YMMV / Assassin's Creed: Unity

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Arno Dorian the charismatic Only Sane Man calling for peace, or a self-pitying, whining Butt-Monkey who never owns up to his irresponsibility? Despite being a young novice for only two years, he independently conducts major missions without direct orders from the Assassin Council and moreover fails to achieve the one major objective they give him, recover compromising documents concerning their Mentor and later complains about his, rather justified, expulsion, which he uses as an excuse to be an alcoholic and general miscreant in Versailles. The fact that he ends up becoming an Unwitting Pawn to Napoleon, who unbeknownst to him, stole an Apple under his nose, further underlines the consequences of his ignorance.
    • Likewise many feel that Arno calling for peace and preaching against Pierre Bellec and Germain for believing that they can change the world by killing people is hypocritical, since that is what all Assassins believe and have practised before him. Though, to be fair, Assassins are very specifically targeted killers. The Assassins are an organization which does not kill the innocent and by violating this part of the creed, the Assassins have lost their way. The Templars, of course, have never had that view.
  • Pierre Bellec sees himself as a Rebellious Rebel anti-hero who is taking a pro-active stance opposing the Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering that is the French Assassins. Arno and Elise see him as a fanatic who justifies his betrayal of his mentor. Fans however see him as a Tragic Hero whose frustration was genuine and however wrong his actions are, the fact that he was at least willing to take a stand and get his hands dirty gives him Villainous Valor as compared to the thoroughly ineffectual Arno. Further adding to this is the fact that he was a friend of Charles Dorian and he truly loved Arno as a Replacement Goldfish and believed he was being a father figure to him. As Shaun states in the database, later generations of Assassin historians also feel the same way, to the point where stating you felt he was either wrong or right to do what he did will almost always get Assassins to fight each other.
• Angst? What Angst?: Arno does not care his father was murdered by the Templars. When he finds out his father was an Assassin and his stepfather was a Templar it doesn't set off any thoughts of revenge, or even any questions about why his father was murdered. In fact, his main drive in the story is revenging his Templar stepfather who might have had a hand in the murder of his father.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Yet another staple for the Series, with Francois-Thomas Germain. For all his skill with the Sword of Eden he acquired, he is easily taken out with three Air Assassinations. The final boss fight is less a battle and more a practice in stealth and maneuvering.
• Base-Breaking Character: Arno. Either one of the best main characters, Overshadowed by Awesome compared to Shay from Rogue and the Unity supporting cast, or just the worst AC lead so far. His status as this is such that some critics compare him in a negative light to Connor, who endured his own Base-Breaking Character until Arno came along and changed some minds among his detractors.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In the "Dead Kings" DLC, Arno seeing a hallucination of Elise, who turns out to be an Identical Stranger who is also a thief. Aside from being a reason for him to get to a specific area of the city and to make clear when this DLC takes place, it serves no purpose in the plot.
• Broken Base:
  • This game is either a worthy addition to the series or the worst game in the series for its various bugs, disrespectful handling of the source material, and cliche ending.
  • Elise's death is either a realistic fitting end to her character and within precedence to other video games, or an overdone cliche and trend that has repeated time and time again in Ubisoft games. Especially in the same year that saw widespread criticism of the overused Stuffed in the Fridge trope in action videogames.
  • The new combat system. Some prefer the more fluid kill streak system that has been a staple of the series since Brotherhood while others like that the combat is more challenging and focuses more on positioning.
  • The game's handling of history is either a strong message against revolutionary extremism or extreme falsification of events, with certain historical figures like Robespierre especially, being for some far beyond Historical Villain Upgrade and close to Malicious Slander. This eventually became so important that Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the Front de Gauche (French far left-wing party) declared that he was disgusted by what he called "propaganda". He said the portrayal of Robespierre was one of a beast, and the revolutionaries are all seen as dangerous madmen.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Unity had several mechanics, which if exploited can be minor Game Breakers.
  • Climbing and synchronizing viewpoints the moment Arno enters Paris. Not only is the Fog of War removal welcome, the synchronizations also reveal the locations of the cafes which Arno needs to renovate, which leads to the next point...
