Assassin's Creed (video game)

2007 video game
the video game

Assassin's Creed is an action adventure game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It is the first installment in the Assassin's Creed series. The video game was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in November 2007. A Microsoft Windows version titled Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut Edition containing additional content was released in April 2008. The plot is set in a fictional history of real world events, taking place primarily during the Third Crusade in the Holy Land in 1191. The player character is a modern day man named Desmond Miles who, through a machine called the Animus, relives the genetic memories of his ancestor, Altaïr Ibn La'Ahad. Through this plot device, details emerge about a millennia old struggle between two factions: the Assassin Brotherhood (inspired by the real life Order of Assassins), who fight to preserve peace and free will, and the Templar Order (inspired by the Knights Templar military order), who seek to establish peace through order and control. Both factions fight over powerful artifacts of mysterious origins known as Pieces of Eden to gain an advantage over each other. The 12th century portion of the story follows Altaïr, an Assassin, who embarks on a quest to regain his honour after botching a mission to recover one such artifact from the Templars; he does so by finding and assassinating nine targets across the Holy Land. The gameplay focuses on using Altaïr's combat, stealth, and parkour abilities to defeat enemies and explore the environment. The game features counter based hack and slash combat, social stealth (the ability to use crowds of people and the environment to hide from enemies), and a large open world comprising various regions of the Holy Land, primarily the cities of Masyaf, Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus, all of which have been accurately recreated to fit the game's period. While most of the game takes place within a simulation based on Altaïr's memories, the player will occasionally be forced out of the Animus to play as Desmond in the modern day. Here, they are restricted to exploring a small laboratory facility, as Desmond has been kidnapped by a shady corporation looking for specific information within Altaïr's memories that will further their enigmatic goals. Upon release, Assassin's Creed received generally positive reviews, with critics praising its storytelling, visuals, art design, and originality, while criticism mostly focused on the repetitive nature of its gameplay. Assassin's Creed won several awards at the 2006 E3 and several end year awards after its release. The game spawned two spin offs: Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles (2008) and Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines (2009), which exclude the modern day aspect and focus entirely on Altaïr. A direct sequel, Assassin's Creed II, was released in November 2009. The sequel continues the modern day narrative following Desmond but introduces a new storyline set during the Italian Renaissance in the late 15th century and a new protagonist, Ezio Auditore da Firenze. Since the release and success of Assassin's Creed II, subsequent games have been released with various other Assassins and periods.

