Question the Creed
Warning: This post is about the historical stealth action-adventure video game series called Assassin’s Creed and spoilers will be included.
My journey with the Assassin’s Creed franchise began during my pubescent years. I’d really love to say that I was the coolest teen in town and had my priorities sorted. But that would be a downright lie. Like most, I struggled and grappled with the idea of self-identity and purpose. Whenever in doubt, the Assassin’s Creed taught me to take a leap of faith. A lesson that to this day, I carry with me. The series preaches about ideals of human freedom and sacrifice. There were those who would take that freedom from us and too many of us who gladly give it. I learned that it was our ability to choose, whatever we thought was true, that made us human. The first six games made me realize the world really was black and white. We had to protect ourselves and our freedom from society’s monsters. After all, everything was permitted.
These very notions were challenged by the franchise’s 7th and final chapter for the last generation of consoles, Assassin's Creed: Rogue. Rogue is possibly one of the best and most underrated game in the series that you might never play. Released around the same time as that of Unity, it was released with bare whispers and hushed marketing tones, due to a majority of the marketing cake being taken by Unity for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Unity hit the news for all the bad reasons. Plagued with bugs and inconsistent gameplay, it was a less than satisfactory entry for the 8th generation of consoles. Arno Dorian, the game’s protagonist, was a cheap Ezio rip off, which didn’t settle well with hardcore AC fans. Rogue on the other hand….Rogue was the second Revelations. Beautifully concluding the story arcs of the colonial American group of Assassins, it was Ubisoft’s swansong for the PS3 and Xbox 360. So you could imagine my excitement upon hearing a remastered edition of the game for the current generation of consoles.
Here’s why Rogue is an understated gem in the franchise and why Shay Patrick Cormac, it’s hero, or anti-hero to be precise, is the only protagonist from the entire series that made sense.
Rogue made me question the Creed. The game follows Shay, a convincing, devout and reckless Assassin during the Seven Years War, learning the ropes of the brotherhood of Assassins until one day, he is sent on a mission that ends up in leveling an entire city and slaughtering millions. He immediately takes up arms against his Mentor and the entire brotherhood in an attempt to stop them from going after sources of powers capable of killing millions more. Even if it meant siding with the authoritarian and age old enemies of the Assassins, the Templars.
Anger. Betrayal. Morality. Shay’s story isn’t one of revenge like Ezio’s or Connor’s. In fact, I’d say it’s more like a redemption arc we saw with Altair in the first game. Except for this time, Shay redeems himself by doing the right thing ie saving the world. He isn’t forced or threatened to join the Templar Order. He chose it. And so the Assassin goes on to become the Assassin Hunter. And boy. What. a. Ride! Despite being a short game of about 12–14 or so hours, it’s the most convincing and mature story from the franchise. It threw away my notions of black and white into shades of grey. It showed me that the very monsters of society we believed to be could actually have a point. That the chaos of freedom had to, at some point in time, lead to order. Shay chose to be the harbinger of that order by siding with the Templars and in doing so, became responsible for decimating the entire Assassin order of the Colonial rite save for their mentor until Connor (in AC 3) came about and re-established it. From a sociological perspective, seeing things as black and white, good and evil was a thing of the past. Something that would leap from the Old Testament. We like our protagonists in our stories to be complex. Riddled with doubts and impossible choices. While I will agree that Rogue doesn’t fully explore such a novel idea, briefly touching upon something like this is breaking new ground for a franchise that could have become tired of itself.
In terms of gameplay, it borrows familiar swashbuckling combat and naval missions from Black Flag. The familiarity ends there though. As soon as you become a Templar, your hidden blade adorned enemies hide in haystacks and bushes. They strike from above and from corners. Exactly the same tactics we have come to recognize from the previous iterations in the franchise. And thus begins a game of ‘hide and seek’. Kill or be killed is the end result of this fairly gratuitous and ingenious game. And the payoffs are dope. My only criticism with this game would probably be the fact that the graphics aren’t at par with Black Flag, taking into account that Black Flag was made on the PC and next generation of consoles as opposed to Rogue’s porting from PS3/Xbox 360 to PC.
Overall, this game makes you ponder about a few story-telling choices not normally seen in the franchise and you can’t help but be swept away by the beautiful, cold, desolate North Atlantic. A perfect desolate setting, for a desolate story. Apart from this, the game’s soundtrack, as well as a new take on Ezio’s Family theme makes it worth it. I’d definitely recommend this game to any hardcore AC fan. It’s way better than Unity and definitely wins cred on storytelling and gameplay.
