Assassin's Creedence Clearwater: A Retrospective of my Favorite Non-Halo, Non-Mass Effect Series

As fans of the Hunger Games know, I am the master of promising and postponing. So we're holding off on the Walking Dead review until I play Episode 5 and going right in with an overview of Assassin's Creed. Why? Because Assassin's Creed 3 (the fifth game in the series, just roll with it) comes out today and I won't get to play it until at least 7 PM because I had to be an idiot and volunteer at a blood drive.This is what service to others gets you: less time to pretend killing Redcoats. Assassin's Creed is one of my favorite series largely because it combines historical settings with many sword fights and also crazy alternate history intrigue. Now I'm going to try and deviate from my normal writing style, because otherwise this retrospective will be 8,000 words and come out in January. I figure I'll talk a little about the plot for each game, what I liked what I didn't like, and then conclude with a ranking of each game in the series. Today, I will do Assassin's Creed 1 and tomorrow, I will review what is known as the "Ezio Trilogy" or "Where the Numbering went FUBAR". Without further ado, let us begin the look back at the Assassin's Creed series:

Assassin's Creed (2007)

If being an assassin doesn't work out, Altair should try the NBA. He's got mad hops, yo.

Fall of 2007 will be remembered as the greatest season for video games of the 360/Wii/PS3 generation. It saw the release of no less than a half dozen phenomenally good games: BioShock (one of the few "artsy" games that is also fun), The Orange Box (specifically Portal), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (perhaps the most revolutionary FPS of the generation), Halo 3 (which was just fun), Mass Effect (you know, I think I've said enough about this series), and Assassin's Creed. In the game, you play as Altair, a member of the Order of Assassins during the Third Crusade. You are tasked with killing both Crusaders and Saracens who are profiting and prolonging the carnage, because if they did it accurately, you would be in a group of Muslim extremists murdering Christian soldiers and that would be just great for sales. But wait! You are also Desmond Miles from the far off year of 2012, henceforth known as Future Desmond.

"Literally no one likes me" ~Future Desmond

It turns out the whole "Medieval Assassin" game is actually just Future Desmond reliving the memories of his ancestor, which is pretty awesome actually. Unfortunately for Future Desmond, he has been kidnapped by the evil Abstergo Corporation, who is watching him play Assassin's Creed for some nefarious purpose. All right, that's enough exposition.

In retrospect, I could say that the sidequests were extremely repetitive, the combat boiled down to "Block and counterkill", the NPCs had just a few sayings they would repeat ad nauseum ("If Richard takes Jaffa, he will take the Holy Land!"). But seriously, it was a ridiculous amount of fun to run across the roofs of the medieval cities, swoop down on unsuspecting guards and then sword fight your way to freedom. The combat animations were graceful and combat was simple and fun.

The characters were... less fun. Honestly, they were so conservative with characterizations that I have a hard time remembering anyone but the main protagonist, main antagonist and Richard the Lionheart. Altair has a really cool character design but lacks any sort of character. Some scenes he is stoic, other scenes he is hotheaded and the rest of the time he is forgettable. Actually, that's a lie. I distinctly recall him being a militant atheist, which is fitting because this whole series is aggressively anti-theistic (which is my biggest gripe with it). At the start of the game, Altair and his fellow assassins are rooting around the ruins of the Temple of Solomon  and they see some Templars carrying a highly ornate gold box. One of the assassins says it's the Ark of the Covenant and Altair says "There's no such thing!", even though he's sort of gazing directly upon it.

Robert de Sable is... French and a Grandmaster of the Knights Templar! Outside of that, he really doesn't do much. You hear his name a lot, but I honestly don't know much about how he would react to a situation. And Richard the Lionheart is the token historical celebrity. He's only in the next to last level of the game, but he also has the only memorable line from this game. He tells Altair, "You may not believe in Him [God], but He certainly believes in you." Oh also, it turns out your mentor, Al-Mualim is the main bad guy. He's forgettable because you have lengthy dialogue with him at the start of every level and nothing he ever says is very memorable and it's always pseud-philosophical bunk. It turns out that everything you did was all an intricate plan of his to be the sole owner of a powerful artifact called "The Piece of Eden", which gives you the ability to control the minds of lesser people (and was also taken from the Ark of the Covenant). And it turns out the modern day Templars, Abstergo, were watching you play Assassin's Creed so they could find the Piece of Eden in the modern age and control everybody's mind from a satellite! Yeah, it does sound crazy when you say it out loud. As the game ends, you discover that Future Desmond has developed some of the skills Altair had through something called "The Bleeding Process". With his new found superpower, Desmond finds some truly crazy stuff written on the wall of his bedroom. Incidentally, it was one of the first series to get wrapped up in the 2012 Doomsday stuff (since 12-21-2012 is when the Templars plan on launching their Doom Satellite)

I'm gonna have such a hard time falling asleep tonight with all the glowing text on the wall!

So that's Assassin's Creed 1. Not perfect, but a great start to the franchise. Ignoring some issues of characterization and relentless cynicism, it had some very intriguing ideas. It kept the alternate history simple but intriguing. And all of the crazy text on the wall suggested that the playbook was wide open for the sequel. The medieval cities were truly impressive in their design and it really established Assassin's Creed as a series to be reckoned with. Tomorrow, I'll be back to discuss the Ezio Trilogy in all its glory. Those games will take much less time to discuss because, as the title suggests, we only have one assassin to follow and I don't have to explain the whole "reliving your ancestors memory" thing again.