Assassin's Creed Unity: What We Know So Far

It’s official, Ubisoft is once again unshackling its flagship historical-action series from the burden of sequel numbers. Assassin’s Creed Unity, which might have otherwise been known as Assassin’s Creed V (but who’s counting?), is heading to 18th century France and to the newest generation of gaming consoles. Parkouring right over the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Unity instead lands in an Xbox One and PlayStation 4 haystack on November 11.

Unity heads to the famed City of Light. Why Paris? Well, to go on a tangent, a resurgence in the city’s pop culture popularity doesn’t hurt. A small debt of thanks may be owed to relatively recent movies (Inception, Les Miserables), music (Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “N***** in Paris”), and even literature (The Da Vinci Code). Paris is no stranger to video games either. Battlefield 4 and Modern Warfare 3 all take turns shooting up the place. Gran Turismo 4 and Grid Autosport race through its streets. The Broken Sword adventure series practically lives there, and even the original Deus Ex paid a visit.

But France has always been in Ubisoft’s sights. Earlier this year, Jade Raymond, Managing Director at Ubisoft Toronto, non-hinted where Unity would take place. Before Ubisoft officially revealed Unity’s location, Raymond had stated in an Adweek interview that the newest Assassin’s Creed would take place in her favorite political era. At the time, she didn’t spoil the surprise, but she was indeed talking about Unity’s France. Raymond’s Toronto studio shares developer credits on Unity, while Ubisoft’s Montreal studio took lead.

By “favorite political era,” Raymond meant France in the late 1700s, the setting of the particularly nasty, heady-choppy French Revolution. If, like me, you went to public school, then you’ve probably forgotten everything you learned in history class about the French Revolution—that is, if your school taught anything on it at all. My knowledge base of that bloody time period is limited to Kirsten Dunst playing Marie Antoinette, and Russell Crowe sing-songing his way after Hugh Jackman in Les Miserables.

In other words, I know nothing beyond what Wolverine and Mary Jane Watson have taught me about France’s toppling of monarchies and churches, and the rise of democracy and nationalism. Relying on former Marvel movie characters does not make for the most solid educational foundation, I’ll admit.

But Ubisoft’s research team does its homework. Assassin’s Creed does my homework for me, in fact. They rebuild historically accurate cities for me to climb on, citing historically accurate documents for me to chase through the streets, and include historically accurate depictions of characters that populate the era. Well, that’s probably being overly generous. Let’s just say they include persons that were at least verifiably present during the time.

All that historicity aside, however, the Assassin’s Creed series is still here to tell a ripping little illuminati tale about Assassins and Templars looking for excuses to stab each other. The telling of these tales is a noble goal, and one I hope they keep pursuing for years to come.

But I’m not going to kid myself. It can be difficult, sometimes, trying to muster up enthusiasm for yet another Assassin’s Creed. Especially since there’s been an annual release every single year since Assassin’s Creed II in 2009. That doesn’t take into account a dozen other spin-offs on the Nintendo DS, PlayStation Vita, Facebook, iOS, Android, and even Windows Phone. Suffice it to say, Ubisoft knows how to implement a good old “hit ‘em where they are” strategy. That is, get your product out there, in front of as many eyeballs as possible, on any and all platforms available. Nobody can accuse Ubisoft of not getting the product to their customers.

So, here we are. It’s 2014. And not only are we getting another major console game from Assassin’s Creed, we’re getting two. And due to a last-minute delay, they’re both coming out on the same day. November 11 will see the launch of, yes, Unity on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, plus Assassin’s Creed Rogue on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Neither title will straddle both console generations. PS3 and 360 won’t get a watered-down Unity, and PS4 and Xbox One won’t get an upscaled Rogue.

This speaks volumes to the financial powerhouse that Ubisoft has become in recent years. They have the economic muscle to strongarm one major launch every single year onto Microsoft and Sony’s (and sometimes Nintendo’s) gaming boxes. And Ubisoft can manufacture a couple other annual releases on minor platforms. And write a few novels about it. And even get an Assassin’s Creed movie starring Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds, Prometheus) into pre-production.

So, even as we approach critical mass for Ubisoft’s golden goose, my excitement is still ramping up with it, despite my efforts to curb my enthusiasm. For a little while, deep inside me, there was nothing. I had nothing left for the Creed. I’d already run around Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, swam up and down Venice’s canals, I walked bearded Ezio through Istanbul (not Constantinople), and sang all the shanties I could shant under a Jolly Roger. I thought I was done. I thought I had nothing left for Unity.

But nope. I’m enthused. It’s like I drew one of those huge thermometers, taped it to the wall, and now I’m quickly filling it in with red marker. Why? Because the French Revolution was absolutely nuts.

Don’t get me wrong, the American Revolution wasn’t bad. A lot of factors came together in favor of the American colonies that probably shouldn’t have. Characters like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson did their thing. Plus, me being a citizen of the United States, I’m rather fond of our origin story.

But the American Revolution was a cute little kill-10-rats side quest compared to the end-game raid of the French Revolution. I’d give you the Cliff Notes version, but it starts off crazy…and then gets crazier. If you were to oversimplify the process and boil things down, it went something like this:

The French aristocracy pretty much spent all the money. After a couple bad harvests, it started costing commoners a month’s wages for a loaf of bread. The commoners chopped off some of the aristocracy’s heads. Then a lot more of the aristocracy’s heads. Then, the revolutionaries flipped the script. If a commoner happened to say something nice about the aristocracy, or if a commoner thought, y’know, maybe we should stop chopping off so many heads, then that commoner got their head chopped off. This paranoid behavior was happening all over France, but at its peak, Paris alone was beheading 800 people a month for “crimes against liberty.”

