Assassin’s Creed: Rogue is a new game in the famous series, telling the story of the difficult fate of Shay Patrick Cormack, an assassin who joined the Templar Order after a tragedy that occurred on one of his missions and resulted in hundreds, or even thousands, of human victims. The tragedy has a historical basis, intelligently woven into the plot. The game takes place in the 18th century, between what happened in the third and fourth parts, from 1752 to 1761, during the Seven Years’ War (a war between France and England (and other European powers), mainly for dominance over the North American colonies). Interesting fact: Winston Churchill called the Seven Years’ War the first world war in history.
In the game, in addition to the Assassins and Templars, there are two key factions – England and France, who constantly cut and shoot each other. What’s interesting: in the prologue, when Shay is still a member of the brotherhood of assassins, France is your closest ally, and when he joins the Templars it’s the other way around: the British are your friends and the French are your enemies. All of the above does not greatly affect the gameplay, except for the fact that some areas that were considered enemy in the prologue and were displayed in red on the minimap become friendly in the main Templar campaign.
The main game mechanics have been carried over from Black Flag, but have been enriched with a lot of new content and interesting innovations in the gameplay. The world is no longer open, but is divided into three huge locations: the North Atlantic, River Valley and New York. The river valley is the most interesting. According to the developers themselves, they tried to combine the Frontier from the third part of the series (if anyone suddenly doesn’t remember, it was the largest location in the game, with forests and small villages) and the naval mechanics from “Black Flag”. Having moored his ship "Morrigan" to some small village, Shay can go deep into the island, hunt there, stumble upon a small skirmish between French and English troops, cut a couple of throats, and then come out the other side and call his ship using a signal torch. And this brings completely new emotions that I have never experienced while completing all the previous parts of the series. The North Atlantic is designed primarily for naval gameplay: the settlements are small, the sea spaces are large. It is now possible to shoot icebergs from cannons; waves from pieces of ice falling into the water can sink small ships. New York turned out to be very boring, although big (offhand: Boston and the same New York from the third part combined). The developers tried to fill it with a variety of content, but this did not save the situation – the plank houses of the colonial city are inferior to the majestic cathedrals of the Renaissance.
If the conventionally open world of https://balkanbetcasino.co.uk/ “Black Flag” was guilty of generic villages, boring and completely identical, then in “Rogue” all the settlements were designed manually: somewhere a town is hidden in forested mountains, somewhere dotted with small rivers, in the North Atlantic fishing villages, covered with snow, are hidden between gloomy rocks, and above them large flocks of birds fly to warm countries. The fauna has also been replenished with new species: penguins, polar bears, lynxes and arctic foxes. You can now harpoon a huge beluga whale or narwhal in the ocean.
The main storyline in terms of setting and character development, unfortunately, remained at the level of the previous pirate story, only the main character is less charismatic. Dialogues are primitive, cut scenes are short. The antagonist is Achilles, Connor’s teacher from the third part, who from a quiet but formidable old man has turned into an equally formidable tough leader who does not accept other views on the actions of the brotherhood, in every possible way suppressing any attempts at freethinking. Quite strange for a man who must adhere to the slogan: “Nothing is true, everything is permitted,” isn’t it?? Shay also confronts Adewalla (Edward Kenway’s first mate), his former friend Liam and the Indian assassin Kesegovaase. Helping him are Haytham Kenway and Christopher Gist, the only character in the game who even tries to joke.
Shay’s main enemies, directly in the gameplay, are prostitutes and bandits trained by the masters of the brotherhood. The developers explain this by saying that the heroes of past games used their help, and now, they say, they have become enemies. To be honest, it looks a little strange when a prostitute jumps screaming at you from the roof, blazing her hips, plunging a blade into your throat. Well at least not the homeless children from the third part. Dealing with such enemies is quite difficult: they attack covertly (from the back or from the roof) and immediately inflict critical damage, and then try to escape, hiding in the crowd, or throwing a smoke bomb. There are two ways out: have time to block the blow (this takes literally a split second), or catch up and kill the enemy. You can also prevent an attack by using improved eagle vision and being the first to deliver a fatal blow. Shay finds assassins using a whisper that appears from nowhere (this is not explained in any way in the game), which he hears when enemy assassins are close. It’s entertaining only in the first hours, later it starts to irritate. Repetition of the same actions has always been a disadvantage of games in the series, and in “Rogue”, assassins jumping on rooftops and crawling in bushes have to be killed with unpleasant frequency.
Additional tasks included bandit lairs, capture of settlements, siege of forts, interception of a contract and a lot of garbage typical for the series, like “collect fifty pieces of Viking junk and get a sword”. Bandit Lairs are a simple puzzle. You need to quietly cut off the gang flag and kill the leader-assassin, who must first be tracked down. The leaders are insidious and dangerous, they act the same way as you: they attack on the sly, and then throw smoke bombs and shoot back along the way and try to escape. They shoot very painfully: Shay dies after literally two shots, so you need to plan an attack on the lair carefully, having studied the territory in advance. Capturing settlements is much easier (the enemies in them are French soldiers): you also need to cut off the flag, kill the captain and destroy stocks of explosives or poisonous gas. Sieges of forts have become more difficult. Now the hero is not helped by his team, he needs to get through and kill the officers alone and preferably quietly, since there are quite a lot of enemies. Tasks with contract interception can be obtained by catching the Assassin carrier pigeon. Then you need to find the target and prevent him from being killed by destroying all enemies within the allotted time.
The protagonist’s arsenal has been replenished with a blowgun and an under-barrel grenade launcher. You can shoot sleep darts, berserker darts and distraction darts. Grenades also perform the same functions, hitting several enemies at once. Replacing Kenway’s blowpipe with a gun was the right decision – it was too stupidly hanging on the back of the main character in "Black Flag".
The new ship "Morrigan" became smaller, faster and acquired superhero weapons: a Pakla gun (a rapid-fire falconet) and burning oil, which can be poured directly onto the water and set fire to enemy ships. Innovations cause mixed feelings – although the ship has become less durable, it moves like a speedboat, so defeating even a difficult enemy is not difficult.
But oddly enough, the most interesting thing was the appearance of legendary battles, which replaced the famous ships from “Black Flag”. They make a truly strong impression: on the horizon there is a fiery glow from burning ships, an armada of military frigates and fire ships headed by a mighty battleship is moving towards you. Even the crew of the nimble and dangerous "Morrigan" freezes in a daze and stops singing the dashing shanti… The silence is broken by the roar of mortars and a hail of deadly shells falls on your small flotilla, destroying the decks of ships… And this is what Blag Flag was so missing – the scale and atmosphere of real naval battles.
Bottom line: “Rogue” combines the strengths of the third part and “Black Flag”, becoming much more interesting and varied than the previous game. It reeks of nostalgia for all past parts of the series, greeting players with a slightly modified title theme from the second part and a night carnival festival in one of the first missions. This is exactly what Black Flag should have been – big, big and dark. But at the same time, “Rouge” also took negative features from the previous part – scanty characters, short cut scenes and even Kenway animation for the main character. I would recommend the game to true fans of the series who would not mind once again experiencing the outdated gameplay and understanding what happened to the brotherhood of assassins if only old Achilles remained from them?
Additional information: instead of developing an estate, you can now restore buildings scattered throughout all locations and receive income from it. Money is accumulating in the bank. Also, bandit lairs, settlements and forts are economic zones, they also generate income.