My 2020-21 Playthrough of Assassin's Creed

One year ago, Ubisoft announced Assassin's Creed Valhalla. At that point, I had not played any Assassins Creed games however the viking setting of the new game interested me. I knew there was more to Assassin's Creed than the history part, so wanted to experience the older games before getting the new one.

Assassin's creed is a series of 12 games (plus spin-offs) that tells the story of a secret war between the Assassins (you) and the Templars (the bad guys). Each game is set in 2 different time periods, the modern day and which ever era that particular game is taking place. The modern day sections are generally less interesting and in some of the games they basically didn't bother to include them, but the general idea is that using modern technology you can use DNA to relive ancestors memories. The historical part of the games have you exploring an open world, living through historical events, meeting famous people, and climbing towers to get to viewpoints which you can synchronise to fill in your in-game map. Oh, also there are magical artifacts with brain controlling powers that were developed by a race of creatures that lived millennia before the human race. Your mission is to stop the Templars getting their hands on these.

I'd picked up Assassin's Creed 1-3 digitally on PS3 when they were on sale a few years back, but never played them. I also had a few of them on PC from Humble Bundle or when they had been given away free on UPlay.

As of last weekend, I have completed the story on all the mainline games except Valhalla (that one is waiting for a bit longer).

I feel my favourites are 2, Brotherhood, Black Flag and Syndicate. I wouldn't say any of the games are bad, but there are games that I don't remember the story as well as others (Rogue, Revelations, Unity)

Playing the first Assassin's Creed, I really liked the gameplay mechanics. However, it got rather repetitive and I was surprised that it was released before PS3 had trophies (not that I care too much about that). This game was a good starting point for the series and was a good base to build upon in future games. One thing that I've realised didn't carry forward was people commenting on your climbing of buildings (or avoiding soldiers seeing you climbing a tower to get to a viewpoint). This game is the only PS3/Xbox 360 Assassin's Creed game that has not had a re-release on a newer console.

Rather than continuing on the PS3, I continued the story on Xbox One with the The Ezio Collection, which is a remaster of Assassin's Creed 2, Brotherhood and Revelations. This set of games is the only time that you play as the same character in the historical portion in more than one game. Assassin's Creed 2 and Brotherhood kind of blur together in my memory, there are portions that I know were in one game and portions that I know were in the other (and DEFINITELY know what happened at the end of 2.