100% Synchro, Suspension of Disbelief, and UI challenges in AC

(Warning: some spoilers ahead)

When Assassin's Creed was released, it gave players a concept unlike any other at the time, and in may ways, it was a combination of trends in storytelling at the time: Matrix-influenced reality vs. simulation, political conspiracies, historical revisionism, cliffhanger plot twist devices of Lost, and merging elements of stealth and adventure genres. The main hook was that Assassin't Creed was not just about the player running around killing people and blowing stuff up in a sandbox game, but that there was a meta-level in which the player plays Desmond who plays characters in a simulation of his genetic past, weaving two separate storylines about secret factions that is just a part of an overarching arc about humanity, mythology and alien gods. The past and the present are connected by an interface in which the players are connected to Desmond.

When AC3 came out, I was very frustrated in its UI, and I’ve felt about this for subsequent AC titles since. The particular issue I have is how the gaming elements for the player are messing up my sense of immersion. Example: in the final showdown between Conner and Lee, we have a thematic cutscene which sets up a chase. At this point, we as the player should be completely emotionally motivated to get Lee because of all the shit he’s done. However, when the cutscene ends, the very first things that pop up on the top left corner of your screen are the optional objectives, telling you that you must be within 50m of Lee and do not shove anyone, or else you fail 100% synchronization. First of all, how does staying within 50m and not shove people got to do the main character’s goal of revenge? It sounds completely arbitrary from a narrative point of view, and reeks of game designers inserting gamey objectives for its own sake in the biggest emotional payoff of the game. Second of all, if I were to do a user testing, I’d wager that the majority of players would immediately run straight to get Lee the second the cutscene ends, not even bother reading the upper-hand game UI messages, hereby guaranteeing that you’re going to shove people. When that happens, the objective turn into an impossible-to-ignore red text in the screen.

In effect, the majority of players’ first experience in the biggest moment of the game is a giant red sign that says FAIL. Throughout the entire game, AC3 is constantly reminding you of things don’t matter to the story. On one hand, the UI designer wanted everything to look clean and minimal. On the other hand, the game designer want you to know how important the side objectives are. The resulting mess is that if you ignore gamey elements and just want to focus on the story, you get constant fail alerts on your screen. But if you want to know gamey elements, you have to look away from the center of the screen to read exactly what you need to do to complete gamey objectives, hindering your performance. It’s the worst possible scenario. If game objectives are so important, then put it at the center of the screen so it’s easy and fast to read without taking your eyes off the gameplay. If they’re not important and you want players to be really immersed in the story, the world-building and atmosphere, then remove the alerts and progress altogether until after the sequence is finished.

The immediate appeal of AC has been the stealth and action, but what makes AC unique has always been this meta layer that the player is playing a character playing a character. Therefore, its interface needs take that more into account, and so far it hasn’t been enough. There still plenty of moments in Syndicate where I get unintentionally taken away from my sense of immersion. (I stress unintentionally, because there are times during the story where you do get interrupted by NPCs in the in-game present timeline.) And finally, I just want to say that for a game where you’re supposed to be on the side that champions free will, you are sure as hell being shoe-horned into specific directions by the game designer. If that irony is intentional, then the AC dev team has the mental capacity to do something even better but chose not to.