The Assassin's Creed Series: Assassin's Creed 3 + DLC

Context

The release of Assassin's Creed III brings us to 2012. Assassin's Creed II was very well received, as were the two follow up releases. However, with three games being released in fairly quick succession based on one character, there were accusations that Ubisoft was churning out the releases without doing any more work then they had to. A harsh criticism, as every iteration of Ezio's series did bring new mechanics with them, and the third was set an in entirely different locale. However, there was a feeling that a change was now due, if not overdue.

Assassin's Creed III sets out to deliver that, with a brand new character, a brand new location and point in history, and brand new features that are unlike anything previously seen in the series. AC3 was quite an ambitious project, so can it deliver on the promise of this ambition?

Ratonhnhaké:ton, a.k.a. Connor

The man himself

The main protagonist of AC3 is an indigenous American called  Ratonhnhaké:ton by his own tribe, but chooses the Western name Connor in order to aid his dealings with the colonials. Connor's link to the Assassin order comes twice over, from his maternal ancestry, essentially in relation to his tribe's sacred duty, and also from his paternal ancestry as his father is not from the tribe but is mixed up in the Assassin/Templar feud.

A lot of Connor's character is honest to the point of naivety, as a half-British half-Indigenous American he is accepted by his tribe without question and brought up the same as any of his peers. However, we are led to believe that his half-British heritage means he can pass for a colonist as well as a member of his tribe, and this means he can just take part in Colonial society whilst only being a minor and occasional victim of racism, normally restricted to name calling and chest-beating aggression. It would be much more likely that his half indigenous heritage would be completely rejected by a nation of people still in the grip of industrial-scale slavery, but I guess this convenience is a requirement to make the story work.

Ultimately, Connor is a much less relateable person than Ezio. He is honest and virtuous to a fault, and surprisingly naive about dealing with the colonists. He gets involved in the push for independence and laments the machinations of politics and the telling of lies in order to aid one's cause, but ends up going along with it all anyway. In the end, Connor comes across as a bit of a whiner and although he ends up cutting a somewhat powerful figure as a result of the change he leads, once you've finished the game, you won't really care much about him, unlike Ezio.

The Setting

In contrast to Connor, the location and setting of the game is quite interesting, taking place over the course of the American push for Independence from Britain in Boston, New York and the Frontier.. Maybe it's because I'm a Brit, but I find this particular point in America's history to be quite fascinating, and many of the events that unfold in the game are based on heavily on real events, like the Boston Tea Party. After each mission, I was looking up the new information in the Animus database to see the details that the mission was based on, then looking it up separately in Wikipedia to see how much of it was true.

In AC3, Connor is a key part of the Boston Tea Party.

The modern day setting for AC3 is the next chapter of the story of Desmond Miles. The team of assassins make their way to a precursor site hidden in a cave, that they identify the existence of at the end of the previous game. The progression of this story alongside Connor's progress culminates in a major moment in the history of the series. I won't say any more about the plot in case you haven't played this game before. Suffice to say that in some AC games, the modern day plot is little more than a sideshow, this is definitely not the case in AC3.

The Parkour

Essentially, the two main additions to the game are the new types of terrain you can free run through, and the Naval missions.

Parkour is no longer limited to climbing up buildings, but can now also be used to move around the frontier, especially climbing up trees and running across tree tops. One might be skeptical about how the game's parkour would cope with such free-form structures as trees, but generally it works surprisingly well and it is not really difficult at all to move through the frontier at quite a pace across the tree tops.

Trees also make appearances in Boston and New York and can be used to switch from one building to another or perch on in order to make an air assassination.

Connor can run across treetops with surprising ease.

Unfortunately, there is another change to the parkour in AC3 which is not nearly as welcome. In previous games, you could press a button to parkour and then press an additional button when you want to climb up or drop down. In AC3, there is only the one parkour button. I believe the reason for this change is related to the climbing across trees. With the parkour button held down, Connor will only make safe movements between branches, so you can be sure he'll make the jump to the branch on the adjacent tree. If you want Connor to make a risky move or just move fast, you can press the jump or drop button and he'll make the move even if it kills him.

However, down on the ground, this change is all negative. In the AC2 trilogy you could run around safe in the knowledge that Ezio is not going to start jumping on anything until you press the right button, but in AC3, Conner will now leap on top of the small stack of crates that you meant to run past, or start climbing up the corner of a building rather than turn round the corner. These issues are especially prevalent during time sensitive missions, as far too often you'll be cursing Conner making a wrong and time wasting move rather then going where you want him to.

