Assassin's Creed: Unity Review

The Assassin's Creed franchise has long become a staple for publisher Ubisoft. Despite some concerns about the ability of the series to deliver every holiday season, it has carried on, and with the launch of the new consoles comes an opportunity to push the gameplay forward. While last year's great AC IV: Black Flag was a simple port to the Xbox One and PS4, this year's Assassin's Creed: Unity is its own experience. It's a game designed purely for the next generation, carrying with it high hopes and fan expectations to make a strong start into a new Creed era. And while Unity is a solid experience, gameplay mechanics are hardly groundbreaking and troublesome technical issues keep the game grounded.

As is customary to the franchise, Unity sees players partake in an important historical timeline, this time around the French Revolution in the 18th century. Players become Arno Dorian, a young man whose father is murdered during his childhood. Arno is then adopted, and meets Elise De LaSerre, whom he grows up with and subsequently falls in love. Years later, her father (Arno's adopter) is also murdered, and soon Arno finds himself on a path of revenge. As is somewhat expected, we learn that Arno's father was a member of the Assassin Order. But in an interesting twist, Elise reveals that she and her family are with the Templars. Thus the narrative follows to the usual struggle between the two factions, with Arno seeking revenge for his father's death by joining the Assassins and rising through the ranks.

Having two main characters romantically involved on opposite sides of the conflict creates an interesting dynamic not yet explored by the franchise. Both Arno and Elise are driven by their ideologies and desire to uncover the truth, and use the respective orders to accomplish their goals. The story is helped by focusing on a few lead characters, rather than overwhelming the player by numerous historical figures that come and go. It's also briskly paced, and doesn't have the problem of too many subplots. Arno and Elise create an engaging dynamic, and following their tale of revenge and love is interesting. However, that's not to say the dialogue or the plot itself is anything extraordinary. And despite the French setting and Ubisoft being a French company, characters still possess a thick British accent.

But what of the French Revolution? Sadly, unlike previous games, Unity doesn't really involve Arno in the historical events. The societal struggle is only sometimes touched upon, and mostly serves as a backdrop to the private story of Arno and his life, rather than the tale of a nation. We only observe moments of chaos that erupt on the streets through specific missions, and with many locations on the map always featuring protests, the game world doesn't always feel like it's changing. The game's story missions feel similarly disconnected from the main narrative. Like Altaïr before him, Arno is often running errands for the Assassins rather than trying to accomplish his own personal goals that made him join the Order in the first place.

The main story missions are a typical Assassin's Creed affair. You're going to be climbing and fighting your way to objectives, speaking with important characters, and performing targeted assassinations. Here is where Unity does shine, and stands above its direct predecessors. The assassination missions play out like stealth assignments, where Arno starts off on the edge of a restricted area, and must find a way to his target. The game presents numerous optional objectives that allow the mission to play out in different ways. For example, you can pickpocket a guard to gain keys, and get into the building via rooftop access. You can free some prisoners to help you fight through the guards, or just use the chaos as distraction. Or, you can cover the sewer vents to reduce visibility inside when you eventually venture in. These alterations to the missions help create a dynamic feel to the gameplay, and offer lots of replay value. Sometimes these optional tasks significantly alter the path of the mission, and at other times they are merely distractions that do little to help your progress.

While you can fight your way to the target, stealth is usually more rewarding. Thankfully, for the first time a dedicated stealth button has been added that makes Arno crouch and be able to stick to cover. The controls can be a bit awkward at times, but for a franchise that's so focused on stealth, it's a wonder it took so long to add. Other notable gameplay changes include revamped combat and parkour mechanics. Your melee options include the usual dodge, parry, and shoves, and they have been rebalanced and are a bit more challenging than before. Arno's phantom blade acts similarly to the dart gun from Black Flag and provides a silent, long-range weapon for more flexibility. Finally, the parkour does feel vastly improved when it works, letting you hop to and from ledges at odd angles and perform maneuvers previously impossible. At the same time, there are many frustrating occasions where the game refuses to cooperate and flings our hero to his death, or right into a group of foes. It's growing pains for the new traversal mechanics, and while they are impressive at the outset, you will miss the completely polished experience from last gen.

Improving your skills and acquiring new gear has been streamlined and made more progression-based than before. You earn cash to purchase new weapons and clothes, which now carry a multitude of stat boosts, from better stealth to increased Eagle View range and duration to higher HP. The crafting systems are gone, and all items can be purchased almost anywhere outside of combat. Most gear is also upgradable, using Creed Points. These points are earned by performing various gameplay tasks, such as stealthy takedowns or successful escapes. You'll usually have plenty of Creed Points, but cash seems much harder to come by.

Despite completing a wealth of random events, missions, and owning a couple of upgraded profit-generating buildings in the city, we were only able to keep Arno moderately outfitted to match the district difficulty rating. That's because it feels like the game is making it much more difficult to acquire cash, and your ammunition refill costs are quite high. But every weapon and clothing item can also be bought with Helix Points as well. These are an arbitrary currency that can be only gained with real cash purchases. With point packs ranging from $10 to $100CAD, this marks the introduction of microtransactions to the Assassin's Creed franchise. While Unity is still not an overly challenging game, and it's entirely possible to complete it without spending a dime of real cash, there's certainly a pinch that players will feel when it comes to their finances. Earning some of the elite level of gear would likely take hours and hours of grinding and replaying missions, and while that ultimately won't affect most players, it's disappointing to see the franchise head into such a direction.