Most demos at PAX differ from their E3 counterparts, in that more often than not they’re playable. Given the fan-centric nature of the event, it’s presumed that when gamers shell out cash for a badge and trek to a convention center full of sweaty enthusiasts, they want to play games, not observe them. Still, when you’re as big as Assassin’s Creed, you can probably get away with doing whatever you want.
As such, my time with Assassin’s Creed Unity and Assassin’s Creed Rogue was not spent with a controller in hand, but rather seated on a theater bench as an observer. Luckily, Unity’s gameplay demo was fascinating enough to make up for Rogue’s relatively uninteresting, dubstep-drenched trailer, and I came away more excited than I entered. So in that very basic sense, the presentation was a success.
I’ll get the Rogue talk out of the way first. I don’t mean to disregard or discredit hard work that Rogue’s dev team has poured into the game, but I don’t find myself all that wooed by or interested in the title. As a last-gen offering it’s obviously not going to be blowing any technical milestones out of the water, but there’s something else; something about the trailer puts me off. Maybe it’s the now-aging Black Flag engine, or the crunchy dubstep, or the all-around presentation that just sort of screams “XTREME BLOCKBUSTER,” but I found myself wondering how Assassin’s Creed got to this point. In the era of ACII, I such a trailer would probably be vetoed immediately. In 2014, it’s approved and pushed straight to PAX.
The cool thing about Rogue is that it takes place in New York, with locales extending all the way up to Canada, but the trailer didn’t do much to emphasize this. If you’re the sort of Assassin’s Creed fan who needs or prefers to stay in the loop on every last plot development, then you already know you’ll buy Rogue when it releases. Otherwise, the “Plot” section on Wikipedia may very well suffice, especially if you’re an owner of a PS4 or Xbox One.
Thankfully, the presentation soon shifted to Unity, and Ubisoft’s next-gen AC offering is clearly keeping the cinematic, prestigious pedigree of the franchise in mind. The video was essentially a guided developer walkthrough of a mission called “Heist,” in which one of the title’s main new draws, co-op play, was featured. The lights dimmed, the video began, and I wished I had a sandwich. PAX makes you very hungry.
Heist’s main objective was to infiltrate an area and retrieve a precious Templar treasure, and this was carried out by way of sewer-crawling. Well, it eventually was; the demo began with, much to nobody’s surprise, the jumping from a building into a haystack, where nearby guards were subsequently subjected to silent takedowns. I can’t for the life of me imagine why Ubisoft would feature the haystack-dive off the bat as if it’s something even remotely new or cool, but it’s a minor complaint, and the moment soon passed.
Once sewer-bound and united with his co-op partner, the demo began to get interesting for our developer friend at Ubisoft. Though there were few shockingly new mechanics or Assassin tactics happening during the infiltration, what struck me as most impressive was the smoothness with which co-op teamwork unfolded. Want to distract a guard and quickly slit his throat? Just send your buddy over with a flash bang and the rest is easy. How about a group who needs to be incapacitated to prevent the sounding of an alarm? No problem – just ambush them and split the workload between the two of you. I especially enjoyed an almost Batman-esque strategy that involved leaping from the shadows before inducing death by terrifying asphyxiation. The sleek, shadowy assassin outfits on display only amplified the effect.
The demo was admittedly a bit linear, but I was pleased with how the game looks visually. Is it an outright revolution in Assassin’s Creed graphical presentation? Well, not really. But detail has very clearly been enhanced, character models look phenomenal, and as I noted from what I saw at E3, the need for pre-rendered cutscenes is becoming smaller and smaller as game engines improve. I look forward to the day when they’re entirely unnecessary.
As with The Crew, Ubisoft offered a tease at PAX but is otherwise asking us to trust them. Though Rogue makes me squirm a bit, I understand the importance of catering to the tens of millions of Xbox 360 and PS3 owners out there who haven’t made the next-gen jump yet. As for me, I’ll be waiting for Unity to hit, and preferably the PC version too. There absolutely needs to be a Batman and Catwoman mod for than sewer mission.
All screenshots are from Assassin’s Creed Unity.
