I finished III believing the series would continue into the wilderness: an action-adventure videogame with a little bit of principle, providing an entertaining but worthwhile space to interact with two opposing ideologies of power through pseudo-historical exploration.īut glimpsing the homestead again in Rogue, teeming with cookie-cutter Assassins who serve as nothing more than combat tutorials, I realize those hopes were pitifully naive. Through the lens of Connor’s optimism in III, the empty mansion overlooking the breadth of the American frontier had seemed bursting with potential, as a home base for a future Assassin revolution. But what does this time travel do to the past?īringing back a few characters and settings from III only serves as a reminder of how far the series as a whole has fallen. In some ways, it feels like Ubisoft’s attempt to return to a time before Black Flag, which flat out abandoned the philosophical and moral underpinnings which once served as the series’ narrative foundation. This demise, though, is brought about by Assassin’s Creed Protagonist™ #6.Īt the core of Rogue ’s purported appeal is the chance to deepen an understanding of the Assassin-Templar war by placing players on the Templar side of the battlefield for once. The story focuses on the ultimate downfall of the Brotherhood into near extinction by re-introducing players to the North Atlantic Brotherhood during its golden age under the leadership of good ol’ Achilles (Connor’s mentor in III). Shay Cormac, lacking any backstory or motivation whatsoever, seems to stitch together all the worst qualities of past protagonists from the series in the hope that it’ll count for enough “personality.” He encapsulates Altair’s petulant rebelliousness, Ezio’s treatment of women as exotic birds, Connor’s rigid yet shoddy sense of morality, and Kenway’s smugness, all rolled into one cardboard Assassin’s Creed Protagonist™, whose face I got to watch melt repeatedly during final assassination sequences (an Animus glitch, presumably).Īrguably, Rogue isn’t about the journey of a single character. Rogue at best provides hollow answers about the now-hollowed conceit.Īs a mutant hybrid prequel of III (in terms of story ) and a spiritual successor to Black Flag (in terms of world navigation and combat), Rogue is as original and congruous as its main character. No amount of Otso Berg’s conspiratorial scream-whispering that this Shay guy is important as hell, oh man, you wait-just you wait until you see how absolutely not pointless this story and this Assassin are can convince the bedraggled player that anything worthwhile is happening. “Shay’s story contains the answers,” Otso Berg assures me.īut whether following Shay’s story in the animus or the meta-narrative frame that casts the player as yet again another nameless Abstergo employee, Rogue at best provides hollow answers about the now-hollowed conceit of an eternal battle waged between Assassins (chaos/freedom) and Templars (order/control). We are pointed constantly toward a badass Templar mastermind plot, which instead comes across like a schizophrenic attempting to make sense of a convoluted dream. Otso Berg and his pushpin map embody Rogue in this way, as an Abstergo (by which the game means Ubisoft) representative tries to convince me that it all ties together. Otso Berg looks twitchy, too closely resembling the crazed Assassin’s Creed conspiracy theorist often spotted on Ubisoft forums, devising hypothetical plotlines to render the series somewhat coherent. He stands before an enormous white board of pictures featuring the Assassins most relevant to my current mission, excavating the life of Shay Cormac. “I believe Shay may be the most important Assassin that has ever lived,” Otso Berg, an Abstergo head honcho, says to me in a voice I can only describe as permanently conspiratorial.
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