And because it's a world that doesn't reward curiosity, either with fun or material gain, I finished Shay's story without really getting to know the cities of Albany or New York, and used fast travel whenever possible. As a result, Rogue feels deceptive it appears to be generous, but it's not. Consequently, there's just no reason to spend time hunting there's no benefit.Īnd I feel the same about the icons and question marks dotted around its sprawling map: they're just not that interesting, and if you do explore, the pay-off rarely justifies the excursion. For example, I only lightly upgraded my ship, and managed to easily finish the campaign without ever tending to Shay’s equipment. Yes, it looks big on a map, apparently crammed with things to do – forts to conquer, animals to hunt, territory to explore – but I can’t stress how extraneous all of these activities are. Sailing through blizzards while your ship cuts through the ice looks great and is thrilling.īut for all of its good looks and atmosphere, I can’t help but find Rogue’s world lacking. Even though it can be on occasion a bit fuzzy around the edges with some dodgy shading, Rogue is a frequently pretty experience. The map sends us around Albany, New York, the frozen waters of the North Atlantic, as well as plenty of small towns and quaint settlements, like the pumpkin-strewn Sleepy Hollow, dotted around. In both good ways and bad, Rogue plays like a direct sequel to Black Flag, and carries on its strong emphasis on seafaring. And when the time came to confront my former Assassin brothers and sisters, what should've been dramatic moments were revealed as forgettably staged and mechanically bland. Since he was trained as an Assassin, it’s bloody business as usual. I was hoping some of this would feel different playing as Shay the Templar, but disappointingly there are no new abilities to distinguish. This adds a renewed level of intrigue to what is a very familiar Assassin’s Creed experience of running across rooftops, freeing hostages, sabotaging the enemy, and of course, killing important people. Rogue is great because it does away with the idea of black-and-white villains at all.
Shay isn’t a villain he’s an individual, who questions orders and suspects inherited truths, and for the first time in the series we are encouraged to do the same. Familiar faces and locations from each of the past Assassin's Creed games are thrown up and put in some sort of order, but the perspective of those events we know is either changed or challenged. Rogue also attempts to transfer the crisis of faith Shay experiences to us, and for me it worked. There’s always a sympathetic motivation to be found it’s all much more nuanced and ambiguous than I was expecting, and it makes for the most engaging story in an Assassin’s Creed game since the days of Ezio Auditore da Firenze. There’s a good chunk of the 14-hour campaign where Shay doesn’t have any clear allegiances, and even then, he never really descends into brutal killer territory.
You play the first third or so of Rogue as an Assassin, which lets you forge relationships with those you will later hunt. Most of the trailers surrounding Rogue have portrayed Shay as a cold-blooded killer, but that’s in no way accurate his story is nuanced, and the narrative is patiently unfolded. Either way, each time an Assassin's Creed game comes out, that now-iconic video game logo continues to ebb and flow with each changing of the time period and setting.Rogue’s greatest strength is its central character – Shay Patrick Cormac – and his journey from dutiful Assassin to vengeful Templar. At the same time, Assassin's Creed Rogue utilizes a shattered sigil design to represent Shay Cormac's betrayal of the brotherhood. That thematic design can be as simple as Assassin's Creed Syndicate, where the logo features nuts and bolts and rigid edges to symbolize the industrial revolution.
With each changing of the Assassins' sigil, there's generally been a thematic undertone representative of that specific entry in the series. Whether it's been the 12th century Holy Land or 8th century Scandinavia, practically every new location in Assassin's Creed has provided fans with a new iteration on that same triangular symbol that's been prevalent since 2007. Each game in the franchise has its own time period, and thus, adapts and changes the symbol of the Assassins to match whatever setting or point in history is being represented. For a franchise as adaptable as Assassin's Creed, it's admirable how even the series logo continues to iterate and change over time.