My problem with the Assassin’s Creed games is that I always try to play them like stealth games, and Assassin’s Creed is not a very good stealth game. It’s a great action game, when it wants to be, but it’s just not built for stealth as anything other than a side-mechanic. It’s not adaptive enough; stray from the level designer’s script for a second and you’re screwed, drawn into running or fighting instead.
Assassin’s Creed Unity is looking to address all of this with a few borrowed techniques from Splinter Cell and an emphasis on flexible level and mission design that lets you take three or five or ten different approaches to a situation rather than struggling to find the exact way that the designer intended you to do it. I didn’t expect the same from Rogue, the last-generation Assassin’s Creed coming out later this year. Mechanically, it isn’t much different from Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, but in the absence of making big changes to the game’s systems, Rogue makes big changes to the tools you get to play with – and to the story.
See, in Rogue, you play a Templar rather than an assassin, and Templars have much better stuff. It stars Shay Patrick Cormac (who is an Irishman, in case that wasn’t painfully obvious), an assassin-turned-templar for reasons yet unknown. He has an olde-tyme grenade launcher that can fire all kinds of troublesome ammunition from shrapnel grenades to tranquilliser bombs, and a silent air rifle. He has firecracker darts that make flammable things explode to cause a distraction or destroy supplies. He has beserk gas that can turn enemies or animals against each other for Far Cry-style mayhem. In short, he has options.
Playing as a Templar also obviously changes the central dynamic of Assassin’s Creed, which usually revolves around killing or avoiding Templars. Cormac is an Irishman who is, for some reason, working with the British Empire out in the frozen Atlantic in the 1700s, during the Seven Years’ War. Rogue takes us back to probably the least beloved setting in Assassin’s Creed’s history, revolutionary America, but gameplay-wise it’s like Black Flag: Part 2, with a mix of naval and on-land exploration and combat.
Instead of taking on assassination missions and infiltrating forts, Rogue has us tracking down and eliminating “gang outposts” – assassin dens, basically. The Gamescom demo has Cormac running around causing distractions, blowing up poison reserves, cutting down assassin flags and generally upsetting things in such outposts; it’s a reverse version of Black Flag’s camp infiltrations.
Being a templar also means that there are people trying to assassinate you, hidden in bushes or on branches above your head, waiting to suddenly appear and end your life with a hidden blade. Sacking the gang outpost culminated in a fight with the commander, an assassin with all the tricks of the trade – parkour, smoke bombs, different weapons, the lot. Instead of just pressing B to counter and X to kill as soon as you get into a fight, you have to actually chase the dude around and find a clever way to stop and kill him.
The templars’ better equipment extends to the seas as well. Rogue features faster, better naval warfare with more weapons: Cormac’s ship can drop and ignite and oil slick, creating a giant wall of fire across the sea, and it has far better swivel guns. There will be a lot of naval combat in Rogue, I’m guessing – I must have sunk about seven or eight ships just in the Gamescom demo.
Despite the basic similarities to Black Flag, Rogue’s beautiful frozen setting could not be more different from its predecessor’s Caribbean capering – it’s a huge aesthetic change that, I imagine, will help to alleviate the sense of familiarity in the seafaring and island exploration. You can’t swim far, because the freezing water will kill you after a few seconds. Icebergs lurk below the water and peek above it (weirdly, you can shoot them with your cannons to “release” frozen cargo, which makes absolutely no sense).
At the end of the demo I came across a shipwreck caught in planes of ice, and docked to investigate. A little flock of penguins was gathered on the edge, and they all slipped into the water when I approached. (“Thank you for not trying to kill the penguins,” said a Ubisoft developer at this point, making me wonder what kind of arsehole attackspenguins in a game demo.) I spent five minutes climbing up the ruins of the ship, picking out a path through broken masts and jutting wood. At the top, as Cormac crouched up on high, the Northern lights played out across the sky.
Rogue is a Black Flag remix rather than a step in a different direction, like Unity, but as Black Flag was my favourite Assassin’s Creed in a long while, I’m looking forward to it nonetheless. It’s just a shame we won’t be seeing it on Wii U.
This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK, bringing you original reporting, game culture and humour with a U from the British isles.
