Assassin's Creed Settings Ranked (2007–2022)

[Music] [Music] from a marketing perspective The Genius of Assassin's Creed lies in its basic premise transport players to a unique historical setting that has been otherwise untapped in the gaming world and promise a new one with every single installment even if you aren't interested in the series or if you've fallen off the wagon all they have to do is announce your favorite historical time period for the next game to suck you right back in as a result Assassin's Creed lives and dies by its historical settings and while the quality of the games themselves has been varying to say the least the franchise is yet to miss the mark when it comes to their backdrops almost two years ago I made a video ranking all of the settings in the series and now that some time has passed I wanted to make an updated video with a higher quality setup for the new channel it is tough to rank these games because like I said I think all the settings are great but there are definitely some that stick out from the rest of the pack when I think of great settings I consider worlds with immaculately detailed visuals like the Horizon series and ghost of tsushima I think of the density of immersive activities in games like Yakuza and Ocarina of Time I Think of the scale of Skyrim or breath of the wild and with Assassin's Creed specifically I look at how accurately and respectfully the game portrays its historical setting a setting does not need to have all these things but together they do make a winning combination now I've made a video like this before and a lot of my opinions have stayed the same over the last couple years so if you did watch the last video and you're only interested in things that I have added or ranked differently you can check the timestamps below and I'll mark any time that I deviate from what you might have already heard otherwise here is my 2022 ranking of all the open world Assassin's Creed settings I spoke a little soon when I said that every game does the setting well Assassin's Creed bloodlines is not a Mainline game which is why I didn't include it in the last video in fact I didn't intend on including it in this one either but after booting up my old PSP I found it kind of hard to justify that position Assassin's Creed bloodlines is not like the 2D spin-offs it has an open world and it does showcase two different cities within Cyprus lumosal and corenia it has the gameplay of the mainline Assassin's Creed games and overall it does check the boxes for what an Assassin's Creed game is and what its World should include so I decided that Cyprus would be worthy of inclusion on this list beyond that I don't want to give it too much credit the game did come out in 09 for the PSP and its Graphics err on the side of the PS1 which for that platform was honestly pretty good it attempts to imitate the first game's World in pretty much every way with limasol acting as something of a parallel to Damascus and karenia calling back to Okra from the first game I'm basing that observation entirely off the filter because without that the structure and the architecture of the two cities are basically identical the buildings in these cities are just low polygon versions of the ones in ac1 so karenia and limasaw really don't have any sort of individual identity and in fact Cyprus itself does not have any identifying factors that would separate it from the Holy Land setting of ac-1 at all the biggest difference from ac1 is the fact that the weak Hardware required the developers to segment each City into multiple small chunks with the player only being able to explore a few blocks before having to load into a new Zone in addition to that there are almost no NPCs on the streets and there is very little to do in this world in general showcasing how poorly suited this type of game was for the handheld technology of that time the PSP just couldn't handle a full-on Assassin's Creed game and this version of Cyprus probably is the best possible option we could have gotten with the tools they had the game does a solid job of imitating the holy land of ac1 but in a series we're visiting new locales is such a huge part of the appeal making an ugly version of a world we already got to explore is a pretty tough sell foreign while it is debatable as to whether or not it makes sense to include bloodlines on this list the same can't be said for Assassin's Creed 3 liberation I didn't rank this game in my last video because of the game's handheld nature and the separation from the mainline series that comes with that but my revisit to 1700s Louisiana reminded me that Liberation is a fully fledged Assassin's Creed game with a fully fledged Assassin's Creed setting the game splits its focus mostly between the City of New Orleans and the Bayou of Louisiana mirroring the Dual focus on City Life and Wilderness that Define the console title it released alongside Assassin's Creed 3. now I was blown away by the game when it came out I didn't own a Vita so I played the game much later when it came out on PS4 but I couldn't believe that that quality was possible on a handheld title from a graphical standpoint the game holds its own against a majority of the PS3 air Assassin's Creed games which definitely helps the setting it's still a handheld game though and with that does come its fair share of issues as far as the Bayou goes the game uses the same tree climbing systems AC3 which I do have my issues with my main gripe being the linearity of tree travel however while AC3 offers the player a wide open Frontier to explore with the trees just being one tool