Evolving Designs: Assassin's Creed

This is going to be a long one; you've been warned.

Assassin's Creed was one of those games that immediately grabbed my attention when I first saw the trailer. It had atmosphere, texture, mythology, and a musical score that was wonderfully dramatic. I didn't own a Playstation 3, but my roommate at the time did, and together we dove into the Animus to discover the secrets of the Templars and Assassins. And we both loved the game, but there were also some obvious problems with the game's free-running system. Occasionally Altair would run into a hot spot that would send him sailing off a ledge into oblivion rather than into the much less lethal haystack; or perhaps worse, into the haystack rather than up to the next handhold.

That was six years ago. Ubisoft has released six more Assassin's Creed titles, and although each game is set in the same universe and the mechanics are largely the same, there are elements that have evolved, grown, or disappeared altogether since AC1.

I had the bizarre notion last year to play as many of them as I could, as quickly as possible. I made it through Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood, Revelations, and III. What you are about to read is the product of that experience.

You'll notice that Assassin's Creed III is rarely mentioned. I'll explain why in more detail in a later piece if I have time; in many important ways, AC3 doesn't play like an Assassin's Creed game.

On my desk I have six pages of Assassin's Creed notes. I'm going to distill them down as much as possible, to talk about the changes that were made between each game, why they worked, where they failed, and how they could have been done better.

Hot Spots and Free-Running

In every Assassin's Creed game, there are places on every building and structure that are designed to be interactive, whether it's a spot to grab when climbing or a structure that gets knocked down when you push someone into it. In many cases these hot spots are visibly different from the rest of the architecture: you know there's a Leap of Faith point when you see pigeons or an eagle perched on a ledge, you know that all haystacks make good hiding places, and you know that if it's an iron ring you're probably going to grab it at some point while scaling that next tower.

Why it works

Free-Running in these games is spectacularly fun when it's working correctly. You can run from one end of Acre to the other without stopping to catch your breath, and in the later games timed trials encourage the player to let go of planning and follow their instincts. All the clues you need are on the screen, and when Altair, Ezio, and Connor are doing what you tell them to do the action just flies.

Where it fails

When it's not working correctly, unfortunately, it feels less like flying and more like a teenager learning to drive a car. There is very little more frustrating than pressing a button to make the character do one thing and then watching that same character do something else. Occasionally it's a case of slippery fingers jerking the control stick, but sometimes what looks like a place to jump into water is actually just a high cliff. Most of the time the clues don't lie, but occasionally there are elements of scenery that look like clues but in fact are just window dressing. And sometimes instead of running up a wall, your assassin will just run smack into it and stop altogether.

These situations are (usually) not a case of the world not behaving properly. Most often, it's because the clues aren't clear enough to show you the best path to your destination.

How it could be done better

In Assassin's Creed: Revelations, there are moments where you can activate Eagle Vision and see Altair running ahead of you to show you how he traversed the same path. I would do the same thing, but build it in directly to the Eagle Vision mechanic. When you hold down Eagle Vision, it not only highlights the hot spots for hiding, climbing, and leaping, but it also shows a shadowy version of your character a few seconds ahead of you, taking what the computer believes to be the best and safest route to your target, whether it's an enemy you're chasing or your next viewpoint. The game already calculates best-route scenarios for guards and thieves, so displaying a ghost-version of your avatar would be fairly simple.

Not every player is going to want to use it, but tying its functionality to Eagle Vision lets the player turn it on when they need it. And ultimately, an assassin of Ezio's caliber is going to be using that advantage all the time. Why not let the player make full use of it?

Combat: Counter-Combat

One of my favorite aspects of the Assassin's Creed games is the emphasis on reaction. You don't get points for fighting a dozen guards; in fact, if you fight a dozen guards aggressively you will almost certainly fail. Instead, the game encourages you to watch what your opponents are doing and counter their attacks. It's a very impressive system, and it gives the player the sense that they are filling the shoes of a true expert. You might not be skilled enough to take on all of the Templars at once, but you can be skilled enough to defend yourself against an entire group of ordinary guards long enough to break away and escape.