  • Finding money to renovate the Cafe Theatre and buying over the various cafes in Paris. As livres are always useful in Unity ^note The most expensive equipment cost well over 100k livres a piece. In contrast, the maximum income of the Cafe is just over 10k every 20 minutes. Also, medicine becomes more expensive as the main story progresses., it only made sense to invest money into the Cafe in order to make more money. What makes this Game Breaking is that this can be done starting from the end of Sequence 2, way before Arno unlocks his more powerful skills. It's entirely possible and realistic to have mainly level 3-4 gear as early as sequence 4. Also, the renovated cafes are Fast Travel points for Arno, while completing cafe missions will liberate various Parisian districts, making it safer for Arno to explore.
  • Come the end of Sequence 9, where Arno's most powerful abilities are available for purchase, level 3 lock picking is almost certainly the first skill players would buy. Many chests with 3 pin locks hold several thousand livres each, while doors with 3 pin locks often offer valuable shortcuts to bypass enemies or (in Co Op Brotherhood missions) allow Arno to access Sync Points, mitigating the cost of the skill.
  • Dropping Smoke Bombs while in combat. What makes this Game Breaking is that while enemies are disorientated by the smoke, Arno is not; even enemies who can parry Arno all day are left helpless, allowing Arno to dispose of them. Unlike the other bombs, Smoke Bombs are inexpensive, and more belts offer an increase in holding capacity for them.
• Contested Sequel: Opinions over this game are divided. While some fans claim that this is the best entry since Assassin's Creed II, others think this entry reeks of Sequelitis due to the plethora of bugs, anti-revolutionary message, mixed views on Arno, and the cliche ending. The fact that this game followed the highly praised Black Flag, and accompanied by the surprisingly good Rogue, did not help matters one bit.
• Critical Backlash: While Unity received heavy criticism upon release, sentiments among fans had generally cooled down over the years. There has been a gradual surge in opinion that while Unity is far from the best game in the franchise, the flaws in it tend to be overblown and negative opinion was a result of having to follow up Black Flag and being riddled with bugs that needed many patches to fix. A common consensus now is that the game — once all the game-breaking issues were smoothed over — is, at the very least, So Okay, It's Average.
• Designated Hero: The Assassins, primarily the council with the exception of Mirabeau, are seen as this. They play an extremely passive role in the Revolution thanks to their Head-in-the-Sand Management, preferring to side with the inept aristocrats, whilst trying to cover up the corruption of its Mentor. Their treatment of Arno doesn't win them any favours either. Despite him exposing Bellec as Mirabeau's killer and stopping him from launching a coup against the council, they proceed to repay him by punishing him for "defending a Templar". Then there's them expelling Arno from the Assassins for acting and killing Templars on his own accord, despite the fact that said Templars were complicit in many of the bloodshed caused by the Revolution and that the Assassins were not doing anything about it.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Pierre Bellec is highly popular among fans who feel that he should have been the Player Character of Unity rather than Arno.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Axe-Man from the E3 trailer stole the hearts of most of the fanbase, as of the four Assassins, he had a significant lead on the other three Assassins in fan art for a significant chunk of time.
  • Napoleon won fans for his badass cynical wit, as well as being seen as the Only Sane Man between a corrupt aristocracy and bloodthirsty zealots. Many fans couldn't wait to start Rooting for the Empire.
  • Elise for being a interesting character along with her interactions and dynamics with Arno. Many were not pleased that you can't play as her and that she dies in the final mission, with many preferring her to either have still died, but at Arno's hands or actually live on, become Templar Grandmaster and/or live Happily Ever After with Arno instead (or kill him). Her last two letters hurt things further.
  • Pierre Bellec is often seen as the kind of Assassin who should be the hero for a game set in the French Revolution, in that he makes ambiguous choices out of enthusiasm and desperation and is a kind of Rebellious Rebel anti-hero that better fits the landscape of the Revolution than the more Knight In Shining Armour type Arno. This is also shared by critics who note that Bellec's boss fight serving as the half-way climax made the rest of the game feel empty since he had the most compelling characterization of the supporting cast and villains, and they felt that either Bellec should have been the Player Character or the actual Big Bad.
  • Theroigne de Mericourt in the Brotherhood and Side Missions has won fans for being more of an Assassin than the actual Assassins, for actually caring and doing something for the people and cottoning on to the Templar shenanigans without fancy powers. The fact that she is a Historical Domain Character lends her more credit.
• Fan Nickname: The four Assassins are known as the Backstreet Boys.
  • Also, we have Ice-Cream Man, Greencoat, and Axeman.
  • Frenchzio for Arno has become a mocking nickname for those fans who note his many similarities to Ezio.
