It didn’t help that Arno doesn’t bring any distinctive new Assassin abilities to the table, making combat the same parry-heavy scenarios as in previous games. (What’s more, the fact that everyone in Unity - including Napoleon Bonaparte himself - speaks with an English accent is completely inexplicable and immersion-breaking.) I never really found a reason to care about his Forrest Gump-style quest through the French Revolution, and an unfulfilling ending definitely left a sour taste in my mouth.
Arno is a one-dimensional character whose motivation is little more than the standard revenge tale. Getting back on the story track, I found that Unity’s main Assassins-versus-Templars plot is relatively forgettable, and has none of the fun and levity of last year’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Navigating between pieces of cover is finicky, and it was never clear whether or not I was even hidden. It was also particularly frustrating in stealth sections, which Unity emphasizes heavily. I found myself quickly losing momentum and clumsily hopping about whenever I tried to enter a window and explore any of Unity’s huge array of interior spaces. The key phrase there was “when it all worked,” because the series-long frustration of your assassin not doing quite what you want him to do is still present here. When it all worked perfectly, guiding my Arno up, down, and across the Parisian skyline brought me a great sense of satisfaction. (Unless there was a haystack handy, I usually just lept off and hoped that I had enough health to survive.) Most of the time, traversal in Unity feels better than ever thanks to fantastic animations, buildings with plenty of climbable paths, and a new downward parkour system that adds certain finesse to the act of shimming down a wall, resolving one of my big gripes with previous AC games. The disgruntled masses make it even more of a necessity to scurry along rooftops instead of the streets, and thankfully, this mode of transportation does not disappoint. As the story progressed, I found that the masses of Parisians mostly got in the way, and spotting repeating character models was a crude reminder I was playing a video game.
In particular, a late-game mission involving Louis XVI was populated with several thousand characters, and wading through the crowd was one of the most memorable moments of the campaign.ĭespite being technologically impressive and adding a lot to the atmosphere of Paris as a living and thriving city, I found myself oftentimes swearing at the digital hoards that populated the streets when I simply wanted to make my way from one place to another. But what makes it really unique and distinct from past games is its citizens, who form some of the largest, most impressive crowds I've ever encountered. Each of the various districts unfolds with its own sense of character and environmental storytelling, from the ornate palaces of the privileged, to back-alleys running with the blood of the revolutionaries.
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