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As you rendezvous atop a roof in Paris, overlooking a painstakingly recreated French Revolution unfolding below, you feel as though you've been here before. Not in this period of history but in one of the many other Assassin's Creed games, awaiting your orders while keeping pigeons for company. But the message Ubisoft is pushing at Gamescom is that Assassin's Creed: Unity is different - this is Assassin's Creed built afresh for a new generation, constructed by 10 studios over the course of more than four years. And the game wastes no time cutting to the chase on that Parisian rooftop at the beginning of the game. "Devise your own plan," says your gruff contact, refusing to give you the orders you've come to rely on. "I'm not here to hold your hand." Think you know what you're getting in Unity? Think again.Take the setting of Paris: this is only one city (split into distinct districts) whereas Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag offered you an entire Caribbean to sail and plunder. But Paris is more than you think. "If you take all of the combined land mass in Black Flag and clump it together, it's smaller than Paris," Alex Amancio, Unity's creative director, tells me. "And not only is it large in terms of scale, it's multidimensional. You have literally hundreds of buildings you can go seamlessly into: monuments, underground sewers, catacombs. It's a huge, sprawling city." As to the level of detail in Unity compared to Black Flag - "You can't compare it," says Amancio. One full-time historian plus consultant, and input from the famous Louvre museum, have made this French Revolution as historically accurate as possible. "This is as close to time travel as we have right now," he boasts.
Talking of time travel: the present day Abstergo stuff reappears in Unity but will start "anew". "There's no 'previously on'." Amancio explains: "It's narratively linked - the context is linked. We're not erasing anything. But it is a new start; it is a new context and a new start. There is one familiar character but again, the context is so different that me giving you any information would have me explain what the context is. The only thing I can tell you is: Black Flag told you you're the protagonist because you're playing this Abstergo employee; we take it one step further. There's no layer of Abstergo employee; you, the player, are actually acknowledged as the protagonist of this game." And before you ask, it has nothing at all to do with Desmond, despite some the theories circulating.
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