YMMV / Assassin's Creed Syndicate

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• Alternative Character Interpretation: Are the Fryes trying to make London a better place by substituting the Friendly Neighborhood Gangster Rooks instead of the Blighters, or are they so obsessed with fighting the Templars, they essentially just take over the operations of the Blighters without changing anything but jackets? The latter is backed up by the fact the majority of Rooks are ex-Blighters. Jacob and Evie would surely make a rule to not harm innocents ^note  Rule 1: Stay your blade from the flesh of the innocent , but it would be impossible to enforce throughout the entire gang. It doesn't help they seem to employ all of the children they rescue in their gang, if only as a network of spies who don't see action. On the other hand, dialogue from both twins in the Debut, Cinematic, Twins and Story trailers and Evie's concern about the effects Jacob's brashness will have on the people throughout the game point more to their plan being meant to help the lower class and London in general just as much as it's meant to fight Templars.
  • Alternatively, do they plan to stop the Rooks' more morally ambiguous operations and keep a closer eye on their ranks, but only after eliminating Starrick and freeing London? Do they figure London will always have street gangs, so they might as well keep theirs in control and work to enforce standards akin to the Creed once Starrick is taken care of and more focus can go to their operations only bending the law instead of morality?
  • Is Jacob just using the Templars as an excuse to live out his "firm but fair" gangster fantasy given his plan to start a gang starts with almost zero context to why they would need one, which Evie even calls him out on? However, in the trailers and throughout the game Jacob does seem to show serious concern for the working class, so is he more focused on helping them? Or, knowing Jacob, is he going for both objectives at once, helping London but making sure he has a grand time doing it?
  • Similarly, is Ned Wynert actually trying to help the people of London by using the Fryes against the Blighters or is he just framing their thefts, hijackings, and sabotage that way so Ned's criminal organization can prosper in their place?
  • Do Dickens, Darwin, Nightingale and Marx not actually know the Fryes are notorious London Gangsters? Or is it more the case of an Odd Friendship on their part? Dickens, at least, could be explained by having quite a few odd friends who might add spice to his writing inspiration. Likewise, Marx may well seek out the Fryes's help because they're criminals and being harassed by the police^note Marx regarded the criminal element as "lumpenproletariat", parasites who drained the true working-men and enabled middle-class society to exploit the masses, but the Templars use of capitalism to control people for their own good is certainly something he would want to see dismantled. Darwin, however, just seems oblivious to the fact Jacob is more than just an anti-drug vigilante.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Jacob Frye is probably the most divisive of the Assassin's Creed protagonists to date. While he has some fans who found his thrill-seeking personality and charisma more endearing than previous protagonist Arno Dorian, he's disliked by a fair share of players. Negative points include being a Spotlight-Stealing Squad from his more interesting sister Evie, his personality being seen as downright unlikeable at times, and his personality seems to be a retread of Edward Kenway's like how Arno was to Ezio.
  • There's quite a split over Evie's handling. There's a notable sentiment who think Ubisoft only included her as a form of damage control for Unity's "Women are too hard to animate" controversy, evidenced by her general Out of Focus state in the press releases and the aforementioned limited time she's playable, and so are cynical and dismissive of her inclusion. Others, however, didn't mind the reasoning so long as it adds a female character, and there was hope that the Jacob-focus would be deliberate misdirection with Evie being more prominent. As well, others point out that these games are usually in development for several years, so Evie was likely planned for a while, and that the idea of her being introduced only to save face is absurd to them. Many will point out that Evie's bizarre exclusion from many trailers and other marketing material comes across as an attempt by Ubisoft to pander to a male-only demographic.
  • The inclusion of Karl Marx in the game is evidently one, just like how the man was in Real Life. A quick glance in a comments section will be filled with anti Communists wishing to assassinate Marx, a removal of his inclusion or to be portrayed as a villain. Other anti Communists are okay with Marx in the game for historical purposes and just view him as a social theorist rather than the man who spawned the Cold War.