Assassin's Creed II: Secondary Attacks and Neon Signs

The second game in the series adds new weapon types like daggers, hammers, and great swords, and also gives the player a collection of secondary attacks for each weapon, such as throwing sand in your enemy's face or hurling a sword down the street to take down an enemy. These secondary attacks add some depth to combat, but they aren't really useful. There are precious few moments in the game where you feel like the best solution is to throw sand, and there are no situations where throwing your sword away from yourself is anything but a terrible idea.

The other thing that Assassin's Creed II added was health meters on enemies, which flash white when they're about to attack. It's a useful way to know when you need to counter-attack, but it could work better by not being the default view.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: Assassin Recruits and Arrow Storm

Brotherhood introduces recruitable assassins that join your cause, and as you train them they become better at helping you during combat. From directing them to stealthily take down your target's guards so that you can close for the kill, to laying down a storm of arrows that eliminate all enemies in the area, your assassin recruits quickly become the lifeblood of your assassin character. The only problem here is that once you have enough assassins to use Arrow Storm, any combat in the game feels like cheating.

Assassin's Creed Revelations: Secondary Weapons

After being used to the controls in the first three games, Revelations threw me through a loop. The top face button was mapped away from Eagle Vision in favor of the character's secondary weapons: throwing knives, crossbows, pistols, bombs. It was a good way to bring the player some new options in melee combat, and paved the groundwork for Assassin's Creed III and IV to incorporate ranged combo kills.

Revelations also changed the way smoke bombs work, requiring the player to use Eagle Vision to see enemies while the area is obscured by smoke. It was a clever evolution, and it made Eagle Vision a much more useful mechanic.

How it could work better

The first thing I would do is get rid of secondary attacks altogether. There is no reason to use anything but the reactive combat system from the first game. Instead of giving different secondary attacks for each weapon type, make each weapon type better suited for facing opponents of a certain type. Heavy weapons might be great for defending against heavily armored opponents, while light weapons are better against fast opponents. Any weapon is ultimately useful against any opponent by the end of the game, but using the right weapon in the right situation should yield tangible benefits that the player feels during play. This also encourages the player to switch weapons more frequently as different situations call for different tactics, giving every player a reason to master and acquire every weapon available.

(I would still keep the secondary weapons introduced in Revelations; crossbows, throwing knives, and even the rope dart from AC3 are great tactical options. I would also make the Assassin Recruits part of that same repertoire; more on that later.)

The second thing I would do is take the flashing health meters on enemies about to attack and put that information into Eagle Vision's view. When you're using Eagle Vision, show the enemies in red; then when an enemy is about to attack, have them turn white. It's a much more intuitive way to give the player that kind of information, and expert players don't need the information anyway. This would also open the door to encounters were more than one enemy attacks at once; what does the player do when they're actually being attacked on all sides?

Finally, the Arrow Storm ability is interesting but it's too powerful, ending many combat encounters before they have a chance to be interesting. Instead of calling down a rain of arrows, I would have the ability call out all of your assassin recruits at once as if you had called each of them separately. This encourages the player to build up all of their recruits, and still lets the enemy defend themselves. You could even have a situation where you call out eight assassins to take down one templar enemy--and then the templar shows their skill by doing the same thing you do when surrounded. How does Cesare Borgia react when surrounded by assassins? Does he try to fight them all at once, take them on one at a time, or does he throw down a smoke bomb and try to flee?

Controls and Button-Maps

The controls have evolved in each game, so I'll break them down separately.

Assassin's Creed

In the first game, the controls follow a basic Hands/Feet/Head orientation. The bottom face button, Feet, activates the Fast Walk mode of movement, allowing you to travel through crowds more quickly without breaking into a run. The left face button, Hands, is your attack, while the right face button offers grabs and object interaction. The top face button, Head, activates your Eagle Vision. The right trigger lets you run, and when you hold down the right trigger and the Feet button you break into a sprint. The left trigger locks onto targets, and the bumper buttons both do nothing.

Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood

The next two games added Carry and Loot to the right face button, and added a talk button to the top face button. Both decisions made sense, but having Talk use the same button as Eagle Vision meant that you sometimes ended up talking to someone when you meant to activate your Eagle Vision; and if you pressed the Grab button while standing next to a body or a weapon on the ground, you might end up picking up a corpse instead of grappling with the living foe in front of you.

Starting with Brotherhood, calling your assassin recruits is handled with the left bumper button. Holding down the button with three or more recruits available calls down an Arrow Storm.