    • This gets a Fandom Nod in Dead Kings when Arno, finding the militiaman he had been chasing had fallen to his death, outright quotes Ezio's "Requiescat in pace", rather than using the main game's "Repose in paix".
  • "Assassin's Creed Unity - the most British French game ever made." A reference to how the game's French characters all speak in British accents.
  • Thomas de Carnellion is Black Altair, due to his Assassin outfit being a retextured, black version of Altair's iconic robe.
  • For the game itself, Assassin's Creed: Made in Unity^note A play on the game's Obvious Beta status and the Unity game engine, which, due to its liberal licensing, has a (somewhat undeserved) reputation for producing unpolished games.
• Genius Bonus: Unlike most other portrayals in media, Napoleon isn't particularly short here. While he's a few inches shorter than Arno, Arno towers over most other characters. This is a case of Ubisoft showing their work, as in spite of being the Trope Namer for The Napoleon, Napoleon Bonaparte was not particularly short. He actually stood above most of his peers at the time.
• Good Bad Bugs: The infamous slew of graphical glitches is extremely hilarious for those who don't consider them to be pure Nightmare Fuel. One example is one where NPCs gatecrash into cutscenes and trash talk in French, the conversations between Arno and Napoleon. These people feel that Ubisoft should Throw It In!.
• Harsher in Hindsight: If you play Unity first, you can see that one of the optional outfits you can put Arno in is that of Shay's Templar greatcoat from the latter part of Rogue. It's not until you finish Rogue that you realize that you can have Arno wear the coat of the guy who murdered his father.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: The developers worked for years to create a painstakingly detailed recreation of the Notre Dame cathedral in the game, and the in-game model could be used to help rebuild the famous chapel after the roof was devastated by a fire on April 15, 2019.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The developers' comments about the difficulty of animating female characters, originally lambasted by critics for how sexist the claim sounded, turned out to be hilariously (or disturbingly) prophetic after numerous animation bugs and glitches surfaced, including those involving female NPCs. Apparently that statement was indeed meant to be taken at face value.
  • Ubisoft faced some backslash for not having French characters speak with French accents. They were also criticized for giving an Irish character too heavy of an accent. Come 2016, and they get even more flak because characters don't speak any modern language in a game that takes place 10,000 BC.
• Informed Wrongness: Arno gets expelled from the Assassins for killing Templars without permission from the council. It's meant to show that Arno is letting his own personal goals override his duty to the order, but he is arguably justified in acting on his own. The Templars are complicit in the bloodshed caused by the Revolution, such as the September Massacres and hoarding food supplies from the populace, and the Assassin Council's Head-in-the-Sand Management makes them completely inept in stopping them. If Arno didn't do what he did, the Revolution could have been even bloodier and the Templars might have won. Not to forget that often Arno finds out about a ploy right before the Templar's are about to start it. If he were to run to the council first every time, not only would the ploy be started in the meantime, he would also most likely lose the trail of the Templar doing it.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • The criticism of Arno is that his character model looks and acts like a Suspiciously Similar Substitute of Ezio, even appearing initially in the white-shirt/black-vest combo that Ezio sported in AC-II. Many fans feel that he doesn't stand out as particularly original in personality and motivation, with even critics of Connor admitting We Want Our Jerk Back! in that, the previously most-divisive character in the Franchise, at least had a unique personality. The fact that Arno is essentially a Satellite Character to Elise's tale of revenge and that, unlike his predecessors, hasn't Been There, Shaped History also makes viewers feel frustrated.
  • Speaking of Elise, the reaction towards her death has been this, with players feeling Ubisoft has killed off too many supporting characters in the Assassins Creed Universe in this manner, as well as their very public declaration that having a playable female character in co-op would require cutting something, when they already had a female Assassin in the game.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Prophet Francoise Germaine successfully orchestrated a coup within the Templar Order to become Grandmaster himself, and then manipulates the young Assassin Arno to eliminate his remaining enemies whilst playing every faction of the French Revolution against each other to make the entire nation tear itself apart. Setting himself against the local Templar Grandmaster and the Assassin Order, Germaine orchestrates their downfall and defeats to weaken both orders while setting Arno against targets loyal to his enemies. With this achieved, Germaine settles back to enjoy the chaos of the French Revolution, intending on seizing control no matter which faction comes out on top.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Women are too hard to animate" became a trending topic on Twitter after the controversy of female characters started up. Even moreso after the revelation that the team spent 5000 hours recreating Notre Dame.
