Assassins Creed 3 review

Quick, try and think of a good game about the American Revolutionary War besides Assassin's Creed III. Partial credit if you picked Empire: Total War, even if it's more about imperialism in general. I'll also accept this gem of a Flash game, which plays like Hogan's Alley with a machine-gun musket. Fact is, the Revolutionary War is a difficult setting for a game. It suffers from the same problem as any game set before World War II: In the mind of the average person, all of the fighting was done single-file with muskets that had to be reloaded after every shot. It was also a war that was fought well more than 200 years ago, making it hazy at best in our collective memory. Put it this way: World War II has Band of Brothers, The Pacific, and Saving Private Ryan. The American Revolution has a great History Channel mini-series, a musical, and a middling film starring a certified crazy person.
Thankfully, the people behind Assassin's Creed III appear willing to think outside the box. Consider creative lead Alex Hutchinson's comments on the topic of settings: "We've had versions of the assassin... people have thrown ideas around for probably literally any setting that people would think of. But when you get right down to it -- when we're doing the actual nitty-gritty of spending the time on it, spending a couple years making something -- we wanna go to a setting that other games haven't." Given its scarcity in other games, you can understand why Ubi looked to the Revolutionary War for ACIII.

The Action Doesn't Rely on Firearms

In some ways, the whole "musket" issue is actually pretty overblown. More often than not, Americans conducted an early form of guerrilla warfare, sniping their rank-and-file British foes from the safety of the woods. That in itself could make for an interesting game. But, of course, those lopsided tactics don't make the muskets of the time any less unwieldy or inaccurate. In Assassin's Creed, however, it's plausible -- even required -- that the main character would be versed in bladed weapons. After all, this isn't Battlefield, or even Metal Gear Solid. Assassins like Ezio, and now Connor, do perfectly well with a knife (or arrows). That puts muskets safely on the sidelines, where they can function as a change of pace but not the main mode of game play. The Assassin's Creed universe allows quite a bit of flexibility in terms of mechanics, making many of the problems other franchises would face in a Revolutionary War setting moot.

It Can Make Great Use of a Rich Setting

I've already mentioned that the forests of the American Northeast would make a great setting for an action game. But few can exploit that setting to the extent of Assassin's Creed. I can already imagine stalking a pack of British soldiers from a high branch, waiting until their backs are turned, then taking them out one by one. That's not to say that it'll be easy for Ubisoft. I'm no artist, but natural-looking foliage has always been tricky for developers to render. Given that the only alternative is the wide-open -- and boring -- fields that dominated the combat of that era, it's easy to see why action game developers would be reluctant to tackle the Revolutionary War. But for Assassin's Creed, it's an opportunity. Having spent three games running the rooftops of Italy, it'll be fun to spend some time tree-surfing.

It's Not Limited to the War

So you know how I said that the Revolutionary War is too far out of the collective memory? One of the consequences is that it all feels academic. After all, no one actually knows anyone who fought in the Revolutionary War. It's one of the reasons that we don't have many good blockbuster movies on the subject either. But Assassin's Creed has a built-in solution for this dilemma as well. It can use the real events of the war -- Valley Forge, Yorktown, and all that -- as background color for the "real" war between the Templars and the Assassins. This war bears a direct connection to the series' near-future framing scenario and thus feels more immediate to contemporary audiences. I'm not calling the Templar-Assassins War a masterpiece of fiction or anything; to tell the truth, it's one of the bits I like the least about the series. I'm a history nerd, so I enjoy the simple act of playing against interesting historical backdrops. But for others, I'm sure that the modern thread will make it feel less like a textbook, and more like... well, to be honest, a superhero film.
I'm sure that it would have been much easier for Ubisoft to go ahead and put Assassin's Creed in Feudal Japan, or in World War II. It's easy to sell the idea of an assassin with a katana, or even of an assassin storming Omaha Beach. It's not as easy to sell an assassin hanging out with Benjamin Franklin. Or Leonardo da Vinci, for that matter. My reference to Assassin's Creed as a game about costumed heroes was admittedly just a touch derisive, mainly because I'm personally sick to death of comic book films. But the Assassin's Creed concept being as flexible as it is, I think it has an opportunity to explore a huge number of interesting settings that have traditionally received short shrift in gaming. It could be the American Revolution, it could be the Russian Revolution, it could be the Cuban Revolution. Whatever it turns out to be, the history nerd in me is officially excited.

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