The Pure, Written Word

Assassin's Creed III has a lot of issues.  It is, in fact, so replete with issues that in almost any other case, it would be rendered a cold, inert mass; I'd shove this lump aside, perhaps disdainfully with the toe of my boot, and move on to something less "troubled".

The worst offenders are technical.  While I understand that console players and a large number of PC gamers have had few or no issues with it (excepting the loss of a few incidental frames), inside the bizarre architecture of my machine AC 3 is a hot mess.  It stutters constantly, crashes like a derby car.  It howls in open rebellion at the inadequacy of my aging computer.  It is nearly as likely to fatally malfunction as to work properly.

Sidebar: the effect of this regular implosion has led me down a dark hole of .ini editing, feature disabling, and dust annihilation, hours of which have yielded no appreciable results.  I'm reminded of the bad old days, when the similarities between convincing a PC game to run properly and the practice of black magic were strongest.  My conviction that all of the work I've put in, trying to adapt the mold of machine to best accept the pour of Assassin's Creed III, has borne fruit is purely faith-based and anecdotal.  But even this clockwork, horror-show dimension of my time with the game did not deter me.

A perfect condensation of my experience:  early on, young Ratonhnhaké:ton is inhabiting the body of a hallucinated winged animal, soaring through and above a surreal landscape that is startlingly beautiful and otherworldly.  The liberating sensation of flight and the day-glo magnificence of this alien landscape are so breathtaking, that I completely miss a lot of the critical narrative being delivered via voice-over.  Then, I careen into a tree, failing an optional objective.  Because I'm a masochist completionist, and committed to perfect syncing the entire game, I restart.

This time, I'm so focused on listening to the narrator that I completely lose track of the spectacular moment passing around and through my winged avatar...and then violently hurtle into another bit of errant lumber.  Restart.  More progress this time, trying to keep a laser focus on navigating; another failure.  Restart.  I make it almost to what I assume is the end, and then a sharp change in elevation has me crashing through some dangling tree roots.  Restart.  Success!  I even have some rough sense of what the narrator was expressing, and while I'm boiling with frustration, there is also relief.  As the sequence ends, I gratefully lower my controller and the screen fades to white.

Hard lock.  The game is frozen with my progress unsaved.  That dazzling white screen and the hideous shriek my speakers are emitting are the only mementos of the last thirty minutes of my life.

Why material objects exist in this fugue state is beyond me, but more importantly, stealing the breathtaking impact of this moment by shoehorning in a failstate is almost unforgivable.

But I did forgive you, Assassin's Creed III.  I kept on; there was a tremendous amount of keeping on.  When I began, I debrided my mind of all the criticism I'd heard regarding your lengthy open and found myself thoroughly charmed and delighted.  While I saw systems beginning to mature in the world around me, and felt a fierce keening to plunge recklessly into them, I let you guide me instead.  The subtle story you spun surprised me, the tantalizing power of your secret narrative compelled me forward.  You sloughed off your flaws, even transcended them.  I was wholly committed; I had grown with Ratonhnhaké:ton; I would liberate his people; I would save the world.

And then, that old saw.  By the time the world opened up, and I found it littered with a staggering number of collectibles and diversions, my desire for non-linearity had reached a fever pitch.  I threw myself into them happily, gorged on them.  The crashes got worse.  Days later, I was sated, but nowhere near finished.  Feathers.  Trinkets.  Hunting challenges, hunting missions, frontiersman challenges, frontiersmen missions, naval missions, treasure map missions, homestead missions, assassination missions.  Almanac pages.  Stockpiling, crafting, trading.  The underground.  Masonic puzzles.  Sync points.  Liberation missions.  Fort assaults.  Convoy attacks.

So.  Many.  Things.  Such a shameful feast of THINGS that my appetite for them rebelled.

I lost the thread.  More importantly, I lost the sense of place, and the connection to these people.  They'd been distilled down to icons, icons that represented systems, systems I'd begun to resent.  I got you all of those feathers, Assassin's Creed III:  a fucking outfit?  Really?

Again, I know that the failure is mine.  I could've should have stopped.  Gotten back to what mattered.  I will.  I'm nearly done.  I still love you, Assassin's Creed III, though it is a brutal love that a future version of myself will look back on cringingly.  Perhaps, come Assassin's Creed IV, after Ubisoft and I are both thoroughly exhausted, one of us will have learned.  Will know better.

I wonder, though.