A Brief Look at Assassin’s Creed: Rogue

“I like big boats, I cannot lie.” – Isabela, Dragon Age II

Is it just me, or was releasing two different Assassin’s Creed games at the same time a somewhat confusing move? If you’ve been too distracted by Unity to notice, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue was released at the same time exclusively on previous gen consoles (PS3 & Xbox 360) while its counterpart did a leap of faith into the current gen market. So I dusted off the PS3 and made a trip to my local Redbox kiosk to give this thing a spin. It’s a trip back to the Americas featuring plenty of familiar faces and a bunch of back story for all of your alternate history needs.

Here’s my tl;dr pitch before I actually write the thing that’s too long to read: if you liked Black Flag, but wish you had more of it then you’re going to be really happy with Rogue. Luckily, that actually describes me. I haven’t played Unity yet, but I’m pretty sure Black Flag was the best game in the series. What can I say? I love me some piracy! Rogue takes the naval battles that I loved in Black Flag and adds some new mechanics to them while telling the story of an Assassin who’s too deeply bothered by the actions of the brotherhood to continue working with them. Well, that and they try to kill him, but they are assassins after all. Attempting to quit and taking the map to the Precursor Civilization sites with him goes about as well as one might expect it to for our new protagonist. It’s good to see a game that actually blurs the lines between who the good guys and bad guys are. Shades of gray, my friends, and lots of them.

The story is pretty good and does a lot of narrative fill in for the relatively short period between AC3 and AC4. We get to see some of what Achilles was up to while he was still an active mentor in the Assassin Brotherhood and we get to see a bit more of Haytham Kenway during his time as the Templar Grand Master of the Americas. We get to see some Templars with actual good intentions, not super-villain style rule the world to save it from itself intentions. All of this is pretty cool, but I don’t understand where this genetic memory comes from. It makes for a cool game, but it’s weirdly coincidental that Abstergo has genetic material for Assassin turned Templar, Shay Cormac. Hell, even the good people curating the Assassin’s Creed Wiki don’t say. C’mon guys, just give us some thin story about spending years researching the lineages of blah, blah, blah.

By this installment, I doubt many people need a description of what the Assassin’s Creed games do. This time around we get more crafting, more ship upgrading, and more chasing around a gazillion little things to unlock new outfits, weapons, and sails. Yes, of course I tracked down all of the Viking sword fragments so that I could be an Irish Viking sailing around the American colonies in a kraken-themed ship because I love history SO MUCH! (By the way, there’s an unmarked Viking Sword piece in River Valley at LacEternal (427, -370) if you’re having trouble finding that 15th piece.) I had to kill so many animals to make a bunch of outfits I will never wear in that game. What’s weird is that they seem to have reused the skinning animation from AC3, so Shay does that whole “giving thanks” thing right before skinning his fresh kills. It kinda took me out of the fantasy, which is pretty crazy in a game where I’m playing a person playing a virtual reality simulation being extracted from someone else’s DNA. Oh, one last note on the collectibles: if you get all of the Abstergo tablets and hack all of the computers, your prize is in Sleepy Hollow. Took me a while to find that one.

If you’re a fan of the series and the lore is interesting to you, then you’ll probably enjoy this newest installment. As of the time of this writing, it doesn’t seem to interact much with the AC Initiates site, which is a bit of a shame. (That thing has a potential to really be a hub for all of the AC series.) The few new things that it does offer won’t likely be a compelling reason to play for anyone that didn’t enjoy the feel of Black Flag, because that’s primarily what Rogue emulates. There is a planned PC version due out in March, so if that’s your preferred platform, you may either have to wait or skip this one. It was an enjoyable ride for me over the course of a week and certainly worth a rental.