10 years ago, amid the early years of the eighth console generation, Ubisoft released Assassin’s Creed Rogue and Assassin’s Creed Unity. The seventh and eighth mainline entries in the Assassin’s Creed series, Rogue and Unity, marked pivotal turning points in the then seven-year-old franchise. Unity was the series’ first large step into the realms of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, while Rogue was designed as a final sendoff for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles the series originally debuted on. Here, within Assassin’s Creed Rogue and Assassin’s Creed Unity, Ubisoft showcased different perspectives on the war between Assassins and Templars, both in the past and modern-day, while innovating the series' landmark gameplay.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue and Unity’s Narrative Explained
By 2014, most Assassin’s Creed players had become familiar with the series' narrative tropes. Assassins were the good guys, while the Templars were conniving villains bent on stripping people’s freedoms. However, Ubisoft Sofia sought to switch this trope up with the seventh generation’s last Assassin’s Creed game.
In Rogue, players embody an unnamed present-day Abstergo Entertainment employee who is ordered to relive the memories of 18th-century Assassin Shay Cormac in order to help restart Abstergo’s systems. As Cormac, players witness and take part in the destruction of the Colonial Brotherhood led by a young Achilles Davenport after the Mentor repeatedly sought Precursor artifacts that killed thousands. Cormac eventually joins the Templars after aligning to stop Davenport.
Rogue effectively served as the missing piece bridging the narratives of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry, and Assassin’s Creed 3 together, but it also served as a lead into Unity’s story. At the end of Rogue, Cormac travels to the Palace of Versailles, France in 1776 to retrieve a Precursor Box and take out the Assassin Charles Dorian, leaving his son Arno Dorian an orphan. While Cormac is not seen in Unity, this is the background event of Unity’s intro sequence, with Arno coming upon his father’s corpse and subsequently raised by Templar Grand Master François de la Serre alongside his daughter Élise. Cormac hints that he and the Templars laid the groundwork for the French Revolution of 1789.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue and Unity’s Narrative Innovations
Both Rogue and Unity spotlight lesser-seen aspects of the Assassin-Templar War, showcasing how the Assassins could be just as villainous as the Templars could be and vice versa. Templars such as François and George Monro were shown to be compassionate and selfless individuals, while Assassins such as Louis-Joseph Gaultier, Chevalier de la Vérendrye, and Pierre Bellec were shown to be pompous.
These games helped broaden the Assassin’s Creed world and helped depict the Assassin-Templar War as more gray than black and white. That said, while Rogue’s modern-day storyline showed the inner workings of Abstergo and displayed how present-day individuals are recruited into the Templar Order, Unity effectively had no modern-day plot.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue and Unity’s Gameplay Explained
Rogue was essentially a clone of Black Flag in terms of gameplay, and since Rogue took place in the international Seven Years’ War, Sofia continued to have players set sail on a ship—primarily in the Northern Atlantic Ocean. Due to this colder setting, Rogue introduced upgradeable ice-breaker rams to Cormac’s ship, the Morrigan, to break apart glaciers and ice as well as deal more damage when ramming into ships. Sofia additionally implemented Assassin’s Creed’s multiplayer circle radar mechanic to indicate when Cormac is near a hidden Assassin. One of Cormac's most useful weapons was the air rifle, allowing players to silently but quickly fire poison and sleep darts, firecrackers, and grenades.
The first game built on the AnvilNext 2.0 game engine, Unity was a dramatic departure from its predecessor Black Flag in terms of gameplay. Instead of the wide-open Caribbean islands, Unity was set in the tight corridors of 18th-century Paris. With this city setting in mind, Ubisoft Montreal drastically improved Unity’s parkour mechanics, making climbing through a city more seamless but still skillful than ever before, and it's debatable that no other Assassin’s Creed game has topped Unity’s parkour since.
Unity was also the first Assassin’s Creed game to introduce cooperative multiplayer to the series, allowing up to four players to take part in select missions throughout the city to level up and upgrade skills and equipment.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue and Unity’s Gameplay Contrast
While Rogue has players embody a Templar, Cormac’s gameplay was the same as Edward Kenway’s for the most part. Still, with a short development period, Rogue did not launch with Assassin’s Creed Unity's take on multiplayer. Meanwhile, Unity’s more intricate parkour and combat mechanics gave seasoned players more of a fun challenge to play through, despite widespread bugs and glitches affecting the game at launch.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue was remastered in 2018 for eighth-generation consoles and in 2019 as part of the Assassin's Creed: Rebel Collection for the Nintendo Switch, while Assassin’s Creed Unity hasn’t been remastered yet.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue and Unity’s Legacy and Impact
Narratively, both Rogue and Unity are often regarded as unique experiments in the Assassin’s Creed series. While many enjoyed playing as an Assassin-turned-Templar, Rogue’s short length and lack of expanded connection with Unity’s story was disappointing. Similarly, while Arno’s Ezio-like personality and Romeo and Juliet-like romance with Élise were enjoyable, Unity’s villain, François-Thomas Germain, was arguably dull compared to prior complex antagonists such as Haytham Kenway. At the time, Assassin’s Creed's annual releases and similar gameplay mechanics seen throughout most of the series could be seen as tiring and may have been big factors leading to RPG entries such as Assassin’s Creed Origins.
Despite these setbacks, Assassin’s Creed Rogue and Assassin’s Creed Unity are now often seen as some of the franchise's best games. Unity’s impressive visuals and seamless recreation of iconic French landmarks such as the Notre-Dame cathedral keep players returning to the game a decade later. Likewise, Rogue’s complex story and thematic messages often keep new and old players perplexed about who truly are the good guys in Assassin’s Creed's world. Following a handful of Assassin's Creed RPGs with Odyssey and Valhalla, Rogue and Unity are a reminder of Assassin’s Creed's core pillars and traditions dating back to 2007—faults and all.
Assassin's Creed Rogue
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 70 /100 Critics Rec: 31%
- Released
- November 11, 2014
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ due to Blood, Strong Language, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Ubisoft
- Publisher(s)
- Ubisoft
- Engine
- AnvilNext
- Franchise
- Assassin's Creed
WHERE TO PLAY
- Platform(s)
- Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Stadia
- Genre(s)
- Action, Open-World
- How Long To Beat
- 11 Hours
- PS Plus Availability
- Extra & Premium
- OpenCritic Rating
- Fair
