Here we are, the end of Unity Hell. The conclusion to my co-op infused saga of desperation. The water for my weeklong thirst.
I don't wish to preamble any longer. Let me speak of my woes, and my triumphs.
The Damned UI
The user interface for this game, paired with the input changes made for the parkour and combat, gives me a migraine. Especially when coming out of every previous game with a relatively unchanged set of inputs to get me through, only for this new game to bloat my UI with co-op RPG shenanigans and throw my muscle memory out the window. Even after learning the inputs, the interface continues to bug me - why does everything look so sanitized to me? AC1-Rogue all had this techno interface as part of the Animus and present day hook, but the Unity UI seems somehow more detached than ever. The pause menu is cluttered to the nines, holding more random shit that I have never touched than things I actively need to use. I interact with three things on that list: the progress tracker, the database, and the options menu. And I don't bother with quitting to main menu, because I can just stop the game from the Xbox dashboard.
That's all I have to say about the User Interface. Less of an analysis than an unhinged rant, but I don't care.
Reno & Paris Stories
Not much happened with the renovations, in the end. They served very little purpose in the story, aside from giving me more historically relevant missions. I did enjoy the stronger focus on historical content (to an extent) through the concept of "Paris Stories" being the Assassin Contracts equivalent, but I find that it felt more hollow than the prior versions. Being called Paris Stories rather than Contracts creates a separation that deprioritizes the Assassin part of the gameplay, and makes Arno feel more like a fantasy adventurer on side quests than the Assassin that he is supposed to be. Social Club & Cafe Theatre missions have little distinguishing them from Paris Stories and Co-Op Missions, with the Heists being the only side quests that I did not take part in to gain an understanding of them. Murder Mysteries are interesting but infrequent, Helix Rifts are just Animus tutorials on crack, Nostradamus Enigmas are a slightly more complicated hidden symbol hunt akin to the Ezio Trilogy or AC: Rogue, and the cockades are a colossal waste of time and energy to collect. The only collectibles I actively hunted for outside of quests that required them were the Initiate Chests, mainly because I knew that they sometimes held Legacy Outfits from previous titles.
I don't actually know any better way to summarize the side content than this: when I did a Paris Story, I did it simply to get it off my map. When I did the Enigmas, I wanted the armor and I followed a thorough tutorial rather than spending a decade looking for upwards of forty symbols across France. When I did a co-op mission, I did it for the promise of loot that I quite literally could not get outside of those missions. Almost all of the quest content in the game outside of the main questline provided me minimal, if any, incentive to complete it. It felt like running through the motions for the sake of it. The Social Club and Cafe Theatre missions were the only ones which had any affect on the world and therefore had caught my interest; completing all the Social Club missions for a region "Liberates" that area, whatever that is supposed to mean during a multi-faceted revolutionary landscape in which no side is listed as a clear liberator. My best estimation is that it adds more allied revolutionaries who can help you in combat against hostile folk, but that isn't a scientific fact as I noticed no real correlation in where I had higher or lower assistance. It honestly felt random when NPCs would help me in a fight. Regardless, that might be a difference caused by the Liberated areas from the Social Club missions. They also increase Cafe revenue, allowing me to buy more goodies in the shop. Theatre missions actually add to the appearance of the Cafe itself, but after that initial quest which brings patrons back to the business, I really couldn't tell the difference in variations.
It's a rather expansive home base, for sure, and one that I functionally prefer over the likes of Fort Arsenal and the Great Inagua plantation house. But the cool French cafe hub would have been a lot more-so if it actually felt like a home for the Assassins instead of just a stopping point. Idk, it was missing something in the feel and I never found it.
The Story - But Just The Parts I Wanna Talk About
Last time, I talked extensively about the Assassins themselves and how Arno is inducted and so on. I'd rather not retread old ground, so I'll talk about the Templars and Elise instead. The Parisian Rite undergoes heavy turmoil in this game; first comes a civil war within the Order which ends in all of Elise's allies either disappearing or ending up dead. Then she helps Arno to wipe out the traitorous remains, dying at the very end of the game in a bladed scuffle with "Grand Master" Germain. Her primary goal in this game is revenge, and she's willing to destroy the entire treacherous Rite in order to get it. But what exactly was her plan, in the event that she succeeded and lived to tell the tale? Her and Arno have a relationship of some form, and that simply won't work if she is deemed the new Grand Master of the Parisian Rite. The Templars lack influence in France following the Grand Master's death, and I have heavy doubts that the deadlocked, paranoid Brotherhood would abide by a new Order of any kind showing up in their city. The only way that her conflict could possibly be resolved in a way that felt conclusive was with her death, and that sucks. Because, in all honesty, I kind of liked her character by the end of the title. It took the whole game for her to feel like a worthwhile foil to Arno, and it is unfortunate that she died so soon after really establishing herself as a decent character (in my opinion).
