Detailed Analysis - Collectibles, Environmental & Context
Collectibles - Flags
Throughout the Holy Lands, Altair will be able to collect flags that belong to and represent the different areas of the world, ranging from the Saracens flags in Damascus to the Assassin flags in Masyaf. As far as collectibles go the flags are a fair enough creation but as the only collectibles in the game, there is not much done to give them any true distinction save for different symbols on the flags. While there are a great many flags to find in the Holy Lands, there is virtually no narrative reward to make them interesting to find, unless you’re interested in getting the achievements. While it makes sense that the developers decided to put more effort into making sure they have a solid single-player mission experience, it is a shame that no more effort was placed into creating collectibles more varied. It’s something that the devs should be mindful of in the future when creating collectibles in future entries of the series, both in variety and in creating narrative values that make finding the collectibles worthwhile.
Environment - The Holy Lands
During Altair’s travels to eliminate the Holy Lands of the Templars who are ravaging it, Altair will explore many of the ancient cities that were at the centre of the crusades. From the Saracen-controlled city of Damascus to the Templar-controlled city of Acre. The historically vibrant cities are used to enhance the skills of both Altair and the players to look for signs of distress and suspicious people that could either help the player or work against them. Using the environment to hide information for the main story is an excellent design choice but it only really works if there are gameplay tools that can complement this. For Altair, his gift of Eagle Vision where he can identify friends or foes can be a hindrance as it can’t be used while moving and can be a bit blurry. Using the environment is an excellent design choice and can be really used to enhance the narrative of the cities that are visited.
Contextual - Emails
While in captivity, Desmond Miles would steal Warren Vidic’s access pen to access his emails to find out more about the people who were holding him captive. Lucy on the other hand willingly left her email open for Desmond to view so he could form a much clearer opinion of Abstergo and to help gain his trust.
Vidic’s emails are a lot more unfiltered and show some of the more darker aspects of Abstergo as they have been trying to divide up the continent of Africa and informing him of a recent influx of illegal immigrants entering Mexico to which border patrols have been ramped up and over the past 6 months 330 people have been killed and 1000 have been wounded. Someone who Vidic is in heavy contact with is Alan Rikkin who appears to be a high-ranking executive at Abstergo and that makes him a high-ranking Templar and someone who often comes across as impatient and very matter of fact as he asks for additional test subjects should Desmond need to be “Retired”. Abstergo isn’t afraid of making people disappear seeing as they’ve always considered themselves above the Government.
Lucy’s emails are a lot more casual, as while she is still communicating with people in the company and even Vidic, she seems a bit more casual with him which is odd considering he doesn’t come across as that. Lucy is more interested in finding out what happened to friends of hers at the company who either committed suicide or disappeared. Perhaps the most interesting detail about Lucy’s emails is her deleted emails. In these emails she appears to be in contact with someone who doesn’t have a send or received address, inquiring about Desmond’s health and status as well as an Abstergo satellite project. The last email is Lucy asking if she can send rescue with no reply, hinting at much bigger events happening in the future.
The emails can be quite fun to read as they show so many more layers to the newly birthed gaming series and show many new opportunities for world-building and even future adventures in the series. The emails also do a good job of characterising Warren and Lucy further as we see sides of them that are not shown much to Desmond. The emails are a fun contextual element and it’s something Ubisoft should think to expand on in terms of characters, email contents and further world-building cause they are on the right track.