for travel the Bayou was very restrictive when it comes to exploration the ground level is home to these Gator infested swamps and natural walls that Aveline can't climb forcing the player to get around via the dull linear paths that the trees provide whereas the frontier was open and expansive concessions for The Vedas considerably less powerful Hardware made the Bayou frustrating and boring to explore at times New Orleans does fare better but it's here that we see how Liberation Falls prey to the same big issue that Bloodlines does which is that it is a handheld rehash of a better console title in this case AC3 New Orleans and Dubai were built from the same basic assets as the world of AC3 and neither ends up forming their own identity as a result traversing the buildings of New Orleans feels mostly the same as traversing the buildings of Boston just worse and traversing the Trees of the Bayou is mostly the same as traversing the Trees of the frontier again just worse if this game had done anything new I might have been able to rank it higher but as it stands there is no experience you can get in Liberation that isn't outright better in AC3 combine that with an incredibly repetitive soundtrack The Sloppy handling of its slavery era storyline and a lack of story events or activities that enhance the setting in any real way and you're left with a setting that feels like a shallow backdrop when you compare it to the console games [Music] with the North Atlantic during the Seven Years War from Assassin's Creed Rogue were finally moving into Mainline territory and with that we're also getting a very clear jump in quality for the list Rogue excels in showcasing these beautiful wide open Landscapes and it's one of those games where you can see the concept art in every Vista New York from AC3 is reused here but the real stars of Rogue are the two new areas the North Atlantic and the river valley the North Atlantic map is mostly water similar to the Caribbean of AC4 but it sets itself apart with a snowy Northern backdrop sheets of ice have to be rammed through glaciers block your path and Northern fauna like these penguin adjacent great Ox can be found loitering near Frozen shipwrecks these animals are sadly extinct it contrasts well with the river valley which attempts to combine the American wilderness of AC3 with the sailing mechanics of AC4 you can go from Full Sail to free running through Albany on a dime and it offers the player a familiar yet unique hybrid type of traversal that no other game in the series has really attempted at this level even with all that it is still my worst ranked Mainline setting and you are going to notice a pattern with these lower rank settings which is too much copy pasting of other games even with all the work the developers did to make the northeastern corner of the Americas unique it still feels very derivative of AC3 and 4 instead of being an evolution of either the North Atlantic has this snowy atmosphere but at the end of the day it functions exactly the same way as ac4's Caribbean many of the activities in this game are lifted straight from AC4 with you attacking forts searching for Buried Treasure and attacking Merchant ships for gold you basically play as a pirate in a game where your character is not a pirate and as a result your protagonist exists in a world that was clearly tailored for another character and given a new skin the influence of AC3 comes into play with the River Valley and the game's singular City New York it's easy to see in New York because that city is lifted verbatim from AC3 which is the only time in the series a primary city has been reused in that way but the river valley has the most issues it has the exact same visual style as ac3's Frontier but the addition of the sailing mechanic actually makes things a lot less open Shea does not have the freedom of exploration that the player gets in AC3 with him exploring land masses wardened off by the river instead of a large and open Frontier as a result mountains and trees are traversed in a much more linear fashion by comparison to AC3 the biggest issue is probably the fact that the river valley has absolutely no historical basis in the real world the franchise has always had a problem with its wide open Wilderness Maps since the very first game we've had Maps like the kingdom which conceptualizes Akra as directly west of Jerusalem when in reality it should be almost straight North and the frontier of AC3 does very similar things with randomly placing real-life locations on the map but at the end of the day even if the placements were haphazard the frontier still represented the forests and the fields of the region while the river valley map looks nothing like the area it's trying to represent the Hudson River becomes a giant lake and a large chunk of the East Coast exists as Island towns within that Lake for example in the game Sleepy Hollow New York is a bizarre Island City directly east of the Washington estate in Mount Vernon which is in Virginia this is all a fantasy map built around the hybrid land water mechanic in a series where the game mechanics should really be built around the setting instead of the other way around this lack of originality and accuracy does keep the setting from matching the other console titles but unique traversal mechanics and a beautiful picturesque world do make it more than worthy of exploration foreign [Music] after exploring Rome in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Ezio's next adventure would take him to the former seat of the Eastern Roman Empire Constantinople now I was very happy when