Assassin's Creed Unity

• 1. Introduction

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  In the streets of Assassin's Creed Unity, a single crowd can hold up to 1000 individual characters. Each one acts on its own and reacts to its neighbors and to the player. Ubisoft Montreal built that spectacle for its 2014 entry in the Assassin's Creed series, a game staged in Paris during the French Revolution. It was designed to take advantage of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Several questions run through its story. What does it take to rebuild an entire city for a video game? Where did the ambition meet the limits of the hardware? Why did a French political party object to the way the game portrayed history? And how did a game with mixed reviews still find an enormous audience?

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• 2. Paris At Full Scale

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  Seven major districts make up the Paris of Unity: Le Louvre, Île de la Cité, Le Marais, La Bièvre, Les Invalides, Quartier Latin, and Ventre de Paris. Together they recreate the late 18th-century city at a roughly 1:1 scale. The map also reaches past the capital to the town of Versailles on its outskirts. One more commune, Saint-Denis, appears only in the Dead Kings expansion, under the name Franciade that it carried during the Revolution.

  Three kinds of side mission fill the open world. In Paris Stories, the player helps a non-playable character, usually a historical figure, with a minor problem. In Murder Mysteries, the player studies crime scenes, collects clues, and questions witnesses until the culprit is clear. Nostradamus Enigmas are cryptic riddles that lead to artifacts, and those artifacts lead to a special reward.

  Treasure chests, cockades, and artifacts are scattered across the city as collectibles. They mostly pay out in new gear or cosmetic options.

  The Companion App was a freemium app with only limited direct ties to the story of Unity. Many chests, assassination targets, and other collectibles were visible to every player but could be reached only by those who had met certain goals inside the app. An update in February 2015 ended that requirement, so any player could collect every chest without touching the app.

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• 3. Blades And Free-Running

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  Fencing was the inspiration for the sword combat that the team rebuilt for Unity, a system far more refined than anything earlier in the series. Lead game designer Benjamin Plich promised a harder game than its predecessors, since the counter button was removed and guards behaved more aggressively. He also said the game would feature synchronized Double Assassinations.

  The Phantom Blade is the most visible new tool for stealth. It is a variation on the series' signature Hidden Blade and doubles as a silent crossbow. Manual crouching joined it as another new stealth feature.

  The "Black Box" design replaced the linear assassination missions of earlier games. Instead of following one scripted path, the player explores the environment for different entry points or helpful distractions. Each player then chooses the approach that suits them best.

  Free-run up and Free-run down are new commands that make scaling buildings easier. They give the player controlled ascents and descents whenever they want them.

  Bullies, brawlers, and pickpockets turn up in the crowds as optional encounters. A player can scare off a group of bullies by drawing a weapon, settle a fight between two civilians by killing one of them, or chase a thief who has just robbed someone.

  For the first time in the series, Arno Dorian has a skill tree. Points earned through play go into stealth, melee, ranged combat, or his health. Weapons, armor, and equipment can be customized, and each item carries a level with a maximum of 5 for legendary gear. The arsenal includes swords, axes, spears, rifles, pistols, and throwable items such as smoke bombs.

  The Dead Kings expansion later adds the Guillotine Gun, a grenade launcher with an axe head mounted under the barrel.

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• 4. Café And Cooperation

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  The Café Théâtre was once an intelligence-gathering front for the Assassins, but it has fallen into ruin by the time Arno arrives. It serves as his main headquarters during the story. The player pays for renovations that change the interior and open new rooms, including a secret passage to the Assassins' underground hideout. The Café also runs as a passive business, depositing revenue in a chest for Arno to collect. The more renovated it is, the more money it earns. Café-related missions and extra taverns bought around Paris raise the income further.

  Taverns also act as the social hubs for cooperative play, a first for the series. Inside one, the player can see which online friends are currently playing. A friend who is on a mission appears as a ghostly version of their character, and the player can walk up and ask to join. If the request is accepted, both enter the same session and continue from the last checkpoint. Up to four players can team up. Each appears as their own customized Arno and keeps their gear. Many missions and activities support cooperative play, and all of them can also be played solo. The main story missions are single-player only.

