Long-time readers
of my blog know that I routinely talk about Assassin's Creed games.
Whenever a new one gets released, it rises to the top of my to-play
list. And for good reason. Regardless of the quality of any one
installment, each entry has something, a feature or a flaw, worth
discussing. The latest game in Ubisoft's long-running alternate
history franchise is no different.
Unlike past games,
Syndicate features two lead characters, twins named Jacob and Evie
Frye, who take London by storm. This use of two protagonists allows
Assassin's Creed: Syndicate to do a number of interesting things with
both its play and its plot. The most obvious being that it allowed
Ubisoft to contrast and cater to the two major playstyles that
players can generally be sorted into when playing Assassin's Creed.
As the more
athletic of the two, Jacob loves a good brawl. He's more than content
with attracting the attention of large groups of enemies and beating
his targets, and anyone who looks like they might try to stop him,
into a bloody pavement pulp. If ranged combat is needed, Jacob will
just bring out a pistol and go in loud. Meanwhile, his sister takes a
more silent approach. Though she can handle herself in a fight, Evie
prefers to sneak around undetected. She isolates enemies and takes
them out one-at-a-time, being careful not to attract too much
detention. Rather than rely too heavily on her gun, she takes wields
throwing knives that can kill ranged enemies quietly. While either
character technically can perform in combat or stealth, they have
clear preferences towards one or the other.
This neatly maps to
the two common Assassin’s Creed player archetypes. Some people are
just fine with rushing to a mission objective, killing everyone in
sight, and completing their assigned task. Stealth or finesse isn't
important. What matters is only that the mission is done at the end
of the day. Others would willing redo the same mission over and over
until they've “perfected” it by completing all the optional
objectives and avoiding detection. It's not just about completing the
mission. It's about keeping mistakes to an absolute minimum. Though
these descriptions are more representatives of extremes on a sliding
scale, and less hard-and-fast alternatives, it can be broadly said
that most will gravitate towards one or the other.
By having Jacob and
Evie together, both extremes can be catered to and defended in the
game. Even in the story, both characters represent these playstyles
through their conversations. Being the more detail-oriented of the
two, Evie constantly admonishes her brother by pointing out the
sloppiness of his work and the unexpected consequences of his
actions, especially in comparison to how she carries out her
assignments. But Jacob gets just as much opportunity to defend
himself by pointing out that he gets things done, often faster and
more efficiently than his sister. The game doesn't preach in favor of
one style or the other. Rather, through these contrasting characters,
it acknowledges that both extremes, and everything in between, are
valid ways of doing what needs doing.
As a pair, the Frye
twins also allowed Assassin's Creed: Syndicate to explore the same
story through multiple viewpoints. Because he tends to be the
go-getter of the two twins, Jacob performs most of the tasks often
associated with a typical Assassin's Creed protagonist. He’s the
one who goes after most the high-ranking Templars, by discovering who
they are, sabotaging their operations, and ultimately assassinating
them. In many ways, his missions offer the “typical” Assassin's
Creed experience. While Evie gets in on the action with her own
separate story-missions, Jacob takes the lion's share of these
assassinations.
This frees Evie up
to do something fairly unique in the context of the series. Usually,
after the mission in which the main character kills one of the
Templars, that target's influence on the world is suddenly rendered
null and void. They no longer matter, and we can safely move on to
the next target without exploring the potential effects of their
removal. In Syndicate, in the next sequence following an
assassination, Evie gets a moment where she revisits the scene of
Jacob's crime, exploring the aftermath.
One early sequence
has Jacob target a corrupt doctor who was brewing and distributing an
hazardous and addictive “tonic” to the people of Victorian-era
London. When Evie enters the situation later, she agrees that killing
him and cutting off the supply of tonic is a good thing. However,
Jacob failed to note that doing so only solves part of the problem,
and creates others. This doctor wasn’t only responsible for the
distribution of the tonic, but also for providing other, beneficial
medicine needed by the poorer citizens. By removing him, Jacob has
inadvertently made it possible for gangs to swoop in and take over
both the distribution of medicine and the creation of tonic for
people those still addicted. Though Evie does what she can to help in
this mission, it is ultimately up to other characters, who aren't
involved in the Assassin/Templar meta-narrative, to start setting up
the infrastructure needed to truly solve the problem.
Through these
post-assassination missions, Ubisoft appears to launch a subtle
critique of their very own stock storyline. In almost every other
Assassin's Creed game, assassinating every major Templar magically
fixes every problem. By using Jacob and Evie to explore these
assassinations from different perspectives (one before and during the
kill, and the other afterwards) Syndicate posits that the actual kill
is only the start of fixing the problem at best, and at worst makes
it harder to come to a permanent solution. It's not enough to take
down the existing economic and logistical frameworks without taking
steps to replace them afterward. Otherwise, the situation can only
get worse. Without Evie, it would be much more difficult to make this
point in an elegant manner.
On their own
merits, neither Jacob nor Evie would be particularly interesting
characters. What makes them worth noting is what they allow Ubisoft
to do in the context of an Assassin's Creed game. By throwing
together two characters with different personalities, and making them
work towards the same ends, there styles forced to clash with each
other. Using their interactions, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate explores
some of the franchises central gameplay and story tenets with an
uncharacteristic self-analysis. Hopefully, with this insight, the
series can continue to improve itself.