    • Communists themselves are rather happy that Marx is in the game, but ironically don't like how his revolutionary tendencies were played down. Marxists either view this as a far better portrayal than what other media would depict him as, while other Marxists accuse Ubisoft of not going the extra mile to portray Marx as a revolutionary rather than a reformer.
  • Shaun is back to write the Database entries, but fans, just as they were in Unity, are divided on how many jokes there are in the entries and wished the Database would be more straight-laced. On the other hand, there are fans who are even happier with Syndicate's Database, due to the fact Rebecca now adds her own annotations to Shaun's writing.
• Best Level Ever: The actual assassination missions build on what Ubisoft learned from Unity and often provide a large, fun level with plenty of ways and opportunities for the Frye twins to kill their target.
  • "A Thorne in the Side." The level consists of Evie infiltrating the Tower of London to kill resident Jerkass Lucy Thorne. You can choose any method to get to her, but probably the most satisfying is using Henry's contact to fake being captured, infiltrate the tower, then give Lucy the unexpected killing she rightfully deserves. The best part is that she doesn't see it coming at all- her ego and hubris are so inflated that she plays basketball with her lack of foresight!
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The World War I side-missions. Other than featuring Jacob Frye's granddaughter in London, it came completely out of nowhere, had nothing to do with the main plot (modern or 1868), mostly used by the series' Greater-Scope Villain Juno as an Excuse Plot to provide chunks of Info Dump (most of which was already covered in previous games no less), is only ever mentioned by Bishop when you enter or leave the 1916 portal for the first time, was completely unnecessary, and was absolutely fantastic.
  • The Last Maharaja DLC as a whole doesn't really contribute anything of significance to the story, the lore, the relationships between Jacob, Evie and Henry, and focuses heavily only a minor NPC who was barely in the game, and only tangentially related to the generally disliked Assassin's Creed: Chronicles:India game.
• Broken Base:
  • The modern day storyline's continued Out of Focus nature, as was the case in Assassin's Creed: Unity, has been met with mixed feelings. Some people believe that it is a case of Sequelitis with the series continuing to lose the focus it's been losing since Assassin's Creed III (with a brief reprieve in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag), while others welcome the shift away from that device and diving exclusively into the historical settings.
  • The rope launcher. While some fans appreciate its addition (especially with firearms being even more prominent now), others feel that the climbing of buildings and platforms is an important part of the series' identity and core aesthetic, which the rope launcher ruins by making it too automatic and easy. However, the developers have stated that they added this mechanic because London's buildings are much taller than those in previous entries, and climbing them would break the flow of the game. It also helps that you can choose to use it or not.
  • Evie's Chameleon skill, which many have misinterpreted as literal invisibility, while in actuality Evie is regulating her heartbeat and standing completely still (the game, however, shows this through invisibility). Some have mocked this ability, calling the game "Assassins's Crysis," while others seem to be more or less okay with it. It helps that the skill is optional and can only be unlocked late into the game.
  • The question of whether Jacob is bisexual or not. Many fans furiously defend the idea that he is while others are vehemently against it, arguing a general lack of real evidence in the game itself. Regardless, Word of God subsequently confirmed his bisexuality. Few people find his sexuality offensive or immoral. The fact that all the romance in the game is assigned to his sister in the form of a not very convincing relationship, and the heroine of time skip is declared the granddaughter exactly of Jacob, does not make the situation better. In general, while a bisexual man implicitly ending up with a woman doesn't make him less bisexual, the fact that he is bisexual does not get any showing in the game at all, and some feel this paints Ubisoft as cowards for not addressing the matter.
• Complete Monster: Tobias Jeffers ^note appearing in The Dreadful Crimes DLC side mission "The Fiend of Fleet Street" is a leatherworker responsible for disappearance of several people of Fleet Street. After killing his victims, he sends their flesh to a bakery as meat for pies, grounds their bones into manure, which he sends to a florist shop, and uses their skin as a leather for his products. His most recent victim is Detective Murphy, who was investigating the disappearances; Tobias uses his skin to make a handbag. After deliveryman George become suspicious about the nature of products he was delivering, Jeffers kills him to avoid begin caught. Confronted about his crimes, he gleefully admits them.
