While modern fan-made Assassin's Creed-themed map in Fortnite. However, much of what made this feature fun and valuable has been lost.
Generally speaking, the Assassin's Creed games can be split into two distinct categories: pre-AC Origins and post-AC Origins. Before Origins was released in 2017, Assassin's Creed games were considerably more dense and focused more on urban locations such as renaissance Italy, industrial-era England, and revolutionary . Origins marked a turning point for the franchise in many ways, mainly as it pertains to progression, RPG systems, combat, and gear, but it also vastly expanded the settings, with Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla all having much larger, more nature-oriented maps than earlier games.
This shift in setting, along with a broader change in gameplay philosophy, greatly impacted the Assassin's Creed parkour system. While there are several problems that the next Assassin's Creed should avoid, the series already has a great template to follow when it comes to in-game traversal. Reverting back to this original template, or building a new system based on its framework, would go a long way towards providing players with a more gratifying, enjoyable gaming experience.
What Made Classic Assassin's Creed Parkour Work Well
When Assassin's Creed games placed a greater emphasis on cities and towns, parkour was far more integral to moment-to-moment gameplay. The denser urban environments made sprinting across rooftops interesting from both a visual and gameplay perspective. Games like Assassin's Creed 2 offered a visual feast with their sprawling cities, which instilled in players the sense that anything could be hiding around the corner. The act of moving through these many cool Assassin's Creed settings, while not on the level of a dedicated parkour sim like Mirror's Edge, was at the very least engaging, as players had to employ a degree of critical thinking when it came to which buildings had the best handholds and what routes would serve as the most efficient pathways for a getaway or infiltration. This was often reflected in the level design, as construction equipment, railings, and various other architectural implements would subtly guide players towards certain areas.
The parkour system was also changed and enhanced in numerous ways across entries. Assassin's Creed 2 expanded the system with new mechanics like the leaping grab and hidden blade hook that allowed players to experiment opened new doors for traversing the game's cities. Assassin's Creed Revelations brought ziplines to the table, and the result is a sense that the parkour actually evolved over the course of the complete Assassin's Creed Ezio story. This is to say nothing of Assassin's Creed Unity, which, while not without its problems, featured gorgeous, fluid parkour animations that made moving through the city feel elegant and rewarding. Unity also introduced controlled descent, which gave players a practical option to reach lower levels and further developed the parkour system.
The benefits of the classic Assassin's Creed parkour reached beyond just gameplay and visuals and into the feeling of immersion. Because players would have to actively grapple with the architecture of famous cities like Venice, Paris, Boston, and Rome, they felt like much more than simple sets or superficial 3D environments. Instead, the player would have an ongoing relationship with these in-game cities, which led to a more intimate and meaningful connection, especially for those who took the time to learn specific routes or master the earlier social stealth systems - which is another feature the next Assassin's Creed game should bring back.
Why Modern Assassin's Creed Parkour Doesn't Work (& How To Fix It)
While Assassin's Creed seemed to be constantly iterating and expanding upon how parkour worked with each entry, Assassin's Creed Origins brought that progress to a screeching halt. The fluid, impressive traversal and controlled descent animations of Assassin's Creed Unity were nowhere to be found, as the game opted for a decidedly clunkier, more utilitarian animation style for the parkour. Even saying that these newer games feature "parkour" is almost a misnomer, as Origins and its two successors feature a traversal system that is effectively just perfunctory climbing without any creative flair or focus on efficient travel.
This change doesn't just affect the modern Assassin's Creed games from a visual standpoint, however. It seems that, as the series shifted its focus more towards gear-collecting and in-game events like the Assassin's Creed Valhalla Ostra Festival, mechanical depth was greatly de-emphasized. This change impacted parkour in the sense that, rather than the player needing to think critically about which path would be best or most efficient, traversal was essentially boiled down to pressing one button and moving in the desired direction. The problem with this approach can be observed when climbing the many mountains of Valhalla, which can be scaled with very little effort or attention to things like grapple points. The simplification of parkour in these games is linked to individual areas, as far less attention given to how pieces of architecture interconnect and provide opportunities for thoughtful traversal.
Much of this comes down to the aforementioned change in overall environment design. While older games in the franchise placed a heavy emphasis on detailed, scalable buildings - with Assassin's Creed 2 even including real-world locations - Origins began to move the franchise further away from cities and into the wilderness, removing opportunities for parkour and replacing them with wide fields and deserts. AC Valhalla is perhaps the most rural yet, with few large buildings and cities compared to smaller settlements and broad natural vistas. While the Siege of Paris DLC offered a classic AC city, it doesn't make up for the rest of the game. Modern Assassin's Creed games certainly still have impressive cities and man-made landmarks, but they don't seem to be a priority.
Parkour can still be engaging and complex without a heavy focus on cities, however. Assassin's Creed 3 and Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag are prime examples of how the same thoughtful approach to parkour can exist in more natural landscapes. Assassin's Creed 3's had vast stretches of dense forests, with climbable trees taking the place of buildings. Along with an Assassin's Creed protagonist who deserved his own trilogy, Black Flag brought with it different types of trees and other natural features like cliff faces (with obvious rocks for gripping) that could be used for parkour. If the modern Assassin's Creed games could reintroduce this approach to parkour in natural environments while making what cities they do feature more parkour-friendly, they could become much more enjoyable.
Many aspects of classic parkour live on in modern Assassin's Creed, such as ledge takedowns and other stealth mechanics. However, the parkour system as a whole has been considerably stripped back, with its animation and depth seeming to take a step backward compared to earlier entries. If Ubisoft can bring back elements of this classic traversal gameplay, future Assassin's Creed games have even better parkour than their predecessors.
