Last year, I was eating out, and the reveal trailer for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was released. Blackbeard being one of the first thing’s you see, confirming the games Golden Era of Piracy setting, and I got excited. Today, Assassin’s Creed: Unity was revealed, and while I wasn’t eating out, I was still pretty excited by the trailer.
The first thing you’ll notice is that they didn’t bother giving the game a number. To be honest, pure subtitling is probably the best option for the series considering it’s chronology makes no frickin’ sense anymore. The next thing you’ll notice is France, goddamn France. It’s been a long time coming but after being stab West Asians, Italians, the British and some Americans, we can finally stab the French. Taking place in France also means we will go back to Assassin’s Creed IV world design consisting of impressive, huge architecture, a welcome return.
As seen in the screenshot above, Notre Damn is beautifully replicated in the game, and whether we’ll see more inner building exploration like what was in the Italian Renaissance games is yet to be known, although those navigation puzzles were great fun. Something different, however, is the Parkour Up and Parkour Down buttons. It seems that, unless this is just a prototype build, that Ubisoft Montreal are changing up the parkour mechanics, which is long overdue as the Press X to Parkour mechanics of all the other games has started to become a little dull. A say a little dull, it’s hardly even an interesting game mechanic anymore, it’s just what you do.
Roaming the French cobbles, and the London cobbles if rumours are to be believed, is the new assassin Arno, who is probably French. His assassin robes are really well designed, giving off a Georgian feel, which makes sense for a Georgian era game. I still hope, however, that there are plenty of unlockable robes like in Black Flag, and I definitely hope the previous assassin’s robes show up as loyalty bonuses like in Black Flag. Even though it will be more difficult to pull of in a city environment, I would like to see hunting return, as it is good way of acquiring upgrades. Preferably the hunting system used in Black Flag, not AC3’s incomprehensible nonsense.
The leaked screenshots looked good, but my god did the trailer look good. I actually believe that this is what the game will look like, as it isn’t in any way held back by last-gen technology. The screenshots were definitely from an old build, and you can tell that by looking at the lower quality textures, but the trailer, although in-engine, did look like it could easily be what gameplay looks like. However, this trailer wasn’t released by a company known for living up to reveal trailers, it was released by Ubisoft, so we’ll see. However, at this stage of falling back in love with the series again thanks to Black Flag, I am definitely looking out for the game. Ubisoft at E3, here we come.
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