the game launched because it ticked all the boxes that I wanted from a new AC setting at the time the atmosphere was much more colorful and the architecture was a nice change after two straight games in Italy and things like climbing the Aya Sofia or strolling through the Grand Bazaar were experiences that were very unique to the series at the time and honestly still are today the city is also more compact than previous settings with narrow streets filled with civilians and Ezio's hook blade lets him Traverse faster than ever before as well letting him travel via the many zipline ropes that cover the rooftops in addition to giving his regular free running abilities some upgrades as well my enjoyment of the setting is unfortunately tapered by the fact that it was also clearly rushed and thrown together at the last minute Revelations as a game has the shortest Dev time of any AC game and its production was spread across a dozen Studios just to get something ready for launch by the holidays this lack of time is very much felt when exploring the city many of the buildings feel suspiciously like the Italian buildings we saw in Rome with some new textures slapped on and the city as a whole is very repetitive you take a setting like brotherhoods which had a city a Countryside ruins and multiple one-off maps and other regions to explore whereas Constantinople as a map is very monotonous from corner to corner while Ubisoft claimed there would be unique districts to keep the city interesting each block ends up being relatively indistinguishable from every other block you do explore the underground city of cappadocio for one sequence and while I appreciate the added variety the segment is just too brief to make a big impact compared to the main city in addition to this while Brotherhood was filled with side activities that existed solely to flesh out the city of Rome Revelations has almost no side content and what it does have was copied straight from Brotherhood instead of tailoring New Missions to this setting it is a shame because the game takes place at a really fascinating time period where Constantinople was recovering from a major shift in power and it feels Wasted by the fact that they had to rush the game out Constantinople is colorful and it is gorgeous and it's actually my love of the setting that makes me wish Ubisoft had put more time and resources into it I would have loved to see what kind of map they could have made with this setting if they were given more than a year but at the end of the day Constantinople deserved better than the expedited development process that it did get [Music] in some ways 9th century England is the most beautiful world the AC team has ever created it is rendered in such beautiful detail with a huge map that spans a large portion of the country as we know it today I love watching trees Ripple in the harsh winds and the waves crash against the chalky Cliff faces of the Seven Sisters if Rogue had great Landscapes then Valhalla dials everything up a notch with Rolling Hills dense bogs snowy fields and some serviceable cityscapes too this is easily the most diverse singular map in the series plus it puts a chunk of Norway in as a separate map and France and Ireland as DLC maps however this game more so than most in the series has an issue with historical accuracy now the Assassin's Creed games are video games they are popcorn fun and with that comes in accuracy with every title but that being said visiting artistic depictions of these long-lost places is still the main draw of the franchise and that doesn't work if those depictions barely pull from history at all I put a link in the description to a Reddit post by a group of historians on ask historians regarding accuracy in the game and while you should always take Reddit posts with a grain of salt I found it to be the most comprehensive collection of info on this topic if you want to jump start your own research the game leans hard into contemporary pop culture depictions of Vikings as these tattooed Warriors clad head to toe in leather and fur a more realistic male option is usually substituted for more visually striking brigandine or scale on avor and NPCs and weapons come in exaggerated shapes and sizes it was a sharp turn coming after Odyssey which actually taught me a lot about different weapons and armor that could have been found in Classical Greece even with that game's artistic flourishes and you contrast that with Valhalla where it is very tough to equip avor with a kit that doesn't look like it belongs in Skyrim or Game of Thrones The beautiful landscape I discussed heavily exaggerates the disparity in climate between northern and southern England with York portrayed as a snowy mountain town and the cities of the game like London choose to focus on these towering Roman ruins that are probably exaggerated far beyond what would have actually stood at that time what makes the inaccuracies of the world in the city even worse is that the game also has a problem with making traversal and exploration fun recent games in the series have an issue with putting buildings too far apart to encourage rooftop traversal forcing players to the ground level a little too often but Valhalla overcompensated and has the opposite problem and a lot of these towns and cities are covered in these linear rope paths that make me feel like I was tightrope walking where the devs wanted me to go instead of forging my own path the cities are also incredibly small and empty much more so than they appear in TV shows like the last Kingdom or Vikings now these are also very inaccurate TV shows