  After the mode was revealed at E3 2014, creative director Alex Amancio and technical director James Therien explained that it would not let players choose a female avatar. Amancio blamed "the reality of production" and said: "It's double the animations, it's double the voices, all that stuff and double the visual assets. Especially because we have customizable assassins. It was really a lot of extra production work." Level designer Bruno St-André estimated that about 8,000 additional animations would have to be recreated.

  Brenna Hillier of VG247 pointed out that nine development teams were working on the game. She wrote: "Ubisoft has here trotted out a tired, stupid, constantly refuted excuse for why it has perpetuated the cycle of sexism and under-representation in the games industry." Tim Clark of PC Gamer noted that earlier Assassin's Creed multiplayer had included playable women. He added that Brotherhood had supported players with on-call assassins, many of them female.

  Jonathan Cooper, a former Assassin's Creed designer, said: "In my educated opinion, I would estimate this to be a day or two's work. Not a replacement of 8,000 animations." He added that Aveline de Grandpré, the heroine of Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, shares more of Connor Kenway's animations than Edward Kenway does. Fans started petitions urging Ubisoft to change course. Another former designer, Patrice Désilets, called Amancio's reasoning valid but said Ubisoft should still make the effort to offer gender options.

  Insomniac Games joined the conversation with a video for its upcoming game Sunset Overdrive. Asked "Can you play as a female character?", the presenter answered yes while the player character appeared as a woman dressed to resemble Ezio Auditore.

  Amancio later tried to calm the confusion. He compared Arno to Aiden Pearce in Watch Dogs and said that in co-op, everybody is playing Arno. In his words: "The reason we're just changing the face and keeping the bodies is we want people to show off the gear that they pick up in the game through exploration."

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• 5. Arno And The Templars

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  Jacques de Molay is the first figure the player meets, in a memory of the sacking of the Paris Temple in 1307. In the frame story, a company called Abstergo has released its Helix software to the public as a game that gives access to genetic memories. While the player watches de Molay order a fellow Templar to hide his codex and sword, the Assassin Brotherhood makes contact through an agent codenamed Bishop, played by Kate Todd. Bishop invites the player to join as an initiate and shows an Abstergo video memo about a captured Sage who carries precursor DNA. Abstergo hopes to use that Sage to compile a precursor genome. The initiate's task is to locate the corpse of a second Sage.

  Arno Dorian, played by Dan Jeannotte, was born in Versailles to an Assassin father. Shay Patrick Cormac kills that father at the end of Assassin's Creed Rogue. In the story told here, the father, Charles, is assassinated in 1776. Arno is taken in by François de la Serre, Grand Master of the French Templars, and does not know how senior his new family is in the Order. In 1789 Arno is handed a message for de la Serre, but he leaves it in the office to meet his childhood friend Élise, de la Serre's daughter, after her Templar initiation. He later finds de la Serre murdered and is framed for the killing.

  The Bastille is where Arno meets Pierre Bellec, played by Anthony Lemke, a fellow prisoner who knew his father. When the prison capitulates, the two escape, and Bellec invites Arno into the Brotherhood. Back at home, Élise turns Arno away and reveals that the message he never delivered was a warning of her father's coming murder. Arno blames himself and joins the Brotherhood to hunt the Templars behind the crime.

  François-Thomas Germain, a silversmith played by Julian Casey, seems at first to be a hostage of the acting Grand Master, Lafreniere. Arno rescues him and assassinates Lafreniere. Only afterward does Arno learn that Lafreniere had been trying to warn de la Serre. Germain, it turns out, is a Templar extremist who staged a coup after de la Serre banished him from the Order. When Germain starts killing Élise's faction, Arno persuades her to negotiate with the Brotherhood. The Assassin Mentor Mirabeau, played by Harry Standjofski, agrees to help, hoping to broker peace between the Orders. Bellec murders him, wanting to stop the alliance and purge leaders he considered weak. Arno has to kill Bellec after Bellec defends the act as a necessary evil and urges Arno to join him.

  During an insurrection at the Tuileries Palace, Arno searches for damning letters from Mirabeau to King Louis. There he meets Napoleon Bonaparte, played by Brent Skagford, who helps him escape. With Napoleon and Élise, Arno learns that Germain wants to spark a mass revolt against the King, and he assassinates the Templars helping him. At Louis' execution, Arno chooses to protect Élise rather than pursue Germain. Élise rejects him for that choice, and the Brotherhood exiles him for his rash actions.

