One of video gaming’s most beloved franchises will finally return on Tuesday, Oct. 30 with a new timeline, a new setting and a new hero.
Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed” franchise began in 2007 with the release of “Assassin’s Creed I” and has since released three main games for major consoles and PC. The series follows Desmond Miles, a bartender in the year 2012, who is a descendent of the Brotherhood of Assassins. He is kidnapped by a megacorporation called Abstergo Industries, a modern-day face of the Knights Templar order. In the fictional world of “Assassin’s Creed,” the Templars are the bad guys while the assassins are silent guardians and protectors of peace (there’s a Batman reference in there somewhere).
Through a machine called the Animus, the Templars at Abstergo use Desmond’s DNA to view the memories of his ancient assassin ancestors. These memories put the player straight into the role of an assassin in key points in world history. In “Assassin’s Creed I,” the player follows the life of Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad, one of the world first assassins in the time of The Crusades. The franchise’s next three games, “Assassin’s Creed II,” “Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood” and “Assassin’s Creed Revelations,” all follow the life of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an assassin during the time of the Italian Renaissance. “Assassin’s Creed III” is the latest installment to the series, and it will follow a brand new assassin in one of the most important points of world history-The American Revolution.
Members of Ubisoft have said that this will be “the biggest and best ‘Assassasin’s Creed’ yet,” and I believe that they are right. Here are some of the best new features of the game, and why you should buy it even if you are new to the franchise.
Think back to your American history classes in high school. Remember events like the Boston Tea Party, Lexington and Concord, and Yorktown? Imagine getting to fight on the sides of men like General Putnam and George Washington. That’s exactly what you will get to do in ACIII. The game will cover a time period of about 30 years (1753-1783), putting you right in the middle of the action in the most important event in American history. Fighting next to the colonial army will be a man who is basically a second army in himself, the newest assassin to the brotherhood, Connor Kenway.
Connor, whose real name is Ratohnhaké:ton, is half Mohawk Indian, half European, and he is the most brutal assassin of the series so far. Unlike the series’ first two assassins, who carried weapons such as swords and throwing knives, Connor is armed with what could be the funnest arsenal to date. Armed with items like a tomahawk, a bow, a flintlock, a rope dart and the traditional assassin’s hidden blade, you can be sure that there will be some epic, nasty kills in this game. Connor is also trained in martial arts, which means there will be some crazy, MMA-style fighting to go along with his one-man-army arsenal.
One of the greatest things about the “Assassin’s Creed” series is that the player gets to interact with many famous figures from the stories’ particular time periods. In the games that covered the Italian Renaissance, the player worked with people such as Niccolà Machiavelli and got many different gadgets from Leonardo Da Vinci. Now imagine how awesome it would be to get all of your weapons and gadgets in ACIII from a guy like Benjamin Franklin.
The biggest (literally) part about this game is the world for the player to explore. There will be three main areas in ACIII for the player to perform their missions, New York, Boston and a new, ridiculously huge area called The Frontier.
While most of the assassination missions will take place in the cities, Ubisoft has said that The Frontier area will have a very “free to explore” feeling to it, similar to Skyrim. Using a new type of gaming engine called Anvil Next, The Frontier will have a very organic feel to it rather than the traditional grid style format that most games have today. About one third of the game’s side-missions will take place in The Frontier. It will also be populated with wild animals such as moose, deer, bears, wolves and cougars in which the player can hunt and use their resources to help him complete missions.
In the end, “Assassin’s Creed III” has the potential to be the best game of the year by far. The past games of the series were great, but they did not have that close-to-home feeling like this one will have being set in colonial America. ACIII will finally give players a brand new story to follow as well as a whole new type of environment and weapon arsenal to use thanks to the time period. “Assassin’s Creed III”w goes on sale Oct. 30, and you better believe that I will be at a midnight release to get my copy.