Whose Faulty Vision

Assassin’s Creed

My latest Playstation 3 game is “Assassin’s Creed”, and despite the mixed reviews, I’m loving it. There’s a trend in video games recently to be more open–games that allow you to decide how to solve a particular problem, instead of having to guess how the programmers intended you to solve the problem–and AC really exemplifies that trend.

Let’s take an (admittedly extreme) example. A little background: Assassin’s Creed is set in the Holy Land in the era of Richard the Lionheart’s crusade. The protagonist is an Assassin, in the original meaning of the word (although hashish is never mentioned–guess killing people is ok, but drugs are evil), who’s sent to kill various evil men. An unrelated piece of background: Before picking up Assassin’s Creed, I played through a chunk of Half-Life 2, which is a game that everyone raved about, claimed it was one of the best video games ever, and so on.

Now, imagine a gate that you need to get past, that’s guarded by a bunch of armed guards.

In Half-Life 2, there would be exactly one way to get past that gate. Probably just by killing all of the guards, but possibly by finding a lever somewhere to pull to make a machine come out and kill them all for you, or some such nonsense. Either way, there would only be one solution, and you’d have to find it.

In Assassin’s Creed, here are the ways at your disposal to get past that gate:

• Just kill all of the guards.
• Run past the guards, lose them in the crowds, and hide in a haystack (or some other hiding place) until they stop searching for you.
• Find a way around the gate, such as by climbing a nearby building and leaping to the top of the wall.
• Find a group of scholars, who the guards will allow to pass unmolested. Disguise yourself as one of them, blend into the group and simply walk past the guards.
• (And this one really impresses me) Find another nearby guard who’s by himself. Stick a knife in his back. When a civilian finds his body, they’ll raise a ruckus, and the guards will come and investigate. Sneak through the gate while they’re away from it.

As I said, that’s an extreme case, but the whole game’s like that–for any given problem, there are a bunch of different possible solutions. You never feel like you’re stuck trying to read the programmer’s mind, as you do in games like HL2. It’s a real breath of fresh air.

Also, the game is gorgeous. There are three Crusades-era cities modeled in the game, and they’re incredibly detailed and realistic. And the protagonist looks incredible–very detailed model, and his movements are so fluid you’d swear you’re watching a real person move. But I’d play it even if it didn’t look so good, just because it’s so open.