BURSTING AT THE SEAMS
Also for: Nintendo Switch, Stadia, Windows, Xbox One
What is Assassin's Creed III? Well, it is nothing if not
ambitious.
Let me try to summarize it: It is the fifth game in the Assassin's Creed-franchise, a continuous tale about an ancient struggle between "freedom" (the Assassins) and "order" (the Templars). This chapter depicts a revenge tale, in large part told through the
perspective of a native American in the mid-to-late 18th century. And so it
extends into the tragic fate of the native Americans in their struggle against
the colonialists, who in turn fight among themselves, namely the Brits against
the French. It's also a tale about the American revolution, as told through
the lens of dozens of famous freedom fighters.
The gameplay is a third-person, story-driven stealth game, an open-world
parkour platformer with survivalist components, a melee fighting game, a
walking simulator and a naval battle sim - all wrapped into one gigantic
package.
All of this is, in turn, also encapsulated within the larger,
futuristic sci-fi narrative about the recurring character Desmond Miles, whose story finally gets concluded. He and his companions keep uncovering an ongoing global conspiracy. Meanwhile, they try to decipher the messages left by an ancient (or is it?)
civilization, who keep warning about an imminent apocalypse. As ridiculous as it sounds, all of it is told with
straight-faced seriousness.
Do you see the problem here? I tried to shorten it the best I could, but
supposedly you got lost somewhere along the way. If this was a book pitch, a
professional editor would have stepped in halfway through and said: "Whoa
there, partner! You need to edit some of these elements out or you'll never
see the end of it." Sadly, since Ubisoft self-publish their
games, no one was there to tell them what a mess they were creating.
Assassin's Creed III just doesn't know when to shut up. It tries to be too
much, never giving any of it time to sink in, and consequently is about
nothing. It contains twelve long story sequences, and after roughly half of them
it still introduces new major gameplay elements in a game of endless
tutorials. Point the musket there, pull the trigger, and there you go, good sir - your first
kill! Everything is chopped up and stitched together to form a sort of
Frankenstein's monster of video game narration.
Much has changed since the last entry, but at least I still embody an assassin. Eventually I get my
list of assassination marks, but I don't feel like an assassin anymore,
instead I feel like I'm part of an interactive tour depicting the birth of the
U.S. I just go where the quest markers point and try to follow the on-screen
prompts, all the while staying within the confinements of the set piece (lest
I get "desynchronized" and have to start over). If Ubisoft want to make their
games linear, they should just do so.
Many missions involve tailing and searching for clues, and they are tedious
and frustrating. The stealth mechanic works horrendously with the
auto-assisted controls, giving your position away at every possibility and
causing your mission to fail. In a game about freedom and
independence, taking place in a big open world, I shouldn't constantly feel monitored and directed by an
invisible hand. Especially not such a traitorous one, that causes me to fail so much.
I also feel weirdly constrained in the few choices I actually get to make.
Halfway through the game I enter a store to upgrade my arsenal, only to find
that I don't meet the requirements to purchase or craft more than a couple of
items. Store goods only unlock as the story progresses and I find the correct
chest somewhere in the open world. Some of them even require me to leave the game and head into the Ubisoft online store.
Crafting requires me to recruit artisans and gather materials by exploring the
frontier wilderness. I must navigate the clunky interface to look for animal
habitats, set snares and place bait - and wait. Then I must kill and skin the
animal. The revolution can wait a few hours, because I must figure out how to
get a better tomahawk. And the big irony is that I had no problems finishing the game with the free weapons the story handed me.
Maybe I'm missing the point. Maybe it's intentional, like Assassin's Creed III tries to
subtly tell us freedom of choice is only an illusion. Previous Assassin's
Creed entries have been upfront about that possibility, to a degree. But this
is not a franchise known for subtlety. It indulges in explanations, with thick
database entries about every historical location and individual you come
across. If this game really is about "freedom as illusion", they'd have
someone make a long speech about it, which it doesn't.
I can't go into much detail about the ambitious plot, because it revolves
around so many twists and historical figures, revelations and more twists,
that I'd do anyone a disservice to spoil it. It is overly stiff and serious,
but presents a couple of good performances among the voice actors. The
characters themselves are poorly written, though, with unclear motivations and
sudden alignment shifts. Suffice to say, the story is the best thing about
this game, without being good.