Assassin's Creed Revelations

Revelations moved Eagle Vision to the left control stick (which some of you may agree is the blackened oblivion of controller design), and gave the top face button to the new Secondary Weapon action. Switching weapons is handled with the right bumper button, talking is moved to the right face button, which eliminates the frustration of standing in a crowded room and looking for haystacks.

How it could work better

I wouldn't change much. The placement of Primary and Secondary weapons on the left and top face buttons is a common one, and it works well for these games. The right face button makes sense as the Object Interaction, and the bottom button works just fine for movement.

The first thing I would do is move the Assassin Recruit call button from the left bumper to a slot as a secondary weapon. There will be some players who use the ability a lot, and some players who don't use it at all; for those who use it a lot, it is essentially a weapon, and mapping it to the Secondary slot works well. Moving it away from the left bumper also lets you move the Target-Lock ability there, and move Eagle Vision from a toggle on the left control stick to a held action on the left trigger.

This means that the left and right triggers both handle movement and perception; by holding both, you can run and see where you're running, without worrying about accidentally pressing the wrong button and turning one of them off (which happened fairly often with Eagle Vision when it was stuck to the control stick).

Puzzles, Dungeons, and Minigames

The first game had no proper puzzles, and the dungeons existed primarily in the form of assassination contracts with complicated obstacles. Subsequent games instituted new concepts for puzzles and dungeon-delving, to varying degrees of success.

Assassin's Creed II: The Truth

The second game created The Truth, a series of puzzles that, once solved, unlocked a short video that revealed something about the world. It wasn't essential to the plot, but it was worth doing if you wanted to know more. The only downside here was that finding the puzzles themselves was difficult; it would have been nice if the locations were marked on the map once you found them, so that you could quickly see later in the game which ones you'd missed.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: Clusters and Followers of Romulus

Brotherhood built on the Truth concept with Clusters, which were essentially the same thing with a different name and much more difficult to find. What's more, the resulting video that was unlocked wasn't as interesting as the one from Assassin's Creed II, which made the extraordinary lengths required to see it seem unnecessary.

Brotherhood also added the Lairs of Romulus, scattered around Rome, which offered an extensive platforming experience to challenge players. The lairs were interesting and sometimes challenging, and each one came with an extra layer of challenge: complete the dungeon in a certain amount of time or without taking a certain number of hits, and you get full synchronization.

Admittedly, the reward for completing the challenge was a bit lackluster; it would have been more tempting to try each one if the rewards were tangible, even if they were just cosmetic.

Assassin's Creed Revelations: Desmond's Journey

Desmond's journeys are frustrating, not because they're difficult or because the story isn't interesting, but because they force an entirely different gameplay style onto a game that was serving perfectly fine without it. Instead of free-running in third person, the game shifts into first person perspective. You can't run up the walls or even across the floor; you walk everywhere, and hope that you can jump far enough to reach your goal. This looks very clearly like a case of bad design from the top: it doesn't build on the concepts you've learned in the game, and it punishes you unnecessarily for not being good at its different style of gameplay. The question you're left with at the end of each segment is Why couldn't this have been done in third person?

How it could work better

The Truth and Cluster segments worked reasonably well; but instead, what would have been better is to build the puzzles off the animus data entries that you unlock throughout the game. Encourage the player to research the characters they're encountering in order to solve the puzzles. The information already exists in the animus; give the player a reason to read it.

I would also build tangible rewards into the dungeons for completing their respective challenges. If you complete all of the lairs of Romulus with all of the challenges, for instance, maybe in addition to finding Brutus's armor, you find Brutus's cape. The reward doesn't need to be mind-blowing, and in fact it shouldn't be terribly powerful, but it should be worth getting if only to say "I did this, and this is what I have to show for my efforts."

Finally, the Desmond's Journey segments could work well, even with the over-the-top monologues that carry on throughout them, if they let you play as Desmond in third person. Let the journey carry you through a bizarre landscape with shifting structures interspersed with concrete moments of memory. What would it be like to explore the Animus? Let his journey answer that question.

Character Progression and Loot

In the first game, your progress with Altair dictates your armor and weapons. At certain plot points you get better armor, weapons, and health. As the games went on, more options became available.