but since Valhalla is so loose with the time period anyway they could have at least made exaggerations that actually improve the gameplay if they were going to make them at all outside of the Cities the Longboat isn't nearly as interesting to use as the ships of AC4 Rogue and odyssey given that the rivers that run through England just don't have a lot to explore now I'm sure a lot of these complaints come from recency bias and Valhalla is definitely a new standard when it comes to building these beautiful and detailed landscapes but it has neither the cultural immersion nor the fun factor of games higher on this list and I hope Ubisoft steps up their game when it comes to historical accuracy in their next title Assassin's Creed 3 being set in the American colony shook up the franchise more than any other game in the series up to that point we had gotten used to these dense cityscapes so the simpler colonial buildings and the wide open Wilderness was a really big change it was exciting to experience when it came out because AC3 was just so much bigger than any game before it the frontier was huge and varied and there were so many things to explore and see and while it's dwarfed by the AC games we see nowadays at the time AC3 felt almost overwhelmingly large and full of things to do one thing the devs did really well was representing the day-to-day lives of people living in that era much more so than they had in the past the game is really interested in showing you what life might have been like in the colonies during the Revolutionary War mostly for the colonizers themselves but it was nice to see that they hired accurate actors and advisors to make sure its portrayal of ganyangaha as a language was accurate the player's Hub in the homestead allows you to meet people of various era accurate professions and learn about their work to some extent and you can explore the cities to find people simply living their lives at the markets and the docks the game really wants you to be able to role play in this setting you can take on Hunting contracts for frontiersmen or naval contracts as a privateer plus it's fantastic that the seasons change meaning that every region actually has two maps one for summer and one for winter the dynamic weather effects were also vastly improved with storms really looking and sounding authentic Assassin's Creed 3 does fall behind a little bit when it comes to that fun Factor the cities of Boston and New York are pretty much aesthetically the same and while it's awesome to see how different these cities could have looked back then they just don't have the historical spectacle of the landmarks of other games in the series the frontier does have a ton of different things to do and see but as I mentioned when discussing Liberation the tree climbing just isn't that fun Assassin's Creed in its early days especially was defined by the wide open options for climbing letting you use almost any piece of the wall face as a handhold in contrast to the linear Ledges that are common in other games with climbing mechanics the frontier of AC3 is defined by wide open areas but also by the linear tree paths within tree travel is almost entirely horizontal along a linear path of branches I was hoping they would add verticality and more capacity for creativity to the mix but when you are in a tree there is usually just one path you can take to get off that tree AC3 set the stage when it came to filling its world with immersive era appropriate activities and characters but some of the changes to the Assassin's Creed system made it feel a little more bland and the spectacle of previous games was sorely missed [Music] things have changed a lot since the original game for better and for worse but its representation of the holy land during the Third Crusade was easily the best part of the experience ac1 Simplicity is a fantastic trait with the blocky architecture of its cities meshing perfectly with Altair's free running mechanics the city is on much more of a clear grid than other games in the series pulling from Old School Platformers like Tomb Raider your character as a result feels great to control and the buildings feel perfectly placed for the type of free running that the game employs each city is split between its richer and poorer districts and that combined with identifiable landmarks as they would have been a thousand years ago gives the game a lot of variety the game has three cities plus the Assassin's stronghold of mossiaf and the kingdom area that connects the cities although I will say the kingdom map sucks because it's inaccurate and there's nothing to do in it but it only really exists to give the player a sense of distance between the main cities so I don't really knock it for that Jerusalem Akra and Damascus have an amazing atmosphere to them with Beggars stopping you in the street mercenaries patrolling with weapons you can steal and orator spewing propaganda Assassin's Creed uses its setting to evoke a sense of tension and provide the player with a backstory about what life might have been like on both sides of the Third Crusade games since ac-1 have tried and failed to do the same thing in this series the game still acts as proof of concept in many ways and there are still a lot of aspects of the setting that don't stand the test of time as well as others the three cities are very samey with the same basic architecture and building layout being used in all three the devs tried to hide this by giving each City a bizarre color filter but there isn't a ton to actually differentiate them this was also before side missions entered the