Assassin's Creed 3 occupies a particularly strange place in a sprawling series which has sustained near-annual releases for over a decade. For a start, it was the end of the original Assassin's Creed trilogy. To make matters more complicated, it was actually the fifth game, and the first one to follow the imbedded Ezio trilogy which began with Assassin's Creed 2 and ended with Revelations. The game pulled in two different directions. On the one hand it was a fresh start, on the other it was a finale to the modern-day story of Desmond Miles.
Assassin's Creed 3 was not poorly received, but it was faced with an almost insurmountable challenge. Almost ten years on, and the story of Ratonhnhaké:ton, AKA Connor, is not remembered nearly so fondly as Assassin's Creed 2, Black Flag, or the games released since the series' integration of more RPG features. Despite its lacking legacy, Assassin's Creed 3 was a far more ambitious game than it is often given credit for, and although it had its shortcomings, it deserves to be remembered as an underrated gem.
Assassin's Creed 3's Story
Assassin's Creed had a fairly underwhelming story, its equally clunky mechanics aside. It wasn't until Ubisoft depicted the transformation of young, wise-cracking Florentine Ezio Auditore into a trained killer that the series really found its footing and entered into its stride. Ezio was a great protagonist for many reasons. The execution of his father and brothers before his eighteenth birthday made him sympathetic, but his backstory wasn't so tragic that his charm was overwhelmed by doom and gloom. The world of Renaissance Italy felt more colorful, while the Borgias provided equally colorful villains.
Assassin's Creed 3's protagonist was a far more withheld personality than Ezio, one of the reasons many fans felt he struggled to live up to his predecessor. The world Connor inhabited may have been less bombastic than fifteenth century Italy, but despite being less colorful, it was also far less black and white. Ezio was charming and the Borgias were compelling villains, but there were very few points in Ezio's story that asked broader questions about Assassin's Creed's main theme — freedom versus tyranny.
Assassin's Creed 3 depicted George Washington as both a symbol of liberation for American colonists, but also the infamous town destroyer he was known as by the Iroquois. The game's plot is kicked off when Connor is forced from his home after his village is burned down by what he believes are Templar forces, only for the game to later reveal that it was George Washington who ordered the attack.
While the moral divide between the Assassins and Templars had remained relatively uncomplicated throughout Ezio's trilogy, Assassin's Creed 3 didn't hold back from exploring the hypocrisy of famous men and movements who championed freedom for a land-owning class of white men, while upholding slavery perpetrating genocide. The Tyranny of King Washington DLC might have thrown subtlety to the wind, but Assassin's Creed 3 was far more ambitious when it came to analyzing its freedom versus tyranny dynamic than the games before it. Connor is a more subtle character than Ezio, but he inhabits a subtler world.
The American Colonies in Assassin's Creed 3
Assassin's Creed 3 took the series' in-game worlds to the next level. While the games had always been relatively open, Assassin's Creed 3 let players explore colonial towns, free-run through trees in the forest, and even build their own settlement. While the Ezio games explored some visually impressive cities, Assassin's Creed 3 felt far more like it built a whole world, one which existed before Connor and would continue to exist after he was gone. The game had seasons, and its snow physics in particular set a new standard for rival studios to beat.
Assassin's Creed 3 helped pioneer features which would define some of the best-received games of the decade like Red Dead Redemption 2, like its hunting system. Suddenly, there was far more to do outside an Assassin's Creed game's main quest than fighting guards and jumping off tall buildings. Many of the more RPG-style features that recent Assassin's Creed games like Valhalla have been praised for have their roots in Assassin's Creed 3's world, even if Ubisoft took some detours in the intervening games. Assassin's Creed 3 helped create the type of world players came to expect not just in later Ubisoft titles, but from the action-adventure genre as a whole.
When it came to combat, the previous Assassin's Creed games were something of a power fantasy. Despite the series' emphasis on stealth, Ezio could easily find himself surrounded by any number of guards, waiting for them to attack one-by-one before delivering a counter and an instant kill. Assassin's Creed 3 revamped the combat system and made it harder to spam attacks and expect victory. Some enemies were now more vulnerable to certain attacks than others. The range of weapons, from hidden blades to muskets to tomahawks, was greater. The system wasn't without its problems, but as with Assassin's Creed 3's story, it's hard to fault the game's ambition.
Assassin's Creed 3's Legacy
Assassin's Creed 3 was unlikely to live up to expectations. Fans had been with Ezio for three games in a row, and while Assassin's Creed Revelations wasn't as well-received as his earlier adventures, Ubisoft still had the personality of one of the studio's most beloved characters to fall back on.
Assassin's Creed 3 was tasked with finishing the original modern-day storyline, though many fans believe Desmond Miles returned in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, while introducing a new hero. The game wasn't judged unfairly, but in light of the series' development since, many of its most glaring problems are perhaps better seen as growing pains, and many of the features it introduced and the stories it told laid the foundation for some of Assassin's Creed's best entries yet. Although it may not be at the top of many Assassin's Creed fans' lists, Assassin's Creed 3 and its 2019 remaster are well worth revisiting.
Assassin's Creed 3 Remastered is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.