Analysis:
Assassin's Creed
Let's look at Assassin's
Creed in detail, and consider how it achieves its Parkour play mechanic
-- where it succeeds, and where it fails. The developers of the multi-platform title at Ubisoft Montreal played a montage of relevant footage that inspired the game at GDC 2006, including scenes from the French film Banlieue 13 featuring noted Parkour practitioner David Belle.
How well does this fit with
its play mechanic, and how authentically does all this relate to Parkour?
Last but not least, how well has this translated into commercial success?
Success
Ubisoft's relationship with
the world of free running dates back to Prince of Persia on the
PS2. Over the years they have developed a play mechanic that draws on
Parkour. As the player progressed through each Prince of Persia
game they (unknowingly) learned to make use of a variety of free running
moves. The relationship here focused on individual skills rather than
a more general aesthetic. Sands of Time, for instance, included
classic Parkour moves such as landings, cat-balances, tic-tacs and rolls.
This vocabulary was then expanded in Rival Swords that included
techniques such as monkey vaults, cartwheels and round offs.
It wasn't until Assassin's
Creed that Ubisoft took that free running seed and gave it the space
that it needed to grow into a fully fledged experience. By removing
the directed progression of their older game, and creating awe inspiring
city environments, the developers delivered what had only been hinted
at before: a game that held free running at the center of its play mechanic.
Assassin's Creed provided a world that was built to explore, climb,
fool around in and even leap from. It was a game that created excuses
for players to find routes between two points in a city.
Problems
Although a confident outing
(and many people's definitive Parkour game) Assassin's Creed
still held back from rewarding the player for elegance. The player is
encouraged to focus on competition and speed rather than the graceful
flowing movement. The player employs free running to travel through
the environment and escape pursuers in a decidedly competitive manner,
something that is at odds to the fundamentals of Parkour.
Although there
are plenty of Xbox Live Achievements to give reason for further exploration
of the city, these largely focus on raw repetition. The player simply
needs to perform the same move a number of times to be awarded the gamerpoints.
One could imagine a range of
achievements focusing on combinations of moves, or distance travelled
without touching the ground that would provide a more authentic focus
on the art of Parkour rather than the sport of escape. This would substantially
change Assassin's Creed, focusing it more authentically on true
Parkour pursuits.
Furthermore it could encourage players to record and
re-watch their exploits as they can in Skate or Halo 3,
again bring the game experience closer to the real world. The ability
to save and share the most impressive moves with friends would also
enhance the level of enjoyment and capitalise on their stunning graphics
engine. This is something that players are already doing themselves
via homemade YouTube clips.
While this may not have substantially
altered the main game, it may well have aided those who found the main
game and side-quests too repetitive, giving them reason to spend more
time experimenting imaginatively in the environments.
Sales
These points about improving
the play mechanic can be made because the engine itself delivers such
a compelling experience, and one that is clearly capable of recreating
moments of pure Parkour beauty. This is something that seems to have
been better understood by the marketing department than the game designers
themselves. A raft of video, images and music were employed by marketing
and clearly communicated these moments to their audience.
Although they were no doubt
helped by the popular templar-knights setting and stunning visuals,
it was this clear vision of acting out free running moves that helped
the game go on to such success in stores. Having received mixed critical
success, it went on to become one of the highest selling games of the
year; impressive and rare for a new franchise such as this.
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But regardless, I myself perform parkour when I have time, and it is rather enjoyable to move through your environment free of the constraints of sidewalks and stairwells.
It is cool that you are given more freedom with your environment in many of these games. I always marveled at the acrobatics from Tomb Raider and Prince of Persia. I have yet to play Assassins Creed or Crackdown; and from what I've read of Prototype, it will have similar mechanics. This is all well and good, but I don't foresee games surviving on play mechanics alone. It's great that we are finally learning how to allow players freedom of movement through their environment, but what about freedom of expression through their character? Or freedom of exploration through human emotion? Or freedom of definition to write your own, personal, unique story in a game.
I'm going to stop before I start rambling. My initial comment was just supposed to be "it's cool that they are drawing on Parkour for inspiration in play mechanics. It's weird you didn't discuss the actual game, 'Free Running,' by Reef Entertainment and Rebellion, and how well they did or did not stay true to the spirit and nature of parkour."