series so the only thing you can really do in this world is collect dozens upon dozens of flags which doesn't exactly encourage exploration as a result the setting of ac1 is a little dated but it still did a perfect job of setting the tone for things to come and I still enjoy returning to this version of the Holy Land when I have time [Music] [Applause] Ubisoft struck gold with ac2 so it made sense for them to just want to do more of that for the next game the city of Rome takes the best Concepts from ac2's Italian setting with the twist of having a majority of the game take place on a single larger map this experiment paid off and would inform how the company handled many of the future Assassin's Creed settings now while Revelations would end up stifled by ubisoft's greedy need to rush development Brotherhood actually ended up being a very polished and well put together game this is reflected in the city of Rome which despite reusing many of the assets of ac2 has its own Vibe and atmosphere the ruins that are spread throughout the map evoke a sense of ancient history that sets it apart from its predecessor Vatican City the city proper the ruins and the countryside all feel distinct from one another making Rome feel like a real and dynamic location Brotherhood does a fantastic job of making the setting distinctly intertwined with the rest of the game the story of Brotherhood revolves around the corruption that plagues the city of Rome and Ezio's fight to weed it out Brotherhood was the first game in the series to have fully fledged side missions and most of these missions are related in one way or another to the Salvation of the city sometimes the player will purchase buildings and famous landmarks to restore them sometimes they'll be burning down enemy towers and sometimes they'll be assisting Allied factions to regain their hold on the city the setting is important in every AC game but Rome is one that is actually Central to both the story and the gameplay the only issue I really have with the game is that most of what I enjoy about it was already stuff I enjoyed in ac2 the architecture and the aesthetic the drew me in was already great in that game and in a series where one of the main draws is having a new setting every installment Brotherhood does feel like more of the same with an extra coat of Polish it's hard for me to rank it higher because so many of the assets are exactly the same as ac2 and that feeling of awe you get from popping in a new AC game to explore a totally unique setting just isn't something you're gonna get from Rome here despite this the game still took huge steps forward when it came to adding immersive side content and making the settings Central to the player experience and the series owes a lot of its future successes to this iteration of Rome [Music] time has made Assassin's Creed Unity the most controversial entry in the series by far and the City of Paris likewise represents both the best and the worst the series has to offer it is by far the most representative of the original promise of Assassin's Creed with a dense Wide Open City with lots of opportunity to take to the rooftops the traversal system of this game works beautifully in tandem with the layout of those rooftops and while it has a lot of Jank to it that I attribute to a rushed and troubled development process the parkour up and down features give the world a vertical flow that had never existed before the addition of detailed Interiors was also a huge step making the world feel bigger without actually expanding its borders meanwhile street level NPCs have an incredible amount of variety in their animations making Unity a great game to just walk through the streets in watching normal folk do different things that being said I will say the large crowds that the game advertise so heavily before release are a mixed bag it is impressive to see so many NPCs on screen at once but it clearly takes its toll on the game and it's obvious that it doesn't quite work which is probably why they never tried it again only a handful of NPCs at any given time will have their textures loaded in and if you get up high enough and aim at the crowd the game will wig out trying to load all those textures I recorded this segment on PC because I wanted to see if it would be any better but I didn't notice many big improvements to the stability of the crowds even with all that the technical stuff really doesn't bother me that much and my biggest problem with the setting is that despite having the most intricately detailed map in the franchise the game doesn't really do a good job of showcasing it to the player and incentivizing exploration the concept of Ubisoft bloat was really ramping up in the company's games around this time and Paris definitely Falls victim to it we just discussed how Brotherhood excels at tying everything the player does to the setting of Rome and Paris is on the opposite end of that Spectrum there are almost no period appropriate or story enhancing activities to immerse the player in the setting instead we get a few dozen Paris story side missions which usually consist of Arno silently accepting a quest sprinting to a location where either enemies or a special object would have spawned and then sprinting back for a reward without actually saying a word the game also got Flack for needlessly filling the map with icons despite not having that much more content than your average AC game to hammer in that point this is what my map looks like on my 100 save file all content is complete aside from some extra initiate stuff but the map is still covered in icons even