First impressions
The magnitude of Assassin’s Creed is as great as ever this year. Syndicate‘s London is said to be 30 percent larger than Assassin’s Creed Unity‘s size, and it feels every inch of it. Upon unlocking the open world, simply navigating to the map and zooming out makes seeing everything seem like an unconquerable task.
Fortunately, it’s not that bad, due to Assassin’s Creed‘s newest and most notable addition: a grappling hook. This device is acquired early on, and it makes traversal much easier. In short, Assassin’s Creed wastes less of your time this year with finicky climbing controls.
If that sounds like a godsend, well, it kind of is. The grappling hook doubles as a zipline, so it creates an instantaneous path between you and another location along your route. Zooming to the top of an imposing edifice feels magical when compared to the minutes it would have taken in prior games. It’s efficient enough that you have to wonder how Ubisoft will shoehorn it into future titles, because going back will seem like a downgrade.
The ironic thing is that the grappling hook is a very poor mechanic in the context of gameplay. I found myself running around the streets spamming the left bumper and praying that the cue to latch onto something — anything — would appear. I had completely given up on the notion of pathfinding or climbing (mind you, a pillar of Assassin’s Creed play), and just hoped that I’d be transported where I wanted to go.
That’s not a mindset that the player should ever be in. It shouldn’t be beneficial for them to mash a button without regard for timing or placement because it’ll improve their situation. But Syndicate will put the player there literally thousands of times throughout its run. The grappling hook makes the game undoubtedly better and more economic in its movement, but it does so at the cost of actually playing.
Five (or so) hours in, that’s my biggest takeaway from Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. I’m partway through Sequence 4, and I’m confused about the direction of this all. It’s doing that thing where there are so many features that it spends several missions in a row explaining each. Beaten over the head with so much, I’m dazed and unsure of what to do.
More importantly, I’m unsure why we’re doing this. Each of the Frye twins seems to have their own motive. Evie’s looking to find a Piece of Eden in Templar-controlled London — that’s easy enough to understand. Jacob just wants to start a gang and be a dick. He’s succeeding, even if it flies in the face of acting like an Assassin.
My hope is that this all becomes manageable soon. Most Assassin’s Creed games eventually do once you start ticking all the side objectives off the map. And, when that happens, maybe everyone’s intentions will become a bit clearer.
It’s too early to give full thoughts on most of Syndicate, so we’ll have a review for you next week. All I know for sure right now is that I have a love/hate relationship with the grappling hook.
