Assassin's Creed (PS3)
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Genre: Action
Release Date: 2007
A number of interesting game trailers were shown off during Sony's E3 press conference, but the one that really made us gasp and stare at the screen agape was Assassin's Creed from Ubisoft. As it turns out, it was also the one PlayStation 3 game that still had the biggest impact on us after the show ended. Brought to you by the same team who made Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the game puts you in the shoes of a cold-blooded assassin named Altair.
The closed-doors demonstration we saw of Assassin's Creed was set in the same bustling, walled 12th-century city from the trailer. We watched as Altair exhibited some athleticism with the ability to climb walls and jump from roof to roof. He also showed off some nice fighting moves with the ability to deftly riposte and instantly kill enemies that attack with swords or other weapons. We were also impressed by the vast size of the city, as well as the detailed textures and lighting used in the graphics engine.
What really wowed us about the game, though, was the depth with which you can interact with people and the environments. The city Altair explored was full of civilians, who react to you in a realistic way. To get by them, you don't just clip through them, nor do they just walk out of your way--you'll see Altair actually use his hands and arms to nudge people aside just like any person who's trying to wade through a thick crowd. If they see you climbing a wall or engaging in other "socially unacceptable behavior," they will become alarmed or afraid of you. You can actually cause a panic with your actions, which can be detrimental or work to your advantage depending on the situation. If you take a more subtle approach you can also blend into the crowd cleverly, by mimicking the behavior of a roaming group of monks, for example. This can allow you to sidle up to your targets undetected while still in plain view and broad daylight; Assassin's Creed isn't just about hiding in shadows like typical stealth gameplay.
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After ruthlessly stabbing a guard in the neck, Altair still shows the decency to close the corpse's eyes before disappearing into the city.
No longer are climbable walls shaded strangely or called out to you in obvious ways. Instead, Altair can Spider-Man his way up any wall that has big enough protrusions to make for logical hand- and footholds. Physics-based gameplay also came to the forefront, with Altair being able to knock over scaffolding to block off a road as he makes an escape. These aren't just scripted, though--if you knock over the wrong support, the scaffolding might not fall over in the manner you expect, and not block off enough of the road. The level of interaction you can have with the people and environments gives the game a truly open-ended and organic feel and potentially allows you to take some very creative paths to assassinating your marks.
The end of the demo was a bit of a mystery to us and left us wanting even more with the way the screen fuzzed out with computer-like scan lines and a "system down" message after dying. Is there more to Assassin's Creed than just the medieval setting? Was it all just a simulation? The brief teasers we got at E3 left us wanting to see and play a lot more, which is why Assassin's Creed was the best PlayStation 3 game of E3 2006.
Finalists
E3 2006 Editors' Choice Awards
In this feature, the GameSpot staff brings its considerable amount of collective experience at covering E3 to bear, distilling all of our coverage down to its most important elements and showing you what the biggest names and events were at E3 2006.
