Assassin’s Creed Unity, it hardly needs to be said, had its share of problems. At launch, the game which was intended to be Ubisoft‘s big technical showcase on the then-new PS4 and Xbox One was rife with sometimes-hilarious bugs, filled with map barf, crammed with microtransactions, had a rather odd emphasis on co-op gameplay in a historically singleplayer series, and was—a little garnish—venomously reactionary about its setting: the French Revolution.
And yet, and yet, I maintain it was actually one of the best Assassin’s Creed games, and represented a much more interesting avenue the series could have gone down had Ubisoft not embraced full Witcher 3-ification in games like Odyssey, Origins, Shadows, and Valhalla.
I would like to call Jean Guesdon, former AC brand content director, as witness to Unity’s defence. In a chat with the most recent Retro Gamer magazine (via GamesRadar), he came to the game’s defence, hailing it as an overlooked entry in the series that fell victim to its own ambition.
Unity is “one of the most underestimated games in the series,” says Guesdon. That’s not to say it’s unfairly underestimated—Guesdon is clear that the game had its troubles: “Sadly, Unity’s launch was a huge challenge because of several reasons,” he says.
“Like Assassin’s Creed 3 with AnvilNext, Unity’s development was impacted by the incredible new tech allowing for 1:1 scale, interiors, massive crowds, a brand-new parkour system and an integrated multiplayer component.”
All that whizzbang tech gave the devs a lot of plates to spin: “Pushing content and tech at the same time is always very demanding, and this opus maybe pushed too many things at once,” says Guesdon. But dammit, it had ideas—”Unity’s team decided that the key component would be Paris, one city only. Hence all decisions were made in order to make the setting shine and ensure players would experience the French Revolution like never before.
“This is why all mechanics and systems were more dense and focussed,” says Guesdon. “Maybe we could have done better in terms of progressive introduction but overall I don’t think the experience was too complicated.”
I adore Unity’s humid Paris streets, thronged with sans-culottes, and I love the fact that it’s the only Assassin’s Creed game I’ve ever played where stealth felt like it served a purpose—where combat carried any actual risk. Will Ubi ever try to pick up those ideas, and return to the dense, one-city game format of yore? Well, it sort of tried that with Mirage, and people didn’t like it, but I’m holding out hope regardless.