With remake Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced due out this month, what is it about the historical action series that has kept it popular for almost two decades?
I was a latecomer to the Assassin’s Creed franchise.
I missed the glory days of Assassin’s Creed 2 and the subsequent spin-offs. When Assassin’s Creed Origins launched, it passed me by completely – barring a few posters on the Tube that I glanced at but quickly forgot.
That all changed in lockdown, when I bought Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on a whim. I’d seen the adverts; the prospect of adventuring through Ancient Greece and battling everything from the Minotaur to my secret evil brother was too much fun to pass up.
And I had time – suddenly, we all had time. What was the harm in sinking a few hours into a video game?
One hundred hours later and I had blitzed through my first playthrough. As the country was rapidly withdrawing into itself, I suddenly found my world opening up. I was hooked.
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
For the time, Odyssey featured stellar graphics, as well as a massive open world that felt packed with things to do and people to meet. The choices I made as a player actually had an impact on the story and (imagine that) the storytelling was actually good, serving me twists that I never saw coming, as well as a fair few gobsmacking consequences from my careless decision making.
Crucially, it also featured a female protagonist, Kassandra, who has no qualms about kicking ass and taking names. Literally: for my money, the hefty Sparta kick is still the most satisfying attack in the entire franchise.
After that, it was game over for my wallet. Once I’d completed Odyssey I went back and played through the rest of the series, starting with Origins – which was almost as good. The combat was fluid, the lore was deep, and there was a compelling central story in that of Bayek and his wife Aya, who (spoilers) go on to found the original Assassin’s guild at the end of the game.
Over the years, my love for the franchise hasn’t wavered. Yes, there have been wobbles, like that terrible film with Michael Fassbender or Assassin’s Creed Rogue, which was not one of the best and has been all but forgotten by time.
But on the whole, the series has rewarded the many hours I’ve sunk into playing it. The beauty of a good Assassin’s Creed game is the flexibility it gives you. When I started Odyssey, my playstyle involved hefty doses of running up to enemies and spamming attacks until they died.
That’s possible in all the games, but fittingly, for a game about assassins, you’re able to be stealthy. It’s entirely possible to infiltrate and loot a castle without spilling a drop of blood, thanks to the tools the game equips you with: smoke bombs, sleeping darts, and the good old whistle. The challenge of pulling that off has consistently occupied hours of my time and made me a better player too.
Combine that with a healthy dose of historically accurate worldbuilding and the result is dynamite. I can’t think of any other games franchise that has brought the past to life as vividly and consistently as Assassin’s Creed or been as creative with the different stories it chooses to tell.
Yes, there’s some lore involving aliens and people living out the memories of their ancestors via some kind of super-technology, but really, nobody’s playing because of Desmond Miles. Skip that stuff, because the real meat of the games involves getting to live out your historical fantasies in a variety of equally compelling settings.
Walking through Florence in Assassin’s Creed 2 is mind-boggling – the more so given that I visited a year after I played and found the iconic black and white striped Duomo to be almost a carbon copy of the version I had visited as Ezio. The same went for striding the streets of Baghdad as Basim in the (frankly underrated) Assassin’s Creed Mirage.
All of which is to say that the forthcoming release of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced can only be a good thing.
After the barnstorming success of Assassin’s Creed 2 and its subsequent spinoffs, Black Flag laid the groundwork for what it felt like the series was capable of. Who doesn’t want to live out a pirate’s life on the high seas? Who doesn’t want to loot and plunder or meet big names like Anne Bonny and Blackbeard, before indulging in a round of sea shanties?
It’s the ultimate in wish fulfilment and that’s without even mentioning the excellent naval combat, which still feels groundbreaking today. More than a decade after its release, the game still holds up but the chance to play a version that’s revamped for modern consoles feels indisputably exciting.
It’s as close as we’re likely to get to a direct Black Flag sequel, but even if it’s not your cup of tea, there are a staggering 13 other games out there, and more on the way. Go on, give it a shot – if you’re anything like me, you’ll end up hooked too.
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.