Assassin's Creed Unity

Lore & Background

The plot is set in a fictional history of real-world events and follows the millennia-old struggle between the Assassins and the Templars. The framing story is set in the 21st century and features an unidentified and unseen protagonist who joins the Assassins to help locate the corpse of an 18th-century Templar Grand Master. The main story is set in Paris during the French Revolution from 1789 to 1794, and follows Assassin Arno Dorian and his efforts to expose the true powers behind the Revolution, while seeking revenge against those responsible for his adoptive father's murder.

Unity retains the series' third-person open world exploration and introduces revamped combat, parkour, and stealth systems. It also introduces cooperative multiplayer to the Assassin's Creed series, letting up to four players engage in narrative-driven missions and explore the open world map. The game features a historical recreation of Paris at a roughly 1:1 scale, divided into seven major districts and including the town of Versailles.

The game received mixed reviews upon release, praised for its visuals, customization options, setting, and characterization, but criticized for its narrative, gameplay, mission design, and numerous graphical issues and bugs. Ubisoft issued an apology and offered compensation in the form of a free expansion, Dead Kings, which acts as an epilogue to the base game's story.

Reader's Guide

Assassin's Creed Unity is significant as the eighth major installment in the Assassin's Creed series and the successor to Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. It introduced several gameplay innovations, including a refined combat system inspired by fencing, improved stealth mechanics with manual crouching and the Phantom Blade, and a 'Black Box' mission design that offered players more freedom in assassinating targets. The game also marked the series' first foray into cooperative multiplayer, allowing up to four players to play together.

Despite its commercial success, selling over 10 million units by May 2020, Unity is often remembered for its troubled launch, with widespread bugs and graphical issues that led to Ubisoft's apology and compensation. The game's legacy includes its detailed recreation of revolutionary Paris and its influence on later series entries, such as Assassin's Creed Syndicate, which continued the modern-day narrative but set its main plot in Victorian era London. Unity's cooperative multiplayer and skill tree system also set precedents for future titles.

Did You Know?

• The game was released on the same day as Assassin's Creed Rogue for previous generation consoles.
• The Dead Kings expansion, offered for free as compensation for bugs, is set in the commune of Saint-Denis, renamed Franciade during the French Revolution.
• Players who bought the season pass received a free copy of another Ubisoft title from a curated list of specific games after the controversy over bugs.
• The game's Companion App was initially required to access certain treasure chests, but this requirement was removed in a patch released in April 2015.