The Continuing Adventures of the Middle-Aged Gamer: Doing a Leap of Faith into Assassin’s Creed

This guest post is from Crystal Anne with An E. She comes to us from a sunny clime, but prefers to remain a pale indoor cat. She enjoys reading, cross-stitching something nerdy, going to see live music, and playing video games. She works as an autism consultant by day, got a degree in information science for fun, and currently serves on her local library advisory board.

Ed. note: TW/CW: depictions of violence in the video game clips below.

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If you had asked me two years ago, or even when I got the PS5 last year, I would have said that I was a resolute and faithful adherent to platformers. Then something happened.

I played God of War.

For quite a few months after starting it, I found myself frustrated. I liked the combat, but had a hard time with quite a lot of the puzzle-solving (extremely NOT my strong point in gaming). But in December, during the time period that I wasn’t working, I had time to just game my eyeballs out, and ended up getting much better, since I had the time to just dedicate to it. And I was hooked.

I started getting a hold of every adventure game I could find. Burned my way through the modern Tomb Raider trilogy (in the wrong order, I never said I was smart), Jedi: Fallen Order, and Ghost of Tsushima in a matter of just a couple of months.

So then I decided it was time for me to really get in on the granddaddy of this format and genre: Assassin’s Creed.

I had initially tried out AC a couple of years ago when I got my Switch and bought the two-pack of Assassin’s Creed: Rogue and Black Flag. I started with Rogue, and had a fairly difficult time with it. I didn’t understand the map, I didn’t understand the concept of tagging a locale so that the game would guide me to it, I definitely didn’t understand the concept of fast travel. So it was somewhat frustrating for me.

I did, however, like stabbing folks.

Quick background for those like myself that are/were unfamiliar with the games: the series revolves around two secret societies that have been in conflict with each other for millennia over ancient gods and eldritch artifacts, and in the modern day, the Brotherhood of Assassins use genetic memories and a sort of VR machine to go back into the past and relive the adventures of past Assassins, for uh, reasons. Best not to think too hard about it, because it gets weird fast, and I don’t think anyone cares a whole lot about the parts set in the modern day (I certainly don’t).

When I decided to go in whole hog, I started with Odyssey. Look, if you tell me that you have a whole game set in ancient Greece, I am going to be there with BELLS ON. Because I am a huge history and Greek mythology nerd, and also have a desire to go there one day.

Since, unlike with Rogue, I had now played several action RPGs, my frustration was greatly reduced, as I now better understood how to use a map and how to skip all over said map using fast travel. And I still got to stab people! As I understand it, this was the first AC where you could choose the gender of the main character, so I went with the absurdly gorgeous and buff Kassandra.

Kassandra: LEGEND. ICON. ROLE MODEL FOR US ALL. I had a gay old time letting Kassandra bang anyone who was down for it. Male, female, whatever gender Alkibiades is…Kassandra was ready to get freaky. It made for more than a little happy cackling on my part.

And I did not know how breathtakingly funny AC can be. I don’t remember anything particularly amusing in Rogue, put it that way. But Kassandra was ready to snark at anyone and everyone. She spars with Socrates, she talks to her pet eagle, she gets frustrated with her feckless former boss.

Also, there is one particular side quest, titled “‘Family Values”, that made me laugh out loud. It wasn’t the only funny one, but it was definitely my favorite. My recommendation? When given the option, definitely bone the blacksmith in that one. It’ll be HILARIOUS.

Spoiler’s Ahoy in the following video playthrough of the side quest: 

Since this AC hewed closer to being an RPG than some of the earlier entries, I found myself inserting my own set of ethics and character traits into it. If a character wanted me to kill a woman because he got drunk and had an indiscretion with her? Yeah, that’s a hard pass, my dude, you’re lucky I didn’t have the option to shank you for asking.

If a woman wants me to off her brother so he’ll stop stealing and taking credit for her work? Welp, Earl has to die.

I also would have Kassandra do a lot of swimming, because I decided that after a long day of riding around killing bandits and ransacking leader houses, she could use a nice refreshing dip in the Aegean. You find yourself making your own stories in your head.

 

After this, I decided to hop forward several hundred years and I moved onto Syndicate, which is set in Victorian London.

My understanding is that this is not one of the more well-liked entries, but I’ve been enjoying myself. I particularly like the Child Liberation missions, because child labor is an abomination, thank you very much. I also adore parkour-ing all over the rooftops, because you can see EVERYTHING, and also the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and I get a lot done a lot faster by hopping all over the city.

I might enjoy playing as Jacob Frye slightly more than Evie. This has nothing to do with how they play (stylistically, they’re not as different as the game would have you believe), but the fact that Jacob is the smart-ass of the two. Although again, in the stories I’ve created in my head, Evie enjoys a good scrap just as much as Jacob does, and secretly enjoys taking over London. Also, their outfits.

HOT.

I would be remiss in not mentioning that I am also enjoying Black Flag on my Switch, because PIRATES. Again, this is where spending some time with Odyssey had its advantages, because I am a lot more comfortable with the naval warfare controls, which drove me bonkers in Rogue.

In the past several weeks, with the aid of gift cards and a few sales, I have managed to procure enough AC to keep me occupied for probably the next year, and I cannot wait to see what stories my head adds on to what’s in the game. This is hitting in the same part of the brain that likes to read, and has a yen for travel (a yen that I am working on, I have finally, at the age of 45, gotten my first passport). I cannot guarantee that I won’t use places I’ve seen in the games as I plan out what I want to see in the real world. In the meantime, I have Mirage ready to roll when I finish Syndicate.

There are probably worse ways to plan out world travel. So until next time, I’m going to go be a pirate now. And since starting this post originally, I’ve finished Syndicate, played through Mirage, and am now playing Valhalla.

Quick addendum: a new Assassin’s Creed game, Shadows, is being released in November. Because some people are, well, trash, there is apparently some controversy over the fact that the game features a Black samurai, based on a real-life historical figure, a man named Yasuke who worked for one of Japan’s most famous leaders, Oda Nobonaga. The inclusion of Yasuke as an Assassin has caused some less, shall we say, open-minded gamers to yell about historical accuracy and DEI. I can only recommend that these people go outside and touch some grass, and while they’re doing that, I’ll be playing the game, because it sounds baller.

Ed. note: We’ve written about Assassin’s Creed in some of our Video Game Roundups in Stuff We Like. But what about you? Have you played through Assassin’s Creed?