Assassin's Creed is an action adventure game, set in an open world environment, which is played from a third person view in which the player primarily assumes the role of Altaïr, as experienced by protagonist Desmond Miles. The game's primary goal is to carry out a series of assassinations ordered by Al Mualim, the Assassins' leader. To achieve this goal, the player must travel from the Brotherhood's headquarters in Masyaf, across the terrain of the Holy Land known as the Kingdom, where the player can freely ride a horse, to one of three cities—Jerusalem, Acre, or Damascus—to find the Brotherhood agent in that city. There, the agent, in addition to providing a safe house, gives the player minimal knowledge about the target and requires them to perform additional reconnaissance missions before attempting the assassination. These missions include eavesdropping, interrogation, pickpocketing, and completing tasks for informers and fellow Assassins. The player may also take part in several side objectives, including climbing tall towers to map out the city and saving citizens being threatened or harassed by the city guards. There are also various additional memories that do not advance the plot, such as hunting down and killing Templar Knights and flag collecting. After completing each assassination, the player is returned to the Brotherhood and rewarded with a better weapon or upgrade before going after the next target or given another set of targets, with the player free to select the order of certain targets. The player's health is described as the level of synchronization between Desmond and Altaïr's memories; should Altaïr suffer injury, it is represented as a deviation from the actual events of the memory rather than physical damage. If all synchronization is lost, the current memory that Desmond is experiencing will be restarted at the last checkpoint. When the synchronization bar is full, the player has the additional option to use the Eagle Vision, which allows the computer rendered memory to highlight all visible characters in colours corresponding to whether they are allies (blue), foes (red), neutral (white), or the target of their assassination (gold). Due to Altaïr's memories being rendered by the computer of the Animus project, the player may experience glitches in the rendering of the historical world, which may help the player to identify targets, or can be used to alter the viewpoint during in game scripted scenes should the player react fast enough when they appear. Tamir (Ammar Daraiseh), an arms merchant in Damascus selling weapons to both the Crusaders and Saracens. Garnier de Nablus (Hubert Fielden), the leader of the Knights Hospitalier, who conducts mind altering experiments on patients at his hospital in Acre. Talal (Jake Eberle), the leader of a gang of slavers in Jerusalem. Abu'l Nuquod (Fred Tatasciore), a pompous trader and regent of Damascus stealing money intended to fund the war. William V, Marquess of Montferrat (Harry Standjofski), Acre's cruel and abusive regent. Majd Addin (Richard Cansino; based on Baha ad Din ibn Shaddad), a tyrant who rules Jerusalem through fear by holding public executions. Master Sibrand (Arthur Holden), the paranoid leader of the Knights Teutonic, who plans to betray the Crusaders by blocking the ports of Acre. Jubair al Hakim (also Tatasciore), a scholar using his position to seize and destroy all written knowledge in Damascus. Robert de Sablé (Louis Philippe Dandenault), the Grand Master of the Templars, who has been taking advantage of the Crusade to further his Order's ideological goals. As Altaïr eliminates each target, he discovers all nine are Templars who had conspired to retrieve the Apple, revealed to be a relic of a long forgotten civilization said to possess god like powers. He also comes to question the nature of Al Mualim's orders while slowly becoming more humble and wise and making amends with Malik. During his assassination attempt on Robert, Altaïr is tricked with a decoy: a Templar named Maria Thorpe (Eleanor Noble). Maria reveals that Robert had anticipated the Assassins would come after him and went to negotiate an alliance between the Crusaders and Saracens against them. Sparing Maria's life, Altaïr confronts Robert in the camp of King Richard I (Marcel Jeannin) and exposes his crimes. Unsure of whom to believe, Richard suggests a duel to determine the truth, remarking that God will decide the victor. After Altaïr mortally wounds him, Robert identifies Al Mualim as the final conspirator, revealing that the latter has betrayed both the Assassins and Templars to acquire the Apple. Altaïr returns to Masyaf, where Al Mualim has used the Apple to enthrall the population, as part of his plan to end the Crusade and all conflict in the world by imposing order by force. With the help of Malik and several Assassins brought for backup, Altaïr storms the citadel and confronts Al Mualim in the gardens, resisting the Apple's powers and killing his mentor. He then tries to destroy the artifact, but instead unlocks a map showing the locations of countless other Pieces of Eden around the world. As more information came in about the capabilities of the next generation consoles by September 2004, Désilets' team considered expanding the Prince of Persia acrobatic gameplay into an open world that would be feasible on the newer systems. Désilets wanted to move away from the lead character being a prince simply waiting for his reign to start, but a character that wanted to strive to be a king. He came upon one of his university books on secret societies and its first material related to the Order of Assassins and recognized that he could have the lead character in the game as the second highest Assassin, seeking to be the leader of the group. or Prince of Persia: Assassins, The Assassin character was fleshed out throughout the game's three year development in an iterative fashion. The team had some idea of how the character dressed from Alamut and other historical works in all white robes and a red belt but had to envision how to detail this in the game. One of the first concept sketches, drawn by animator Khai Nguyen, suggested the concept of a bird of prey, which resonated with the team. The Assassin was named Altaïr, meaning "bird of prey" in Arabic, and eagle imagery was used heavily in connection to the Assassins. The game cost $15 million to $20 million to develop.

Initial work on the game was to expand out various systems from Prince of Persia to the open world concept with a team of 20 at Ubisoft Montreal. This also helped them to give the feeling to the player that they had as much freedom as possible within the game, a concept that had originated from the success of the Grand Theft Auto series. From late 2005 to early 2006, following nearly two years of development, the concept for Prince of Persia: Assassins had the game's titular prince AI controlled, watched over by the player controlled Assassin that served as the Prince's bodyguard and rescued the Prince from various situations.

On September 28, 2006, in an interview with IGN, producer Jade Raymond confirmed that Altaïr is "a medieval hitman with a mysterious past" and that he is not a time traveller. In a later interview on December 13, 2006, with IGN, Kristen Bell, who lent her voice and likeness to the game, talked about the plot. According to the interview, the plot centers on genetic memory and a corporation looking for descendants of an assassin. blockquote|text="It's actually really interesting to me. It's sort of based on the research that's sort of happening now, about the fact that your genes might be able to hold memory. And you could argue semantics and say it's instinct, but how does a baby bird know to eat a worm, as opposed to a cockroach, if its parents don't show it? And it's about this science company trying to, Matrix style, go into people's brains and find out an ancestor who used to be an assassin, and sort of locate who that person is." Al Mualim's character is roughly based on Rashid ad Din Sinan, who in 1191 was the leader of the Syrian branch of the Hashshashin in the Nizari Ismaili state and was nicknamed "The Old Man of the Mountain". Al Mualim was referred to as Sinan in Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles. On October 22, 2007, an IGN Australia interview with Patrice Desilets mentioned that the lead character's climbing and running were done by "Alex and Richard – the same guys from Prince of Persia".

