Assassin’s Creed Unity

After the series’ brief diversion in the high seas, Unity marks a return to what Assassin’s Creed has always excelled at: parkour inside famous churches. Building a new foundation for the series, based on more elaborate sidequests and freeform assassinations, the game mostly falters with its disappointing story that is too afraid to delve deep into the complicated politics of its setting.

Unity is set during the French Revolution that led to the execution of King Louis XVI, but it starts many years before when the little Élise De La Serre, just like the snake in the Gardens of Eden, encourages her friend, Arno Dorian, to commit a cardinal sin: steal an apple. We then jump in time and learn that Arno has made a habit of the practice – becoming a somewhat competent thief – and still has a crush on Élise. His chances of conquering her heart, however, dim significantly when he’s framed for her father’s murder.

In prison, Arno discovers that he’s the son of an Assassin and, after escaping during the Storming of the Bastille, he decides to join the Brotherhood, as it would help his goal of clearing his name and avenging his almost father-in-law’s death. This means that, much like Kenway in Black Flag, Arno cares little for the Assassin’s… creed and is using his newfound allies as a means to an end.

Élise is Arno’s main motivation. “Listen, I’m sure your little cult is a delightful bunch, but I’m not interested. The only thing I care about is finding Élise,” he says to the man trying to recruit him, putting very bluntly how little the Brotherhood would mean to him. The problem is that this wastes the early revelation that his love interest – just like her father – is a Templar, the Assassins’ main rival faction: this could have put another strain on their relationship but they rarely argue about ideology, especially since Élise, just like Arno, is just after revenge. To make matters even simpler for Arno, the killers of Élise’s father are Templars themselves too, so he’s not pushed to turn against his own in his quest.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t conflict between Arno and his newfound allies, though, as they soon realize that he doesn’t care for them at all and is even consorting with the enemy. Arno, in other words, is an Assassin in name only, a man whose drive is personal in nature and who shows little interest in politics.

In a story about pirates, such as Black Flag, having a self-interested character who foregoes his companions makes thematic sense, but in a story set during the French Revolution, this is just… well, a huge waste of a complex setting. We soon learn, for example, that the Templars are behind the political unrest, fomenting revolt by framing the king for food shortages.  During his execution, it’s said that Louis XVI addressed the crowd by saying, “I die innocent. I pardon my enemies and I hope that my blood will be useful to the French, that it will appease God’s anger…” In Assassin’s Creed Unity, Louis XVI is indeed innocent, while the leaders of the revolution, such as Robespierre and Sainte-Just, are fools or monsters or both. The latter, for example, even wears coats made from human skin, exactly like the more outlandish rumors of the time suggested.

The king’s death is framed in a bad light – the guillotine itself is seen as a political symbol of a sickly nation turning against itself instead of freedom and reform – with the revolution gradually escalating into something unruly and chaotic that ultimately derails into senseless violence. The Assassins want to control the situation and even work alongside the king to maintain the peace, while the Templars believe that no relevant change in social order is possible without the tearing down of current systems and symbols. The villain, for example, states: “New order never comes without the destruction of the old. And if men are made to fear untrammeled liberty, so much the better.”

And where does Arno stand in this conflict? Nowhere, because he couldn’t care less about such matters. He doesn’t even emotionally engage with them, which turns the act of analyzing the political discussions in Unity rather moot. One could point out how peculiar it is for the Assassin Brotherhood to be working to maintain the monarchy, for example, or how the Templars, who are all about order, are thriving in the chaos they’re themselves fomenting, but these narrative elements are basically incidental in the story, which never goes in-depth on them: the nuance and complexity of the political machinations that are indeed present in Unity – which could have made a brilliant game – end up suffering the same fate of tears in the rain.

So, what about Arno’s relationship with Élise? Well, even though their romance is clearly the focus of the story, it still remains rather undeveloped. During the first half of the game, while Arno trains with the Assassins, she’s nowhere to be found – we can only read a couple of letters she sends him in his study. During the latter half, however, when they finally go on missions together, their dynamic never manages to evolve beyond the basic bickering of old friends turned lovers. In other words, it’s a rather shallow affair. And Arno not being the most charismatic of people while barely having a character arc to call his own certainly doesn’t help Unity’s story either.

This being an Assassin’s Creed game, Unity also has a plotline taking place in the present, but we’re being too kind to it just by acknowledging it exists. This whole narrative thread regarding Abstergo has been adrift ever since losing its main character in Assassin’s Creed 3, without knowing where to go and what to tell, and here it’s no different. If it continues this way, the series would be better off just discarding this sci-fi story and focusing only on the historical part. At least, the database entries are funny.

