Retrospective Assassin's creed II

How Ubisoft took their time between sequels and turned a flawed series into Assassin’s gold.

- Tom Stone

We should’ve booked a vacation abroad this winter. Because for the first time in seven years we’re not going to be climbing, leaping, and stabbing our way through a new part of the globe in Assassin’s Creed. Mixed reviews and disappointing sales of last year’s Syndicate mean the next game in Ubisoft’s once untouchable series will be taking a year off, most likely for drastic changes. That could be what this long-running series needs, especially if we look back to the last time Ubisoft took a year between installments to rethink Creed’s future.

The original 2007 Assassin’s Creed is by no means a bad game. You play Desmond Miles, a bartender in the 21st century who’s been kidnapped by the sinister Abstergo Industries. Using a machine called the Animus, they force dull Desmond to relive the memories of a far more interesting ancestor during the Third Crusade. In what was an incredible technical achievement at the time, Ubisoft put us in a vast open-world ancient Jerusalem, with crowded streets full of beggars, drunks, and people just hoping to get through another day without being stabbed in an alley.

Parkour skills let you clamber up buildings and leap from rooftop to rooftop, helping you to reach heights an average sandbox wouldn’t. Play five minutes of Assassin’s Creed today and it’s still impressive. But those five minutes over and over get samey. Great job on the sense of scale, guys, but now we’d like something fun to do.