7 Things We Hope Ubisoft Have Changed For Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

Although Assassin’s Creed Unity may not be the worst game in Ubisoft’s power selling franchise, this latest instalment certainly fell short of expectation. Despite the series’ transition to current gen systems exclusivity, Unity’s stunning simulation of revolutionary Paris did little to mask the game’s shopping list of woes. To top things off, when it launched last November, it came in tow with a raft of frustrating, and sometimes hilarious bugs and glitches.

With Assassin’s Creed Syndicate making the rounds at this year’s E3, we decided to set the dial on our Animus to the late 1700s as we retrace where Unity slipped up and how Ubisoft can avoid making those same missteps.

Story

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where this started in the Assassin’s Creed timeline but, for a while now, the series’ narrative has been a mess. Sure, the parallel plot starring Desmond Miles wasn’t always on point, but it gave the AC games a sense of continuity. Since walking away from this narrative thread at the end of Assassin’s Creed III, the overarching story has continued to suffer. Edward Kenway and his seafaring adventure may have kept things fresh, but last year’s entry felt more like an interactive history lesson.

Unity fell into a rut, feeling the need to constantly remind the player where they were as well as who and what they were seeing and interacting with. The game’s persistent name-dropping soon began to drag, with Unity almost expecting the player to read through its virtual encyclopaedia to fill in the gaps within its historical plot line. Whether or not this will change in Syndicate isn’t clear, since history has always played a major part in how Ubisoft approaches world building, but with Syndicate we hope to see a less complex story as the Frye twins look to cleanse London’s criminal underbelly.

Collectibles

Ubisoft is no stranger when it comes to populating vast open worlds. Last year alone, the publisher opened the door to a slew of virtual playgrounds, from Far Cry 4’s Kyrat to Watch Dogs’ Chicago and beyond. Although huge and often quite gorgeous, Ubisoft has yet to strike a consistent balance between landmass and game content.

Unity is a prime example of this. With much of the game centred on the French capital, it offers considerably less open space to roam than previous titles in the series. Why, then, did Ubisoft decide to cram every nook and cranny with collectibles?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sucker for gathering the odd trinket here and there but Unity took things to the extreme. When viewing the in-game map, I’d have to wade through dozens of icons with my cursor to find anything of actual importance. What’s worse is that many of these collectibles did virtually nothing other than artificially expand one’s total playtime.

With collectibles having played a role since the original Assassin’s Creed, we’re bound to find plenty in Syndicate, but let’s just hope they’re actually meaningful and not used as a lazy way of filling every back alley and street corner with ‘content’.

Side Missions

Much of what has just been said is also applicable to the way in which Ubisoft handled side missions in Unity. For a start there were simply too many of them. Although some did a great job in anchoring the game’s setting, many were completely forgettable, raising questions as to why the developers would include them in the first place.

Perhaps most guilty were the murder mysteries and the Nostradamus puzzle quests. Both had players reading cryptic clues and dialogue before exploring certain areas of Paris, using Arno’s Eagle vision to pick out highlighted points of interest. Although the idea driving these missions was sound, the execution was unmistakably poor.

If Syndicate is to feature as much side content, it should mainly focus on the game’s central cast, while giving players something fun to do instead of alternating between navigation and the odd bit of reading.

Companion App

In fairness, there wasn’t much wrong with Unity’s companion app. Using data from the game, it generated a map that would update in real time to give players all the information they could ever need while playing. It even had a built-in game of its own, allowing player to form a brotherhood of assassins that could be sent on missions.

Although flashy, the app was still completely unnecessary. With Unity’s map viewable in-game at the press of a button, there was no real need to have a tablet device sitting on your lap. Furthermore, it added an additional layer of superfluous nonsense to Unity’s bulging repertoire, thanks to a cluster of Nomad chests and a new currency.

Thankfully, Ubisoft has already sidestepped this pitfall with Syndicate, having announced that the game won’t launch with a companion app.

Microtransactions

This is where things really started to look bad for Unity. Although microtransaction exist in many of our favourite big-budget games, the way they were implemented in Unity had eyebrows shooting up left, right, and centre.

Charging someone for a weapon or character skin is fair enough, but charge someone for a temporary boost to attack strength in a well-established game franchise and players are soon going to start asking questions.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but Assassin’s Creed Unity felt markedly more difficult than previous instalments. It certainly had something to do with the game’s combat mechanics, yet a more cynical part of me couldn’t ignore the presence of microtransactions in lieu of a difficulty setting in the game’s options.

Mechanics

One of the few things Unity got right was its free-running. Although lacking that crucial degree of finesse, it was serviceable enough to lead Arno over rooftops and through the cramped confines of interior locations. However, the same cannot be said of Unity’s combat.

Since Assassin’s Creed III and the move away from Altier and Ezio’s previous style of play, this area has continued to suffer from one year to the next. Throw in more characters capable of ranged attacks, a few dodgy animations and a harder overall difficulty, and what you get is the poorest, least exciting combat in an Assassin’s Creed game.

The old system may have had its problems, yet it felt more robust in comparison, while also allowing players more interaction when sparring with opponents. For instance, I loved being able to grab opponents as Ezio, holding them at swordpoint before launching them off rooftops or into unsuspecting groups of soldiers.

It may be too late to revert from the changes made to AC’s combat, but Ubisoft Quebec can at least make a genuine attempt to mend or improve upon some of the damage when Syndicate launches.

Customisation

At first, I loved the amount of customisation that Unity offered. However, several hours in, the novelty of switching weapons, armour, and other equipment soon wore off. Again, looking back at the original Assassin’s Creed and its trilogy of sequels, their limited range of weapons was actually a boon. In trying to include so many different types of arms, Ubisoft had to limit the number of unique animations each one had, draining much of the flare from combat sequences.

It’s that same recurring problem of the developer trying to pad out Unity, but lacking any sort of substance to back up its ideas.

It’s easy to have a few digs at Assassin’s Creed Unity, even months after the game’s problematic launch. That said, there are elements such as the cover mechanics, online co-op and interior environments that marked genuine improvements over earlier games in the series.

Even so, Ubisoft has a golden opportunity to right many of the errors it made in Unity with Syndicate, and Aisha Tyler acknowledged their recent spate of missteps during Ubisoft’s E3 press conference earlier this week. Although many of these flaws require minor tweaks in the way the developer thinks about open world design, there are other lingering issues that need a heavier shake-up. Hopefully, we’ll see some of these changes as Syndicate does the rounds at this week’s E3.