Assassin’s Creed is a series that I have routinely found enjoyable, but not necessarily earth-shattering. Given that Assassin’s Creed III received somewhat mixed reviews, I didn’t go in expecting much. I actually ended up being pleasantly surprised by this title. While it lacks some of the charm that Assassin’s Creed II boasted, it makes up for a lot of its shortcomings in other ways.
Of the major changes made in Assassin’s Creed III, the combat was one of the things I noticed most quickly. The timing was made more difficult, the controls were overhauled, and your options were made more numerous. Now you can not only counter-kill enemies, but launch quick, surprising attacks to knock foes off balance, throw them off of rooftops, or disarm them entirely. Not only that, but all of your sub-weapons can be used to counter enemies as well, usually with fatal results. Gone are the throwing knives that have made an appearance in every game in the series thus far and the bombs from Revelations, but they have been replaced with other interesting and deadly fare, such as the bow, rope dart, and flintlock pistol. Another interesting combat mechanic is the added ability for your enemies to attack more than one at a time, potentially triggering an impressive cinematic counter-kill that drops both enemies at once. Unfortunately, the same problem that plagued the combat of the previous titles remains in effect here; once you’re used to the timing of the different weapons and the abilities of your foes, you can dispatch them with both extreme ease and extreme prejudice. I occasionally found myself picking fights with groups of six or seven musketeer enemies while completely unarmed, only to beat them all senseless with my bare hands with nary a sweat broken. There are quests and resource-gathering elements to this game that unlock new weapons, but I found myself somewhat disinclined to bother, seeing as I was already a near superhuman killing machine. Even if it is flawed though, the combat is more satisfying than ever; the main protagonist’s combat style is viciously aggressive, and slaughtering a base full of enemies with ruthless efficiency will definitely elicit a few maniacal cackles.
The game begins from the perspective of the soon-to-be-protagonist’s father, which ended up being somewhat of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Haytham’s James Bond-esque confidence, dry wit and ice-cold imperturbability immediately drew me in, but on the other, it set the bar impossibly high for his son. Connor, by contrast, is bitter, overly defensive, naive, and needlessly hostile with people who could otherwise be friends. After the third time a recurring friendly French brother-in-arms is rebuffed by a firm glare when patting Connor on the shoulder affectionately, I couldn’t help but wonder how he could resist the urge to shout “FINE! BE THAT WAY YOU ANTISOCIAL ASSHAT! WHY DON’T YOU JUST GO SIT IN A CORNER LIKE THE POUTY MAN-CHILD YOU ARE AND THINK ABOUT HOW NOBODY LIKES YOU BECAUSE YOU’RE SUCH A ROYAL PRICK.” I assume it’s because he rather prefers remaining un-stabbed. And if there are two things Connor is good at, they’re being an antisocial asshat, and stabbing people. And climbing, I guess, but that doesn’t count for much in the Assassin’s Creed series.
For some reason that is completely beyond me, if you help a former captain repair his damaged vessel, he teaches you to sail it and names you the new captain. While I do question why anybody would do anything nice for Connor, I must admit that the naval combat was extremely fun, and though it is (almost) entirely optional, I exhausted every mission opportunity available to me. Hearing the crunch of splintering wood and watching an explosive gout of flame roar out of a crippled enemy vessel after you unleash the full force of your complement of broadside cannons is just as exhilarating as it sounds. Part of me wishes they had done more with boarding enemy vessels, but I suppose that would have just lead to more of the melee combat I found so stupifyingly easy. The only other complaint I had about the naval combat was that there wasn’t more of it; there are probably a good dozen missions, which for an optional side-game is quite generous, but I still found myself walking away wanting more.
Hunting is a new addition as well, allowing you to kill and skin animals for raw materials that can be sold or used to craft new items back at your homestead as part of the new trading and economy minigame. Ambushing animals, setting traps and throwing bait down to draw them in can be exciting at first, but the luster doesn’t last. Getting jumped by a pack of wolves or a mountain lion is kind of exciting the first couple of times, but after that, it just gets tiresome. I also quickly realized that hunting in general was entirely unnecessary; just like the entire economic aspect of your homestead in general.
You have the option to help out and recruit settlers to work at your homestead. Some settlers, like lumberjacks for example, will gather raw materials, where others, like the woodworker, might make use of those gathered materials to craft things.The problem is, very few of these items have any practical use; most of them are loaded into caravans and shipped off to a store to sell. As most players of the series know, money is practically superfluous, and AC3 is no exception. The only thing I found myself bothering to spend any significant amount of money on was upgrading my ship, but even after I had bought all of the upgrades, my trousers were filled with more coin than could fit in Santa’s sack.