• Contested Sequel: This one vs Unity. The predecessor was highly criticised for having a poor story, plot and character development but praised for excellent gameplay once the many bug issues were resolved. Syndicate gets the complete reverse; criticisms for poor gameplay as well as the Scrappy Mechanic involved with the life-point indicator but praise for the storyline and characters.
  • It was due to the mixed reception of both those games that Ubisoft lengthened the production schedule of Origins, putting more time and effort into the areas where these games failed.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Crawford Starrick is generally considered to be a pretty impressive and cool villain. Likewise Maxwell Roth, an Expy of Daniel Day-Lewis' evergreen Bill the Butcher.
  • Jack is a sick, twisted, bastard to be sure, but good lord, is he awesome. His clear inspiration from Scarecrow doesn't help matters at all. Many players wished, he was playable throughout the entire DLC, instead of a handful of missions.
• Game-Breaker:
  • As with some of the past Assassin's Creed games, some of the secondary weapons are extremely powerful and can make missions incredibly easy. Throwing knives are ranged weapons that are silent, and can kill any enemy in 2-3 hits (or one with a headshot) ^note and that's before Evie gets her unique skill which allows her to carry more of them and do increased damage, while poison darts can cause an entire garrison to completely destroy itself. One of the biggest offenders are smoke bombs, which make stealth missions criminally easy since guards cannot see you and the smoke doesn't actually put them in an alert state.
  • If you thought combat was too simple and button mashy in previous Creed games, you haven't seen nothing until you see the spike weapon from the Jack the Ripper DLC in action, since it will literally incapacitate any enemy with the push of secondary weapon button, and two successive attacks with them will scare the rest of the group off.
• Genius Bonus: During his presentation, Dr. Elliotson explains his belief that two deceased patients with a history of violent behavior will have “similar protrusions in specific parts of their brains.” The real Doctor John Elliotson was a proponent of phrenology, a now-discredited pseudoscience from the 19th-century based on the idea that bumps on the brain were indicators of mental illness and antisocial behavior.
• Good Bad Bugs / Loophole Abuse: Occasionally, you might find yourself struggling with an optional "Don't kill anybody" objective. Just find the nearest set of rooks and send them to fight whoever Thou Shalt Not Kill. After all, while the protagonist didn't kill them there and then, they could have died by somebody else's hand there and then. It's likely an oversight, as the game would become much harder if the objective could fail because of a random street fight. This is not the most reliable trick however, as the objective can still occasionally fail.
• He Really Can Act: While Paul Amos turns in a stellar performance as Jacob, his talent really shines in the Sequence 8 mission "Fun and Games". The performance is frightening- especially when he pleads "NOOOO!!!"
  Maxwell Roth: Stand back! *waves to the Blighters to get back* Readyyyyyyyy...
  Jacob: WAIT!!!
  Maxwell Roth: Whatever for?
  Jacob: THERE ARE CHILDREN IN THERE!
• Harsher in Hindsight: In the base game, Jacob may offer a job in his Rooks gang to a child pickpocket after catching them. Come the "Jack the Ripper" DLC, The Rooks have been corrupted into Jack's gang and become the replacement Blighter threat against the Fryes. Even worse, the Rooks loyal to the Fryes were stated to be killed off by the others, but there's still some hope left by Lydia Frye's time in the future where she seems to have regained control of the Rooks.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The "Team Edward Kenway" jokes became even funnier after Syndicate introduced Jacob Frye. As a bonus, they're both the primary protagonists of their respective games and the first two such primary protagonists to be British.
  • Family Guy had a Cutaway Gag on Benjamin Disraeli where he turned to the camera and said to the audience "You don't even know who I am." Well, thanks to this game we now do.
• Ho Yay: Between Freddy Abberline and Jacob. Note that by this point in the game, Jacob has realized he's bisexual, so it might be intentional on his end.
  Jacob: One uniform, as requested.
  Abberline: It's still warm...
  Jacob: My gift to you.
