Looking forward is not always the right way to go. Assassin’s Creed in particular would do itself a favor to learn from the past
I have a new hobby. Since the latest update to Assassin’s Creed Mirage, I’ve been clicking through video after video on YouTube because there are so many incredibly satisfying parkour montages to be found. The latest patch brought the biggest improvements to the game in exactly the area where I had the most to complain about in the GlobalESportNews test of Assassin’s Creed Mirage: the acrobatics.
Main character Basim now swings much more elegantly over the rooftops of Baghdad. Sure, Mirage is still no Assassin’s Creed Unity, but the community finally has a flexible enough toolbox to pull off some really cool stunt choreography:
But as is the case with the YouTube algorithm: As soon as you click on a video, Google plasters your feed with even more stuff on the topic. Looking for a trailer for The Mandalorian? Here are a few four-hour analyses by a thirteen-year-old on why the third episode of Clone Wars is better than Star Wars 5. And so I dived into the world of Assassin’s Creed videos, into the past of earlier parts of the series and I came across a mission type whose presence I hadn’t seen for a long time…
Please, please bring these missions back!
There’s a type of mission that was part of every good Assassin’s Creed in the days of Ezio and Connor. It always had a different name – sometimes Templar Lairs, sometimes Lair of Romulus and in Assassin’s Creed 3 it was called Naval Locations. The principle behind it always remained the same: in order to find some gizmo, you have to travel to a particularly exotic location to experience an incredibly excitingly staged special mission – usually linked to some wild acrobatic puzzle.
Sometimes Ezio pursues a Templar on horseback in the Roman catacombs, sometimes Connor explores a Mayan ruin in Belize and sometimes you have this spectacular boat chase in Assassin’s Creed Revelations. This is a side mission. With emphasis on side:
With each subsequent installment in the series, Ubisoft invested more effort in making these five to ten chase missions per game more and more spectacular. Where in the second part I primarily solved cathedral acrobatics puzzles, in Assassin’s Creed 3 I explored ghost ships, abandoned mansions or the aforementioned Mayan ruins in all corners of America.
And then they disappeared. With the switch to the PS4 and Xbox One generation, these missions were removed and never returned. Sure, even an Assassin’s Creed Origins has exploration missions and there are some cool locations here and there in the side missions of a Valhalla, but the greatest strength of these missions was never replicated: they were a real break from the open-world monotony.
Best example Assassin’s Creed 3: There I spend so much time mingling with Washington and co. on the East Coast that I eventually can’t watch tea parties in Boston anymore. That makes missions in Central America or other exotic locations all the more refreshing! And that’s exactly what modern Assassin’s Creeds would do well, because the open-world monotony is finally becoming more rather than less
The escape from the open world
I understand that if I, as a development studio, invest millions of euros in an open world, then the players should also spend a lot of time there. But it’s the dose that makes the poison – and an occasional outburst at least prevents my open-world fatigue.
How much cooler would an Assassin’s Creed Syndicate have been if I hadn’t always been clambering around London, but instead traveled to India for a mission, where the British Empire is on the decline?
Sure, later Assassin’s Creeds generally make an effort to offer more than one location. After all, in Valhalla I travel to Paris and Ireland as well as Norway and England. But it’s not just about the locations, it’s about the blatant break with everything else I repeat for 200 hours
These chase missions forgo the open world, they are focused, linear, highly staged, offer fresh locations and force me to rethink my gameplay. After all, in Assassin’s Creed I almost always have huge rooms at my disposal – and suddenly, as an assassin, I have to rethink because I find myself under a Roman theater and somehow scurry from cover to cover.
A completely forgotten Ubisoft game that has done just that is the 2019 post-apocalyptic Far Cry New Dawn. There, I set off on special expedition missions to completely new locations away from the open world. And lo and behold, these missions are the biggest highlight of the whole game. So Ubi, learn from yourselves!
