Assassin's Creed: Syndicate

The scary thing is that I used to be what might be considered a hardcore AC fan; I bought every single game since the first and was still excited even when Unity was announced. The tipping point has been reached however as I cannot bring myself to buy Syndicate. Maybe in a few years I would have had a hankering for another game but, nah, I have reached my limit on it now. I don't understand who is going to buy this game I am not.

Congratulations, Ubisoft, you had a good thing and then you grinded a franchise that should have lasted decades into the dust in less than one.

Om guessing millions of people will buy this game, amd the next one and the next one and the next one.

Meep wrote:...The tipping point has been reached however as I cannot bring myself to buy Syndicate...

What has been the tipping point, Meep? The disappointment of Unity? The majority of reviews are indicating that Syndicate is a step up from that game; with likeable characters and a more coherent storyline.

Most reviews suggest this is a step back into the right direction but I had fatuge with this franchise at 3.

I keep seeing unity and blackflag on offer but have no interest in them at all.

The story is just too convoluted and is the games weakest point.

Black Flag is a brilliant pirate game. The AC stuff is well same old same old. The piracy though. Great.

Unity was last years Christmas present, Black Flag the years before and the Mrs spotted the trailer on TV and basically said that's this years then. I haven't even finished Unity

I like that some of the solutions to AC fatigue have been to get rid of the violence and/or combat.

The way to fix it is for Ubi to take a couple of years off while they refine the controls and refresh the gameplay. AC feels clunky nowadays and the missions/gameplay haven't really changed since the first two games. Oh and ditch any mentions of the modern day world and the animus bollocks. Desmond was shite and it got even worse after they got rid of him.

jawafour wrote:

Meep wrote:...The tipping point has been reached however as I cannot bring myself to buy Syndicate...

What has been the tipping point, Meep? The disappointment of Unity? The majority of reviews are indicating that Syndicate is a step up from that game; with likeable characters and a more coherent storyline.

There is no way for them to keep up the current release schedule and keep things fresh. If you release new games as often as they do now then even the core mechanics that are good will get stale. Unfortunately this all comes down to corporation pressure to make a short term profit than actually intelligently managing an intellectual property so that it remains attractive for as long as possible.

I'm hoping next year they take it to Japan and ninjas. That's what everyone wants, isn't it? It would be nice if they could actually incorporate some stealth mechanics in there but I know that's asking for too much.

I'm a pretty big fan of the series and, well, I have gone ahead and brought Syndicate yesterday. I've played the first hour or two now and I still like it, while at the same time I'm aware it is really, really similar to the previous games. I know it doesn't innovate or inspire, but for me it's just a game world that I enjoy, and a central conceit that I like too. I really enjoy wondering around the cities that are fantastically well recreated, too.

I suppose it's a sort of 'comfort food' game. It's probably not good for me, and I know I shouldn't, but I just enjoy it.

Anyway, for those who like this sort of thing, this is good stuff. It looks good, it plays a little bit differently, the characters seem likeable enough, and not much Danny Wallace so far. So far, so Assassin's Creed. And I'm down with that.

Okay, so I went ahead and bought the game on PS4 (I actually bought the Gold Bundle for my sins and my weakness). As much as I criticise the totally goofy combat in the game I have to say this is probably the most accessible AC game I've yet played (and I literally have them all - on PC, anyway). I think some lessons were learned from Unity (a game I hold in high esteem, despite being aware that it's the least loved by fans of the franchise) - mostly about just getting on with it. I've spent about 5-6hrs today working through all the Whitechapel sections, and tbh most of that was spent going off the main tasks, opening chests and then doing the main plots points. This game just doesn't waste time like Unity did. I suspect my play time would have been nearer 2.5hrs if I'd just done the plot points.

But the game is goofy. Don't get me wrong, on PS4 (so far at least) no glitches or bugs (although I've seen one fairly big one on a YT vid) and it does look very nice (although I still think Unity actually looks just as good if not a little better). But the plot (if you can call it that) is tripe and the pointless enlisting of famous names is tokenism at best, even bordering on offensive...



