It's Not An Olympic Themed Game, But We Got Assassin's Creed At The Paris Games
By Brian Allen
If you were drifting off during the Olympic opening ceremonies know that you weren't dreaming, that really was a parkour expert dressed as an Assassin's Creed hero carrying the torch. Ubisoft, the publisher that has allowed gamers to jump into haybales for almost two decades now, showed off its French roots for the Paris 2023 Games. You never know what you'll see when the Olympics show up and show out every four years, but I doubt anybody had an Assassin's Creed hero carrying the torch on their Olympic bingo card.
Assassin's Creed's "your character changed history" stories typically occur during important real-life events. Assassin's Creed Unity casts the player as Arno Dorian, a man torn between the assassin and templar factions during the French Revolution. It got off to a rough start due to numerous launch bugs, but Ubisoft fixed many of them with patches. Many players report it's now worth trying, even if the initial glitches chased you away.
The franchise's intensely loyal fans never gave up. Some of them even released a mod adding multiple quality-of-life fixes such as a button specifically for entering windows and better responsiveness for crouching. Because an assassin that glitches near a window or can't get into the shadows fast enough is a dead assassin.
Art often imitates life, but Assassin's Creed Unity helped restore some of France's real-life iconic architecture. When large portions of the famous Notre Dame cathedral burned in 2019, the restoration team used Ubisoft's in-game cathedral model as a reference. Ubisoft also donated $500,000 to help with restoration efforts.
From a game maligned at launch to literally helping rebuild French history, Unity has aged better than anyone might have imagined. Arno is carrying the torch in more ways than even his biggest fans might have imagined. Assassin's Creed Unity is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC and is free with an Ubisoft Plus membership. PlayStation Plus Premium and Extra memberships contain the Ubisoft Classics collection which also features Unity.