  Abberline: I will meet you on the roof of Buckingham Palace.
  Jacob: You're such a romantic.
  • Even while Jacob was procuring the uniform, to be precise, stripping a guard to his underwear, he took the chance to say "Chaaarming!"
• Incest Yay Shipping: No wonder, given the charismatic twin protagonists and a poorly developed real romance in the game. Moreover, the time skip for some reason "loses" Evie's husband and they are training Jacob's granddaughter together, which only adds to the speculation.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Some fans are not too happy with the setting mostly because Victorian London and its overall culture and aesthetic have influenced several contemporary games such as The Order: 1886, Bloodborne and Dishonored to the point that people feel it's overexposed and some fans would have preferred a different country or an earlier era of English history.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • A lot of people came to the game for Evie Frye.
  • Likewise, many were interested in Syndicate because it featured Karl Marx, as noted in Honest Trailers video parody of Unity, mostly because they were curious how Ubisoft would tackle such a divisive figure.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Fans have taken to shipping Jacob with Maxwell Roth, Pearl Attaway, Ned Wynert, Frederick Abberline, and even Henry Green and Nigel Bumble. His sister and mentor are an Official Couple, alas.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Between a future DLC episode making him playable and Lydia's profile mentioning that she received training from him in his old age, fans knew better than to believe that Jacob would die at the hands of Jack the Ripper.
• Magnificent Bastard: Crawford Starrick became a master of manipulation at a young age. The moment he took over his father's business, Starrick used assassination and his own genius to become rich and powerful. Upon being invited to the Templar Order, Starrick quickly rises in the ranks to become the Templar Grand Master, and becomes one of the most feared Templars in the world and looks for a Piece of Eden known as The Shroud. Weaving London around himself and his businesses, Starrick adapts to the Frye twins intervening in his business by attempting to give the city aid rather than making it suffer and even when cornered with his associates dead, keeps his cool, deciding to wipe out the ruling authority of England at a ball. He successfully steals the key to The Shroud from Evie Frye, and when defeated, tells the Fryes he wished only to make London a utopia, remaining loyal to his city to the end.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Where before leaps of faith had a hawk's scream or a rather generic ground rushing up to you piece, now the act is accompanied by one of Austin Wintory's distinctly beautiful drawn out violin notes.
• Narm:
  • The trailer that called the rope launcher 'iconic'. Similar to Aiden Pearce's cap and Arno's pocket watch, Ubisoft is calling something new from a game that nobody has played 'iconic' just reduces it to a meaningless buzzword that's incredibly transparent in its use. It's even funnier because they go out of their way to mention how new and different the rope launcher is when it's essentially repurposing the traversal system of the Hookblade and Zipline from Revelations and Eagle Flight in AC3's DLC.
  • Some of the historical characters and situations are really odd mostly for the fact that the Fryes are Victorian gangsters and their activities jar with the social station and position of these figures. Charles Darwin tasking the Frye Twins to stop gangsters from using rare plants to create drugs is cited as bizarre. Likewise, the ending where Queen Victoria knights three assassins and crooks is cited as being incongrous and unlikely.
  • The Disraelis, mostly because of the poor animation of their scenes are regarded as quite the Narm Couple.
  • The romance subplot between Evie and Henry Green is also seen as lacking chemistry and proper build-up. Henry's attempts to ingratiate with Evie, asking her to find flowers and the like was cited as too awkward and stilted to be romantically charming.
    • Part of the problem may be the fact that there's no indication of the "correct" chronological order of many of their scenes together, which can lead to some awkward mood shifts in their relationship. For instance, you can collect all the pressed flowers and trigger the marriage proposal scene very early in the game. Then when you go back to Evie's story missions all of a sudden Henry is awkward and nervous around her again, like they just met. It's safe to say that chronologically, this didn't happen until after the events of the main story.
  • Dr. Alvaro Grammatica in the modern day section is cited as being too over-the-top in his portrayal of an eccentric Mad Scientist. He's been compared to Dr. Nick Riviera from The Simpsons.