Luckily for Assassin’s Creed Unity, it makes up for its rather disappointing main campaign in other areas. The game’s selling feature is the humongous increase in NPC density, for example: towns are now bustling with people wondering about and living their lives. This is not only visually striking but also impacts gameplay, giving us more options to blend in with the crowd (benefiting stealth) while also making eagle vision more useful, since our enemies can do the same thing and become hard to spot. Running away from angry soldiers has become more difficult, too, since we’re constantly trying to avoid bumping into people, which slows Arno down and leaves him open to being shot.

This increase in NPCs is also a perfect fit for the setting: we can spot angry mobs holding torches in front of official buildings and see men brawling and killing each other while walking down the streets. – this is a period of political turmoil and violence and Unity perfectly captures that.

Paris in the game is a richly realized setting. In a single street, besides the passersby, we can find people sweeping the ground, a group singing songs, a couple dating discreetly in a dark corner, a woman handing out newspapers, a man trying to clean off a graffiti desiring someone’s death, another one smoking by the wall, a group drinking coffee, and maybe even people running and screaming because a fight just broke out and someone has a gun.

Some attention to historical detail greatly helps the setting come to life as well. The printing industry flourished during the French Revolution – in a matter of months France went from having just five publications to more than a hundred – and to reflect that we can find people all over Paris handing out newspapers that talk about recent political developments, such as a particularly… sharp invention current billionaires certainly have nightmares about even though it’s a symbol of a sickly nation turning against itself.

But Unity’s greatest strength is giving us interesting things to do in the city. Yes, we can still open a bazillion chests and collect innumerable irrelevant cockades, but now there’s also a plethora of sidequests that present us with engaging characters and stories. The first mission with Mademoiselle Lenormand, for example, presents her in shady colors, as she foresees that some people will harm her and asks Arno to handle them. On the one hand, she clearly knows who those people are beforehand, which makes the foretelling a performance: she’s hiding her personal interests behind a prophecy. But on the other hand, she rightly foretells that it’s going to suddenly rain during the mission. After we gain her trust, however, she sends Arno to Notre Dame to steal a device that is the key to finding Nicolas Flamel’s secret laboratory. In the third mission, we’re tasked with breaking into a noble’s home to steal the second part of the device. Finally, Arno must himself go to the laboratory to find the fabled elixir of life. The punchline of all these missions, then, comes with her database entry, where we learn that the historical Lenormand once said she was very certain that she would live a very, very long life. Sadly, however, that didn’t come true. Blame Nicolas Flamel, Mademoiselle Lenormand, Arno did everything right.

There’s a new kind of quest that turns Arno into a detective, too. We go to a crime scene and use “eagle vision” to highlight clues, such as blood stains and crumpled pieces of paper. We then talk with the suspects to collect testimonies and finally accuse someone of being the culprit. The first mission, for example, is about a monk who was strangled while writing a startling confession: he had poisoned three of his fellow monks in accordance to a prophecy. There are mainly two ways to discover the culprit. Next to the body, there’s a chest with the prophecy – and we must pay attention to who owns that chest, as this person would have a motive to dispatch the monk. The second is noticing that a note directly accusing the culprit is hidden at the edge of the crime scene, outside the house. The following quests are much more complex – with several places to gather clues and some red herrings to throw us off the scent – but they remain with this simple but entertaining structure.

The main assassination missions have also been revamped, being a bit freeform now: they allow us to create better opportunities to get near the target, such as saving a merchant from some hostile guards who will then return the favor by releasing some fireworks that will get our target near the window. It’s a concept that never evolves too much in the game, but at least Unity leaves a great groundwork for future games to build upon and maybe make the series resemble a bit of Hitman (they’re going in this direction, right? Right?)

To break the pace, we also have “Rifts”, portals that make great use of the fact that Assassin’s Creed takes place inside a simulator to take us briefly to other periods in time, allowing us to do things like climb the Eifel Tower even though it was built much later than the French Revolution.

Finally, regarding combat, we cannot kill everyone with a counter anymore – as enemies swarm Arno and attack at the same time, besides frequently using long-ranged weapons – but we can still cheese every combat encounter with smoke bombs that leave all enemies unable to react for a time. Meanwhile, parkour is smooth and fluid – and we can jump inside a lot of buildings now, which have their doors and windows open – but the game is still trying to predict our movements and sometimes failing at that, leading Arno to jump onto the wrong place.

In the end, Assassin’s Creed Unity is a competent new entry in the series, offering its most fascinating setting yet, even if its story fails to take full advantage of it.

February 18, 2025.