It's interesting to witness some historical events, like the Boston massacre
and the Declaration of Independence, even as Ubisoft shoehorns these events
into the revenge plot to a comical effect. A lot of political intrigue is
going on, and it's clear no side has the moral high ground. I just ally
with the ones that could bring me closer to my ultimate goal. It's not like I have a say in the matter, but at least I appreciate the
ambition to make both sides into moral shades of grey.
But that's all the praise I can muster for Assassin's Creed III. Playing it
throws me back and forth across the world map, and back and forth in time. The
constant interruptions muddle the chain of events and keep me from getting a sense of the geography. The
half-developed American cities with a lack of landmarks can hardly be called
fun to parkour. You can climb trees in the wilderness, which is a welcome
addition, but the forests are playgrounds in search of attractions. Besides, the tree
climbing doesn't work well. In fact, none of the parkour does. In fact,
nothing about this game works.
The mission design is an abomination. Your objectives are tedious and
frustrating to reach, often involving very little gameplay and shady winning
or losing conditions. If you stray too far from the intended path you
automatically lose, resulting in a frustrating "desynchronization", meaning
you have to start over.
The combat doesn't fare much better. I keep parrying and countering, or
disarming and attacking, and can basically fight indefinitely. It's sure as
hell easier than going the genuine assassin route by sneaking and actually
assassinating the targets, which I thought was the point. The combat controls are unreliable, and
sometimes don't respond to my input. Too often the horrible camera positions
itself behind objects so I can't see what's going on. I guess that raises the
difficulty somewhat, but in all the wrong ways.
In spite of its remaster status, I run into glitches or annoyances everywhere. Cityfolk walking backwards, random people spawning into cutscenes, AI
hiccups and the game inexplicably desynchronizing me (i.e. killing me) for
shooting a deer in open world exploration - all of it happened in one horrible
session. Enemy soldiers popping out of nowhere also happens frequently.
In the
final chase scene of the game I caught up with my target and even ran past him, but the game didn't let me assassinate him. As it turned out, you weren't supposed to catch up to the guy at all, so the assassination option was turned off. The game had a
cutscene in store further down the road that it desperately wanted me to see.
And in spite of its endless tutorials, it leaves so many mechanics
underexplained that I don't know how to approach some of the side activities.
The trading, the crafting, the sidequesting, the collectibles, the survival
challenges, etc., are all hidden in an intricate maze of menus
and don't feel well integrated into the story at all. I tried them, but gave
up on all of them, because they were all so unnecessary and underdeveloped.
Assassin management suddenly gets introduced in a mission and never properly
explained. And for what reason would I go on these tedious naval expeditions?
It seems like Ubisoft got pretentious with Assassin's
Creed III, and decided to expand their assassination plotline to become a
grand statement about the freedom of life. Which, as we all know, is such a
grand statement it doesn't actually mean anything. Life is whatever you want
it to be. Is it about making a stand? Finding inner peace? Finding love?
Raising a family? Getting to know yourself? Surviving? Climbing buildings?
Admiring the scenery? Getting to the top of the command chain? Exploring? Law
and order? Striving to be free?
Pick your poison, and re-evaluate it if it doesn't do the trick, but you sure
as hell don't need this game to find it. For me, it constantly feels like playing with
my hands tied behind my back. Even as a history lesson it is boring - rarely
have I dozed off reading codex entries, but here it actually happened. Who
knew the American revolution was so boring?
There's no denying the fact - life is way richer outside of your video games,
no matter how much you try to stuff into the bloody product. Assassin's Creed
III is so bloated that it is bursting at the seams and deflates the entire
project. It took guts to polish its dreary visuals into a remaster and unleash
it upon the world again. "Look, we know the gameplay sucked, but now we have
polished the graphics so you can see exactly how ugly they are."
I feel like I could go on complaining forever - the constant textbox popups,
the awful horse mechanics, the stupidity of the dull main character - but it's
sort of pointless. Choose a random blind spot on the world map and I'll point
out at least ten flaws on our way there. I never expected the franchise to
sink this low. Assassin's Creed III is its weakest entry by a landslide.
Considering I have seven more entries to go before catching up, let's hope it
remains that way.
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