Why Assassin's Creed 2 and 3 Had the Best Writing the Series Has Ever Seen

One of the astir memorable moments successful the full Assassin’s Creed bid happens adjacent the commencement of Assassin’s Creed 3, erstwhile Haytham Kenway has finished rounding up his set of assassins successful the New World. Or astatine least, the subordinate is led to judge they’re assassins. Haytham, aft all, uses a hidden blade, is conscionable arsenic charismatic arsenic erstwhile bid protagonist Ezio Auditore, and has – up until this constituent successful the run – played the portion of a hero, busting Native Americans retired of situation and beating up cocky British redcoats. Only erstwhile helium utters the acquainted phrase, “May the Father of Understanding usher us,” does it go wide we person really been pursuing our sworn enemies, the Templars.

To me, this astonishing setup represents the fullest realization of Assassin’s Creed’s potential. The archetypal crippled successful the bid introduced an intriguing conception – find, get to know, and termination your targets – but fell abbreviated successful the communicative department, with some protagonist Altaïr and his victims being utterly bereft of personality. Assassin’s Creed 2 took a measurement successful the close absorption by replacing Altaïr with the much iconic Ezio, but failed to use the aforesaid attraction to his adversaries, with the large atrocious of its spinoff Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Cesare Borgia, coming crossed arsenic peculiarly underdeveloped. Only successful Assassin’s Creed 3, acceptable during the American Revolution, did the developers astatine Ubisoft give arsenic overmuch clip to fleshing retired the hunted arsenic they did the hunter. It lent the crippled an integrated travel from set-up to payoff and, arsenic a result, achieved a delicate equilibrium betwixt gameplay and communicative that arsenic yet hasn’t been replicated since.

The underappreciated AC3 features the series' champion equilibrium of gameplay and story. | Image credit: Ubisoft

While the existent RPG epoch of the bid has mostly been good received by players and critics, a wealthiness of articles, YouTube videos, and forum posts hold that Assassin’s Creed is successful decline, and has been for immoderate time. What precisely is liable for this downfall, however, is taxable to debate. Some constituent to the progressively unrealistic premises of the modern games, which person you look disconnected against gods similar Anubis and Fenrir. Others instrumentality contented with Ubisoft’s implementation of a varied spectrum of romance options or, successful the hotly-disputed lawsuit of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, replacing its hitherto fictional protagonists with a real-world humanities figure, an African samurai called Yasuke. My idiosyncratic nostalgia for the Xbox 360/PS3-era games notwithstanding, I’d reason it’s nary of these. Instead, specified diminution is simply a effect of the series’ gradual abandonment of character-driven storytelling, which has by present gotten buried heavy wrong its sprawling sandbox.

Over the years, Assassin’s Creed has padded its archetypal action-adventure look with a slew of RPG and unrecorded service-ish elements, from dialog trees and XP-based levelling systems to loot boxes, microtransaction DLC, and cogwheel customization. But the bigger the caller installments person become, the emptier they person started to feel, and not conscionable with respect to the countless climb-this-tower, find-that-object side-missions, but besides their basal storytelling.

Although allowing you to take what your quality says oregon does should theoretically marque the wide acquisition much immersive, successful signifier I’ve recovered it often has the other effect: arsenic scripts get longer and longer to relationship for aggregate imaginable scenarios, they consciousness similar they deficiency the aforesaid level of polish arsenic a crippled with a much constricted scope of interaction. The focused, screenplay-like scripts of the series’ action-adventure epoch allowed for sharply defined characters that were not pulled bladed by a crippled operation that demands its protagonist beryllium compassionate oregon brutal connected the whim of the player.

Thus, portion a crippled similar Assassin’s Creed Odyssey technically has much contented than Assassin’s Creed 2, overmuch of it feels woody and underbaked. This unluckily breaks the immersion; it's excessively often precise evident that you are interacting with machine generated characters alternatively than analyzable humanities figures. This is successful stark opposition to the franchise’s Xbox 360/PS3 era, which successful my humble sentiment has produced immoderate of the finest penning successful each of gaming, from Ezio’s fiery “Do not travel me, oregon anyone else!” code aft besting Savonarola, to the tragicomic soliloquy Haytham delivers erstwhile helium is astatine agelong past killed by his son, Connor:

“Don't deliberation I person immoderate volition of caressing your feature and saying I was wrong. I volition not weep and wonderment what mightiness person been. I'm definite you understand. Still, I'm arrogant of you successful a way. You person shown large conviction. Strength. Courage. All noble qualities. I should person killed you agelong ago.”

Haytham Kenway is 1 of Assassin's Creed's astir richly-realized villains. | Image credit: Ubisoft

The penning has suffered successful different ways implicit the years, too. Where the modern games thin to instrumentality to the easy digestible dichotomy of Assassins = bully and Templars = bad, the earlier games went to large lengths to amusement that the enactment betwixt the 2 orders isn’t arsenic clear-cut arsenic it initially appears. In Assassin’s Creed 3, each defeated Templar uses their past enactment to marque Connor – and, by extension, the subordinate – question their ain beliefs. William Johnson, a negotiator, says the Templars could person stopped the Native American genocide. Thomas Hickey, a hedonist, calls the Assassins’ ngo unrealistic and promises Connor that he’ll ne'er consciousness fulfilled. Benjamin Church, who betrays Haytham, declares it’s “all a substance of perspective,” and that the British – from their constituent of presumption – spot themselves arsenic the victims, not the aggressors.

Haytham, for his part, tries to shingle Connor’s religion successful George Washington, claiming the state he’ll make volition beryllium nary little despotic than the monarchy from which the Americans sought to liberate themselves – an assertion which rings each the much existent erstwhile we observe that the bid to pain down Connor’s colony wasn’t fixed by Haytham’s henchman Charles Lee, arsenic antecedently thought, but Washington. By the extremity of the game, the subordinate has much questions than answers – and the communicative is stronger for it.

Looking backmost connected the franchise’s agelong history, determination is simply a crushed wherefore 1 way from the Jesper Kyd-composed Assassin’s Creed 2 score, “Ezio’s Family,” resonated with players to the constituent of becoming the series’ authoritative theme. The PS3 games, peculiarly Assassin’s Creed 2 and Assassin’s Creed 3, were – astatine their halfway – character-driven experiences; the melancholic guitar strings of “Ezio’s Family” weren’t meant to evoke the game’s Renaissance mounting truthful overmuch arsenic Ezio’s idiosyncratic trauma of losing his family. As overmuch arsenic I respect the expansive worldbuilding and graphical fidelity of the existent procreation of Assassin’s Creed games, my anticipation is that this out-of-control franchise volition someday standard itself down, and erstwhile again present the benignant of focused, tailor-made stories that made maine autumn successful emotion with it successful the archetypal place. Sadly, successful a scenery dominated by sprawling sandboxes and single-player games with unrecorded service-style ambitions, I fearfulness that’s conscionable not “good business” anymore.

Tim Brinkhof is simply a freelance writer specializing successful creation and history. After studying journalism astatine NYU, helium has gone connected to constitute for Vox, Vulture, Slate, Polygon, GQ, Esquire and more.