  • Some of the kill animations starts disturbing by how violent they are, but then go straight into this because of how much overkill they are.
• Narm Charm: That said, the above moments also qualify as this to many, as they enjoy the characters enough to take the sillier moments in stride.
  • Lucy Thorne's completely deadpan "Delicious" after Starrick's speech about Indian tea. It's ambiguous wether she was talking about the tea or eviscerating Evie.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The kidnapping minigame is a deeper, more polished version of a scripted setpiece from The Tyranny of King Washington where Ratonhaké'ton holds Benjamin Franklin at gunpoint and forces him into the rebels' hideout.
  • The ability to zoom into faraway targets; Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor had a similar ability a year earlier, and the fear assassinations work like the brutalize move from Mordor, the main difference being that fear assassinations involve a Quick Time Event.
• The Scrappy: Rogue's resident Scrappy, Violet da Costa, is back - and if you didn't hate her then, you WILL by the end of Syndicate.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Many people, having gotten used to the life-point indicator in the shape of white diamonds that had been in use since the very beginning of the franchise, were upset by the new circle indicator and found themselves unable to play the game further. It is especially telling when for the next game in the series, Origins, Ubisoft went back to the first life-point indicator.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus is that Syndicate is a solidly middle-of-the-road entry into the franchise. The Fryes are likable protagonists, London is recreated well, and the gameplay is fun, overall considered on par with the pre-Unity entries. But for that same reason, there is little to make it truly stand out from the series. The Modern Story, despite being improved from Unity, is considered inferior to previous entries and there's nothing which particularly stands out about the villains or the main story. Gang warfare, while entertaining, hasn't blown people away like the introduction of the pirate ship mechanic either.
  • Fans that enjoyed the gang warfare are hoping Ubisoft will take it and improve it even further, the way they took Assassin's Creed III's well-received naval aspects and greatly expanded upon it in Black Flag.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • It looks to be one for Gangs of New York — creatively titled street gangs with themed animal names, sporting cool hats, populist resentment among slum-areas, all-out street brawls, Fight Clubbing and roughly the same era, only transplanted to London.
  • It's more or less a game adaptation of Peaky Blinders set in Victorian London with Gangs Of Hats roaming the streets and a criminal organization led by family relatives just like the Shelbys. And funnily enough, the game has a level set during World War I which forms a major part of the backstory for the Peaky Blinders complete with Winston Churchill himself.
  • With its plot centered around organized crime and managing a gang, street traffic not only prominent but playing an important part in the gameplay (hijacking vehicles, pursuits and cargo delivery being essential to many missions) and the city itself being a sandbox full of morally dubious activities, corrupt figures of power and eccentric criminals, Syndicate is essentually a Grand Theft Auto game set in XIX century.
• Squick: In the Fight Clubs, both Evie's and Jacob's finishers are surprisingly brutal, even for Assassin's Creed. Jacob has a tendency to break his opponent's back by knocking them to the ground and then forcefully pulling his leg over his head, or occasionally his entire torso. Evie seems to have a nasty tendency of breaking people's arms in the ring. Given the state of medicine during Victorian times, or hell, even in modern times, it's hard to believe that nobody was killed in the Fight Clubs when they went up against the Frye twins.
  • For the fanbase, the pairing of Roth and Jacob, which is becoming increasingly popular among a certain group of fans and is actually canonical according to Jeffrey Yohalem, Syndicate's lead writer, falls smack into this for the rest for its general wrongness. Not only is Roth much older than Jacob, he's also a murdering psychopath who does what he does For the Evulz, and was a second away from murdering a house full of children. A large portion of the fanbase is more than just turned off by the pairing. To be fair, Ubisoft did not write the relationship between Jacob and Roth as an example of a happy or in any way positive romance, but as a way to add depth to both of the characters.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Though she's far more willing to go through with Gramatica's experiments with the Shroud later, there is something rather satisfying about hearing Violet de Costa getting shot in the head at the beginning of every recording.
