ASSASSINS CREED : ROGUE CAMPAIGN REVIEW

Assassin's Creed Rogue is an action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Sofia and released by Ubisoft. It is the seventh major installment of the Assassin's Creed series and is set between 2013's Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and 2012's Assassin's Creed III, with its final mission being the prologue to 2014's Assassin's Creed Unity. It was released in March 2015 for Microsoft Windows.

The plot is part of the fictional history of real-world events and follows the centuries-old struggle between the Assassins, who fight for peace with free will, and the Templars, who want peace through control. The story is set in the mid-18th century during the Seven Years' War and follows Shay Patrick Cormac, an Assassin-turned-Templar who, after being betrayed, hunts down former members of his Brotherhood. The Gameplay in Rogue is very similar to that of the Black Flag with a mixture of ship-based naval exploration and third-party land-based exploration with some new features.

GAMEPLAY

Shay and Morrigan.

Assassin's Creed Rogue is an action-adventure, stealth game set in an open world environment and played from a third-party perspective. The ship of Shay, the Morrigan. The Morrigan has a shallower design compared to Edward Kenway's Jackdaw of Assassin's Creed IV: the Black Flag, allowing for river travel. New features include weapons such as the release of an oil slick that can then be ignited, Puckle guns, and the ability of the enemy to board the Morrigan during a ship-to-ship battle. There are icebergs that can be rammed with an icebreaker. However, the underwater diving missions included in the Black Flag do not exist as swimming in the North Atlantic causes the health of the player to deteriorate rapidly due to the frigid water, although Shay is able to swim in the more southerly waters of the river valley.

Air Assassination with sword. (Templar style)

For combat, the game introduces an air rifle, similar to the Black Flag blowpipe, which allows the player to silently remove enemies at a distance. The air rifle can be equipped with a variety of different projectiles, such as firecrackers. The player can also use it as a grenade launcher to fire shrapnel grenades and other loads. Hand-to-hand battles have been slightly modified, and now enemy attacks can be countered by timing. Enemy Assassins may hide in the bushes, mingle with the crowds, and carry out air assassinations against the player. Poison gas can now be used as an environmental weapon, and Shay has a mask that can mitigate its effects. Shay is capable of detecting the enemy's presence with the red edges of the screen and is also able to predict precisely when and from where his enemies will strike.

Yes! I am a god. I killed every soldier in this outpost and saved you.

Side missions and activities return, a number of which are based on those of the previous games. Reflecting the role of Shay as a Templar, the game introduces a new side mission: Assassin Interception. These, mirror the Assassination side missions in previous games, in which Shay, after intercepting a messenger pigeon carrying an assassination contract, must prevent an innocent man from being murdered by finding and killing Assassins hidden in the vicinity.

The main source of income is the renovation of Assassin-controlled gang shelters. The aim of each hiding place is to kill a gang leader who has an unblockable hidden blade strike, to burn the flag of the gang, and in some cases to kill defectors. After completion of the hideout, players will have places to renovate that require a stone to be renovated. There are a total of ten gang hiding places, and the gang leaders are the toughest enemies in the game. The legendary battles of the ship make a return as well. In order to overcome these challenges, the player may upgrade to the Morrigan as the game progresses.

PLOT

Morrigan traveling fast.

Shay Patrick Cormac is a new recruit to the Assassin Colonial Brotherhood whose potential is offset by his insubordination. While training with the North Atlantic chapter under the Assassin Mentor Achilles Davenport, he encounters the Assassin Adéwalé, who brings news that the Haitian city of Port-au-Prince was devastated by an earthquake in search of the Precursor Temple containing the Piece of Eden. With his experience as captain of ships—including the recently acquired Morrigan—Cormac is engaged in an investigation of Templar's interests in the artifact and manuscript of the Precursor linked to the temple.

As a Templar courier, he delivers the artifact and the manuscript to Benjamin Franklin, whose electrical experiments on the artifact generate a map showing the location of the Precursor temples around the world. He identifies one in Lisbon, and Cormac is dispatched by Davenport to retrieve the piece of Eden that it contains. However, after seeing their refusal to engage in dialogue with the Templars, Cormac began questioning the motives of the Assassins and was asked to kill the already-dead Templar Commander, Lawrence Washington. His convictions were destroyed in Lisbon when his efforts to retrieve the Piece of Eden triggered a massive earthquake, destroying the city. Correctly deducing that a similar sequence of events destroyed Port-au-Prince, Cormac is horrified to learn that Davenport, despite the danger, intends to continue the search for Pieces of Eden. Shay then stole the manuscript and tried to escape the Homestead, but the members of the Brotherhood were cornered. Intending to commit suicide by jumping off the cliff of the Homestead, Shay is shot dead before he can destroy the Manuscript. 

Damn! My cover is blown. Now I have to kill everyone of them.