more importantly the game doesn't do a lot to showcase the French Revolution during which it is set in fact outside of the storming of the Bastille early in the game you don't see lead up related to the French Revolution until chapter 8 out of 12 and the revolution doesn't actually start until chapter 10 as the narrative is already wrapping up the game tries to make up for this by shoehorning that aspect of the story Into the co-op missions but even then all you really get is a narrated blurb before each mission the French Revolution is supposed to be as much this game's setting as Paris itself and the game really dropped the ball when presenting it to the player I know that for a lot of people the gorgeous visuals and the density and detail of the city make Paris their number one and that is deserved the highs of unity's world really do shine and while I do like to imagine the scenario in which the devs were given the time and resources to give players more to do in the city Paris still is one of ubisoft's triumphs [Music] spectacle is a big part of this series and odyssey exemplifies that Above the Rest of the games on this list as of this recording Classical Greece during the Peloponnesian War is the furthest back the series has ever gone by about 400 years and there is an air of exploring the ancient and unknown that sets it apart from the other games I look at the city of Athens and I am reminded of the cultural significance and usefulness this Series has the potential to have while this is clearly an artistic rendering of the setting it also acts as a fantastic interactive simulation of a two and a half thousand year old city and you can't really find that anywhere else there is just so much detail in the world that the devs build here and walking from the marble District to the textile District of Athens is almost as exciting as sailing the Aegean Sea and exploring the various Islands the game features almost but not quite because exploration in this game is top-notch not only is the mainland rendered in full detail but a good chunk of the Greek Islands as well as the entirety of the seabed are completely explorable different regions have distinct personalities ranging from the cherry blossom covered town of Leia to the brutal Reds and blacks of Sparta the journey north to south and across the islands that the story takes the player through made reaching new places exciting and I was 70 hours in before I realized there was snow on the map I always felt like Odyssey setting was giving me things to do ranging from Naval battles to old Greek fighting tournaments to underwater shipwreck looting plus a ton of legitimately interesting side missions that do add to the world in addition to a lot that really are just filler and with that comes some of my complaints for the setting the scale of the world is just a bit too big for its own good and it's not able to make every inch interesting you will notice a lot of copy pasted Forts and mountains with the same assets and despite the fact that this game probably has the most unique things to see in the series you have to get through a lot of repetition if you actually want to see all those things the cities also lack verticality due to the time period making these urban areas feel less exciting to explore than in other games the game also has these goliath-sized statues that I'm pretty sure aren't accurate and while they do add to the scale of the game and look very cool they delve a little too far into fantasy for me even a real Statue like the Athena promicos appears to be heavily exaggerated from real life reports which Peg it around 9 meters high this is a lot taller than that personally I prefer when they stick to realism when they can as I do find that more immersive however while Valhalla had this inaccuracy at the core of its World design Odyssey uses it to add flavor to a much more grounded depiction of Grease so it doesn't bother me as much overall we are getting into territory where I have less and less to complain about Odyssey is a gorgeous game with a gorgeous setting and it has some of the best exploration and World building in this series [Music] there was a time when Assassin's Creed almost exclusively went forward in time and that culminated with the release of Assassin's Creed Syndicate in 2015. Syndicate had a relatively muted release given the poor reception of unity and it doesn't come up in conversation much anymore but I think many aspects of Syndicate do deserve a second look especially the city of London which I legitimately think is the most well done individual City in the series now there are clear flaws with the city namely the wide streets that require the use of a rope launcher to cross certain gaps breaking the flow of free running at times free running itself is also slightly simplified which succeeds in removing a lot of unity's Jank while also removing some of the creativity from that system there is also more pop in than I'd like and while the game performs significantly better than its predecessor I think it scaled back a little too far from unity's NPC density as it lacks hustle and bustle on the streets but there is just too much to like about London in Assassin's Creed Syndicate and so much effort put into making the world feel alive and explorable Vehicles add a lot given how rarely they are used in this series so getting to ride a ship along the Thames or hijack an old-timey fire engine adds a unique flavor to the game traversal follows a similar flow to Unity and while it is admittedly simplified it is still a ton of fun to travel the rooftops of London which