Don’t quote any of that on any essay paper you have to turn in. Just know that the guillotine became known to the French as “The National Razor” for a very good reason.

Later this week, we’ll post my hands-on time with Assassin’s Creed Unity from a Ubisoft event being held in Las Vegas at the Paris Hotel (appropriate). Until then, here’s what we know of Unity so far:

Assassin’s Creed Unity stars Arno Victor Dorian, an Assassin in 18th century France. Unity takes place in an open-world Paris, though the series makes a habit of unlocking and enlarging the map in stages. (Perfectly normal behavior for open-world games.) While the Eiffel Tower is featured prominently in Unity’s marketing—by forming part of the Assassin’s logo—the Eiffel Tower wouldn’t actually be built for another 100 years after the game’s historical setting. The game’s modern-day component will undoubtedly feature the Eiffel Tower, though whether we’ll climb it in a first-person or third-person mode is uncertain.

The title “Unity” likely refers to two things. One, the unification of a poor, starving, and revolutionary French populace. Two, the introduction of four-player drop-in/drop-out co-op. Now, four-player co-op has been in the multiplayer component since Assassin’s Creed III in 2012. It’s called Wolfpack. Unity’s co-op, however, crosses over to the traditionally singleplayer campaign—a series first.

In co-op, each individual player will, to themselves, look like the main character, Arno Dorian. But to every other player, they will appear to be an Assassin other than Arno. Everybody is Arno; they just won’t look like it to everyone else. In other words, when players join your co-op session that you’re hosting, you will look like Arno, and everyone else will look like someone else, even though they’ve brought along all their skills, weapons, and armor customizations from their own game.

In cooperative missions, there are bonuses for multiple Assassins taking out multiple targets simultaneously. Again, this is similar to previous multiplayer Wolfpack mode, but in Unity you might be lucky enough to work with a co-op group that doesn’t run around alerting guards and lowering everybody’s stealth bonuses the entire time. (In Black Flag multiplayer, Wolfpack mode has been pretty much reduced to a hack-and-slash affair. Everybody gets low, terrible scores because someone’s always racing around in high profile, largely negating any stealth scores you might rack up otherwise. It’s sad.)

Ubisoft dubs their mission design as "black box" missions. Meaning, they give you an assassination target, and then cut you loose as to how you approach that mission. This basically means you could be as stealthy as they come, sticking to shadows, keeping kills silent or even nonexistent, or you could kick in the door, pull the plug, drop the mic, and then jet. I have no doubt there will be conditions and parameters making either of those options easier or more difficult, depending. But there are also "mod" missions, which can modify your approach. In one example, Arno overhears a conversation that his target will be going to Catholic confession. Arno removes the priest from the picture. Arno then slips into the confession booth, waits for his target's arrival, then handles his business that way. There are other examples modifying that mission's particular approach, too. It almost makes me want to kill a dude over and over, just so I can do it six ways from Sunday.

Unity also introduces a stealth button. Since the original, there has always been social stealth, of course, where you could blend into the crowds. Also, Black Flag let you lean into walls and poke your head around corners. I never could get much use out of it. But Unity’s stealth button lets you crouch, walk silently in a crouch, and use that wall-lean to greater effect.

Then there’s the distinctive addition of being able to “parkour up” as well as “parkour down.” In urban settings, getting down from tall structures typically required a haystack waiting for you at the bottom. Even in the wilderness you needed a pile of leaves to land in or a deep body of water to dive into. But now you can parkour up or down with a button press in addition to the usual right trigger pull.

No doubt, the entire gamepad will be a lot to grasp for series newcomers. But I’ve always found that parkouring alongside buildings—by swinging up and over signposts and hanging a left at the flower pot—has always been more intense that simply climbing, jumping, and dropping. I’m looking forward to the increase in control.

You can also traverse building interiors with zero loading screens. We’d seen some of that in Assassin’s Creed III, but hopefully there’s no loading when you visit merchants as well. There have been plenty of no-load outdoor merchants before, so hopefully Unity will do away with interior and exterior loading screens.

Unity is built solely with Ubisoft’s inhouse AnvilNext engine (as was Black Flag). Upscaled to take advantage of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One’s new-generation capabilities, AnvilNext can reportedly put up to a thousand A.I. characters on the screen, acting independently, reacting to the player’s and each other’s behaviors. First of all, putting that many characters on screen is insane, and second, that many people on screen should put on a pretty convincing revolution.

Lead game designer, Benjamin Plich, stated that combat will be more difficult with the removal of the counter button. No kidding. There have been some combatants that you can’t even touch unless you use a counter, so we’ll see how that plays out.

As for the city itself, Paris will be rendered at a 1:1 scale. That is, life-sized from Arno’s point of view. It’s hard to tell, but previous Assassin’s Creeds have all rendered their world at about 1:3 scale, or one-third their actual size. Again, this is a testament to the power of the AnvilNext engine when paired with the PS4 and Xbox One. (And, of course, up-to-par PCs.)

Tuesday, September 30, I’ll have attended an Assassin’s Creed Unity event sponsored by Ubisoft in which I’ll get some hands-on time with theis French Revolution simulator. I’ll explore the combat alterations, the new “parkour up” and “parkour down” mechanic, get fabulous with French Assassin armor fashions, and basically see if co-op is worth your drop-in/drop-out time at all. Watch for our upcoming preview.