  • The game's many glitches, especially the texture collapse, has created many potentially frightening images with some finding these changes so bizarre that they feel Ubisoft should Throw It In!.
• Narm:
  • Bellec's insult/nickname of "Pisspot" to Arno. While one can buy the British accents to an extent, this line continuously takes the player out of the experience. The fact that he nearly exclusively calls Arno and his father Charles that does not help.
  • The accents as a whole strike people as really out of place. Conan O'Brien on Clueless Gamer was especially mocking:
  Conan: I live in France, but I 'ave a British accent
  • If you switch the language to French with English subtitles, it feels much more fitting, but this can sometimes result in all other audio stopping when a character is talking in a cutscene, ending up in revolutionary figures addressing completely silent crowds of hundreds.
• Narm Charm: There's just something so ridiculous and goofy yet awesome about seeing an entire army of Assassins running around Paris in broad daylight during one of Unity's multiplayer trailers.
• Never Live It Down:
  • The "women are too hard to animate" gaffe still haunted internet forums months after Unity's release. The way the game handled its Ensemble Dark Horse Elise and other NPCs was Ubisoft Not Helping Their Case.
  • The game's mega-glitch and Nightmare Face essentially became Unity's Signature Scene, much to the developer's dismay. They apologized for the game's weaknesses during the announcement for the sequel Assassin's Creed Syndicate and promised it will Win Back the Crowd.
  • The accents. To date, this is the one Assassin's Creed game to not emulate its region's accents, with the decision to have all of the actors speaking with British accents to date being held as a black mark against the game.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • King Philip le Bel in the Prologue of Unity doesn't have a line of dialogue, but his model animations, his cold gray eyes, and the fact that he's responsible for the Templars most brutal and public loss leaves a memorable impression. Likewise, Jacques de Molay in the same prologue was seen by many as a far more impressive and interesting villain than the Revolutionary Templars of the game.
  • Thomas-Alexandre Dumas has a cameo in the Montage that opens the Brotherhood mission of "The Tournament" and briefly appears as a model in the mission. The montage and the voiceover ("Dumas was hardcore") make him out to be a bigger-than-life character out of his son's books that one regrets the sidelining of such a historical figure.
  • Despite being a critical part (and allegedly one of the major causes) of the French Revolution, Queen Marie Antoinette appears in one 5 second cutscene in "The Women's March" co-op mission asking for more cake, though weirdly she still gets an ingame model and a database entry.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Eagle Vision allowing for "visions" and "flashes-before-my-eyes" has been hinted and suggested before. Namely in Assassin's Creed III where the side-mission "The Mad Doctor's Castle" had Connor exploring a mansion and following up clues, each of which provided him a glimpse of a cutscene of something which happened. The same technique showed up in the Tyranny of King Washington DLC for the flashbacks in Part II showing Samuel Adams' death.
  • Likewise, the game's side-missions of Paris Side Stories which revolve on folk myths and other legends turning out to be Mun Danger or a myth, as well as the Murder Mysteries are retoolings of the Frontiersman Legends in Assassin's Creed III, which also had detective-like quests and moments.
  • Unity was credited by many for its more stealthy-missions. However, much of its features was introduced in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. Namely the patrol pattern of guards and the sniper-on-height archetype which Black Flag had on many of its plantation missions, alongside the large Alarm bell that once rung brought in reinforcements, as well as the X-Ray Eagle Vision that allowed players to see through walls.
  • This is not the first time that Templars have roused the common folk into a rebellion which the Assassins then tried to curtail. One of the Assassin Recruit missions in Brotherhood featured this during the reign of King Henry VIII of England. Its text is as follows "while we have no interest in protecting Henry from his people, we cannot allow the Templars to lead the rebellion".
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: The general critical consensus is that Paris is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, maps of the series in terms of Scenery Porn and free-running, but the story is among the weakest yet. Likewise there's also much praise for the Assassination missions going back to the open-style of Assassin's Creed but they also state that the targets are largely unmemorable and the villains aren't entertaining or complex.
• Polished Port: Thanks to the FPS Boost program on the Xbox Series X/S, the game runs at a stable 60 FPS when played on those consoles.
