Assassin's Creed Syndicate RELEASE DATE:OCTOBER 23, 2015 REVIEWED FOR: PS4 OCTOBER 22, 2015 LONDON MAKES FOR THE BEST ASSASSIN'S CREED EXPERIENCE IN AN AGE. BY Nabil Haidar

Every year, the Assassin’s Creed series struggles with the idea of inheritance. Like its Templars and Assassins, who are locked in a never-ending struggle for relics, each game picks a side in the question of how strongly should it lean into its now-convoluted ancient lore and incorporate the still-underdeveloped present-day elements. Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate chooses wisely, leaves out multiplayer entirely, and pushes a lot of that baggage into the background, largely freeing itself up to make the most of Victorian London and have fun with sneaking, climbing, and stabbing.
Sibling Rivalry
Syndicate smartly negotiates this internal conflict by dramatising it in the form of its twin playable characters, Evie and Jacob Frye. The former is a devout Assassin, intent on stopping the Templars by tracking down the remaining pieces of Eden. Her brother Jacob, however, is a pragmatist – a social reformer who rails against the Assassin’s burdensome legacy and wishes to help his city in more immediate ways, seemingly embodying my desire to move on from the tangled mysticism. They’re both extremely likeable, well-drawn protagonists, and the interaction between the two is laced with a lively sibling rivalry that brings levity to otherwise-earnest cutscenes. But their contrasting worldviews have the greatest positive impact on Syndicate’s structure, which is both engaging and meaningful.
The First 15 Minutes: Assassin's Creed Syndicate
You can freely switch between Jacob and Evie at most points, with side missions and open-world activities open equally to both. Campaign missions, however, are different, with Jacob taking the lead in the majority of the core assassinations. This is frustrating, especially since Evie is pitched as the more stealthy of the pair. But I soon realised that Syndicate is just not that interested in exploring forgotten tombs in search of dusty relics; it wants to liberate the great city of London from its terrible oppressors. And to be blunt, Syndicate’s a much better experience for identifying more closely with the goals of Jacob.
Syndicate is just not that interested in exploring forgotten tombs in search of dusty relics
Despite being sidelined so often, Evie comes across as the more nuanced character, struggling with her sense of duty, where Jacob is a more straightforward bloke with clear goals. By the end of the 20-hour campaign, I felt like I’d probably spent more time with Evie due to prefering her in side missions, and I certainly knew her better. She sees the bigger picture, with her missions tackling problems Jacob can’t even comprehend. Evie also stars in my favourite assassination mission – a nighttime infiltration of the Tower of London.
Given their differences, I was disappointed with how similar Jacob and Evie are to play. They each possess three high-level abilities designed around their supposed strengths of stealth and combat, respectively – Evie can effectively become invisible when stationary, for example, while Jacob can string together longer combos. But the rest of the abilities are identical. At first, I exaggerated the differences by investing all of Evie’s points into the stealth skill tree and Jacob’s into combat, thinking I could switch between the two depending on the situation. But since you can’t switch between characters within campaign missions, that’s not a viable approach. In one mission, I was playing as Jacob and it would’ve been really useful to unlock a specific door to make a quick escape, but because I’d only unlocked advanced lockpicking for Evie – who was unavailable – I had to take a longer, more hazardous route out of the building.
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