Now that he's cast adrift, he finds himself in New York City, acting as a vigilante to clean up gangs that extort the citizenry. His efforts attracted the attention of Colonel George Monro, who convinced Cormac that he could improve the lives of others. Meeting with Christopher Gist, Shay picks up his ship, Morrigan, from the Assassins, and agrees to help his new allies, despite learning that they are Templars. He is disturbed to learn that the Assassins have not given up their search for the Pieces of Eden, and to believe that they are a threat, commits himself to the Temple Order to hunt them down. After killing Colonial Brotherhood Assassins Le Chasseur and Kesegowaase, Shay became a full-fledged member of the Order when Grand Master Haytham Kenway was inducted. Shay eliminates Adéwalé, Hope Jensen and Louis-Joseph Gaultier de La Vérendrye. In the end, only two senior members of the Assassins in America remain alive: Achilles himself and his second-in-command, Liam O'Brien, once Shay's best friend. Shay is chasing the two to the Arctic with Haytham, where the Assassins have placed another Temple. Having dispatched most of the Assassin expedition, Shay and Haytham entered the Temple to find Liam and Achilles, who realized that the artifact was, as Shay said, a means of stabilizing the world, not a weapon to control it. However, the attempt by Achilles to stop Liam from taking revenge causes the artifact to be destroyed, and the third earthquake is triggered. As the four try to escape, Shay and Liam are in a duel on the ice, and Liam is fatally injured when the two fall. Shay then returns to his ship and arrives as Haytham overpowers Achilles. Shay persuades Haytham to spare Achilles, out of mercy, and to ensure that the knowledge of the Temples is not lost so that the Assassins will not try to pursue them again. Haytham then shoots and cripples the last American Assassin to retire to his hometown near Rockport, Massachusetts (To pave the way for Assassin's Creed III events).

Slow-Mo counter-attack.

As the Templars set sail for home, Haytham's tasks are Shay to retrieve the Precursor artifact. Shay spends the next 16 years hunting her down, even as Templar's influence in the colonies was eventually destroyed by Connor during the American Revolution. The final memories gradually reveal a mission to accompany Benjamin Franklin through Paris, in search of the Precursor box in the possession of Charles Dorian, the French Assassin, and the father of Arno Dorian (the protagonist of Assassin's Creed Unity). Shay kills Dorian and takes possession of the box as he becomes a senior member of the Templar Order. 

In today's world, the player searches for Cormac's Abstergo Entertainment memories when they accidentally run a hidden memory file that infects Animus servers. Abstergo is locked, and the player needs to clean up Animus servers by living Cormac's later memories. Juhani Otso Berg, a senior member of the Templars, later ordered the player to upload Shay's memories to the Assassin servers in order to weaken their resolve by showing how close Achilles Davenport had come to destroy the world and the Assassins had betrayed Shay.

REVIEW

Harpooning the Great white shark.

History has always played a pivotal role in the Assassin Creed series. It serves as a source of inspiration and background – a resource for dramatic events, supporting characters, and villains. Rogue is slightly different, however; it is more concerned with examining the history of the series itself than with exploring real-life events. The result is one of the most striking and intriguing stories seen in the Assassin Creed game and unforgettable missions.

Rogue's greatest strength is his central character – Shay Patrick Cormac – and his journey from the dutiful Assassin to the vengeful Templar. Most of the trailers surrounding Rogue portrayed Shay as a cold-blooded killer, but this is by no means accurate; his tale is nuanced, and the narrative is patiently unfolded. You're playing the first third or so of Rogue as an Assassin, which lets you forge relationships with those you're going to hunt later. There's a good chunk of the 14-hour campaign where Shay doesn't have any clear allegiances, and even then, he's never really going down to brutal killer territory. There's always a nice motivation to be found, and it's the most engaging tale.

Synchronizing...

Rogue is also trying to transfer the crisis of faith Shay's experiences to us, and it worked for me. Shay is not a villain; he is an individual who questions orders and suspects inherited truths, and we are encouraged to do the same for the first time in the series. This adds a new level of intrigue to the well-known Assassin's experience of running across rooftops, releasing hostages, sabotaging the enemy, and, of course, killing important people. Since he was trained as an Assassin, it's as usual a bloody business.

This is the place where you get to kill the ghost of Sleepy Hollow.

Rogue plays like a direct sequel to the Black Flag and has a strong emphasis on seafaring. The map sends us around Albany, New York, the frozen waters of the North Atlantic, as well as many small towns and quaint settlements, like the pumpkin-stripped Sleepy Hollow. There is an easter egg in this game in which you can actually fight the ghost of Sleepy Hollow. It is pretty interesting. Rogue is often a very nice experience. Sailing through the blizzards while your ship cuts through the ice look great and thrilling.

Rogue has the most interesting story about any recent Assassin's Creed game. It is fascinated by its own history, and it introduces a level of ambiguity that changes how we look at the formerly simple conflict between the Assassins and the Templars. The theme music of this game is so soothing and it perfectly fits with the game. There are a lot of collectibles. It gave me a feeling of Indiana Jones while I was trying to collect all the collectibles in the game. Completing the game 100% was fun as well as interesting at the same time. Fighting legendary ships was kind of tough but it took me 2 to 3 tries and some youtube help to defeat them.

GOODGAMER7 => 10/10
GOODGAMER7 => HIGHLY RECOMENDED