It doesn’t help that Jacob and Evie get slotted into traditionally gendered roles in the final few missions. How are these arguments any different from the ones they’ve had in the past? If they’re so close, how come they barely talk for the entire middle third of the game? If anything, they seem like they should be an effective team because they respect each other and have complementary temperaments. Jacob and Evie just don’t have enough scenes together, so any change in status feels hollow given how close they’re supposed to be at the beginning. The problem is that the story never establishes the depth of their relationship, nor does it adequately communicate why they can no longer stand each other.
Evie keeps looking for the Piece of Eden, with periodic detours to un-bugger whatever Jacob buggered (examples include public transit and the Bank of England). Jacob assassinates a high-profile Templar but buggers London in the process. You understand why they’re mad – Jacob thinks Evie is cautious to a fault, while Evie thinks Jacob creates as many problems as he solves – and that divide is reflected in a mission structure that falls into a comfortable pattern.
Jacob and Evie become increasingly frustrated with each other as the game progresses, and we’re supposed to believe that their relationship has deteriorated to the point of irreparability. That’s fine in theory, but it falls apart when the story tries to introduce conflict. In the other, Jacob creates a gang called The Rooks and stirs up trouble because he’s too impatient to do anything else. In one, Evie does the legwork to track down a missing Piece of Eden. The story missions force you to play as one or the other, and while the distribution is roughly equal, you end up with two divergent narratives that only occasionally intertwine. After a fantastic introduction in which the twins bicker and argue about who killed who while also conveying a deep mutual affection and understanding – that is to say, they behave like proper siblings – they go their separate ways when they get to London. What’s worse is that the same is true of Jacob and Evie, whose relationship is woefully underdeveloped. We know he’s the villain because he twirls his mustache while sitting in the villain’s chair, but there’s otherwise nothing to compel these people to interact. Jacob and Evie don’t meet Starrick until the final mission. Syndicate focuses on Jacob and Evie Frye, twin Assassins attempting to wrest control of London from the Templars under Crawford Starrick, and the whole cast is going through the motions. Unfortunately, it all comes at the expense of dramatic tension. If you’ve enjoyed Assassin’s Creed in the past chances are good that you’ll love Syndicate. The zipline is a welcome addition that allows you to leap tall buildings in a single bound, while the introduction of vehicles makes it a little easier to get around horizontally. It’s a sprawling video game with lots of stuff to do and mechanics that (usually) allow you to do them. So yes, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate is fun. It all combines to give Syndicate a rich gameplay density that shuttles you from exploration to side missions to main missions with a fluid sense of urgency. Syndicate even takes a page form GTA: San Andreas, introducing a gang war system that allows you to slowly liberate London neighborhoods from a Templar gang called the Blighters. The game is one of the best sandboxes in the series, a sooty Victorian playground with capes and cane swords that offers the usual assortment of collectibles and side missions with famous historical figures (the latest crop includes Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, and a bizarrely apathetic Karl Marx). If Black Flag was the most balanced installment, last year’s Unity was a step backward, an overstuffed mess with a surprisingly well-written story that got ignored because the game pushed microtransactions instead of content.Īssassin’s Creed: Syndicate represents the other side of that equation. Assassin’s Creed has always had an uneasy tension between gameplay and narrative.
0 kommentar(er)
