Yesterday I outlined Assassin’s Creed, and discussed how the narrative was failed by the gameplay. All of these things: narrative, gameplay, control mechanisms, and the art and sound of the game combine together to create the collaborative story which is created in the mind of the player as they traverse the game, and to some extent as the people around them watch the game being played. The goal of a great game is to combine all these elements so that they support each other in framing the emotional state of the player, and their understanding of the game, its thesis and its aesthetic.

In terms of Ataïr’s story, the game does a reasonable job. You get a feeling for the message here: peace is the goal, but only via freedom and knowldege. This counterpoints with Desmond’s story, where he has no freedom, little knowledge (or reliable sources), and is constrained in what he can do. This becomes a metaphor for the player of the game who only has two choices: follow the narrative where it leads, or quit the game. Desmond can quit, but will die if he does; the player can quit, but then they will fail at the game. Ultimately, we know from the start of the game that Ataïr will survive, but that he won’t achieve peace.

As a player, I most strongly identified with Desmond. He, like me, was a controller, the puppeteer. His goal was to live Ataïr’s life as closely to the way Ataïr lived it. As you do so, you get closer to the key game-ending memory, and are rewarded with more “synchronization” with Ataïr, which in game terms serves as your health bar.

This, and the notion of “socially acceptable” and “unacceptable” (or “low” and “high” profile) actions are real successes in the game. The parkour style movement, the climbing is fun except when Ataïr jumps in a way that’s unexpected, and too easy when he does too much for you. I found myself missing Prince of Persia in this case, where the Prince’s movements (mirroring my first feelings about Tomb Raider) were precise and predictable. This led me to, on two occasions, kill an innocent and lose one of my tick points. I had so many of those that it no longer mattered to me in the penultimate memory block (the next to last level) when it happened.

In fact, this highlights one of the problems with the game: it is too easy. I don’t think of myself as a hardcore gamer. I’m the best at these kinds of games amongst my peer group, but I wouldn’t put myself next to a serous FPS’er, nor a just about anyone in the hardcore gamer age (15-25 or so). At almost 40, I’m above the marketing age for “gamers” by a year or two (and always will be, as gamers age). That’s fine with me, I like juvenile games sometimes, but I long for truly adult games — both in emotion and content.

So, when I say that Assassin’s Creed is ultimately too easy, I think I know what I’m talking about.

It took me only 3-4 evenings of play to complete the game. I’ve got 29 of 44 achievements, for a total score of 735 out of 1000. What remains are flag collections, finding and killing all the Templars, and some of the fighting-based ones about killing guards certain ways. The first two sets I’m not attempting without a guide (so it seems pointless in trying), and the last feels out of sync with the idea behind the game. Admittedly, the fighting-based achievements are worth the least; half the achievement points go to the story, with the remainder split 2:2:1 between stealth, collection and fighting achievements, respectively.

In fact, it’s these achievements that started me wondering what was wrong with the game. I’ve loved “sneaker” style games ever since I played Thief, where the hardest setting often invoked the caveat that you couldn’t kill anyone. The goal in Thief was to get in, get out, and, generally, not be seen. It wasn’t always possible, but it often was. When I heard about Assassin’s Creed, I was expecting something similar. I was expecting to be able to hide in more interesting ways, but I was expecting that to be the core of the gameplay.

Research is key, and you wander the city exploring. Exploring is easily the best part of the game, climbing walls and buildings to find the high spots that reveal the map and mini missions. This is rewarded both with a short expansive cut-scene of the city, but also a check on the synchronization bar (15 ticks gives you one of the 20 available ‘health points/dna synchronization bars’).

The other mission that gets you checks is rescuing citizens. There are men and women (mostly women) spread around the cities who are being harassed by guards. You go in, kill the guards and save the person. You get the checks, and scholars to blend with (for saving men) or vigilantes who will harass guards for you (for saving the women). This was kind of hard in the first mission, but after that I had a counter attack that pretty much always killed the guards. I’d basically stand there, wait for them to attack, and they’d die. Battles in the last memory blocks were harder but that was mostly because the certainty and slowness of the battles was boring, so I was taking more risks.

