Finished Assassin’s Creed 3 tonight. (Well apart from the final Epilogue mission, but like the major major story is all done now.)
Overall it was… just pretty messy? This is definitely the Black Sheep of the Desmond saga. It stands out for being different and "more" and just… doesn’t do what it intends to I think. Like, they just didn’t have the time to iron out everything.
The gameplay is just… ehh?? The lack of control that the previous games had stands out A LOT. I’m jumping off things I didn’t mean to WAY more than usual, or jumping ONTO things like my hands are made of magnets. It’s weird.
The new animations are very fluid and great to look at though! Nice stuff!
Sometimes when you get into a flow (in one of the many very linear parkour-paths in the game) it can be fun and cool. All the new free-running tree-running is a nice new “feature”, but honestly, just serves as a new way to Horizontally cross the Frontier where there aren’t plenty of buildings, scaffolding or wooden posts. (And yeah, both this and the “sides of buildings” in the colonial areas are very straight, linear paths that are practically the only viable way to cross the area that isn’t on the ground.
At least the previous games had way more bustling cities and a whole lot of ways to mix up and jump around with intention.
The story is also… ehh??
Like, the one thing I quite like about this one is that in the Past, you see the once-again battle between the Assassins and Templars, who usually have very opposed goals and are at times literal war with each other, but in this game, they’re in a more political war.
Both teams want America to become its own nation and split off from Britain. It’s just that the Templars want to install Templar Reign and have peace through total control, but the Assassins want not-that and have people fight for “Muh Freedom”. Essentially…
Things get mixed up and underbaked. It’s a little weird. I’ll try to summarize my thoughts on it quick-ish…
Connor, or Ratonhaketon (I butchered that in my English keyboard but the intention is there) is a First Nations/Native American boy/man chooses to stand up for his people and actually help the rebels fight back against the British, after seeing a Redcoat guy threaten to kill his people if they don’t choose to give him their land (in the name of securing peace, which makes no sense lol)
He also comes under the wing of Achilles, or “Old Man” as Connor likes to call him, (affectionately, by the end, but I always felt it demeaning a little) after he has a vision of the Assassin symbol which will bring his guidance and to secure peace and keep his people safe. This is also where the “You must kill this Hit-List of high-up Templar people” plot comes in as always.
He wants to help America be free of Britain’s and Templar’s rule, but throughout the story the only justification and argument behind these words are: Controlling people is wrong, Everyone should be Free. And that’s basically it from what I can gather. It’s weirdly flat.
(Also Connor’s voice acting/delivery is also pretty consistently flat. I looked it up, and it might be intentional since the Indigenous language they use in the game is known to be very monotone in delivery (and Ubisoft thankfully used A LOT of experts and contacts with native peoples in the development of this game) it’s just a shame that they give this very flat-voiced character equally flat motives and characterization.)
As a boy, Connor meets Charles Lee, a british guy who gets pretty racist and physical with this kid who he stumbles upon for no reason at all. (And who you previously saw in the prologue as a pretty well-mannered, composed man when you were playing as Haytham) and proceeds to be Connor’s revenge-north-star as he believes Lee, seen soon before his village is burned down, to be the instigator.
This, later down the line, allies him with Haytham, his dad, who is actually an Assassin-turned-Templar – that the prologue very deliberately makes Zero Mention of the words Assassin or Templar right up until the “twist” and instead vaguely refers to Haytham’s quest as “For the Order” all the while he literally sports a Templar Cross on his little cape. Lmao.
And there could have been a great moment that aligned them both and offered more cooperation than we had, and also offered a greater goal and (more cliched but also driven story) after Connor finds out that Haytham did not order Lee to burn down his village, and also even later finds out that Washington was the one who ordered it, but for whatever reason, Haytham is still no matter what oblivious to Lee’s psychopathic racist nature, and advocates for him to be the true Commander in Chief for the new nation. Wow, I see great peace on the horizon for sure.
Seriously. The heel-turn between Prologue Charles Lee and Main Game Charles Lee is insane. Literally insane.
Dude is a proper, well-spoken servant/butler/assisstant to Haytham all throughout the prologue, and then flashforward into the main game as Connor, and his hair is constantly unkempt, he’s sporting a massive beard and is wild-eyed to be the most racist and cartoonishly villainous villain to ever be evil in this game.
Maybe the intention was to say that “Ultimate Power Ultimately Corrupts” since the last thing we see is Lee being inducted into The Order, an organization with many ties to higher-up people, so he could have had a megalomaniacal awakening or something, but yeah, wow, weird in my opinion. And not really supported with evidence or reasoning in the plot at all.
