Follow-up: Playing Cameraman in Assassin’s Creed

My last post suggested that Assassin’s Creed eschews traditional cinematics in favor of in-engine scripting, possibly as part of a misguided attempt at creating a seamless player experience. I argued that Ubisoft Montreal’s storytelling would have been more successful had they taken the reins and shown us what was happening rather than simply having non-player characters tell us virtually everything.

Given these concerns, it seemed strange when, just this morning, I came upon another short essay musing on the effectiveness of cut scene use — Denis Dyack’s Edge Keynote.

Playing Cameraman in Assassin’s Creed

Regardless of whether your take on Assassin’s Creed is glowing or somewhat derisory, I think we can probably agree that the game has a few shortcomings. Though critics generally consent that the mechanics are fresh, it’s hard to ignore arguments claiming that Assassin’s suffers from repetitive objectives. Call it a smart business decision: give players a little too much of one thing and hopefully your competition won’t attempt to reiterate before you get the chance. Whatever the case, those never-ending investigations aren’t what irked me about Assassin’s Creed. No, in my opinion, the truly onerous design decisions had to do with cut scene camera positioning.

Naturally, these issues are far from game-breaking. But they’re still worth thinking about for a variety of reasons. First, expository elements almost always have a serious atmospheric impact. Of more particular interest, however, is the fact that cinematics have taken a lot of flack in the wake of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. While I largely concur with the folks who have argued that player interaction is what games are all about, abandoning cut scenes in favor of scripted sequences isn’t necessarily going to deliver a superior immersive experience, and, to my thinking, Assassin’s is living proof.

I found myself almost completely unable to pay even a whit of attention during most of the major plot points despite being genuinely interested in what was happening.

Spoilers to follow.