Desmond Miles is abducted by Abstergo Industries, a research facility who explain that everyone carries genetic memories hidden inside them which are passed on from generation to generation. They are looking for a specific piece of information from an assassin from the year 1191, and Desmond happens to carry this memory.
Using a machine called the Animus, the memories of assassin Altaïr are explored. He is a maverick and is stripped of his rank for disobeying the tenants of the Creed. To restore his honour, he is tasked with the assassination of nine Templar targets.
In some ways, the buttons are mapped to limbs and are modified with the Right-Trigger. The A button controls the feet. By holding A, Altaïr attempts to blend in by adopting a 'scholar' pose and walking slowly. The right-trigger modification allows him to run. X controls the weapon hand, which attacks with the hidden blade, throwing knives or sword. B performs a gentle push which is used to navigate through crowds of people, and the right-trigger modification performs a grab and throw. Y lets you enter vision, or if you've maxed out the synchronisation bar, activates Eagle Vision to highlight friends or foes. The synchronisation bar is Altaïr's health but is also depleted in other ways such as killing innocents.
The environment is an open world, although is fairly linear outside the cities. Inside the cities, you can follow the streets, or climb Prince of Persia style over the roofs.
Rooftops often serve a better path around town. Any jumps, hops or falls will be done automatically as long as you are pressing right-trigger and A. Just like Prince of Persia, this means this element is more of a spectacle rather than having challenging platforming. There are guards on the rooftops, especially archers. These are often easy to pick off with your throwing daggers, or sneak behind them for an assassination with your hidden blade.
The city floor is filled with hostile guards and several types of civilians, each with varying behaviours. Some civilians carry objects like pots or boxes which you must be careful not to knock from them, otherwise you rouse suspicion. Beggars run in front of you and plead for change who are very annoying. Insane people will attack if you get too close.
Moving quick, causing a lot of noise, or moving too close to the guards will increase your chances of detection (you do look like an Assassin after-all, but are mistaken for a scholar when moving slow). You do have an indicator to warn you if you are being eyed-up. When you are detected, you must run out of sight of the guards, but to return the indicator to normal, you must hide in the designated hiding spots.
The game is visually appealing, with great draw distances when you scale tall buildings, giving you a picturesque view of the city landscapes. The colour palette is quite bright and limited, trying to recreate the aesthetic and feel of the Middle East. The game engine renders large crowds, cities and environments very well. The animation is brilliant, particularly Altaïr's climbing animation as he reaches for every nook and cranny as he scales vertical walls.
The main game involves a repetitive structure which involves travel, research, then assassinate your target. The first thing to do is leave your assassin headquarters in Masyaf, then run all the way out of town which is very tedious. Once you have done that, you jump on a horse and trek for ages till you reach the city of choice. To get into the city, you hide among a crowd of scholars to sneak in. On subsequent returns to the city, a quick travel option does become available.
In each city, you must research some information which you do by completing a couple of quests which come in a few variants. Once you have your information, you can then track your assassination target. This structure is repeated constantly throughout the game.
Initially, your knowledge of the city is limited. By locating vista points and climbing them, you are given a panoramic view of the area nearby, which adds the surrounding area to your map as well as nearby quest locations. Then you can take a dramatic 'leap of faith' into a pile of hay below. There's a bug here which may mean Altaïr just falls to his death rather than the hay cushioning his fall.
There are different types of quest. In 'Interrogation', you follow your target into a secluded area and punch him till he parts with the information. In 'Pick-pocket', you simply walk behind your target and press a button. In 'Eavesdropping', you sit on a nearby bench and listen to your target talk. There's also some 'Informant challenges' where you have to assassinate targets or collect flags within a set time. Apart from the Informant Challenges, the quests are very basic and it's harder to fail them.
There's also 'Save Citizen' where you need to defeat the surrounding guards. This either gives you Scholars that allow you to sneak into well-guarded areas (this is how you get in the city initially), or Vigilantes, which will grab the guards and prevent them from reaching you. Most of these are entirely optional.
The combat is very straight forward. You have a normal attack, strong attack, throw and block and can counter-attack if you time your attack whilst blocking. Most enemies don't seem to know how to 'block break', so you can constantly block and rely on your counter-attack to defeat them. Since the enemies are passive aggressive, even if you are surrounded by multiple guards, they are easily dispatched since they take turns in attacking. Even if your foes vary aesthetically, there's not much scope of strategy changes. The Templars seemed to block your grabs, forcing you to use counter attacks to defeat them whereas you can grab the basic guards and throw off buildings for an easy kill. Either way, counter-attacking can always be used.
The stealth elements work differently in Assassin's Creed. Instead of hiding in shadows and stealthily executing targets, its more about trying to fit into the busy crowds. You can activate your 'hidden blade' and knife people in the back in a busy street. Getting away with it is about staying clear of guards that have arrived on the crime-scene and will be on the alert for an assassin. You just casually walk away, maybe a brief jog then leap up a building to hide/flee the scene. If guards do see you and give chase, they can also climb buildings or pelt you with rocks to make you fall.
For those that like to collect things, there's a huge amount of flags scattered around each city and some outside too, which gives you a small incentive to explore and climb everything you see.
The “cut-scenes” are lazily done. They are rendered in game, so the characters just stand around and reel off their lines. You have limited control of Altaïr so can slowly move in a restricted area. I think this style loses the impact of the dialogue. In a similar fashion, when you take control of Desmond, he has extremely slow movement speed but you are only really required to move towards a couple of characters or points of interest. Why couldn't these sections just be cut-scenes when there's literally no game-play or freedom of choice?
The problem with Assassin's Creed is that there's not much substance to the game-play. There's a few simple ideas with a large city to explore, but you are doing the same tasks throughout the entire game, and it's not exactly a short game either. Within a couple of hours, you have seen everything the game has to offer, yet have to force yourself to play the rest of the game.