There were a few strange oversights and glitches here too. Connor can equip a wide array of weapons, including daggers, but these seemed to be afterthoughts. When equipped with a dagger, all of Connor’s combat animations and sounds are the same as when he is wielding a tomahawk, leading to some very perplexing looking fights indeed. Needless to say, when he swung his small dirk at someone’s head, stopped a couple of inches away with a visceral “thwack”, and then ripped the weapon that never touched the foe back out in a spray of blood, I couldn’t help but quirk an eyebrow. Swinging a dagger like that wouldn’t cause significant injury to a pizza box, let alone an armed and angry British soldier, even if he hadn’t been two inches off. I also killed a bear as teenage Connor with hidden blades I hadn’t yet received. The bear attacking you is even a scripted event; they just sort of… expect you to run, and when you don’t the game just says “well, okay, I guess in that case we’ll just let you have all of the skills, agility, musculature and equipment of a fully-trained master assassin, that’s fine.” It strikes me as quite reasonable to have the bear just outright kill teenage Connor of you’re too stupid to run (I kind of expected to die in fact, but I thought it could be fun to see how it turned out); it would have hurt my immersion far less if they had.
My other major criticism of AC3 was that I was never really entirely clear on who my enemies were, or why I was killing them. Yes, yes, Templars and all that nonsense, but the people in the street, the people I stab on a regular basis are either Redcoats or Patriots. Wait wait wait… I’m no American history major, but aren’t they fighting each other? Who’s side am I on here?
“Why, the Patriots, of course!” the game cheerfully tells me.
“Okay, well, why are your patriots trying to shoot me? And why do they show up as big red dots on my map that scream ‘I’m an enemy please stab my kidneys’?”
“Don’t ask questions, just stab kidneys.”
There were times when bandits were openly coercing and threatening shopkeepers in the streets of New York, so of course, being the good samaritan I am I cut them to ribbons… only to receive a volley of musket fire to the back when a group of patriots decides that I have no business cleaning up their newly-liberated streets. Not that they batted an eyelash at the armed thugs shaking down the poor merchant when they passed by a few moments ago. During the main quest Connor’s loyalty to the Patriots tends to fluctuate a little bit, but the way the game treats them outside of missions always remains the same.
There was one other thing I was expecting going into AC3, but I was very glad not to see it. Judging from the advertisements and setting, i expected AC3 to be a love-letter to the founding fathers, and present the American revolution as a self-indulgent, orgiastic, patriotism-inspired smack-down. And, to my great surprise, it wasn’t. Yes, the British are presented in a consistently negative light, but the game doesn’t gloss over the darker stuff the Patriots pulled, either. I remember a scene after Connor helped the Patriots secure their independence and power-base (SPOILER ALERT: The Patriots win), wherein he watches an auctioneer call out for bids on some black slaves he has tied up with him on the auction block. The look of disgust and existential despair on Connor’s face brought out a great deal of sympathy from me, despite how unlikable I found him; these were the people he had called his allies, and he had helped to get to this point. This was on him. The game also nods to the mistreatment and displacement of the American natives, and the sale of their land by President George Washington to make a quick buck. Another little historical tidbit that is frequently mentioned is General George Washington’s utter incompetence as a General; the real man was indeed outmaneuvered by British commanders on multiple occasions. Your assassin IT guy back in modern times even sends you an email outlining how malignantly homosexuals were treated during those days, with penalties including (but not limited to) castration. All of this added up to an honest (if bleak) presentation of the harsh truths surrounding the founding of America.
As for the modern-day story that sets the stage for your gallivanting around in the past, there’s really not a ton of depth to be found. The ending was not nearly as impressive or interesting as it could have been either, seeing as my attention and time was being constantly directed towards the past, and I felt little connection or interest in the modern-day characters.
All in all, Assassin’s Creed III is a fun game, and certainly a worthy addition to the the series, though it is not without its shortcomings. If you’re looking for an excuse to stab people in an exciting and spectacular way, you’ll be glad for this romp through the colonial era. If you’re hoping for a strong plot and interesting characters with gameplay supporting it, you’d probably be better off looking elsewhere. Baldur’s Gate II Enhanced Edition just came out, so if you haven’t played BG II, you should start there.
Keep on truckin’, assassins.
Uni
Renaissance Gamer 