In-Creed-able

November 9, 2007 at 5:14 pm (Everything at Once!, Reviews/Previews) (Assassin's Creed, Games, PC, PS3, Sword fighting, Ubisoft, Xbox 360)

In the end, it was the sword fighting that won me over.

Games have been notoriously rubbish at really capturing the essence of a duel. What should be a tense ballet of parry and counter, dodge and feint, instead look like a pair of nine-year-olds hitting each other with cardboard tubes. It should be about timing and skill, with a fight settled by that one perfect blow, not slowing wearing away at an infeasibly colossal health bar with a endless series of hits.

But yesterday, finally, I saw sword fighting done the way it ought to be, and I just couldn’t help myself any longer.

Yes, yesterday my herculean will finally broke, my icy heart melted, and I made my pre-order for Assassin’s Creed.

Hardly news worthy, you might think. After all, the game has been receiving glowing previews from all corners, and the level of press excitement about the game is high. I, however, had been holding myself above the hype, telling anyone that would listen that the open world dynamic was merely a gimmick, the control scheme sounded awkward and the mysterious sci-fi sub-plot would be bollocks.

Two of those three fears have been pretty much put to rest. It seems that Ubisoft (Assassin’s Creed’s developers) have integrated the free-form, open world system nicely with the overall gameplay, and the more I hear about the controls, where different face buttons control the actions of various limbs, the more I like the sound of them.

The whole sci-fi plot still bothers me, though.

For those who haven’t been keeping up with Assassin’s Creed, allow me to recap. The game is set in the Holy Land during the late 1100’s, during the third crusade. You play an assassin named Altair, attempting to forge some kind of peace in the land by eliminating some of the nastier figures on either side of the conflict. So far so good; its a cool character and an interesting period of history.

What’s worrying is the fact the, beyond this, the game is going to contain some form of sci-fi influence. What that will be we’re not sure, and bets are divided between time travel, genetic engineering and virtual reality, but it will certainly be there: more recent videos have highlighted some jarringly futuristic elements in the games hud.

I cannot, for the life of me, think of any good reason for slapping this extra layer of complexity onto what already seems like an interesting, exciting story. All it seems likely to do is complicate things and damage the suspension of disbelief. Sure, I can see how it might sound cool when the game designers first came up with it. Historical fiction and sci-fi? What’s not to love! But in practise I can’t see it working, I can’t think of a compelling reason for it’s inclusion, and frankly I think Ubisoft’s scriptwriters should have strangled the idea at birth.

Here’s hopping it’s low key enough for me to ignore it and concentrate on a stonking historical adventure…and that I don’t have to play out the final levels in a steel bunker or something equally as disappointing.