I don't care much to talk about the revenge plot of the game, it's relatively straightforward with some great moments and mediocre ones to boot, but I do want to discuss the Dark Ages stuff and the present day stuff. The game starts in the 13th century, at the fall of the original Templar Order in Paris. The Knights Templar as we knew them in the first Assassin' Creed were driven from the holy land in the following centuries, gaining a position in France as wealthy bankers and landowners to whom the nation owed a lot of money. As a way to remove the Templars from this powerful position, the idea was seeded in the populace that the Templars worshipped a demon named Baphomet, making it all the better for the French government to siege the Bastille and seize all the assets that the Knights Templar held. You see this siege first-hand at the start of the game and within some later Helix Rifts, watching the fall of the true Templars as society deems them a threat and a relic of bygone eras. To be clear, I love this historical stuff - this part of the game's story is actually a lot more interesting to me than the main game. But that is why it makes so little sense; what reason is there to include this secondary setting, to put so much emphasis on it both at the start and periodically throughout the game? The death of Jacques De Molay, the final (public) Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is shown at this introductory section and is spoken about multiple times in-game as a catalyst for the Templar struggles in Paris going forward. Assassins talk about it, Templars talk about it, random people only somewhat related speak about it. This was absolutely a big thing for France and the world at large in the 13th century, and a big change in how religious orders were received post-crusades. Yet I can't quite figure out why exactly the game is so insistent on making this important, when there are more pressing - and more recent - events that have a far greater impact on the Order and the Brotherhood. Like, for instance, the fall of the Colonial Rite and rise of the American Brotherhood alongside an entirely new (and massive) country in the global mix? Or perhaps the total collapse of French society that is happening around them, endangering the positions of many of their own colonies far from the homeland? I see why the Templar Order's switch from public to private is important, as it mirrors the same thing that happened with the Assassins following the first game and it shows how they evolved into what we know of in the series' present day. It just seems to be a bit too emphasized to simply be an important event.
My first thought as to why this is came from that first section's showcase of the Sword of Eden and the Templar version of the Codex; these items were later used by Germain and mentioned as part of the reason that he did all this, but I personally don't see why the Sword and Codex couldn't have been hinted at in 18th century Paris and then shown when necessary. Why design an entire 13th century intro scene for the sole purpose of showcasing a handful of Chekov's Guns? This is not the only time that you play through alternate times in Paris; Helix Rifts take you to late 19th century France in a post-revolution peacetime, the dead center of World War 2 with the Nazis controlling the Eiffel Tower, and another viewpoint of the Bastille siege from the introduction. The intention seems to be to highlight the historical significance that Paris is steeped in, but it comes across a bit...stilted, at times, to go from Arno in body and mind at the height of the French Revolution, to puppeteering an avatar that looks like him through alternate timelines to gain history points.
My second idea relating to this timeline hopping, and this is one that interest me a bit more, is that maybe there was (at one point) an interest in the game switching time periods and focusing on the 13th century. I doubt it, it's more or less just something that I think would have been cool, but the level of effort placed on different versions of Paris and France seems more than just a passing gag for the history buffs. Someone at Ubisoft really wanted the siege of the Bastille and the trial of Jacques De Molay, and whether they got it in the proposed form is not for me to say. I think an Assassin's Creed set in 13th century France against a dying Order of the Knights Templar could have been awesome, though.
Have I spoken about the present day story, yet? It's kinda crap. So, Abstergo Entertainment released their cloud-based, Microsoft Azure-knockoff Helix tech back in Black Flag as a way to make money off the memories of all these dead people, while simultaneously making the Templars look good and the Assassins look bad. In Unity, you play a customer who bought into the Abstergo bullshit and was experiencing the Tragedy of Jacques De Molay when your signal was intercepted by an Assassin cell. The Assassins give you, a random person, top secret information and somehow induct you into the Assassins with no way for you to say yes or no or maybe so. Your mission is simple: play the memories of an Assassin named Arno Victor Dorian at the height of the French Revolution, find someone called a Sage and find out where he was buried before Abstergo does. They want a Sage's corpse so that they can sequence his DNA, and this is bad news for reasons that are explained to you. I don't care to explain the reasons because they do matter for the story, but I just know that they never amount to anything in future games. Long story short, you're playing as Arno from start to finish for this. You'll periodically have to dodge Abstergo's server sweeps by going through the aforementioned Helix Rifts (but these are called "server bridges" instead) and experiencing alternate points in Parisian history, and other than that it is regular Assassin's Creed. You'll get a message from the Assassins every now and again, primarily through the co-op missions and Helix Rifts. You beat the game, discover the location of the Sage's remains, and learn that his corpse was moved by Arno a decade after killing him. The body is in the Paris catacombs, but too difficult to find and long-decomposed by now. The game finishes with a "woo hoo, it was a dead end!" to cap it all off. But there's a bit more to talk about; we still have Dead Kings.
These Kings Are So Dead
I finished this DLC in one day of straight gameplay, and it was more or less just more of the same gameplay that I've already went through. The most important stuff is the story; Arno begins the DLC with the intention of doing one last task for Marquis De Sade in order to get passage out of France and begin a new life, but he regains his hope and passion for defending France through the help of a young boy named Leon. By the end of the DLC, Arno decides to remain in France and help protect the people who cannot protect themselves, making Leon proud.
Napoleon is essentially the antagonist though you never directly oppose him and only fight his rogue lieutenants, and you receive an Apple of Eden at the end for that classic AC apple blast action. It's a fun romp, has some interesting light-based mechanics with a new lantern object that you're given, and that's pretty much it. Just...more Unity. It was fun while it lasted. I did enjoy seeing Arno regain his spark following Elise's death, but other than that, the DLC didn't do much for me.
Final Goodbyes
Here we are, the end of Unity Hell. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it wasn't as good as I know it could be. I've heard mixed things about the following title, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, so I guess that is my next port of call in the series. I don't know what my next post will encompass, but I know that I had a good time with this one and the Sonic post from earlier today. I hope you all have a good one, leave your thoughts in the comments down below, and I'll see you next time!
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