But the real question I had for myself is, “Why am I doing this?” and later, “Why is Ataïr doing this?” After all, doing it put my more in synchronization with him — so I had to infer that this was something Ataïr would have done. While doing it early in the game, I got an achievement called “Eagle’s Swiftness” which is described as “Over 100 people have witnessed your deadly performance with a blade.” Another site says this is to perform 100 counter-kills, but what I read was an achievement award for doing something not stealthy. Not stealthy at all.

While the fighting based achievements are less total points of achievements, there are more of them than any other category (except for the story-based ones). It made me start to wonder.

Earlier in the game, I had to fight a man with a bow. Everyone told me this was going to happen, and I even had a map of all his guards and his escape route. I systematically took out all of his guards, silently assassinating over 90% of them and fighting the others, mostly one on one. This is the sweet spot for Ataïr, and it was a lot of fun. Then I go into the place where the person I’m to assassinate is, and I find out that not only do I lose all my abilities (this happened in every boss battle at some point) while I wait for things to play out “the way they did”, but that he knew I was coming, he “let me in” and now I was in the bottom of a pit, with a bunch of guardsmen, and he was up on a ledge peppering me with arrows.

I never got the opportunity to do it stealthily. It was fun, but it was mostly a waste of my time. Since he did run, I had an easier time of catching him, and of escaping because I’d taken out the guards, but that was minor, escaping was never all that hard. And the fighting was easy enough that the two targets who made it back to a guard tower just gave me a longer battle to deal with, and some confusion with the way the boss cutscenes played out incongruously in the middle of a huge sword fight.

I finally had to come to the conclusion that Ataïr may be an assassin, but he’s a really bad assassin. He’s a really good swordfighter though, and that covers his lack of stealth. I was able to kill one, and only one of the targets stealthily. That earned me an achievement, too. Only one of the final 10 targets can be needs to be killed stealthily. Since for two of them the story makes it impossible, and one is made impossible by the creators (in the two story-related ones, I never expected to be able to do it stealthily).

To me, an assassin is a surgical killer. They do the minimum of killing, and cause the minimum of disruption. They sneak in, killing a few guards silently and then sneak out,the way they came if they can. An assassin running through a town (on rooftops or not) being chased by angry mobs of guards while bells ring announcing his murder is not a very good assassin. And that’s pretty much the way Ataïr operates.

Now, if the game had prepared me for this via its narrative and gameplay instruction, that would have been okay. I admit that I came into the game with the expectation of stealth. The game, in turn, reinforced this with the high and low profile actions. With a tutorial for moving non-disruptively through crowds, with instruction on how to hide, etc. However it was easier, and more effective, to climb a building, kill the two or three (or five) guards who follow you, and then hide in a rooftop garden, and then take the roofs the rest of the way at full speed. Only once or twice did that cause me problems.

Now there were some mini-missions which were ultimately stealthy. Informers who needed you to kill from 2-5 while not being spotted by guards during the whole mission. Those were both frustrating and fun, and pretty much completely optional.

I want to close this with just a couple more remarks.

First, this was a standout game. I played it as fully as I’m likely to — flags and Templars are just too much for me, but I found every high place, saved every citizen, and did every information mission. Those missions did, as reviewers have suggested, start to get pretty boring near the end, with the exception of the above mentioned informer missions, and all the high places which were short enough or challenging enough to be fun. (I think I’d love a game that was just about climbing around and finding things, quite frankly.) If I’m being particularly critical it is because I want to see more truly great games which take all these things into account, and it is easier to see where great games have failed marginally than to talk about something that’s generally broken, even if it’s fun.

Second, I’m not quite done talking about Assassin’s Creed. I want to talk more about it, probably on next Monday’s essay.