due to the close proximity to modern day has a ton of recognizable landmarks it's clear that the devs wanted to make a game that had fun with the setting and put its focus on London itself in the game you can fight in illegal combat tournaments shut down factories that exploit child labor start a gang war or even get in a fight on a moving train the activities in the game are era appropriate and they make the setting better giving the player a reason to go from District to District looking for things to do the game also makes great use of the historical characters of the time with fun segments involving Charles Dickens Charles Darwin and even Queen Victoria herself it was nice having real narrative side content to seek out given how much I missed that in unity also while Paris had more explorable Interiors Syndicate has an amazing variety of them especially in the Black Box missions where you will pursue Targets in an asylum an old theater and a bank just to name a few and if we're talking varied content the Excursion to World War One era London may be the coolest surprise in the franchise's history for me personally this city is the perfect mix of free-running immersive activities and Grand architecture and that makes it my favorite city in the series [Music] London may be my favorite city but my favorite games in the series take you on an adventure to a variety of different places and that's something that all three of my top three settings accomplish I'll never forget that sense of adventure I got from exploring Renaissance Italy in Assassin's Creed 2. while ac1 was an interesting experiment ac2 made the series a must play and it is the game that every subsequent installment has been compared to Renaissance Italy was just such a unique and beautiful choice for a sophomore outing and it left a real lasting impression like ac1 the world is tailored perfectly to the protagonist's style of movement making traversal very fun and comfortable and the rooftops of Florence and Venice are just so interesting to freely run across the cities here feel like they are built to be climbed and explored and yes for kids music set a standard that has not been met since this game with both cinematic and ambient tracks pulling the player into this world I could recognize the themes of Florence OR Venice by heart and I wish the other games in this series would use ambient music like this music can play such a huge role in making a setting memorable and the other games could do a much better job of that now if you did watch my old video you might notice that I did drop this game down one rank I had it second before and now I have it third my reasoning here being that while ac2 is still my favorite game in the series the setting is one of those things that is kind of a product of its time in certain ways meaningful side content hadn't really been figured out and the main motivator for people to explore outside of the story was to collect 100 feathers scattered around the different maps that didn't really have a reward it's not only a negative though I do appreciate the intimacy of a smaller World it might not have as many activities to spice it up but Ezio's Hub and Monterey Joni feels like a home and I missed the distinctly voiced shopkeepers you could find throughout the cities and while many other games do rely on side content to build up the setting I do think ac2's main story does a great job of giving you something new to see every sequence the carnival segment especially adds some really nice variety to the setting and I appreciated that Ezio also spends time briefly in the Tuscan Countryside and in Romania in addition to the two main cities for a lot of people Renaissance Italy is the Assassin's Creed setting and while I do think some games have done certain things better with their settings ac2 was the first game in the series to make something that was really special in that regard if ac2 was dropped down a rank that means another setting had to be bumped up and for me that setting is Assassin's Creed 4's Caribbean during the Golden Age of piracy in the West this setting was a surprise at the time as it diverged even further from the norm than its predecessor Assassin's Creed 3. sailing became as prominent as free running and the world was expanded to include the uncharted waters of the Caribbean what could have honestly been a disaster ended up being arguably the most fun setting to explore in the entire series AC4 does a great job incentivizing exploration which is a concept I've talked a lot about in this video and when I do that AC4 is the game I'm comparing those settings to the world is just chock full of things that make exploration fun you have Naval battles treasure hunts Plantation and Fort raids whaling just plenty of morally ambiguous fun to be had and the fact that these activities are meaningful to the world makes the world feel dense without feeling bloated it's also very colorful a welcome reprieve from the drab colors of AC3 with gold and Sands and Misty rainforests that build very memorable images the cities are really good too and while they don't hit the heights of cities like Florence OR Paris or London they are perfect for the game that they are in Havana is beautifully reminiscent of the European locales of the Ezio Trilogy and Kingston's British colonial architecture reminds me more of AC3 Nassau is its own thing and it's an interesting interpretation of what the pirate libertalia of the time might have looked like it's also really cool that the historical characters are so well-rounded in this game you have Blackbeard and Bonnie Mary