#473: Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation
Handheld spinoff actually pretty good I guess
Initial release: 2012
Developer: Ubisoft Sofia
Platform: Playstation Vita, Playstation 3 (HD), Playstation 4 (Remaster), XBox 360 (HD), XBox One (Remaster), PC (HD & Remaster)
Assassin’s Creed, like any major multimedia franchise over a decade old, has a lot of spinoff material. Comic books, novels, a movie for some reason, and, of course, the prerequisite handheld games. Sure, not all of them were great — Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles had no business existing — but they’re there for when you want to stab people on the go.
Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation, though, that one’s a little different. Marketed as a spin-off to Assassin’s Creed III, it might be better seen as its own game with a brief overlap with its namesake, an otherwise wholly new tale set in colonial New Orleans. But most importantly, it’s a game that takes advantage of the Playstation Vita hardware to create a game that isn’t just a stripped down version of the main title (like Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines) but stands on its own two feet as a fully-fledged mainline entry, nevermind the III in its name (and, indeed, when Ubisoft saw fit to release an HD version of the game for consoles and PC, they dropped the numbering.)
Plotwise it’s pretty unconnected to most everything in the Kenway family saga; you are Lady Aveline de Grandpré, the biracial daughter of a wealthy French merchant in 1760s New Orleans. (This marks the very first time an Assassin’s Creed game lets you play a female character, so it figures that it was relegated to a spinoff game on a handheld that failed almost immediately upon release.) Aveline’s birth mother disappeared years ago, and she’s been raised by her doting father and stepmother. Despite her complexion, her familial connections allow her some leeway in a deeply racist society, and she divides her time between helping run the office at her father’s warehouse and stalking the rooftops as an Assassin. When she stumbles upon a plot to kidnap slaves and laborers for some mysterious project in Mexico she slowly begins to unravel the truth about the Templar designs in New France.
Speaking of unraveling the truth, the game has no framing story like the mainline series typically do, but instead is presented as a carefully-edited video game experience by Abstergo Entertainment, with scenes cut short or otherwise tampered with to present Aveline as confused and wrapped up in some bad business, with all reference to the Templars edited out and their members’ benevolence played up. But occasionally the game will be hacked into by someone known only as Erudito, who shows a few backdoors to allow players to see scenes as they really happened; the database that explains all the characters and historical figures is also progressively edited with the truth added back in.
Gameplay-wise, it’s pretty much identical to Assassin’s Creed III, complete with naturalist parkour as you swing and jump around the Louisiana bayou. But there are a few twists. The big one is the Persona system: Aveline possessed three separate personas that she can use for various purposes. The Lady is Aveline’s public face, a wealthy young upper class woman who can charm men and is allowed to get away with quite a bit, but has little mobility. The Slave allows Aveline to get into certain places unnoticed, but even so much as climbing on things will attract unwanted attention. And lastly, the Assassin, a sharply-dressed murder machine with a cool hat who has some permanent notoriety but can climb and run pretty much anywhere. Each one has their own notoriety meter, meaning it’s possible to escape the guards and switch costumes, as well as lower the meter for another persona. It’s all a very neat concept and the game makes good use of it.
After the Playstation Vita failed, Ubisoft took it upon themselves to spruce the game up and release it as Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD on Playstation 3, XBox 360 and PC. The HD version adds several new features including some changes to missions and other things, but more importantly let the game escape the confines of a failed handheld. A few years later they released a remaster of the game with a completely new engine, but it’s otherwise not that different from the “standard” HD release.
While Liberation probably isn’t a game that will wow you, either graphically or gameplay-wise, it’s still a solid title, albeit a bit of a short one (but there’s plenty of side missions to keep the player busy.) The handheld spinoff scene has long been something of a graveyard of joy pretty much going back to the Game Boy years, but Liberation stands tall as a great exception to the rule.