The carriage racing is a laughable and totally immersion-breaking. The combat is about as dull as ditchwater and just as muddy. But the game looks great and it's somehow fun to be cavorting across late Victorian London rooftops getting into all sorts of larks.

I dunno. It's that old AC thing. I like it despite everything it does to try and make me despise it, godammit.

Regarding the historical backstory of Creed targets:

I didnt finish unity, I got about 2/3 way through. This might be a stupid question, but should i go back and finish unity before starting syndicate?

GrinWithoutaKat wrote:I'm hoping next year they take it to Japan and ninjas. That's what everyone wants, isn't it? It would be nice if they could actually incorporate some stealth mechanics in there but I know that's asking for too much.

Id like to see a 1930's Germany one. But theyd have to step up to guns - take some time to upgrade the game mechanics, that would be the fresh start the franchise needs.

Parksey wrote:Regarding the historical backstory of Creed targets:

It's just this time you find it repulsive because the real-life person seems to share some of your views, and you have a whiff of some sort of environmentalist conspiracy.

Time to explain myself a little more clearly since you obviously seem to want to invent stuff I didn't say.

mcjihge2 wrote:

GrinWithoutaKat wrote:I'm hoping next year they take it to Japan and ninjas. That's what everyone wants, isn't it? It would be nice if they could actually incorporate some stealth mechanics in there but I know that's asking for too much.

Id like to see a 1930's Germany one. But theyd have to step up to guns - take some time to upgrade the game mechanics, that would be the fresh start the franchise needs.

I thought a 1930-40s American one would be interesting; with a kind of noir/detective angle where you flit around the gangs and police trying to get the bottom of a Templar conspiracy to control all organised crime rackets and corrupt all the cops, or the local mayor being part of conspiracy to infiltrating the US government or judiciary. They would have to make it more stealth based with more emphasis on staying incognito rather than charging headfirst into a bunch of people armed with tommy guns.

I wonder if they'll keep going more and more modern or explore the 19th century more. There are lots of interesting places and events; Raj-era India as a full game could be interesting, for example.

I'd like to see some more historical settings too; they could go further back in history to Greek, Egyptian or return to Rome but at the height of the Roman Empire.

Played a few hours of this yesterday, immediately after finishing MGSV. Obviously there's no comparison, and the combat and stealth are inferior in every way. However, as a sandbox game it's quite fun, and the era and location have always fascinated me. With this and The Order (which I liked mainly due to its setting), I'm really getting my fix of Victorian-era England lately. Just wish that Ace Attorney/Sherlock Holmes game was coming this year too.

Nothing focuses the mind more than someone else's inspiration. I was reading something in the latest edition of EDGE - one of the editorials. Big Picture Mode, by Nathan Brown (p34). In his piece, he talks about how when he plays a game he is

"...obsessed by the notion of playing games properly. Not as their designers intended, or in accordance with accepted best practice, but what I think is the best way to play them."

This got me thinking about how I approach these Assassin's Creed games and why, pretty much all the time, I end up being somewhat frustrated/irritated/bored/fascinated/indifferent and disappointed witht them all in one way or another, including this latest, Syndicate. I'm the fool who insists he will walk pretty much everywhere in the AC worlds - not run, never run (because you wouldn't do that in the real world, would you, right? It would just be physically impossible to possess those levels of physical stamina). I've wilfully kept young Connor out of the trees in AC III, ensured Edward Kenway does as little sailing as possible in Black Flag and I avoid riding horses (unless restricting them to a walk, not even a canter) in AC III, while making every effort to stay away from the carriages in Syndicate. I want to try and treat AC worlds not as the designers intended (which equates pretty much to: have fun!) but quite the opposite: so, no running, as little fighting as possible and - in Syndicate - no grapple line; and climb everywhere, just like I'd have to in the, erm, 'real world'.

I think this is why AC and I fall out with each so often. It is, after all, one thing - whilst I stubbornly keep wanting it to be another.

It comes down to this: I have a particular idea of what I want an Assassin's Creed game to be. In my mind's eye it's a fully-formed, somewhat more realistic version of what, just about every year now, Ubisoft eventually delivers. My idea of AC doesn't involve untidy scuffles with street gangs, silly immersion-breaking carriage races down crowded London streets, or some ridiculously po-faced sci-fi sub plot. It doesn't involve time travel, bumping into famous people from the eras concerned or running everywhere and zip-lining between buildings like Batman.