Reed Charles Vane Ben hornagold and Bartholomew Roberts to name a few all of whom are fleshed out characters with real story arcs and we are lucky to even get one historical character with that kind of impact in the other AC games the story just shows a lot of respect to the Golden Age of piracy more so than we usually get for the settings in these games but AC4 loves its world and the story and activities all show that everything acts in service to the setting and immerses the player in a pirate experience that no game since has come even close to matching in any series and as a period piece it Rivals Red Dead in terms of quality to this day the game is worth popping in just to sail around the Caribbean listening to an old sea shanty and marveling at the job the devs did with this setting [Music] my opinion here has not changed and of all the criteria for a great setting that I've brought up in this video I still think ptolemaic Egypt and Assassin's Creed Origins checks the most off the setting has the immersive content of AC4 the heart of ac2 and the exploration of AC Odyssey all while doing its own thing entirely Egypt in the era of Cleopatra and Caesar was one of the most highly requested settings before it came out and for good reason there are so many pieces of history that stem from that era that people wanted to see with their own eyes and Origins does not disappoint while Odyssey could feel repetitive at times Origins is incredibly intentional in its World design and no part of the map feels like filler even the wide open desert feels like it's there for a reason portraying the immensity and brutality of the climate and watching bayek slowly lose his mind and the desert heat is very cool I've seen stuff like that done in linear games but this was the first portrayal I had seen of a character getting lost in the desert done this well in an open world game Wildlife shines here more than in the other games with hippos crocodiles and lions offering a legitimate threat as you Traverse the world the landscape is also full of small towns and Farms that showcase the Ingenuity of irrigation along the Nile the cities themselves are amazing and completely unique to any other game Memphis is a spectacle to look at and a gorgeous display of Egyptian architecture while the Greek city of Alexandria is a beast all on its own and it is 100 deserving of a spot as one of the best cities in this series there's just so much history to it similar to Athens and AC Odyssey the lighthouse is amazing to get to see in a 3D space rivaling the Pyramids of Giza but a game with two wonders of the world was always going to have a great setting the game is just so good at appealing to Modern fantasies of Egypt you can slide down the pyramids climb to the top of the Sphinx fight in a gladiatorial Arena race through the Hippodrome battle a hippo on the Nile go hunting in the mountains or take a chariot fight through the streets of Alexandria the balance of fun and historical Intrigue is just perfect in this game Origins is a game that I found legitimately educational and it sparked enough interest in the setting to encourage me to research it more which is really important in an Assassin's Creed game it showcases everything a player would want to see from a game set in Egypt in this time period and more and it does so with a loving level of detail that every game in this series should aspire to [Music] we now know that the series is headed to Baghdad next year and while we haven't seen any gameplay as of yet to Hype up excitement for the game itself it sounds like a really cool setting but I can't wait to see more of Ubisoft also announced that the new Infinity platform will finally take the series to feudal Japan along awaited setting for the fans as well as what appears to be the European Witch Trials after that although that hasn't been confirmed I can't deny that I am skeptical of this new Infinity platform and we really don't know much about it right now but the cool thing about the series is that even if it sucks I bet the settings are still going to be really cool I'm sure there's even an audience for the upcoming mobile game set in China I just love how this series guides players through history and whether it be the immersive and engaging worlds of the Caribbean and London or the beautifully detailed worlds of Paris and Renaissance Italy there is a setting to please everyone in this series what's your favorite setting this is just a channel where I hope to talk about things that I like for fun and as of this recording this is the only video I've got so if you strike up conversation there is a good chance I'll respond in the comments it took me a solid five months and a couple dozen hours of footage and audio recording to make this video so I really do appreciate you making it to the end with me if you have any other topics you'd like me to talk about in this series or any other just let me know but in any case take care of yourself and enjoy the rest of your day foreign [Music]

Channel: So Says Jay

Views: 282,628

Keywords: Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed Mirage, Assassin's Creed Infinity, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Assassin's Creed Origins, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Assassin's Creed Unity, Assassin's Creed Rogue, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Assassin's Creed III, Assassin's Creed Revelations, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Assassin's Creed II

Id: cxXeLNqBpaE

Length: 42min 45sec (2565 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 11 2022