(Originally published on the UCC Journalism Society Blog, October 2018)
Here’s a fun fact: In real life murder is viewed as a bad thing and we are encouraged to avoid being on either end of it. In most video games this doesn’t apply. In genre games the player is funnelled into mowing down nameless and faceless enemies through the game’s mechanics, with upgrades offering new ways to continue the slaughter. I’m not crusading here; fantasy violence is a staple of genre work and can actually be an enjoyable release. Where it gets fishy is in the way video games differ from other media, because ideally the main character isn’t the one who’s carrying out these over-the-top killings: you, the player, are. They are only a cipher through which you perform actions. This creates a conflict with the way a game’s story is told.
At the end of the day, every video game is starring you. The people that the protagonist takes out throughout the game are the people that you are killing. You probably won’t even think about it while you do it, because it’s usually a simple process. The Assassin’s Creed games provide this simple process in combat: up until Unity the games had an Arkham-like system that could be broken easily through counters and killstreaks. Very early on you are able to slice, stab and shoot your way through dozens of enemies. While this can make the games satisfying escapism, it breaks the player’s immersion in the story.
In most Assassin’s Creed games you’re playing as a protagonist who is basically good, if a bit secretly blade-happy. These range from the roguish Ezio to the naive Connor. They’re all killers, but for a good cause. You can imagine them killing the objects of their vendettas and perhaps some guards, but not many others. Unlike the player, they can’t be realistically expected to slaughter dozens of people. The bloodthirst just isn’t in them. It is, however, in the player.
This is a problem in Assassin’s Creed III, for example, as Connor is disgusted by his Templar father’s cold actions. In one scene he gets taken to his father’s holdup where he finds the bodies of two redcoats and another one who’s breathing but badly beaten. After the redcoat is interrogated Connor’s father smoothly slices open his throat. Connor gapes, disgusted at the callous waste of human life, and feuds with his father over the ethics of his decision. The player is left scratching their head over this. At this point, he’s killed squadrons of guards in a variety of brutal ways for no other reason but to break ACIII’s tedious gameplay. This goes double if they’ve been exploring the Frontier, where you have almost nothing interesting to do. Sometimes seeing the slick pistol-tomahawk finisher animations are all you – and through you, Connor – wants to do. How are you supposed to empathise with a character whose actions are this inconsistent?
Assassin’s Creed IV fixes this problem by having you play as Edward Kenway, professional pirate and all-round scumbag. For most of the game’s story, Edward’s primary motivation is accruing material wealth. He accomplishes this goal by murdering, pillaging, and drinking his way across the Caribbean. His backstory makes him out to be a drunk who is neglectful of his wife and filled with delusions of grandeur. He is not only a nasty character, but is also very skilled: we’re introduced to him taking charge as substitute captain during a storm and are later informed via flashback that he’s been a privateer for many years. The player can identify an amoral pirate like Edward much more readily with random acts of violence than with previous, more steadfast protagonists.
If his capacity for violence provides a reason for the player to immerse themselves within Edward’s character, his basic humanity provides the excuse to enjoy it. The story team of ACIV provide Edward with some painfully relatable subconscious motives that often directly contrast with his outward actions. If his outward goal is to become a ‘Man of Renown’ through robbery and villainy, it is directly contradicted by his subconscious motive: to be loved. From his kindness towards Stede Bonnet to his vision of his dead friends, it is clear that all Edward really wants is companionship.
We can surmise by the letters he writes to his wife over the years that his search for wealth is really a desperate search for a way to have his wife take him back. His letters are unanswered because he moves from place to place too often for her to find him – and Edward probably prefers it this way. He seems to be proud of his marriage, mentioning it frequently to his friends, but too ashamed of his behaviour to engage with it. These contradictions, a need for love against an occupation that breeds solitude and pride against shame, create multiple dimensions for the player to get stuck into his character. More importantly they are both fundamentally human problems. Everyone playing the game has felt the basic conflicts that Edward feels, even if they don’t act them out through such violent means. Couple all this with Matt Ryan’s charmingly salty performance and you’ve got a winning protagonist.
This lines up to create a character who’s both capable of random acts of violence and easy to project your own desires onto. We understand and empathise with Edward, and without the niggling sense of “I shouldn’t really be murdering 20 guards because they saw me chasing a feather,” the player is free to just enjoy the game. For all the complaints of formula, Assassin’s Creed IV is an excellent play, full of high-seas adventures and some excellent naval combat. Blowing apart a man-o-war to the thunder of heavy cannons, swinging aboard on a dangling piece of rigging, ducking, dodging and slashing your way through the crew on your way to the captain; it’s a perfect fantasy of what it’s like to be a master rogue.
When the story is good, it begins to feed into enjoyment of the gameplay, and vice-versa. We understand the how and whys of Edward’s sailing and stabbing and we feel immersed in his struggles and charm; therefore we want to do more of the sailing and stabbing. The sailing and stabbing, conversely, is what we want to do because it’s what the game revolves around, which makes us want to advance the plot so we can do more of it. A simple example is in how Blackbeard’s arc develop: You meet Blackbeard in his down-to-earth younger days and feel Edward’s genuine friendship with him, then a little later you get to sail around in his awesome boat with a million cannons. This creates a bond between player and Blackbeard through gameplay and story, causing them to feel genuine emotion when he dies. At a certain point towards the end of the game I even began role-playing a little; As Edward realises the error of his ways and makes steps towards becoming a functional adult I used more non-lethal methods such as sleeper holds and tranquiliser darts. At around the same point Edward realised he was being a bloodthirsty jackass, I began to feel a little bad about the ceaseless violence.
Gameplay should always have an edge over story, but when both work to service each other you can have a much more immersive experience. Ubisoft struck gold in Assassin’s Creed IV, which remains many people’s favourite game in the franchise. Ubisoft doesn’t quite seem to realise what people liked about Edward Kenway, with each subsequent iteration of the franchise resorting to variations of ‘charming rogue with a heart of gold’ or ‘stoic do-gooder’ (or both, in Syndicate’s case). If Odyssey’s venture into interactive storytelling doesn’t pan out, we can only hope that they return to the fertile ground of ACIV: Walking the fine line between murderer and hero, bringing us true immersion in the process.