Earlier this year, Ubisoft announced the next main entry in their most prominent series when we learned that Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate would be launching on October 23, 2015. In development by Ubisoft Quebec, the publisher promised that they would learn from their previous mistakes and give the fans a more satisfying experience after the troubled debut of last year’s Assassin’s Creed: Unity. What we know so far is that Syndicate takes place during the Industrial Revolution in a London that is 30% larger than Unity’s Paris and allows players to switch on the fly between two characters, siblings Jacob and Evie Frye. Word has it that Jacob will be a more combat oriented character and Evie will be more stealth based. The fighting engine has supposedly been refined to be more fluid and there will be some new weapons for players to take advantage of. They have also stated that Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate will be a single player experience only. All of these changes seem to be for the better and with the player’s best interests in mind. We can only hope that Synidicate will restore this franchise to its former glory.
At this year’s E3, we were treated to a cinematic trailer that starts with some shots of the city streets, busy with horse drawn carriages and people of various social classes eking out their existences. Then we get our first glimpse of Jacob as a roughneck type who runs a gang called The Rooks We see him throw someone down a set of stairs guarded by a gang of unruly looking thugs that gather them up around him, probably to go make more trouble. No sooner does this strongarmed social call come to an end then Jacob is tipped off by one of his men that something of interest has come up. Then we see Jacob on the rooftops stalking a man bearing a shoulder cape clearly displaying the red Templar cross and then getting into a high speed buggy chase, losing his prey, taking a ride on top of a train and then catching up with him again at a factory in order to dispense some form of violent revenge or justice (or maybe both). Then he goes to a bar and beats up some thugs before smacking down their boss right in front of them and convincing them to join the Rooks through alpha dog strongarming. It’s likely that recruiting to the Rooks will be part of the game’s composition, but exactly what purpose it will serve is not made clear in this trailer. However, one can safely guess that exerting influencing on the city with a gang of thugs will have some in game benefits and it’s likely that there will be some kind of mobile app to utilize this functionality via Uplay. It’s a very compelling preview that promises Jacob will be an edgy and dangerous sort of protagonist. Sadly, no gameplay footage was shown and we don’t learn anything new about his sister Evie but what they’ve shown is effective in hyping up the next game and giving us a glimpse of what we can expect.
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate will be available on Sony Playstation 4 and Microsoft Xbox One on October 23, 2015 and on PC in Q3/Q4 2015.
