Image: Ubisoft

When I think of Assassin’s Creed games, I often remember big cities, cool assassinations, climbing high towers, and maybe a few sea songs. I rarely remember how these games end because they often have forgettable or boring endings, sometimes with bad boss fights. Assassin’s Creed Syndicate therefore stands out as an exception with its fantastic final mission and boss fight.

Oh, and in case it’s not obvious, spoilers for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate below.

I’m not going to explain the whole story of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, but here’s a quick recap to get you up to speed. A bad Templar controls London and is an asshole. Twins Evie and Jacob Frye come to London, meet another stabbed man, Henry Green, and work together to defeat the big bad Templar, Crawford Starrick. (He’s got a bad mustache and things.)

Finally, after many missions and side quests, you reach the end of the game. Starrick goes to attack and kill the Queen of England in her palace during a grand ball and the two twins and Green must sneak, stop him and find an ancient Isu artifact buried under Buckingham Palace. (It’s an Assassin’s Creed game, so it’s legally required to be part of the ending.)

What makes this mission so wonderful is the way Syndicate uses both twins at the same time. For most of the game, the twins are separate characters that you swap between whenever you want. But this final mission brings them together and creates one grand final mission that uses them both in different ways. Evie, clad in a full dress, must rely on social stealth to reach the blueprints that will reveal the location of the vault, which is located somewhere below the palace. Meanwhile, Jacob must climb around the palace, taking out the impostor guards and freeing the kidnapped and tied up real royal guards.

Allowing you to play with both twins at the same time is not only a great way to use Syndicate’s two main characters, but it also helps the entire final mission feel bigger and more exciting than any other mission in the game. game. You even meet the queen. It’s a big problem.

Finally, after the wily Starrick obtains the key to Isu’s Hidden Vault, Jacob and Evie pursue him and a grand final boss fight ensues. But again, like the first part of the mission, this final fight alternates between the two twins. You attack Starrick as such, then get knocked back, then the other twin dodges Isu’s magical walls of light and attacks again. On paper, this may seem repetitive. But in practice, you tend to feel like you and your twin are working together. And that makes Starrick a more intimidating and interesting villain.

Screenshot: Ubisoft / Kotaku

This is the biggest criticism I have with this ending. Starrick is supposed to be the big bad in the game, but he’s so far removed from what’s going on while you’re playing that I didn’t really care about him or his goals. But the final mission works despite this by using the twins as tandem weapons. Maybe it would have been nice if more of the game used them as partners like this, but holding back until the end makes the final mission and the fight more exciting and compelling.

While more recent Assassin’s Creed games have allowed players to choose between male and female main characters, neither succeed as well as Syndicate. By having the two characters playable and fully realized as separate people, with their own goals and personalities, it allows the story to better build on them and it allows Ubisoft to cast them both into the final mission to create. the best ending of the series to date. .

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