Statistically speaking, you, as a sentient human, probably didn’t like Assassin’s Creed III. Ubisoft’s ambitious American Revolution story faced harsh criticism upon its launch in 2012, more so than any Assassin’s Creed title since the first one, which was, in my opinion, much more deserving of it. III‘s problems were unfortunately abundant; glitches and bugs plagued the games’ visuals, the four hour red-herring prologue was seen by many as a narrative misstep, and leading man, and perennial pouter, Connor Kenway just couldn’t resonate with players still fawning over Ezio ‘Professional Panty Dropper’ Auditore.
I wasn’t one of those people. I was the statistical anomaly. I was the 1 dentist out of 10 who recommended Strawberry Milk instead of Listerine.
I really liked Assassin’s Creed III. Really. The visual glitches didn’t bother me, the prologue made me soil myself and even Connor really worked for me. He wasn’t as charming or charismatic as Ezio, but his story was infinitely more interesting than Altairs and the writing ran an interesting parallel exploring the moral ambiguity of the American Revolution alongside the relationship between modern day Assassin’s and Templars. The naval battles were great, the bow and arrow was tons of fun and hanging guards via rope darts was more fun than it had any right to be.
That said, even I had a handful of complaints about it. Some of the classic gameplay elements were exposed as archaic, none more so than the missions that tasked you with following someone. Occasionally, Connor had to track a target stealthily, and when you realized that you’d been hiding in groups of random strangers for five f**king games now with little to no variation, you, like me, probably felt a little exasperated. Even worse than this though, were the missions where Connor had to chase a fleeing target while navigating an obastacle-course-environment. These were just the worst. Exhausting exercises in trial and error that frequently gave me pause to just hang up my hidden blades completely. So naturally, Ubisoft saw fit to make III‘s ultimate final showdown one of these sequences.
Chasing Charles Lee is absolute balls. Not only does Lee suddenly and inexplicably develop Quicksilver/The Flash levels of super speed, but the environment becomes comically cataclysmic. There are guards everywhere, shit’s exploding left right and center and the location chosen for this showdown just so happens to be a harbor, so if you don’t end up impaled on a bayonet or blowing yourself up, you’ll probably end up in the water, and as every Assassin’s Creed fan knows, Assassin’s react to water the same way Irish people react to work; slowly.
Add to all of this the fact that letting Charles Lee get more than 50 paces ahead of you fails the mission forcing you to start again and you’re left with a protracted trial and error session where getting to know the environment is both detrimental to the experience, because the surprises become rote, and just not helpful because they’re still next to impossible to avoid. Watching the step count increase as Connor stumbles awkwardly through his ‘I just got smoke in my eyes’ animation, or climbs the wrong poxy pole before sitting atop it like some kind of unmotivated cherokee spider-man is just embarrassing for everyone involved. Except this guy:
Honestly, I really believe III might be remembered more fondly were it not for this sequence. Chasing Charles Lee is not fun, and when you realize that, you inevitably realize that Assassin’s Creed’s chase sequences are never fun. When you realize that, it seems a little unbelievable that we’re still complaining about them 5 games later and from there the entire Assassin’s almanac kind of starts to unravel. Ending a divisive game with one of the very elements that made it so divisive is so dumb and irresponsible that it would almost be funny if the result wasn’t so turgid and frustrating.
