Assassin's Creed Rogue

• 1. Introduction

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  Assassin's Creed Rogue ends its credits with an ultimatum aimed straight at the person holding the controller. A senior Templar named Juhani Otso Berg thanks the player for their help, then offers a choice: join the Templars, or die. The game never reveals what the player decides. Rogue is a 2014 action-adventure game from Ubisoft Sofia, published by Ubisoft, and it asks players to spend an entire adventure on the side they have spent the series fighting. Its hero is an Assassin who turns on his own brotherhood. What could push a trained idealist to hunt his closest friends? Why would a studio build a blockbuster around the series' traditional villains? And how did critics judge a game that arrived on the same day as a flashier sibling?

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• 2. The Lisbon Earthquake

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  In 1752, Shay Patrick Cormac is a fresh recruit in the Colonial Brotherhood of Assassins, and his instructors see more insubordination than promise. He trains in the North Atlantic under the Mentor Achilles Davenport, voiced by Roger Aaron Brown. Then Adéwalé, played by Tristan D. Lalla, arrives with grim news. Port-au-Prince has been devastated by an earthquake during the hunt for a Precursor temple. Shay's skill at captaining ships earns him a mission to take a Precursor box and manuscript from the Templars. The orders trouble him, because the Assassins refuse to talk with their rivals and demand killing whatever the circumstances.

  Two years later, in 1754, Shay delivers the box to Benjamin Franklin, whose experiments produce a map of more Precursor temples across the world. Sent to examine a temple in Lisbon, Shay tries to lift the artifact at its center. The act triggers a devastating earthquake. Guilt crushes him, and he deduces that the same thing must have destroyed Port-au-Prince. He confronts Achilles and learns that the search will go on, whatever the risk to more lives.

  Shay steals the manuscript and tries to flee, but the Brotherhood corners him. He is shot and left for dead before he can destroy it. The man who finds him next belongs to the other side.

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• 3. The Hunt

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  Colonel George Monro, played by Graham J. Cuthbertson, finds Shay adrift and hands him to Templar sympathizers in New York. By 1756 Shay has recovered and begins clearing out Assassin-allied gangs that are extorting ordinary citizens. That work catches Monro's attention, and Monro persuades him he can improve other people's lives. Shay retakes his ship, the Morrigan, and recruits Christopher Gist as his quartermaster. When the Assassins kill Monro to steal back the manuscript, Shay sees that the Brotherhood is still searching for temples. He starts hunting its members and rises to high rank among the Templars.

  Over three years he kills Kesegowaase, Adéwalé, Hope Jensen and Louis-Joseph Gaultier de La Vérendrye. That leaves Achilles and his second-in-command, Liam O'Brien, who was once Shay's best friend. With the Templar Grand Master Haytham Kenway, Shay follows the Assassins to an Arctic temple. Inside, Liam and Achilles have decided the artifacts could stabilize the world rather than serve as weapons of control. The artifact is accidentally destroyed in the confrontation and another earthquake follows. Shay fatally wounds Liam in a duel. He then persuades Haytham to spare Achilles, though Haytham cripples the old Mentor.

  The pursuit stretches across sixteen years of searching for the box. In 1776, with Franklin's help, Shay infiltrates the Palace of Versailles and kills the Assassin Charles Dorian to get it. The modern-day thread runs alongside. The player is an unnamed Abstergo Entertainment employee researching Shay's memories. A hidden memory file infects the Animus servers, Abstergo goes into lockdown, and the only fix is to live through Shay's life. Berg then orders the player to upload those memories to the Assassin servers to weaken their resolve, and the Brotherhood responds by cutting off communications.

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• 4. North Atlantic Waters

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  The Morrigan has a shallower draft than Edward Kenway's Jackdaw, and that single difference opens the rivers to Shay. The game spreads across three regions: the western North Atlantic around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, a fictional River Valley partly inspired by the Hudson Valley, and New York City. Islands, settlements, naval forts and shipwrecks dot the first two. Shay's ship can carry Puckle guns, ignitable oil slicks and an icebreaker. Some icebergs can be destroyed to send waves at smaller vessels, and enemy crews can board the Morrigan themselves.

  The diving missions from Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag are gone. Swimming in the North Atlantic drains Shay's health quickly in the frigid water, though he can swim freely in the warmer River Valley. Upgrades to the ship depend on resources taken from raided ships, warehouses and camps. The strongest challenges are the five Legendary Ships, hidden boss battles in the North Atlantic that also appeared in Black Flag. Players also craft equipment from animal pelts won by hunting and fishing. Collectibles such as Templar treasures, Native pillars and Viking sword fragments unlock new outfits.

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• 5. Assassins as Prey

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  Shay's air rifle works like Black Flag's blowpipe, silently dropping enemies at a distance. It can fire sleeping darts and firecrackers. At a set point in the story a fictionalized Benjamin Franklin gives Shay a grenade launcher attachment for it. Hand-to-hand fights borrow a timing-based counter system, comparable to the Batman: Arkham games. Poison gas now serves as an environmental weapon, and Shay carries a mask to blunt its effects.