  Arno falls into a drunken depression and languishes for months until Élise finds him in Versailles. She convinces him to return while Paris tears itself apart in the Reign of Terror. Together they discredit Maximilien Robespierre, played by Bruce Dinsmore, whom Germain had placed in charge of maintaining chaos. Élise shoots Robespierre in the jaw and makes him write down where Germain is hiding.

  A Sword of Eden that once belonged to de Molay gives Germain his strength. Arno pursues him to the Templar crypt under the Paris Temple, and Élise arrives to help. After Arno is briefly incapacitated, Élise takes on Germain alone, and the Sword explodes. The blast kills her and mortally wounds him. Arno kills Germain, who confirms that he is the Sage and says he wanted to purge the Templars who had forgotten de Molay's teachings. Arno rejoins the Brotherhood, rises to Master Assassin, and promises to watch over Paris and keep Élise's memory alive. Years later he and Napoleon recover Germain's skeleton and place it in the catacombs, where Bishop trusts Abstergo will never find it.

  One month after Élise's death, a devastated Arno finds refuge in Franciade for the Dead Kings epilogue. The Marquis de Sade, played by Alex Ivanovici, asks him to find the manuscript of Nicolas de Condorcet, hidden in a tomb beneath the city. In exchange, de Sade offers a ship to Egypt. Down there, Arno meets tomb raiders led by Captain Philippe Rose, played by Taylor Price, a subordinate of Napoleon. Rose wants an Apple of Eden from a Precursor temple under the church. A child thief named Léon, played by Eamon Stocks, has stolen the manuscript and been captured by the raiders. Arno rescues Léon and retrieves the manuscript but refuses to help stop the raiders. A vision of Élise and Léon's pleas change his mind.

  Once Arno has found the temple and taken the key from one of Napoleon's officers, Rose ambushes him. Rose has betrayed Napoleon and wants the Apple for himself. Arno survives, kills Rose, and uses the Apple to drive off the remaining raiders. He hands the manuscript to de Sade, decides to stay in France, and asks the Brotherhood to carry the Apple to Egypt, far from Napoleon. Napoleon is arrested for desertion and treason.

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• 6. Three Years In Secret

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  On the 19th of March 2014, early screenshots leaked and revealed the title Unity. The leak showed a new setting in Paris during the French Revolution, a new assassin, and a late-2014 release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Two days later Ubisoft confirmed the game with pre-alpha footage. It said development had already run for more than three years and added that a Windows version would also appear in the fourth quarter of the year.

  Development began shortly after the completion of 2010's Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. The core team split off during the early work on Assassin's Creed III. Writer Jeffrey Yohalem revealed that the French Revolution setting had been teased in symbols at the end of Brotherhood, alongside the American Revolution setting of Assassin's Creed III. Support came from Ubisoft studios in Toronto, Kyiv, Singapore, Shanghai, Annecy, Montpellier, Bucharest, Quebec, and Chengdu.

  Trailers at E3 2014 showed off the cooperative mode for up to four players. One trailer used Lorde's cover of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", produced by Michael A. Levine and Lucas Cantor. The team credited the new consoles with the improved crowds. On PC, the game used Nvidia's GameWorks technology, including TXAA anti-aliasing, advanced DX11 tessellation, and Nvidia PhysX, because Ubisoft had a partnership with Nvidia. The game is written in C++ and C#, with an estimated 15.5 million lines of the former and five million of the latter.

  In August 2014, Ubisoft announced Assassin's Creed Rogue for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and revealed its ties to the story of Unity. The same month, on the 28th of August, Unity slipped from a planned worldwide launch on the 28th of October. The new dates were the 11th of November 2014 in North America, the 13th in Europe and Australasia, and the 14th in the United Kingdom. Senior producer Vincent Pontbriand said: "As we got close to the finish, we realized we were near the target but still needed a bit more time to hone some of the details to make sure Assassin's Creed Unity is exceptional." The game also shipped with a day one patch.

  In October 2014, Pontbriand said all console versions would be locked at the same resolution of 900p, to "avoid all the debates and stuff." Many readers assumed the PlayStation 4 version had been held back to match the Xbox One. Ubisoft later denied that this was the reason. Pontbriand said instead that the consoles' processors were the limit. The number of characters and the general amount of AI were paramount to keeping the game locked at 30 frames per second.

