The first new-gen exclusive entry in the Assassin's Creed franchise looks the part. From its incredibly detailed crowds to its immaculate presentation of French Revolution-era Paris, Unity is a visual marvel even before accounting for the centerpiece new feature – cooperative play for up to four friends. It's hard to wrap one's head around the idea that eight Ubisoft studios are now credited as part of the production for this huge game – a testament to the amount of work that can go in to a triple-A project on the newest consoles and PCs.
Unity stars a new assassin named Arno Victor Dorian, a man of French and Austrian descent who joins the assassins on a quest of redemption after the death of his adoptive father, for which he blames himself. Like the franchise entries that preceded it, Unity focuses on this personal tale amid the backdrop of major historical events. In this case, that back drop is the dramatic and brutally violent events of the French Revolution.
Paris is a sprawling metropolis twice the size of the land area depicted in Assassin's Creed III, with one out of every four buildings now complete with an interior. Landmarks like the Louvre, the Bastille, and the Luxembourg Gardens are all present. I had a brief tour of the Notre Dame Cathedral and its breathtaking nave, filled with sunbeams slanting in from the windows. Notre Dame has around a dozen distinct entrances to track down, illustrating the depth of content Ubisoft is putting into one of the game's centerpiece locations.
While Paris' impressive architecture is beautiful, attention is easily shifted to the large crowds that populate the streets. One thousand individual A.I. driven characters can act and move within the crowd at one time, giving Arno a wealth of possibilities for mischief. The crowd is more alive and active than in previous entries, with more opportunities to engage directly with the conflicts, crimes, and day-to-day activities of the citizenry. Equally important, these dense crowds can slow down Arno as well as his targets, making rooftop and inside building movement more important than ever.
Cooperative play is integrated into the campaign, but only on certain missions. The in-game locations for meet-ups are taverns, where you find the “ghosts” of friends who are also actively playing at the same time. By approaching their ghost, if they're at a joinable part of the game, you can hop in and start at the most recent checkpoint. Up to four players can join together in this fashion, offering some intriguing new coordinated options to confront mission objectives.
You always appear as Arno in your own game, while fellow players in the Brotherhood look like other assassins. However, each of you brings your own suite of abilities to the fight, thanks to Unity's new upgrade mechanic. Steering the game more in the role-playing direction, major missions now provide skillpoint rewards, which can be spent to add or improve Arno's active skills, like lockpicking, disguise, or eagle vision. In addition, many weapon and equipment options also offer skill buffs, so the visual style of your character helps speak to his skill specialties.
Assassin's Creed Unity is one of a small handful of new-gen exclusives targeting release before the end of 2014; my multiple demos at E3 revealed a relatively polished gaming experience, with several months of development yet ahead. Lingering questions about mission structure and story will have a profound effect on how Unity turns out, but my first impressions of the game as a whole have me very enthusiastic about where the series is headed.
Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Style: 1 to 4-Player Action
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal/Toronto/Quebec/Annecy/Bucharest/Kiev/Shanghai/Singapore
Release: October 28
