Sister Act: Evie Frye Takes On The Tower In Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

Jacob Frye might have been front and centre when Assassin’s Creed Syndicate was first announced, as he got involved in gang fights or battled on horse-drawn carriages through the streets of Victorian London. Truth be told, he’s probably a bit brash and on the nose compared to the assassins we’ve come to know through the series, but he’s not the only playable character in the game.

You can also step into the shoes of Jacob’s twin sister, Evie, as a second protagonist in the game and as a nice counterpoint to his more combative approach. She’s pitched as the more coolly analytical of the two siblings – we’ve seen her investigating crime scenes in the past – and the more traditional of the twin assassin. She may even be the more deadly, as a consequence.

A Templar of some renown, Lucy Thorne and her cohort are in the process of quietly raiding the Tower of London in search of another Piece of Eden, The Shroud. Naturally, it’s up to you to stop her, which presents you with what’s been branded as a ‘Black Box’ mission.

However, Evie is ideally suited to just such an infiltration mission. Reaching a vantage point within the castle, a range of possibilities are made open to you, as the camera zooms from one opportunity to the next. A guard is happened upon by one loyal only to the Templars, the Queen’s Keys are making their way through the tower in their ritualistic fashion, and a constable is being locked up by Templars.

Each gives you different options, with the Queen’s Keys able to open up any door in the area, and potentially letting you get the drop on Miss Thorne, as it were. Alternatively, freeing the constable would let you rally his troops and fight the Templars head on. Finally, the lone guard would let you make use of Evie’s unique abilities to infiltrate the White Tower and get close to your target.

Of course, she has plenty of standard traversal options available to her. A Batman-like grappling hook to reach the tops of buildings or bridge a large gap with the cable and pull herself across, as well as free running and climbing in a fashion that has always been a staple of the series.

Though by no means a problem unique to this series, I must admit that whenever I return to the Assassin’s Creed games, I always struggle with the controls for a few minutes before getting a hang of them once more. My attempts to infiltrate the Tower of London were a comedy of errors, as a result. I had to refer to the controls print out and ask my guide what button I needed to press to climb down to a lower handhold, I was spotted and ended up having to kill a few guards quite needlessly, and so on. Yet, but the end of the mission, I was at least part of the way back to being in full control.

Staying off the ground and away from the guards is obviously the best way to avoid detection, even if the rooftops are crawling with them as well. To that end, Evie has more throwing knives than her brother so that she can kill from afar, but she also has a unique chameleon ability to go almost completely invisible if she stays stock still. That doesn’t work just in cover, but also out in the open, giving you a lot more scope to get very close to your target, even if it is particularly outlandish.

Much less unusual is her ability to play the captive, taking a leaf out of Han Solo’s playbook. With the friendly tower guard there to make it look like she’s his captive, you can walk past guards with relative ease. However, the Templars themselves are likely to spot that he’s not one of them or that something’s up, if you get to close to them – as denoted by a white circle on the ground which grows larger the faster you walk.

In this instance, it’s a rather effective ploy, with perhaps the only disappointing note being that through this particular path that I chose, I wasn’t in control as Evie sunk her blade into Miss Thorn’s back, to trigger the traditional discussion between assassin and victim in the Animus.

The Assassin’s Creed series isn’t exactly a spring chicken anymore, but it’s good to see Ubisoft striving to keep it relevant and interesting. It’s clear that Ubisoft Quebec are delivering on their promise to speed up the gameplay, and while there might be a few oddities to her abilities, being able to play as both Evie and Jacob within missions designed to be flexible and give you lots of different options should make this one of the more varied and interesting games in the series.