The game was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on November 13, 2007, in North America, November 16 in Europe, and November 21 in Australia and New Zealand. It was made public in April 2008 that Assassin's Creed would be sold digitally and available for pre order through Valve's software distribution, Steam. The PC version of Assassin's Creed was released in North America on April 8, 2008. Four bonus mission types, not seen in the console versions, are included. These four missions are archer assassination, rooftop race challenge, merchant stand destruction challenge, and escort challenge. Because of these four exclusive missions that are only available on the PC, it was released and is sold under the name of Director's Cut Edition. A pirated version of the game has been in existence since late February 2008. Ubisoft purposely inserted a computer bug into the pre release version to unpredictably crash the game and prevent completion as a security measure; however, players were able to use extra content available on the Internet to bypass it. The pirated version of Assassin's Creed was one of the most popular titles for piracy during the first week of March 2008. The presence of the bug and performance of the pirated version of the game was believed by Ubisoft to lead to "irreparable harm" for the game and resulted in low retail sales; NPD Group reports that 40,000 copies of the PC title were sold in the United States in July, while more than 700,000 copies were illegally downloaded according to Ubisoft. In July 2008, Ubisoft sued disc manufacturer Optical Experts Manufacturing, believing the company to be the source of the leak, citing poor security procedures that allowed an employee to leave with a copy of the game.

Jade Raymond, the producer of Assassin's Creed, said: "For Assassin's Creed we wanted the score to capture the gruesome atmosphere of medieval warfare but also be edgy and contemporary." The musical score was composed by Jesper Kyd in 2007. Six tracks were made available online to those who have purchased the game; a password was given to people to insert at the soundtrack section of the Ubisoft website. The soundtrack is available from various online music stores. Several tracks are also available on Kyd's MySpace and his official website. The released tracks have the archaic Latin chorus and dark orchestral music, while "Meditation Begins" features a kind of Saltarello with a very ominous, dark, ambient overtone with men whispering in Latin. The atmosphere in these tracks is what Jesper Kyd is known for and is effective in situ.

Assassin's Creed received "generally favorable" reviews from critics according to Metacritic, a review aggregator. Famitsu awarded the Xbox 360 version of Assassin's Creed a 36 (9, 9, 9, 9) and the PlayStation 3 version a 37 (10, 8, 9, 10) out of 40, positively citing the story, presentation, and acrobatics, while criticizing the one button combat, map layout, and camera problems. Game Informer awarded Assassin's Creed a 9.5 out of 10, praising the control scheme, replay value, and intriguing story, and expressing frustration over the repetitive information gathering missions. On The Hotlist on ESPNews, ESPN's Aaron Boulding called the game's concept of social stealth "fairly original" and added: "Visually, the developers nailed it." GameTrailers praised the story (giving a 9.7 score to its story), and also cited repetitive gameplay and bad AI as somewhat stifling its potential. It wrote that "Assassins Creed is one of those games that breaks new ground yet fails in nailing some fundamentals." The game also received a 10 out of 10 from GamesRadar, Kevin VanOrd of GameSpot gave it a 9 out of 10, stating that "the greatest joy comes from the smallest details, and for every nerve racking battle, there's a quiet moment that cuts to the game's heart and soul." While still awarding the game decent scores, several publications cited a number of significant shortcomings. Michael Donahoe of 1Up. com gave it a B− for the story concept but felt more could have been done, writing "it's apparent that these grandiose ideas may have been a little too much to master the first go round. at least the groundwork is laid for a killer sequel." Hypers Darren Wells commended the game for its "great story, great graphics and intuitive controls". At the same time, he criticised it for "some missions that don't feel right on the PC and its loopy menu system." Hilary Goldstein of IGN gave the game a 7.5/10 ("Good"), stating that "a bad story, repetitive gameplay elements, and poor AI lead to the downfall of one of the more promising games in recent memory." Conversely, he complimented the combat animations and the climbing mechanic, and admired how accurately Ubisoft depicted the major cities of Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus to their real life counterparts.

Assassin's Creed won several awards at the 2006 E3. Game Critics awarded it "Best Action/Adventure Game"; "Best Action Game", "PS3 Game of the Show", "Best PS3 Action Game", and "Best PS3 Graphics" from IGN; "Best PS3 Game of the Show" from GameSpot and GameSpy; "Best of Show" from GameTrailers; and "Best PS3 Game" from 1UP. com. Assassin's Creed was nominated for several other awards by Xplay, as well as Spike TV. Assassin's Creed received multiple nominations at AIAS' 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards: "Adventure Game of the Year", "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming" and outstanding achievement in "Animation" (which it won), "Art Direction", "Gameplay Engineering" and "Visual Engineering". It was listed by Game Informer at 143 in their list of the top 200 games of all time. It also received the editor's choice award from GameSpot.

Sales for Assassin's Creed were said by the publisher to have "greatly outstripped" their expectations. In the United Kingdom, Assassin's Creed debuted at number one, knocking Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare from the top; the majority of the debut sales were on the Xbox 360, which claimed 67% of the game's total sales. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 releases of Assassin's Creed each received a platinum sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies per version in the United Kingdom. On April 16, 2009, Ubisoft revealed that the game had sold 8 million copies.

A prequel for the game, titled Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles, developed by Gameloft, was released on February 5, 2008, for the Nintendo DS. A port of Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles has also been released for the iPhone and the iPod Touch and Java ME on April 23, 2009, as well as for the Palm Pre. Assassin's Creed II was released in the United States and Canada on November 17, 2009, and in Europe on November 20, 2009.