Assassin’s Creed has been around since 2007 and is one of the world’s most played games. Developed by Ubisoft this award-winning open-world sandbox has left its mark on the gaming industry and has sold over 155 million copies as of 2020. The series consists of twelve main story games and seventeen spin-offs. Its story is based on actual historical events and figures with a little twist of the Assassins and Templar feuds. The gameplay is mainly focused on stealth, combat and free running.
The story is focused on the main character who is an assassin in an important historic time period. The main plot of the story is assassins protecting the freedom of humanity from Templars who want order through absolute control over people through Isu technology. The series depicts many key historical events and figures through their fictional connections to either the assassin brotherhood or the Templar order.
The first game in the series titled Assassin’s Creed came in the year 2007 for Ps3 and Xbox 360, the pc version being released later in 2008. The game had a very different way of storytelling through ancestral memories and DNA research, the story thus proceeds in two different timelines. The story’s modern-day main protagonist is Desmond Miles (who is a descendent of three key assassins Ezio Auditore, Connor Kenway, and Altair Ibn-La Ahad) is abducted by a commercial organization called Abstergo to research his DNA through the technology they call the animus, which unlocks a person’s ancestral memories stored inside his DNA.
The other main protagonist is Altair Ibn-La Ahad who is an assassin in the late 12th and early 13th century, the story takes place during the Third crusade.
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The game mainly focuses on Altair and his adventures when he stumbles upon an ancient Isu artifact-the apple of Eden. The Isu is the race of technologically advanced species who created human beings as their slaves and artefacts like the apple of Eden to control the human beings. But two humans adam and eve rebel against them and steal one of the apples. This is the apple that the crusaders find under the Temple of Solomon, which Altair fails to steal from them and gets demoted in the brotherhood.
The player is then assigned the task of eliminating nine Templar masters the player gets promoted after eliminating each one of them. The game is mainly focused on stealth but the open world gives players various methods to approach the target, in some parts during missions the game turns linear and objective-based. While eliminating the final target Robert de Sable he finds that all of them are part of a secret organization called Templars and his mentor Al Mualim is also a part of them but he sought the apple for himself.
After returning to Masyaf (the assassin headquarters) Altair finds out that Al Mualim is using the apple to control the minds of residents and the assassins too. With the help of fellow assassins who were not under Al Mualim’s control Altair battles to his library and confronts him. After defeating Al Mualim he takes the apple to destroy it but instead, the apple responds to him and opens a map where other pieces of Eden are hidden all around the world.
In the modern timeline, Dr. Vidic who was conducting the experiments on Desmond reveals to him that Abstergo is the modern-day reincarnation of the Templar order and is seeking to find those pieces of Eden. As desmond is of no use to Abstergo now Vidic orders to kill him but his assistant Lucy convinces him not to, implying that they might need him for further experiments. The game ends with Desmond alone in the room where he discovers various symbols in the room and a prediction for a future catastrophe on the wall.
The game has very good graphics compared to the era and the scimitar engine combines movement and combat very well. The game also has side quests for when the gamer is bored of playing the main story. The story behind the side quest is quite interesting as they were not in the original build of the game and were added at the last moment in just 5 days. I find the side quest to be boring, it made me think “why do I have to collect flags” but the Templars are fun to eliminate. The AI is good and we need to combat different enemies differently.