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• 7. History Under Scrutiny

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  On the 6th of October 2014, Ubisoft announced that academic historians had helped revise the script. Laurent Turcot, a professor at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, advised on daily life in 18th-century Paris. Jean Clement Martin, a professor at the Sorbonne, also contributed.

  The Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty both appear in the game through its "time anomalies" feature, even though neither existed during the Revolution. Those anomalies also carry Arno to other moments in Parisian history, such as the Belle Époque and the occupation by Nazi Germany during World War II.

  Notre-Dame Cathedral became the game's most talked-about landmark after the fire of April 2019. Persistent but unsubstantiated rumors claimed that Ubisoft held scans accurate enough to help with the reconstruction. People who worked on Unity acknowledged that their own version of the building was not historically accurate. Ubisoft instead donated €500,000 to the reconstruction and made Unity a free download for the week after the fire, so that everyone could explore the cathedral as the studio had modeled it. The studio later reused the model for a virtual reality tour called Notre-Dame de Paris: Journey Back in Time.

  The French Left Party and its frontman Jean-Luc Mélenchon attacked the game's version of the Revolution. They said it depicted Robespierre as "a blood-thirsty monster" and Marie Antoinette as "a poor little girl". Mélenchon called it "propaganda" feeding a growing sense of self-hatred in France. He told the New York Times: "Smearing the great revolution is dirty work that aims to instill the French with even more self-loathing and talk of decline. If we continue like this, no common identity will remain possible for the French besides religion and skin color."

  Alexis Corbière, national secretary of the party, said the game carried "all the counter-revolutionary clichés that have been forged for two centuries". He told buyers: "having fun doesn't prevent you from thinking. Just play it, but don't let yourself be manipulated by the propaganda."

  Creative director Alex Amancio had already addressed the question in an interview with Time published on the 6th of October 2014, without naming the criticism. He said: "We try very hard to portray things as factually as possible." Producer Antoine Vimal du Monteil put the limit more bluntly: "Assassin's Creed Unity is a mainstream video game, not a history lesson."

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• 8. Mixed Verdicts

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  Metacritic summed up the critical response to Unity as mixed or average. Matt Miller of Game Informer gave it 8/10, praising the detailed environment and architecture but criticizing the controls, the balance, and game-breaking technical issues. Louise Blain of GamesRadar gave 4/5 for the dense, atmospheric world and overhauled free-running, though she faulted the framerate and the enemy AI.

  Chris Carter of Destructoid gave 7/10 and wrote: "Unity feels like a step back.... It lacks that grand sense of roaming the uncharted seas in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, or even the open-ended feel of the wilderness in Assassin's Creed III, but it's a journey worth taking if you're already into the series." Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer also gave 7/10 and called the game a "missed opportunity". Marty Sliva of IGN gave 7.8/10 and praised the recreation of Paris.

  Tom Senior of PC Gamer gave 65/100 and called the game, in its current state, a "failed revolution". Sam Prell of Joystiq gave 2.5/5. PC World said the game "is a new low for the Assassin's Creed series". The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences still nominated Unity at the 18th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards for Animation, Art Direction, and Sound Design.

  Yannis Mallat, CEO of Ubisoft Montreal, apologized for the launch, which was hit by widespread bugs, glitches, performance problems, and online connectivity trouble. He said the "overall quality of the game was diminished by bugs and unexpected technical issues". Ubisoft halted sales of the season pass and the Gold Edition and made Dead Kings free. Season pass buyers could also claim one of six Ubisoft games: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, The Crew, Far Cry 4, Just Dance 2015, Rayman Legends, or Watch Dogs. They would keep access to other additional content, including Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China. To claim the free game, however, users had to give up their right to sue Ubisoft over the game and the devaluation of the season pass.

  In February 2016, Ubisoft announced that no new Assassin's Creed games would arrive for the rest of the year, citing the many issues of Unity. The statement said: "we've learned a lot based on your feedback." The announcement may be linked to Ubisoft's third-quarter financial report, released the same day, which said that Assassin's Creed Syndicate, the October 2015 game set in Victorian era London, had a "slower launch than expected."

  Despite the reception, Unity was a commercial success. In May 2020, Ubisoft revealed that it had sold over ten million units. The game reached Stadia in December 2020.

  In March 2026, a performance update arrived for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions. It lets the game run in 4K at 60 frames per second on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

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