Assassin's Creed: UnityThe first thing most players of an Assassinâs Creed game do is get really high. They find the nearest spire or tower, a viewpoint from which to unlock new waypoints â new destinations for trouble making or commotion calming. Up and up, hand over foot over hand, and then a leap of faith: into a haystack, usually.Assassinâs Creed Unity, the first game in Ubisoftâs series to release exclusively on new-generation consoles â an alternative AC game, Rogue, is forthcoming for 360 and PS3, continuing the popular naval battles of 2013âs Assassinâs Creed IV: Black Flag â is full of tall buildings for its protagonist, Arno Dorian, to scramble up. As the gameâs set in Paris during the French Revolution, thereâs no Eiffel Tower to tackle â the cityâs most recognisable landmark wasnât finished until 1889, 90 years after the Revolutionâs end. But the massive Notre Dame de Paris is here in all its virtual glory, a perhaps unprecedented achievement of environment art that took over a year to create.Standing inside the real-life Notre Dame, itâs just a cathedral. A pretty famous one, of course, and circled by tourists â but itâs where people come together to do whatever it is that people do inside these places. Which isnât usually killing. In Unity, itâs the location for one of the gameâs first assassinations â Arno must sneak into the gigantic, one-for-one-scaled building undetected and slyly trail some ugly bloater whose destiny is to get shanked.Assassinâs Creed Unity â E3 2014 world premiere cinematic trailerWe â meaning me, testing the game during a four-hour preview in Paris â achieve our goal and the tubby target goes down like a sack of spuds. This being Assassinâs Creed, his dying moments reveal information, detailing our next hit. But Unity isnât all murder â how very dull that would be. Its team has crowded 18th century Paris with a cornucopia of complementary attractions â I embark on side missions to both reclaim waxwork heads for Marie Tussaud and solve a monastery murder on behalf of a canât-be-arsed gendarme â and extended the open-worldâs boundaries so as to stretch beyond expectations built upon previous series entries.Sure, Black Flag was massive â it gave you a great big slice of the Caribbean, during the Golden Age of Piracy, to play with â but none of its cities really wowed in size. Unityâs Paris does. From that first ascent, the message is clear: youâve never explored a digital city quite like this before. The view spreads beyond the horizon, and itâs the power of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 that makes that possible.âThere is no way Unity could run on previous-generation hardware,â senior producer Vincent Pontbriand tells me at Les Invalides, our apt preview location (like Notre Dame, itâs one of modern Parisâ aged landmarks that plays a role in the game). âWeâre already pushing this hardware, with so many NPCs and assets on screen. We had to make the move to new-gen [consoles] at some point, and while we know they havenât the same market share as the older models, we have to be brave.âPontbriand concedes, though, that Unity isnât a perfect perusal into new hardware possibilities â the development team had to cut just a little from the end product, something that audio director Steven Dumont seconds. âThis is the first new-gen game for us, which makes it difficult as we were working in the dark for a year and a half, because we didnât have all the specs. The first game of any new generation is a challenge â after that it gets easier, with one or two behind you.âThe step up in processing power necessitated the creation of new tools, which the team will take forward to future projects. Says Pontbriand: âThis year was all about production, but last year we were creating new tools and technologies, which we can now use on future games. We never take this for granted â itâs one game at a time, and then we read the reactions.âThe reaction to the preview code I get to play is mixed. Several glitches appear during my time playing the game, but itâs important to stress that this is not the end product. I wonât go into specifics because they will be fixed by the time the game ships, but letâs just say itâs among the buggiest previews Iâve ever sat down in front of. However, regardless of unwelcome moments, Unity was still a lot of fun, albeit familiarly so.Unity is recognisably part of a set of games rather than a fresh, standalone take on what Assassinâs Creed stands for. But tougher combat (which I liked), a newly introduced stealth mode to combine with smoke bombs and cover (another plus) and enjoyable co-operative play (which I only briefly participated in, but was hilarious, in a good way) point towards something more refined next time. âThis isnât a brand-new experience,â confirms Pontbriand. âItâs more an evolution of what AC used to be.ââThe next game will be even better, because we know the tools we have to work with,â adds Dumont.Assassinâs Creed Unity â story trailerThe massive city â which features a complex sewer system beneath its busy streets, and plenty of accessible buildings that require no pause in play to enter â is soundtracked not just by the bustle of thousands of individual AIs, but also the dynamic score of three composers. âThereâs co-op, and single player, and side missions â so it would have been impossible to work with just one composer. The game is so big,â says Dumont.One of the three brought in to provide the music for Unity is Chris Tilton, whose credits include several games and the TV series Fringe.âThe sheer scale of Unity is something I havenât worked on before,â says Tilton. âWe had to create music with the knowledge that the player can be taking multiple approaches to a task in the game.â That first assassination features ten different ways to play it â I go fairly direct, but other, less confrontational routes are available, to make Arnoâs life easier. âThe main challenge therefore became how to work in melodic ideas that could change at any moment.âItâs probably not what Tilton wants to hear, but a great soundtrack is rarely one thatâs overly noticed during the playing of a game. That it becomes a natural part of the overall experience means itâs doing something right â and at no moment of my four hours with Unity do I hear a cue disappearing down an inappropriate direction. âEverything has gelled together,â says Dumont, âand the end product is awesome.âMusic rarely makes a game, and itâs the review scores for Unity that will ultimately decide its awesomeness â among both its immediate family and the widening pool of software available for the One and PS4. I get the feeling that the team is prepared to see Unity fall short of the reception Black Flag was met with â its Metacritic scores in the high 80s will be tough to match. Unity wonât be a bad game when released, but nor does it, on a preview showing, truly differentiate itself from prior iterations. Except, perhaps, for that stealth mode â squeeze a trigger and the game slows, Arno crouches and enemies in the vicinity become marked on a mini-map. It seems odd that a series based on assassins wouldnât have included this before.âIt is very obvious!â Pontbriand laughs. âWe thought of the stealth mode late in production and, once weâd implemented it, the cover mode we had before became less useful. I have no idea why we didnât think about it before, as itâs pretty easy.âNothing is as easy in an Assassinâs Creed game than heading up â its leading characters always possessing firm grips and limited acrophobia. From the top of Notre Dame, Ubisoftâs vision of a city going through incredible social and political changes is remarkable, their Seine a little thinner than the real deal but still slicing through Paris as it should. Itâs a tempting invitation: I want to climb, run and leap my way to its four corners. But thereâs no time for that kind of exploratory gaming when thereâs a despicable sewer-dweller to be dealt with. Back to the murder.Assassinâs Creed Unity is released for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Windows on the 13th of November. The game was tested on Xbox One at a preview event in Paris, the attendance of which was covered by Ubisoft.@MikeDiverPreviously:GamerGate Hate Affects Both Sides, So How About We End It?Hey Video Game Developers, We're Not Idiots'The Sailor's Dream' Is the Ideal Video Game for People Who Don't Like Video Games
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