolen from an enemy.

It’s such a small detail but adds a ton of information to Aveline’s first recorded kill just by what weapon was used.

The story, like all ACs, twists and turns, threading the role of women, race, and indigenous people, something powerful and note-worthy in a major franchise like AC.

Another franchise staple, the First Civilisation, is present, but it isn’t treated with the same world-shattering aspects like previous games.

It’s a small thing in the grand scheme of the game (and has a nice twist at the end), so I’m happy that this series thread is kept to the background.

Liberation takes short detours to Chitzen Itza and Mexico, adding First Civilization temples and items, and uses them as standout platforming sequences (Source: assassinscreed.fandom.com)

But the high point of the story is it never loses sight of its lead. The story is squarely on the Assassin, Aveline de Grandpré. We see her triumphs and defeats, and turning from naive freedom fighter, into stalwart Assassin, and finally someone who can see from all sides, and carves out a path of her own. 

Speaking of which…

3. Aveline

Aveline is such a cool character. While it would take another three years until a female protagonist became a lead character (Evie Frye sharing with her brother Jacob in Syndicate), Aveline is no slouch when it comes to characterisation.

Aveline is constantly torn between two worlds, playing all sides, creating an interesting dynamic not only in story but also gameplay.

The most on-the-nose is her status in New Orleans. Born to a white wealthy merchant and a slave mother, Aveline has known both the stuffy aristocratic life afforded to her by her father, but also the hardships of slave life, even having nightmares of being snatched with her mother by traders right off the street.

Throughout the game Aveline switches outfits, from her Assassin ‘robes’ to ball gowns to slave attire, each one with their own abilities and quirks.

Her Assassin outfit is the one suited for combat, allowing for all her weapons and tactics, and also shows some cool details on her personality. For instance, instead of the trademark hood, Aveline uses a tricorn hat, allowing her braided hair to flow freely.

It’s a small detail but something that gives her an edge, of defining herself by her own skills and attire, not standing by the tradition of the Assassins.

When in her ‘lady’ outfit, Aveline can ‘charm’ guards away from their post and has lower notoriety, but is only limited to her hidden blade and can’t freerun.

When dressed as a slave, Aveline also only has her hidden blade, but can blend with other slaves and free-run, while gaining higher notoriety when doing ‘high profile’ actions.

While incredibly gendered, it adds a small layer of choice and tactics to the game, using Aveline’s duality as part of gameplay, with Aveline even altering her speech when wearing different outfits. It’s a great mechanical example of one of the tenets of the creed, “hide in plain sight”.

Aveline uses a variety of disguises to achieve her goals. I love this aspect and wish it would make a return in the series. (Source: siliconera.com)

Storywise, Aveline’s status as an Assassin also rides the dual aspect. Neither her father or mother are Assassins, a far cry from the rest of the series where it is usually a family tradition.

She may be inexperienced, but Aveline has already earned her hidden blades, allowing the narrative to skip the ‘origin’ story and get right into the main events without showing us her discovering the Brotherhood.

The only person who ‘knows’ about her rooftop exploits is Gérald, an employee of Aveline’s father, who holds down Aveline’s base of operations in New Orleans. Gérald gives Aveline information and equipment and knows of the Assassin/Templar conflict, but he is not immersed in the Assassin life.

Aveline is alone in her pursuit, not chasing down her family’s murderers or looking to gain back her family’s honour like other AC leads, but just watching over New Orleans, leaving only when needs must.

She helps free slaves and guides them to the bayou, she disrupts over-zealous colonial rulers and greedy merchants, and kills any Templar that sets foot in her town.

Late in the game Aveline leaves New Orleans for Boston to hunt down a spy and enlists Connor Kenway’s aid. They fight side-by-side in a knockout cameo sequence (Source: assassinscreed.wikia.com)

Aveline’s actions sometimes bring her into conflict with her mentor as she goes against Assassin dogma, not in a ‘trying-to-be-edgy/I-don’t-play-by-the-rules’ way, but as Aveline’s internal struggle with the tenets of the Creed and wanting to act.

It’s such a departure from the rest of the series, but every other attempt at ideas like this in later games has come across as being contrarian for the sake of it (mostly in AC: Unity).

While Aveline is cool and calm under pressure, smart and resourceful, she isn’t afraid to lose her temper or her composure.

There are several stand-out scenes near the end of the game which top any other moment in the series with their levels of emotion, pathos, and engagement.

One other major section that helps build Aveline’s character is…

4. The Combat

Liberation uses the same combat as ACIII and Black Flag, but has its own quirks that for me add to Aveline’s characterisation and to the game as a whole.

Aveline has the regular assortment of swords, daggers, hidden blades, and accessories, but the animations and their usage are so powerful.

Take the sword for instance. While other Assassins are usually hacking and slashing (such as Connor), Aveline’s sword-work is based more on cut and thrusts, disengages and parries.

It’s more intricate and indicates some formal training, indicative of her childhood in one of the more affluent families of New Orleans.

Her short blade is at the complete opposite end of the social scale. In the first mission of the game Aveline frees a slave and then fights off the enraged owner with his own sugarcane machete.

In another slave encampment, she wrestles away a slaver’s whip before turning it on him, and uses it to hang her enemies from tree branches.

It’s a powerful image of a young black woman using the tools of her oppressors against them, similar to Lincoln Clay’s rampages in Mafia III, a game which similarly stars a bi-racial main character fighting against the systemic racial prejudice of the time, also set in Louisiana.

Aveline strangling an enemy with her whip, getting ready to equip her machete to deliver the killing blow (Source: gamerstemple.net)

In the same camp where Aveline gains the whip, she builds her own hidden blades. Pickpocketing materials from around the camp; a small plank of wood here, a kitchen knife there, and finally a few soldier’s belts, Aveline lashes them all together to re-arm herself.

It’s a cool moment after a long section of having to work around enemies rather than face them head-on, now being able to break free and take on the rulers of the camp.

For many missions Aveline has to use her fists, which adds another layer to her characterisation. It’s mentioned in dialogue and appears in-game when she wears the slave disguise, Aveline is attacked by thugs that roam New Orleans.

In direct opposition to her bladework, Aveline’s hand-to-hand combat is brutal and lacks formal training. She swings wide haymakers, incorporates stomps and flying knees, it is the exact type of combat I would expect someone who had to fend for themselves on the street would have. 

And since the game is based off the updated ACIII engine, there is less of the stop/start counter combat from the earlier AC games.

Aveline has all the tools of the trade at her disposal and can easily go toe-to-toe with any Templar that gets in her way. (Source: spieltipps.de)

Conclusion

I did’t have much hope for Liberation when I first booted it up.

I wasn’t a major fan of either ACIII or Black Flag when I first played them, only really feeling the series had won me back when I played Syndicate.

And as the game was a PlayStation Vita exclusive when it first came out, it gave the impression Liberation was an also-ran, a stop-gap that played safe and didn’t offer anything of value.

But I gave it a chance and found myself relaxing into it, feeling comfortable in my controls and abilities, challenged by new locales and events and spirited away by an unspoiled story, but having a sense of familiarity, old yet new.

It’s been almost five years since AC has leapt from action-adventure to the RPG crowd, and I don’t fault it. Sale numbers and audience reception to Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla have been phenomenal.

But if you a looking for a change of pace, a palette cleanser between the big, bombastic games, something that tells a small story in a larger frame, or is just a nice reminder of a time and gameplay styling that has been absent, then AC Liberation might just be right for you.

It’s been a pleasure to play as Aveline, and my only wish is that I wanted more.

Banner Photo Source: gamestar.de