Comments
30 responses to “Assassin’s Creed Rogue Is Actually Pretty Different”
Not on Wii U. Won’t be playing this one then 🙁
Yeah, same here.
why would you want to play it on WiiU, Assassins Creed has always been a PC endeavour for me, apart from the very first game, which i played on PS3. i also have a WiiU, but Assassins Creed isnt a game i wish to play on it.
I greatly enjoyed it on my WiiU. It’s nice sitting on my couch or giant beanbag in front of the big telly.
PC is in the other room and I don’t have the inclination to get it hooked up to the TV and buy another controller etc just to play.
Well this AC won’t be for you (initially) at least, as it is 360 and PS3 exclusive.
Yeah, as I stated in the comment that started this whole thread ಠ_ಠ
He was replying to skinja who plays on PC, not to you
Wait, isn’t the new one coming to PC? Not like they can’t handle it. Probably will in time.
You only have a Wii U for gaming?
You poor tormented soul.
I’m pretty stoked with it for the most part. A good game can last me a month easy so I’ve got no issues. Can’t just power through games like I used to with a family etc to consider now.
And if the weather is nice I’ll sometimes spend an evening playing ingress instead of traditional gaming. That’s great fun.
Tormented by a whole bunch of rad games.
And from what I read in this article it’s still not a stealth game
Right. He said that Unity seemed to be adding more stealth options but this game was closer to Black Flag.
I think that is the point of the article.
Rogue doesn’t try to hide the fact that Stealth isn’t a huge deal in AC anymore, it gives you the options to kick some serious butt.
While Unity is improving the Stealth aspect in a huge way.
I thought it was a bit weird for an article tbh. ‘I try to play these games as stealth characters, it’s never worked, now look at all the awesome stuff you can use to blow up enemies with’. I might pick Rogue up though at some point if the controls have been refined since Black Flag. For a ‘next gen’ game (albeit on last gen consoles as well), the controls left a lot to be desired for precise movement of Edward
Can the penguins be attacked then? Or are they intangible objects like in Just Cause 2?
More importantly, what are penguins doing in the North Atlantic?
Unless that’s answered in the video, which I watched without sound.I think that’s the new black & white Assassin uniform, right?
Maybe they’re auks not penguins…
That’d work.
on the IGN stream they said that there were a type of penguin that was around that area at the time but went the way of the dodo
That’s be Great Auks then…
Eh. It’s extremely hard for me to justify going BACK to last-gen right now. Especially paying full price for ANYTHING on there. Kingdom Hearts 2.5 is the exception.
I will just wait till they inevitably port Rogue over to PS4 and XB1 probably next year.
Unity for me! Can’t wait.
Yep, I’d put money on an HD port within 12 months.
At least I hope so. I haven’t even played Black Flag yet because I’m holding off until I get a PS4. Don’t want to have to pull the PS3 out again just to play this one.
Still playing things on last gen but don’t wanna buy anything new on last gen (crosses fingers and hopes for Dark Souls II port)
I don’t think I could do two AC games so close to each other. I will wait for the inevitable Assassins Creed Rogue: HD Remastered Ultimate Templar edition that will come out on PS4 sometime next year.
Can we PLEASE stop calling the series ‘Assassin’s Creed’. Seriously.
There’s no assassination left, just runny-hacky-jumpy set-piece murders, there’s no difference between the Assassin’s and the Templars apart from their hats and the Creed has long since been thrown violently out of a window.
Nice to see naval combat is a bit more fast-paced, but I’ll still be opting for Unity instead – AC4 really burned me out on naval combat. But then again, I initially passed over AC:Bro-hood cos their marketing team focused exclusively on a side of the game I’ve no interest in, and that turned out to be a great game… Maybe I’ll pick it up if/when it comes to PS4 or PC.
Did you really play this demo?
I saw gameplay videos of this already.
It sounds like you just watched the video, and pretended you actually played it lol.
I was completely excited for this one until I found out that the main guy was a guy. I guess when I heard Shay I thought Shae from Game of Thrones and you would be doing more subterfuge and undercover sorts of things. Great idea for an AC game in my opinion.
Can we officially call the series Need For Creed now given their shotgun release approach to ruining a franchise they had already screwed story and game play wise by the third installment?