Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Review

   Templars and Déjà Vu

Assassin’s Creed: Rogue is a hard game for me to analyse and break down. Part of me embraces the fact that it is mechanically identical to any other AC game that came before, but I also wish it would be more than just that. You see, Rogue is an extremely safe bet for Ubisoft as it uses the same groundwork introduced with last year’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag with a huge emphasis on naval exploration and travelling from island to island, yet, other than its different take on the entire Assassins vs. Templars narrative template, it doesn’t have anything significantly interesting or relatively new that will keep you invested during its 6 hour long story, or 20-30 hours if you plan on accomplishing everything the game has to offer. While playing through Rogue, all I kept asking myself was: Has the Assassin’s Creed franchise run its course, or am I just tired of playing the same game from Ubi every year now? Although Rogue isn’t a breakthrough in the Action-Adventure genre, it is still a very sound and entertaining Assassin’s Creed experience that is packed with hours of content, but don’t expect it to be anything more than a standard AC game.

The sense of déjà vu is staggering right from Rogue’s opening minutes as it uses the same AnvilNext engine as Black Flag. The similarities are so big that you could put both games side by side and have a hard time telling them apart, and that’s not because they only look alike visually. There is an unbearable amount of rehashed content from Black Flag within Rogue that left me wanting more out of the overall experience. For instance, it blatantly reuses the exact same First-Person real-world perspective as in Black Flag when you are not inside the Animus. The missions, themselves, don’t deviate that much from the standard “locate a target, gain intel, and assassinate it” principle, which could’ve been taken to new directions with the introduction of a new protagonist who turns against his fellow Assassin comrades. Because yes, you play as the quote on quote bad guy with Shay Patrick Cormac in Assassin’s Creed: Rogue. It’s not that the missions are outright boring by any means, but they are just the same ones we have been used to for over seven years now, and I am starting to feel burnt out by this formula. Besides, they are nothing close to being anything memorable by having little to no correlation with the plot itself, which suffers from a lot of pacing issues.

Setting-wise, Rogue nails it for the most part, building on the Kenway storyline established in AC III and Black Flag with great character cameos and references present all throughout the experience. Though it is mostly set in North America, you’ll get to revisit some familiar territories, all while exploring some visually impressive deep arctic areas filled with icebergs and snowy mountains located to the North.

As I mentioned previously, Rogue’s story changes the traditional AC story formula by putting the player in the shoes of a Templar instead of the regular Assassin as the title would suggest. Though this sounds good on paper (and it is for about five minutes until you realize it doesn’t change anything at all), it takes so long to get to that point and I never quite believed Shay’s motivations of killing his former brothers for the enemy. He lacks personality and, although his final moments are very exciting (especially if you plan on playing the current gen version of Assassin’s Creed with Unity), his arc is mostly one-dimensional and only dictated by other characters telling him what to do, making it hard for me to care about anything he does throughout the entire game. That’s one problem the AC franchise has been struggling with ever since the introduction of Assassin’s Creed II’s main protagonist, Ezio Auditore, who was a lovable, lighthearted character with charming traits and to-the-point burdens. Plus, it did not help that I did not care for a single moment for the Assassins that I eliminated because they were barely fleshed out or showcased during the narrative.

Just like any other Assassin’s Creed game, the world in Rogue is big in scope and scale with hundreds, if not thousands of activities to take part in within the 18^th century setting. I could go on forever enumerating all the things you can do in Rogue – which, by the way, are the same things that can be done in other Assassin’s Creeds – but the focus remains on traversal, combat, exploration and, in Rogue’s case, the naval context implementations within each of those previous elements.

First off, traversal works just as you would expect, keeping the same free running approach as it always has. However, you’ll still find yourself battling the controls in frustration as Shay’s movement is often stiff and unresponsive to the inputs from your controller.

On the combat’s side, there isn’t anything significantly important to talk about other than the additional annoying stalker-type enemies, which can randomly come out of nowhere and stab you quickly, and that engaging enemies slowly feels like an afterthought in the franchise as you have such a vast tool set in your equipment in recent installments that you barely need to use your sword. To give you an idea, the game lets you run around with destructive grenade launcher for the majority of the game. I was always trying to avoid combat as much as possible as its swordplay lacks any punch or tightness, and that aspect truly stands out being fresh off Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, which is a very similar Third-Person Action-Adventure game.

Moreover, the exploration elements still hold a big place within Rogue, even though it puts all of its attention on the naval side of navigation from one area to another. There are still observation points to climb on top off, chests to loot, infrastructures to purchase and a multitude of other collectibles to find while you are not at sea, but, just like in Black Flag, you’ll most likely spend the majority of your time on the Morrigan listening to the brand new shanty tracks while taking on enemy ships and forts by using the new puckle gun, gathering resources and ruling your sea empire. That’s one thing I must give Rogue credit for: Its sense of familiarity is appreciated, making for a very accessible experience that isn’t hard to wrap your head around. However, at the same time, it’s one of the main problems I have with the game because there is no sense of innovation whatsoever within the whole game.

VERDICT

Here’s the thing; I can recommend playing Assassin’s Creed: Rogue if you haven’t played Black Flag, or any AC game for the fact of the matter. However, if you have experienced Ubisoft’s game last year, I suggest holding on to your money as you will not miss anything special with this experience. Though it is cool to hunt down Assassins as a member of the Templars, it’s not as game-changing as you would expect it would be, making the entire hook around the game meaningless. Ultimately, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue does not feel authentic because it reaches the highest stage of déjà vu in the franchise’s history, creating an underwhelming experience for fans expecting a little bit more than just a conclusive expansion to the Kenway storyline in Assassin’s Creed.