• Porting Disaster: Even with the day-one patch, the PlayStation 4 version was plagued with a shocking framerate, atrocious pop-in, geometry glitches, and inconsistent control issues. Digital Foundry shares their thoughts on the matter.
  • Much like the maligned port for Watch_Dogs, the PC port of Unity is also horribly optimized. The port has ludicrously high system requirements that are hardly justified by its glitchy lighting, frequent crashing, poor texture qualities and busted AI. Here is Totalbiscuit's report on the PC port.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Some people argue that the interesting factors and characters of the French Revolution, along with a genuine Assassin-Templar alliance was forced onto the sidelines by the relationship between Arno and Elise. What makes things worse is that by the time the game starts, Arno and Elise were already in a secret relationship, meaning that there's no built-up chemistry from the player's perspective, making it a case of Strangled by the Red String. See They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character and They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot below for further details.
• Rooting for the Empire:
  • The fact that the Assassins are on the side of the aristocratic elite decrying mob rule, covering up corruption of their leaders letting Napoleon steal an Apple under their noses as well as the game's narrative bias to place all the violence on a single faction and a bad apple, makes the Templar's radical approach all the more sympathetic, since they are playing an active role in history.
  • Many fans were rooting for Pierre Bellec since he's the Rebellious Rebel and angst-ridden Byronic Hero who represented what fans expected from an Assassin's Creed game in the Revolutionary setting. Many cite his Motive Rant as being far more logical and coherent than Arno's defenses and replies.
• The Scrappy: Deacon/Shaun Hastings, who returns to write the Database entries. While Shaun's snark in the database made him an Ensemble Dark Horse during the Desmond games, in Unity, he doesn't shut up. Shaun usually kept to one or two quips in the Database entries, but here, he commonly drops upwards of half a dozen per page. Likewise, the earlier database entries were funny and informative, here it's full of unfunny quips and filled with blatant disregard for facts.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Putting Eagle Vision on a timer and adding a cool down.
  • The practically forced down your throat companion apps in the form of an iOS App and Assassin's Creed Initiates, which you need to unlock certain chests, hasn't gone down well. Thankfully, later patches removed these requirements.
  • The outfits- more specifically, the full costumes you get for completing objectives in game. The Thomas de Carnellion outfit is the worst example, as it's the token "Complete the puzzles to get the special outfit" reward. The problem is, because it's a purely visual design, there's no gameplay benefits for doing the riddles (which many players see as That One Sidequest), making going for the outfit entirely pointless.
  • The amount of missions that have performing cover kills as one of the optional challenges. It's bad enough that the cover system itself is very wonky, but whistling, the easiest way of drawing a guard to you, has been removed, and the closest thing it has to a replacement, the Cherry Bombs, don't always work.
  • Combat is at its most limited, with no melee or hidden blade attacks, one gun unless you opt for carrying a musket over a sword and a single heavy/light weapon with said single pistol. With the previous Assassins, the combat was at least diverse, but in Unity, the player feels more constrained than anything else.
  • Assassinations now must be performed with the hidden blade. Targets can have their health drained from sword fights, gunshots, and whatnot, but will simply writhe on the ground with the game saying that the targets are merely incapacitated and that the player has to deal the final blow. This can get frustrating for those who favor a more direct approach and still have to deal with a large swarm of mooks.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The removal of memory corridors when you assassinate a target, and replaced with the ability to see into the memories of Arno's targets, did not suit well with the fanbase. With the exception of Bellec, le Peletier and Germain, Arno does not interact with his targets nor do they have their final words. The previous memory corridors go to many lengths to show the targets' motivations and personality, which humanises them and adds moral ambiguity of the killing of targets, something that is rubbed on to the previous protagonists. Unity consequently treats the targets as one-dimensional villains, and hinders Arno's character development. The most egregious example was with le Peletier, who could explain his motivations on why he would side with the Templars which would be seen as understandable, but it could only happen with you assassinate him in a specific way, which you could void entirely. Even if you did, Arno does not even say a single world as he strikes him down. This makes Arno seem more unsympathetic due to how he dehumanises his targets as people he could get information from, whereas the previous protagonists would show some sympathy for some of their targets.
  • In regards to the book, not many were happy with how the US version added the detail that Elise had an affair with another man while still being in some sort of relationship with Arno. While some are angry with how it taints her relationship with Arno who was portrayed as being completely faithful, others are simply annoyed by how random it is and don’t understand why it was added in the US release.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Connor fans wish that the game was about him helping the French Revolution, or that he was one of the Assassins in the co-op missions. What makes it worse in their eyes is that 3 teased this very idea, with La Fayette telling Connor that he wished to show him Paris, and Juno telling him he was still important. Ubisoft's often dismissive comments about the star of their best-selling game don't help.
