In November of 2014, Ubisoft Montreal released Assassin's Creed: Unity, the eighth instalment of the AC franchise and the first to release on the new-gen consoles at the time, which is obviously not a good sign for quality. The game follows the story of the other games, centring on the millennia-old conflict between the Order of Assassins and the Knight's Templars, but is also set in a new location, 18th-century France during the French Revolution. It follows the protagonist of Arno Dorian, a French-Austrian Nobleman, and his plot to expose the powers behind the French revolution as well as seeking revenge for his father's murder.
There are several differences between this game and Assassin's Creed: Liberation. Probably the most significant being the console they are both featured on at launch. Liberations launched on the handheld PS Vita and Unity released on the PS4. As well as this, they are both set in different time periods and feature entirely different main characters. Liberations focuses on the post- French and Indian War in New Orleans and Unity focus on the French Revolution in Paris. The both, however, do share the common theme of the same overarching story of the Assassins and the Templars.
Interestingly, Unity was developed with help from historical professors to gain a more historical accuracy of life in 18th-century Paris. It also features the Tuileries Palace and the Notre-Dame Cathedral, which took two years to build as it was modelled down to the brick. It is also believed that in 2019, after Notre-Dame burned down, the game was used to rebuild it due to how detailed the model was.
This isn't known but Ubisoft did donate €500,000 to the cause of rebuilding it. However, it features the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, which both hadn't been built for another 100 years.
The game did have quite a few criticisms though. One of these was the widespread amount of bugs featured throughout, one of which being the deeply disturbing "no-face" bug pictured to the left. These bugs eventually caused a pause in the development of future games, as well as compensation for fans who bought the season pass, in the form of a free game.
As well as these more gameplay related criticisms, it faced criticisms from the French left party and its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon due to its historical representation of the French Revolution, such as the depiction of Maximilien Robespierre as a "bloodthirsty monster" and the depiction of Marie Antoinette as a "poor little girl", as well as being accused of being "anti revolutionary propaganda"
There was also a controversy to do with a lack of female playable characters in co-operative mode. The excuse Ubisoft had for this was to do with double the voice actors and animations. This was called out as a lazy and tired excuse by many, but Ubisoft didn't change their stance. This controversy became far worse in 2020 when several executives in Ubisoft were ousted due to sexual misconduct allegations.
Assassin's Creed: Unity had a staggeringly large budget of $120 Million, which makes the very mixed reviews even more unfortunate. On Metacritic, the game has a 70/100 critic score and a 6.0/10 audience score, the positive reviews praising the graphics, helped by the superiority of the PS4. Negative reviews mainly come from the game being utterly broken and borderline unplayable at its launch, as well as it being rather 'all over the place' with its focus on stealth as well as on multiplayer. Metacritic says that it is the #91st highest rated PS4 game of 2014, which while sounding somewhat impressive, it was out of 136 games
PEGI (Pan-European Game Information) gave the game a rating of 18. Their reasoning for this is extreme violence, motiveless killing violence towards defenceless people and strong language. Most parent reviews, however, say that the game is fine for children ages 14 and up
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