So it's a little too familiar by now. Assassin's Creed, Mirror's Edge, Prototype... but you know what? It doesn't bother me: If a game benefits from usng parkour as inspiration, and as a reslt overcomes clunky, unflowing, amateurish movement systems, then it's a win for the player, no matter how "sold out" or "last year" parkour is considered.
It's great to see someone else notice how paedaic parkour is, and that the joy of it comes from the proprioception and creativity in path finding - there's an intrinsic joy in the flowing, un-interrupted movement, which some games capture better than others. Whether or not this intrinsic joy is a focus is, I feel, kind of unimportant (certainly, I'd personally prefer it that way, but games are a transcendental medium, and can't rest on one leg alone). Whether fluid motion is the target of the developer, or merely an means to an end, the game will still benefit when there is more thought put into avatar movement - typically one of the core verbs in any first/thrd person game, and thus a bridge for a player into the rest of the transcendental experience.
Whether or not a game perfectly captures the look *as well as* feel of parkour, also, feels irrelevant to me. To me, Quake 3 (noteably the defrag mod) captures the "spirit" of parkour with its model of continuous movement, strafe jmping, plasma climbing and rocket jumping, while Assassin's Creed merely attempts a faximilie of (some of) the moves used (and successfully so). Quake 3's simple, but complete verb set allows for expression, creativity, and skill to be channelled into gameplay. Assassin's Creed, with its well hidden animation states and discrete, contrived movement gives a different perspective - what's it like to have mastered movement to the point that one doesnt consciously think in order to traverse the scenery? Surely then, one is only concerned with the route - means become fairly irrelevant. The destination is all.
I guess my point is that one should be more concerned about how the movement system fits with the rest of the game, and how the level design promotes it, than whether or not it matches the varios splintered philosophies within the freerunning/parkour community. A parkour implementation can be as realistic as yo like, but if it's a pig from a useability stand point, what's the gain?
A quote under "Free Running" states: "You have to make the difference between what is useful and what is not in emergency situations. Then you'll know what is parkour and what is not. So if you do acrobatics things on the street with no other goal than showing off, please don't say it's parkour."
There is a subtle difference, I believe, between free running and parkour. By the above definition, Assassin's Creed is more parkour than free running.
First, congratulations for the article, like Joel said its a nice discussion. But my comment is mostly about calling "competitive" the way that Parkour is taken in Assassins Creed. (I will use the word Parkour, since Free Running for us means something with a totally different philosofy and I have no interest on it).
First, let me say that Parkour was created by a former firefighter and member of marine corps, David Belle.
It has been taught to him by his father, who fought on Vietnam and used his skills to survive. He had to be fast, he had to be efficient, he had to use whatever his body could do to survive.
I have played a bit of Assassins Creed, about 2-3 hours, and I must say that I was impressed on how techincal the "parkour moves" were represented in the game.
When Parkour is called a non-competitive activity, we actually mean that you should not train to be better than someone else. You should focus on yourself, the competition is with your own limits while training and evolving to be a better person (phisically and otherwise), and thus becoming strong to use your skills in a emergency situation.
That being said, I must say that parkour has been represented very good in this game. I have also played Crackdown and I did not like the way Parkour has been represented, not only because the limitations on the movement, but also the way its being seen as a "sport to jump from building to building".
And by the way, Erwans last name is "Le Corre", and Hebertiste is his nickname on the forums.
I hope you could understand my comment, english is not my first language.
You must have read entirely different article. :) This one doesn't mention Mirror's Edge (for valid reasons, but still). As for the other part: developers might have been inspired by parkour but that doesn't make Crackdown parkour game. "Willow" was inspired by "Hobbit". ;) Please play Crackdown or watch gameplay videos - urban environment + agility skill don't make it free runing experience (it's still great gameplay mechanics IMO). Just a thought. BTW: I still love Crackdown. :]
"This would substantially change Assassin's Creed, focusing it more authentically on true Parkour pursuits."
The game is about an Assassin and a great plot that unravels while you play. The developers were inspired by it and made playing with Altaïr a lot of fun by running through the city. However it's still a portion of the overall experience. It's *not* a parkour game in my oppinion, just inspired by the moves of it.
In any competitive FPS, you always need to greatly control your movements and tricks passing by a crouch jump to a rocket or grenade-jump.
Great point.
Parkour is all about optimizing your run. Become faster, more efficient by using your environment or developing your own body.
Parkour isn't a new philosophy in itself, but it's clearly a different life path that I like.