  • The revelation of Robespierre as a Templar has gotten some of this, particularly to those who are aware of said individual's Hidden Depths and would prefer a more ambiguous view of the Assassins vs. Templar conflict. There's also the fact that very few of the more colourful French Revolutionary-Era figures are included; many were hoping for the likes of Marat, Desmoullins, Corday, or Saint-Just to have major roles.
  • Some people felt that Elise shouldn't have died but should have become Grand Master instead, claiming the ending was cliche and predictable. Also, She could have been a good alternate player character.
  • As mentioned above, the fact that, despite the reveal trailer and a great number of arts representing three other Assassins alongside Arno, they ended up just being Palette Swap.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The idea of a Templar-Assassin unity that was promised in the promotion gets shelved since it's entirely confined to a romance between Arno and Elise. With the exception of Bellec and the indecisiveness of the Assassin Council, the game is still Assassin Arno and Templar Elise versus even worse Templars, and there's no real attempt at unity.
  • The game's generally more distant relationship to the history it portrays has gotten this too; considering the earth-shaking ramifications of the French Revolution (seriously, a respected superpower being turned topsy-turvy and dragging the rest of the world into the Age of Revolution might qualify as a major set-piece) and the chaotic and colorful nature of the entire event, there's surprisingly little focus on it. The bulk of the game's plots and characters are original, and emphasis is placed on the "secret conspiracy" stereotypes. Some feel this was a massive waste of potential. One article stated that it was unrealistic for Arno to be so detached from the Revolution and concentrate solely on his personal story:
  "A Parisian not feeling or thinking anything about the Revolution in 1791 would be like a New Yorker not having a reaction after the 9/11 attacks."
  • Many fans felt that the Time Anomalies while impressive should have been a full game or at least have story content rather than small scenic tours into new eras. This sentiment became even stronger when writer Jeffrey Yohalem revealed that the original concept for Unity was a game in Paris in multiple eras a la The Red Violin and they only settled on the French Revolution setting when they felt that the original idea was too complex to achieve in a limited time frame.
  • The plot would arguably have been more memorable if it were about Arno tracking down the man who killed his birth father. That man, of course, being Shay Cormac.
• Vindicated by History:
  • With time, and a lot of patches, fan reception to Unity has softened somewhat since its infamous launch. While the story is still rather divisive, Paris is usually regarded as one of the best cities to explore in the series and the visuals are considered to be some of the best in the series and still hold up years later. The combat is now fondly regarded thanks to its depth and changes from prior games while the parkour is generally considered to have peaked here in terms of both animation quality and depth — especially after Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla made traversal more simplistic. That this would wind up being one of the last 'traditional' Assassin's Creed games before the transition to a more RPG-like format in Origins has also earned it some goodwill.
  • In response to the fire that destroyed the roof of Notre-Dame of Paris cathedral in April 2019, the game was made free for a limited time via Uplay, many fans began to speak fondly of the game, and there was a massive up-spike in positive user reviews on Steam despite not being free there.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: It is really, really, hard for a game about the French Revolution to escape this. Especially for a Franchise that has formerly prized itself for historical research and an even handed look at the American Revolution.
  • The reaction and charges of "propaganda" and the great number of errors in representation has brought a great deal of criticism as well. Jean-Clement Martin, the historian who has served as a consultant for the game, and a respected member of the Society of Robespierre Studies, while noting that the script had a "royalist" bias feels that the game should be enjoyed as "fantasy" and perhaps if it stokes interest, it could lead players to read history books.
  "The Revolution broke royal power, and rather than deterring populist politics, it encouraged them. If anything, the game's apparent stance that the Revolution was an Entirely Bad Thing seems nearsighted and one-dimensional."
  • The author/historian David Andress who wrote "The Terror" also discussed the historical depiction and he noted that the game was largely counter-revolutionary. More generally, while admiring the largely accurate (if streamlined) reproduction of Paris, he dismisses its portrayal as largely cliche and noted that the Templar conspiracy theory instigating the Revolution was a famous right-wing myth that refuses to give credit to the popular movement and pay real attention to its Gray-and-Grey Morality.