The 'Cal-proper' way to play (and I suppose create) an AC game is so fundamentally different to what Ubisoft keep sending me that I wonder why I keep going back for more. If I was 14 years old (not 52, as I am) would it make an difference? Perhaps. I think I love the idea of Assassin's Creed but I'm somehow never satisfied with the final execution of that idea - too goofy, too frivolous, too...well, yes, too unrealistic.

I watched Anita Sarkeesian's review of Syndicate over the weekend. The bulk of her review seemed perfectly valid to me. One thing I did particularly agree with is her observation that in Ubisoft's pseudo-historical worlds you have to get on board with the idea of an altered reality: worlds within which real issues of race and gender do not exist as they actually did back in the real world eras in which they take inspiration from. This helped me to better accept the jarring - almost crowbarred in - concessions to modern liberal values in these games. To see them not as any genuine attempt at historical reality (or, as I have always suspected, revisionism), but more as an alternative universe in which there is some familiarity with famous dates, names and places - but that these games are ultimately a fantasy barely anchored in little more than flimsy - very ambiguous and flexible - references to actual history.

You're mad if you think AC attempts historical revisionism though. It dons its tin-foil hat with glee and knowingly sits in the corner of the pub telling anyone who listens: "Listen, mate, this is how it really happens". While it's main story is a little po-faced, this doesn't mean that Ubisoft are trying to tell us this is how it actually unfolded.

It hangs things on a loose historical framework and features real-life figures, but the game never seriously asks us to rethink our notion of events or people's lives and works. It's clear that it's all just a bit of fun trying to shoehorn the age-old conflict between assassin and Templars through history, often quite tenuously.

The game can actually be quite brave at times, and a little morally ambiguous. In the first game, for example, you kill someone designated a Templar, but who was actually handing out medical supplies in that district. Or, to use a target i mentioned earlier, when you kill John Pitcairn, he rues your actions, as he was actually trying to keep the peace and prevent more dying.

It does often reprimand the player-character for Assassin line, or portray things as not quite morally black and white. In AC 3, for example, you side with people that wipe out a Native American village to achieve their aims. The bad guy is actually more charismatic and, possibly, more sympathetic than the heroes.

And talking about the heroes, saying they sit address race and gender is a bit off, no?

This is, after all, a game series which started you off playing as a Syrian and throughout the years you get to portray an Italian, a Native American, a Welshman, a Frenchmen, an African-French woman. Some of them, like Edward Kenway and, initially, Ezio, are quite morally ambiguous.

There's even a whole bloody piece of DLC dedicated to slavery. How you can say they don't address themes is beyond me.

For games, they are actually quite bold in where they go and what they do.

I don't buy that they taint everything with a bland liberalism either. They are sometimes actually quite partisan in their approach. As I said before, sometimes the bad guys have reasonable aims, and the Assassin's are the naive cult.

Besides, it isn't exactly a modern idea to portray slavery as bad, as the American Revolution as the pursuit of Liberty or as the French Revolution descending into a tyrannical bloodbath. The game actually does quite well to not be overly preachy at times, I feel.

Finally, it isn't exactly a new thing either, to take an old piece of history and impart modern ideas and themes on it. It's what Shakespeare did with his histories after all. They were a piece of drama and entertainment, and not meant to be a factual account of events, but rather a view of history through the eyes of people and opinions of his time.


Art, literature, drama etc. have been doing this for centuries.

Now I am not saying that the AC series are a work of art or something to be held up as a defining achievement of our time. But, you know, they are quite daring as far as games go, and they do go to places, visit people and dwell on things that games don't really focus on.

If anything, it is a shame that they aren't a bit sharper and abandon some of the throwaway action-adventure trappings and go into things a bit more depth and without rattling through the ages to the next big historical event.

But, still, what other game lets you play as a slave in the 18th century Caribbean?

In short, your last sentence is probably about right - these games are a fantasy.

And not running anywhere must be absolutely maddening.