Assassin's Creed Syndicate has learned from Unity's mistakes, but is that enough?

[Administrator]

I'm sat in Wapping Power Station at half nine in the morning listening to Ubisoft talk about Assassin's Creed Syndicate. The surroundings are fittingly Victorian, dotted with industrial machinery that likely once ran on adorable orphan labour. Creative director Marc-Alexis Côté is telling us how the game introduces its two main characters, Jacob and Evie Frye, and why his team are excited about Syndicate's London setting. But everyone sat listening really has just one question they want answering - can Syndicate revitalise the franchise following Assassin's Creed Unity?
Ubisoft's blockbuster series took a serious knock last year when Unity launched in a buggy and broken state. Player frustration at frame rate and graphical problems followed a bold marketing campaign that trumpeted the line: "Next-gen starts here". Fan response was pretty clear: it did not. Underneath all of that lay a decent if unremarkable entry in the series, albeit one launched alongside Rogue, a naval-focused follow-up for last-gen platforms which was arguably more entertaining. Ubisoft patched Unity over the course of several months then offered up its biggest add-on for free, but by then the damage was done.
So, Syndicate faces an uphill battle to regain player confidence when it launches this November. The silver lining from last year is that Ubisoft gained plenty of feedback on how it needed to improve and, happily, from the sections of Syndicate we played it feels like this has to some extent filtered through. It's clear that Syndicate is an Assassin's Creed game, but it's also clear that another year of technical knowledge and fine-tuning for the game's engine has produced a far better and more stable result. In the early build we played, Syndicate ran smoothly at all times.
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