The glitchy parkour combines with another dumb addition to the game, which are the Almanac page collectibles. When you get close to one of these collectibles, they will magically catch the wind at that point and start flitting through a pre-set path at some pace. Generally, the only hope you have to catch them is to be approaching one deliberately and then run after it, across buildings and tree-tops, without making a single wrong move. The annoyance is tempered a little by the fact that each page has two possible paths based on what direction you approach it from. Be prepared to be trying to catch some of these on a second or third attempt!

Aye, Aye, Captain!

The other major addition to the game, and one that is all joy, are the Naval missions. Connor gets himself a ship which enables him to embark on a lot of quests, almost exclusively sidequests, but some of the best fun to be had in the game.

Command and upgrade your own ship in the naval missions

Your ship, which is upgradeable, basically consists of side cannons and a pair of swivel guns, the cannons are for major damage and the swivel guns are for precision shots and smaller targets. I’m someone who is not really into all-out action-packed games, particularly button mashers, which is why the AC series suits me very well for the most part. However, the Naval missions definitely are action packed, and they are a tremendous amount of fun. Outside of general ship combat, you’ll need to navigate narrow straits and push back against devilish cross-winds. In some of the best sequences, you’ll be battling in major storms and having to brace against freak giant waves as well as dodging cannon fire. The naval missions in AC3 are a complete departure from anything before and hugely entertaining to play.

Summary

Overall, AC3 has a very different feel to it than the AC2 trilogy. It does come with some sizeable baggage that has to be patiently managed (and sometimes with forced calm), but overall it does enough with the American Independence setting and particularly the Naval gameplay to be completely worth it. Plus, as an aside, you’ll miss out on the modern day story in a confusing way if you jump straight from the AC2 trilogy to AC4.

The DLC: The Tyranny of King Washington

The story of the DLC is based on a "what if?" scenario that is meant to take place right after the end of the main game. The title is well crafted, as the player is left thinking ,"How can George Washington be a king?" and indeed, at the start of the DLC, Connor finds himself in a world that makes no sense, and interacting with people that he knows are dead. It's only when you get to the final quarter of the story that you can start to guess what is going on, and right at the end it all gets stitched together.

Unfortunately, the intrigue of the story is the best part of the DLC, the rest of it doesn't have much going for it.

The DLC is broken down into 3 chapters, which each taking part in one of AC3's major locales, the Frontier, Boston and New York. You are restricted to the locale this particular chapter is set in, so if/when you want to clean up the collectibles, you have to "free play" the chapter you want to go to.

This leaves the DLC to be incredibly linear, with it essentially being a "one mission after another" type of affair. The story fails to capture interest, it overplays its hand of "what the hell is going on here?" to leave the player with the resignation of just waiting for when the next character is going to die. Interactions with the arch-villain, King Washington, are meant to be epic, but are then rendered meaningless by the fact that such an all-powerful villain can't even complete the basic task of killing key people. King Washington laments how useless people are whilst he continually relies on them to do his bidding, it doesn't make any sense.

The DLC ends up as a bit of chore. If you are a completionist then you'll want to complete it just to get all the achievements, but I believe my very first thought after finishing the final mission was that I wouldn't have lost out if I never played it.

Absolute power..... turns you into an arrogant lump, apparently

The Tyranny of King George is forgettable, play it if you get it for free, like you do in the remastered editions of AC3, but don't pay any money for it.

Review Score

Assassin's Creed III doesn't seem to get a lot of love from fans of the series. Whilst it's true that it can be slow paced at times, especially so in the first two to three sequences of the game, I believe that all round it stands up well as an installment in the series that brings a lot of new ideas with only a few negatives.

For me, the particular highlights are the building of the homestead and the various side missions and craftables that come with that, but mainly the naval missions, which are fantastic, and left me wishing there were more of them in the game.

These positives are only somewhat tempered by the changes in the parkour system. The main negative of the issues introduced when running along city streets are tempered by the fact that the parkour works exceedingly well in the frontier.

The DLC, on the other hand, is a tremendous let down.

So Assassin's Creed 3 doesn't reach the heights of the Ezio trilogy, and the overly long introduction sequences will put some off, but I remember AC3 quite fondly and, probably against the general consensus of the series' fans, I'd give AC3 a solid 3.