Ah yeah, and the Modern Day.
There was a lot of buildup to Desmond having his time in the spotlight. (I think the original plan was to have him get his own full game? Anyway,) Desmond only gets 3 Missions, and most of the plot for some reason revolves around Sleeping in the Animus, Occasionally travelling the world to find Magic Ancient Batteries to power up this cave they’ve holed up in, and Unlocking a Magic Ancient Locked Door to find The Thing that will Save the World.
The first mission, scaling a big skyscraper under construction was the best one. Because it’s all parkour (despite being linear) and that’s always neat.
The second mission was kinda forgettable. Some MMA fight in an indoor arena, and you have to avoid a few guards and climb on the rafters to get to a place?
Then mission 3 is saving dear-old-Massive A-Hole daddy from Abstergo, back where it all started. It was kinda neat, going back and fighting back against the guards with guns using your assassin skills.
But wow. For all the talk of Templars being All Powerful and you can never hope to defeat them… Lmao wow Vidic got done dirty in this game. He used to be psychologically manipulative and clearly thought he was doing the right thing by scanning Desmond for ancient artifacts for his bosses.
In this game, he taunts Desmond vaguely about how he’s messing everything up, that Abstergo HELPS people vaguely, and then willingly lets Desmond into his office where he’s supposed to exchange The Mind-Control Device for his Father – But here’s the kicker: He uses the mind-control device to kill all the guards in the room AND Vidic and just walks out with his dad. LMAO HOW ARE YOU SO DUMB BAD-GUY LMAO.
(2 Villains in Connor’s Story also die because they fail to see the very visible weapon he’s holding right as they think he’s been downed.)
Then, finally in the ending, as Desmond finally unlocks the Ancient Magic Door,
we get two gods debating about A: “We must let the Human Race die because This Other God is Evil and you will Release Her” and B: “You must save the Human Race because the remnants of what remains will rise up, view you as a god, twist your words into a new religious war for power and we’ll be right back at square one.”
Honestly that second point the “Evil God” makes is probably the coolest bit of writing (and cutscene) in the entire game, since it actually makes sense and is ominous for the fate of humanity.
The other point there is… “Juno is Evil, she wants to Rule the World, Let Billions Die so she stays trapped or something” with zero explanation as to when this shift took place, how she’s going to rule the world, or why it’s SO imperative and what the consequences to THAT might be…"
Like, CLEARLY Juno has lost many of her marbles and (through side-emails) mentions her hatred for the human race and she really shouldn’t be trusted, but also…
Desmond does the obvious thing and touches the Magic Ball That Saves the World and – you guessed it – saves the world from the apocalypse somehow.
Then he dies and the game awkwardly cuts to black for the credits. Oof. And that’s the end of Desmond. Thanks Ubisoft.
PS: Ohh yeahhh and there’s some random henchman dude who Desmond meets in every mission called “Daniel Cross” – and after their first encounter, Desmond asks “Who is this Cross guy?” despite him having zero way of knowing his name that was never mentioned, other than 4th-wall reading the subtitles or something!
And this guy just shows up 3 times to get beaten 3 times super easily by Desmond, and also apparently he’s used the Animus beforehand since he has Mind-Altering visions butttttt we’re not gonna dwell on that, we have a story to rush through!!
Seriously. This guy’s inclusion is a total mystery and the game feels like they could have had way more planned for him, but didn’t have the time or budget for it.
Welp, at least we got dozens of Feathers and Chests to collect, bunches of areas to Un-Fog-Of-War, lists upon lists of “Perform X Move 10 times” and a lot of side-missions of “Kill this one Basic NPC Randomly placed on the map”
Oh yeah but the Homestead Missions are at least pretty good, at least in giving Connor a driving goal of unifiing a people and helping out this small growing village as their de-facto “Leader.”
I didn’t touch the Naval missions apart from the mandatory story ones, and I’m not going to play AC4 Black Flag. Already tried that, It’s not my jam. (I played Freedom Cry a month back and that’s all I’ll do.)
Now I think I’m gonna take a break from big AC Games (and AC-like games unfortunately – I’ve heard great things about Ghost of Tsushima – but I don’t want to burn myself out on the series’ gameplay formula. Which this latest entry here just didn’t sit well with me the whole time.
I’ll still check out the Alt-History Washington DLC packed into the Remaster, since maybe if they can make up their own history then the story will be a little better idk