• That One Level: Who here enjoyed getting full sync for the mission "Triple Theft"? You have to do a kidnapping, but you can't kill anyone (in a restricted area) and you can't let the kidnapped target escape, meaning you can't get detected by anyone while trying to escort your target out of the restricted area and back to the delivery carriage. And, you have to do this three times.
• That One Sidequest: The carriage races. The opposing racers are faster than you, and only get more so if you happen to get ahead of them. High traffic density from npc carts may work for or against you (more probably against due to poor handling controls) and the opposing racers are also ram happy and will gleefully knock you off course at the first opportunity. Not only that, their rubberbanding is so ridiculous it makes you wonder if the dev team took pointers from Polaris Snocross. You can see other drivers on the minimap speed up like they fed nitrous oxide to their horses and take corners like a scalpel if you make the mistake of getting a good lead. And you have to get first place in most if not all 12 races in order to get Robert Topping's loyalty to level 5 and unlock the schematics for the best Sword Cane.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: An early leak revealed the game's working title as Assassin's Creed Victory, which many fans came to prefer before it was officially announced as Syndicate.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • In a game about how Victorian Capitalism Is Bad, whose trailers largely paraphrase rhetoric associated with the man, you would expect Karl Marx to have a bigger role in the story and setting, rather than brief throwaway side missions with no presence in the main story. The side missions likewise show him as an activist rather than a prominent sociopolitical philosopher. Some feel that Ubisoft lost their nerve for failing to include such a controversial figure in a prominent fashion, when they had earlier provided revisionist looks at Machiavelli, George Washington and Blackbeard.
    • It's possible that after the controversies of Unity's portrayal of historical figures, Ubisoft didn't want to push their luck further.
  • Ned Wynert could have been an eye-opening exploration of what it meant to be Transgender in an era when such a thing was basically unheard of, and the LGBT rights movement was a full century away from getting started. Instead, his transgender status is largely glossed over. While this may be a good way to approach the treatment of LGBT characters by not making their gender or sexuality a big deal in the work's setting, given previous games' willingness to tackle topics such as racism and slavery, it is unfortunate that Ubisoft didn't think to use him beyond being a Quest Giver with relatively little on-screen presence.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The Jack the Ripper DLC was generally well received but a common complaint is that the story of Jacob and Evie unintentionally creating a monster like Jack the Ripper, with all they have built being twisted horribly and the mystery of the Ripper's identity, could have serviced a full game. Fans feel that the game should have been a proper sequel to Syndicate or be a part of the main game.
  • Jacob is bisexual, but many fans wouldn't know it if it weren't for Word of Gay because his sexuality is displayed only through subtle Ho Yay and a kiss that was forced on him. Similar to Ned Wynert's case, a bisexual man in Victorian times would be a goldmine for interesting plots and character development and an exploration of LGBT people in historic times, but the issue isn't addressed at all.
  • The game starts with Henry Green desperately begging the Assassin Order for help. Evie and Jacob arrive in London pretending to be sent from the Order. There is never any consequence of the Frye Twins lying about working under the Order's authority, the Order never finds out and tries to punish them, and if Henry was ever upset that his relationship with Evie is based on a lie and taking advantage of his desperation we never see it.
  • In the prologue David Brewster's disastrous experiments on an Apple of Eden appear to tear several holes in reality. There's doesn't seem to be any consequences to this unfortunately.
• Unexpected Character: Nobody expected to see a young Winston Churchill in the game.
• Win Back the Crowd: Initially, Syndicate enjoyed a warmer reception than its immediate predecessor Unity had, thanks to launching in a much more polished state and Ubisoft making use of public playtesting to improve the gameplay (e.g. less floaty parkour, more room for error in stealth segments, the return of whistling, and the removal of the companion app). ^However... Unity became somewhat Vindicated by History after its many technical issues were patched, while Syndicate, despite Ubisoft's efforts, is now generally regarded as So Okay, It's Average.
  • The return of the Modern Day story was also an obvious attempt to do this, its removal being one of the biggest complaints about Unity. Opinions on how well it succeeded vary, but considering the amount of people who expressed joy at seeing Shaun and Rebecca, it certainly was a step in the right direction.

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