Love interest Elise is more interesting, not least because it’s often difficult to pin down exactly what her motives are, but ultimately just becomes the pretty distraction that Arno practically screams “but I’m a really nice guy!” at in the hopes that she’ll love him. Arno is charming but smug, a lot like both Ezio and Edward from previous games, but his actions make him come across as such a whiny prick, and without a decent motive to act on, it’s almost impossible to root for him. It might’ve been helped by some actually interesting characters, but even that was apparently too much effort. It’s a paint-by-numbers story with few twists or turns, the ending to which is so obvious and unsatisfactory that you wonder if it was just a first draft that no one bothered to revise. Feeling guilty about all the dads that keep dying around him, Arno joins the Assassins to kill a bunch of people and take revenge. New kid Arno is the focus this time, a rich kid whose dad is murdered within the first ten minutes of the game, taken in by another family who end up with a dead dad around half an hour later. The actual plot is useful in that it drives the story along, but it’s almost as meaningless as the present-day narrative that you could again leave it out and still be left with a perfectly serviceable game. What’s the point? Cut out this entire side of the game and it would make almost no difference. Every now and then, the voice of “Bishop” will talk to you about all the great things you’re doing for the real world, and that’s your entire interaction with the present-day narrative. Thankfully, Ubisoft refrain from using this is an excuse to pass off the plethora of bugs present, but we’ll come to that. The present day is now so overtly pointless that you can no longer exit the simulation, which is now supposedly running on a home console, meaning technically you’re playing a video game within a video game. What a shame, then, that the rest of the game is just a mess of ideas and repetition that feels like the design has regressed to the very first game in the series. This is where the game shines, with its gorgeous graphics and ability to draw huge distances and still retain a high amount of detail. The detail of main character Arno’s clothes is superb, and some of the facial animation is filled with nuance and feeling that it almost tricks your mind into thinking it’s real. The architecture has always been wonderful in the series, and with the power of the current-gen of consoles behind it, the game has the ability to show off some spectacular buildings and environments. I’m going to go into this by straightaway saying that Unity is a truly beautiful game. Could it be another gem in the generally very good series? Or was there going to be more missing from the game than just playable female characters? But as the big day drew closer, a tentative excitement crept in. Starting with the complete removal of a competitive multiplayer mode, followed by the controversy caused by a poor response to the question “ why are we only allowed to play as identikit white men?”, the release was never going to be smooth. Xbox One (reviewed), PlayStation 4, Windows PCĪssassin’s Creed: Unity hasn’t had the most successful of developments.
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