Tailors and Clothing Dye

In subsequent games, visiting a tailor allowed you to change the color scheme for your garments. You have to pay each time you want to dye your clothes, and aside from a change of palette there is nothing particularly worthwhile about changing your colors. That isn't a bad thing, but it would be nice to have better customization.

One thing that didn't work well was the "ultimate armor" acquired from completing special objectives. When you don Altair's armor, for instance, it overrides whatever colors you had for your own clothing, and you can't change them.

How it could work better

Instead of offering twenty or thirty different colors for one outfit, offer five or six color palettes that can be used across four or five different outfits (including the final "ultimate" armor set). Let the player buy a Florence, Venice, and Rome outfit that each has a slightly different look to it, which then can be dyed for customization. Then make sure that any special outfits, like Altair's Armor or Brutus's Armor, can also be dyed.

Armor and Weapons

In the first game, you were just given your armor and weapons at intervals to upgrade your character. In the second game, you bought your equipment from a blacksmith, whose inventory got better as you went through the game's story. In Brotherhood, weapon selection improved as you purchased additional blacksmiths, while armor remained tied to plot. By the time you reach Revelations, however, the variety of weapons that are available is so vast that you seldom have a clear choice as to which weapons to buy, let alone use on a regular basis.

How it could work better

The armor tiers work well; you have four tiers of armor, with four pieces of armor per tier. So let the weapons follow the same rules. Say you have the following weapon types:

• Dagger
• Sword
• Hammer or Mace
• Large Sword

Then make sure that for each tier of weapon, you offer one (and only one) of each weapon type. Let the player carry one of each weapon type as Primary Weapons that can be swapped out during combat, and suddenly instead of worrying about whether to buy the hammer or the sword, the player knows that eventually they'll need both. And with four tiers of armor and four tiers of weapon, you know the general style and look of each weapon.

Bankers and Money

In the second game, funds flow freely; you always have enough money, even if it's exactly enough money, to buy the equipment you need. Starting in Brotherhood, funds start to become more scarce, and in Revelations it is difficult to buy anything.

Part of the problem is that the game's banks, which give you a payment of funds every twenty minutes, don't run on total gameplay time; instead, they run on the amount of time you spend unpaused in the character's actual world. So if you leave the Animus to explore Monteriggioni, or if you spend two hours slogging through Desmond's memories, when you return to Ezio the simulation thinks that no time has passed. This makes for a lot of wasted time, and especially later in the games when you spend a lot of time in Altair's memories or outside of the animus entirely, what seems like a nice diversion starts to feel more like a roadblock.

How it could work better

Let the banks run on "real-world" time, at least within the game world. The world is a simulation, so there's nothing stopping the player from sitting in one place for five hours waiting for the banks to fill up. So instead of forcing them to stand in one place for twenty minutes, let the timer keep going while the player is outside the animus, training in the challenges, exploring Desmond's memories, or even reading the data logs from the pause menu. These games go out of their way to make the player feel like everything is a part of the game world, so let the banks fill up while you're talking to Lucy. Otherwise the financial systems in these games work exceptionally well.

Purchasing Land and Landmarks

Starting in Brotherhood, you can purchase blacksmiths, tailors, banks, and even historical landmarks if you have enough money. Buying shops yields better equipment availability and discounts; buying banks gets you more money to spend as time goes by. Buying landmarks, unfortunately, seems to do very little aside from filling up your achievements.

How it could work better

If there were a way to make the landmarks more interesting when purchased without changing the way they look, then that would be an excellent way to use them. But these are historic landmarks that are noteworthy because they haven't changed over the centuries, and buying them shouldn't change that.

So instead of changing the landmarks, make it so that buying one of them creates allies for the player when near that landmark. Traveling near the Pantheon? If you own it, you'll find courtesans and mercenaries to help you get out of tight spots. In this way, buying half or all of Rome gives the player a tactical advantage, makes them feel like they're contributing to the prosperity of the city, and also gives the landmark a visible change to make the purchase feel satisfying.

Closing Thoughts

These games are deep and satisfying, and they owe a great deal of that to the intuitive gameplay. When it works best, you forget you're holding a controller in your hand, and your heart leaps into your throat as you jump from the top of the Campanile. That's something that as game designers we should always be striving for.