  Swapping sides changes the stealth. Enemy Assassins hide in bushes, blend into crowds and strike from the air, using tricks the player has relied on throughout the series. When one stalks Shay, his Eagle Vision reflects it, borrowing the radar-like tracking from earlier multiplayer modes. Even without that vision, the screen edges turn red as a warning.

  The new side mission is Assassin Interception. Shay intercepts a messenger pigeon carrying an assassination contract, then must find and eliminate the hidden Assassins before they kill the target. It inverts the series' own assassination missions. The Assassins also run a gang with ten hideouts across the three regions. To clear one, Shay kills the gang leader, who blocks most direct attacks, then burns the flag. Cleared areas let him renovate buildings that generate income, as in the Borgia towers of Brotherhood and the Templar dens of Revelations.

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• 6. A Human Templar

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  Ivan Balabanov, producer and general manager of Ubisoft Sofia, described Shay's arc as a "transformation into this very somber, dedicated character who is pursuing his former comrades for something he genuinely believes is the better road". The writers began with an Assassin who changes sides after a traumatic act of betrayal. Richard Farrese said that event forces Shay to rethink his philosophy and see the Templars' goals as closer to his own. Early on, Shay is a frivolous young man, full of doubt about his leaders' motives.

  Ubisoft staff insisted he is never evil or ruthless. The team wanted to avoid a "monodimensional, very flat character, a stereotypical bad guy who kills the good guys". Balabanov said Shay is "regretful when he kills them". Producer Karl van der Luhe argued that Shay is not going to "the dark side", and that the two orders want the same things by different means. Writer Susan Patrick suggested the hunt is really a search for redemption.

  Patrick also pointed to a hidden link between hero and ship. Cormac is a Gaelic name meaning "raven", while the Morrigan is an Irish war goddess often pictured as one. Farrese added that the Templars are well-heeled compared with the Assassins. Their wealth shows in Shay's arsenal of rare weapons, some existing only as prototypes in the era.

  Critics took up the same questions. Writing for the New York Times, Stephen Totilo observed that Shay theoretically turns full-on bad guy yet the game still lets players feel like the good guy. Lars de Wildt discusses Shay's sympathetic portrayal in the 2019 book Playing Utopia: Futures in Digital Games. Author Frank G. Bosman cites the Lisbon earthquake as an example of theodicy in popular media.

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• 7. From Comet to Remaster

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  In March 2014, reports surfaced of a game code-named Comet, destined for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It would be set around 1758 in New York, feature Atlantic sailing, and star a Templar named Shay. Ubisoft officially announced the game on the 5th of August 2014, after its title leaked. Game director Martin Capel called it the conclusion to the series' North American saga. It was built to answer fan requests, such as playing a Templar, and to fill gaps between Assassin's Creed III and Black Flag. Besides Ubisoft Sofia, studios in Singapore, Montreal, Quebec, Chengdu, Milan and Bucharest contributed. Ubisoft said multiplayer was not planned "at this stage" but did not rule out adding modes later.

  Rogue reached PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on the 11th of November 2014 in North America, the 13th in most other regions, and the 14th in the United Kingdom. That timing matched the launch of Assassin's Creed Unity. The Windows edition followed on the 10th of March 2015. The Collector's Edition included a soundtrack, an artbook, three lithographs and two exclusive missions, one of them The Siege of Fort de Sable. Four content packs, the Officer, Commander, Templar and Explorer Packs, were later merged into the Templar Legacy Pack on the 13th of January 2015. Ubisoft also sold four Time Saver packs.

  On the 11th of January 2018, Ubisoft announced a remaster for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, released on the 20th of March. It added legacy outfits inspired by Jacob Frye, Aguilar de Nerha and Bayek, plus UHD support on the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. The game later reached the Nintendo Switch with Black Flag in December 2019 and Google Stadia in October 2021. By the end of 2014, Ubisoft had shipped a combined 10 million copies of Unity and Rogue.

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• 8. Mixed Verdicts

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  Metacritic summed up the critics' view of Rogue as "mixed or average". Scores ran from a 6 out of 10 at GameSpot and Joystiq to an 8.5 at Electronic Gaming Monthly. Ray Carsillo there called it "a far more pleasurable experience than I anticipated" and a fitting close to the series' colonial chapter. He still faulted pacing, bugs and the missing multiplayer. Matt Miller of Game Informer gave an 8.25 and wrote that the game "lacks novelty" yet offers "a wealth of gameplay and lore to faithful fans".

  The harsher reviews pointed at familiarity. Mark Walton of GameSpot said it felt like a glorified Black Flag DLC pack. Xav de Matos of Joystiq called it "essentially a clone of Black Flags setting and systems". IGN's Daniel Krupa scored it 6.8 and found the world empty. Eurogamer liked fighting Assassins who used the player's own tricks, though it criticized shorter story missions.

  Shay himself drew the warmest words. Andy Kelly of PC Gamer praised a "tough and ruthless" lead who refuses to prey on the weak. Mitch Dyer of IGN found him layered and sympathetic. Irish publications, meanwhile, criticized the accent Steven Piovesan gave him. In September 2020, Shubhankar Parijat of Gamingbolt argued that Shay's journey from young Assassin to Master Templar still deserves a special place in the series. In 2019, DAMTOYS released a figure of him just over 12 inches tall with nearly a dozen interchangeable hands.

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