Design Critique and Exploration of the Assassin Creed Syndicate Grappling Hook

In light of the upcoming game Assassin’s Creed Shadow, and the new swinging grappling hook mechanic. I was motivated to explore the subject I’ve been mulling over for a long while, but never put down on paper.

There are 3 game play systems that really form my interpretation of the heart of the Assassin’s Creed series:

Stealth:  Avoiding line of sight whether by blending into a crowd at ground level or in a dimension above at height.

Combat: A light dabbling of combat that happens when a player fails at staying undetected, a short challenge of sorts to regain unnoticed status, to quickly returning to the main state of play. And in a game that is supposed to be about being an assassin, is least of my interests, and have always been perfectly willing to take the stealth option.

Mobility: Climbing into unusual and high places. Simple yet satisfying pathway puzzling built into its unique climbing and parkour system. A rooftops focused traversal across a city.  Even the most iconic way of killing in this series, falling on a target from a height above, is a cleverly hidden elevation navigating mechanic.

A major factor in my enjoyment of the AC(Assassin’s creed) series is due to its mobility and most of that mobility playtime is spent climbing/ in parkour. My point of contention is Assassin’s Creed Syndicate significantly simplified or skipped how climbing used to work and I believe, for the detriment of the series at the time.

Grappling Hook Mechanic Breakdown:

(PS4 controls only)

• Activated by pressing L1 near a viable target (indicated by a L1 icon on top of target), And a grappling hook will be fired to the target. A much higher vertical target will quickly pull the player up to it. If a target is much more similar in height (say over a gap between dame-height rooftops ledges), the player can slide across the grappling rope while hanging by their hands and hand propelling themselves along any point of grappling rope.

  
  

• Tallest wall I could find would take the player roughly a 7-8 second climb up on the grappling hook, in contrast to its roughly 26 sec. manual climb on the same wall.

  
  

• The grappling hook’s range is quite a far distance, and quite fun to get around horizontally on due to its accelerated pace, slightly faster than running.

What I feel didn't work about the grappling hook in an AC game: 

• The skipping of the hands-on climbing feel of the game.

  
  

• It bypasses climbing puzzle aspects, and from memory, no new puzzle design space is explored with this new feature. Nothing that isn't simply amounting to faster climbing. 

  
  

• It loses the opportunity of an engaging climbing puzzle built into the very world, and in every direction. It felt turned into a singular direction hold like any other game that doesn't focus on climbing as a main feature, Severely limiting engagement potential presented in the series' most common movement ability.

  
  

• It acts as an Immediate escape button from combat, reducing the weight of stealth mechanics that should help you avoid combat in the first place. When The punishment for poor stealth is easily bypassed. Indoor combat scenarios are mostly an exception that may disprove this point. In past games you HAD to fight your way out, or run and take a couple minutes breaking enemy line-of-sight and hiding out until they stop searching for you.

Positives of the grappling hook:

• Under the circumstances, It skips the slow climbing that has now become a straightforward less-interesting option in AC Syndicate. Not much hinders general climbing while holding a straight line.

  
  

• The fantasy of a Victorian-era Batman, using grappling hooks, gadgets and a leaning on stealthy tactics.

  
  

• Narrative wise, Assassins feel like they have appropriately evolved their technology over time.

  
  

• Reach across street gaps between buildings (add more roof enemy to balance this power)

  
  

• Sliding down fast on an angled rope.

  
  

• A pretty far distance and the speed to have fun getting around extra quickly.

How I’d adjust the grappling hook:

• New mechanics:

  
  

  • Swinging around corners like how flower pots functioned in previous games.  

    
    

  • Grapple at new walls while you’re climbing.  

    
    

  • Smooth surfaces you rappel across, like a limited wall run, limited to a pivot point created by the grappling hook at a point above you. 

    
    

  • Have grappling hook blocking barriers that while within that section of wall, forces you to rely on basic climbing abilities (eg. back ejects).

    
    

  • Puzzle mechanics that make use of the new grapple range

    
    

  • Puzzle mechanics that expand more on the traditional climbing puzzles (limited hand holds, challenges specific climbing mechanics eg. back eject)

    
    

  • I’d make the range of the grappling hook shorter so you can still have the fun and exhilaration of long distance skips (compared to jumps). But have room to have puzzle design-space for when grappling points are blocked. (Eg. The Big Ben Building) Assuming you can grapple while mid climbing. Big Ben was an easy, hold-forward climb when you aren’t on ledges you can grapple, and overall, Big Ben was used more as a tutorial and demo on the grappling mechanic. Which again, brought the player to the top of any building almost instantly.

    
    

  • A dedicated puzzle that threads the needle of vision into an open window grapple target.

  
  

Why the developers might’ve went ahead on the existing version of the grappling hook:

• The series has slowly made the climbing system easier and more streamlined repeatedly over time. From removing actions you could do in midair (eg. omni-directional grab, landing button to immediately slide off a ledge), to eventually making most walls universally climbable that holding a direction is enough to navigate over most things, foot height or stories tall. This was, at my best guess, likely done in reaction to player disinterest in climbing mechanics, something I’ve heard the years since release.

  
  

• They potentially wanted to be closer to a 1:1 scale world. Previous games scaled down the cities’ heights and distances( I assume for shorter climbs and travel distances, accessibility between buildings). This game's builders were taller and spaced further apart.

  
  

• AC syndicate was extremely sturdy in performance and less graphically intensive, or impressive. It came immediately off its previous game, Assassin’s Creed unity, well known to be extremely buggy on release, and a speculated symptom of the yearly release cycle that AC was in at the time by a few game industry talking heads. To smooth things over, free DLC was the apology at the time (https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/assassins-creed-unity-free-dlc). So perhaps to bypass a lot of climbing bugs, they added the grappling hook as a way to avoid climbing as much as possible, streamlined BECAUSE they have major bugs trying to have climbing puzzles.

  
  

Now, with how wrapped up with the series I have been, I do also want to address climbing beyond Assassin's Creed Syndicate, address the AC series as a whole.

To target the problem of players not engaging with/ digging deep enough to appreciate the climbing system in general:

• I’d Make actual dedicated puzzles/challenges for understanding the climbing system specific abilities (like the aforementioned “slide off ledge” landing button, perhaps an NPC chase is only possible by use of this ability) and Youtube montage-esque tricks. Parkour what you can do at a high level (explained here by JOBAKI): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKPAIa9TPP0

  
  

• I’d test the ability to use the learned abilities and reward it, presenting climbing/ parkour as fun game play content to engage in, rather than just getting from point A to B that a lot of general players view it as.

  
  

• The only puzzle the series had since the beginning were chasing pages blown by the wind across parkour/climbing pathways, or dungeon levels or towers (viewpoints that reveal map objectives)

  
  

• Making climbing fun could  revolutionize how the general player base views the open world, and it becomes an entire playground filled with opportunities of fun in every pixel of it.

  
  

• Keeping climbing flashy and smooth feeling, like in AC Unity’s animations. No game had the same love for spinning jumps.

  
  

• The more you teach, the more you can let the player keep the larger pool of climbing options( /complexity) like in Assassin’s Creed 2 (and its aforementioned aerial grab).

That’s my thoughts. Hopefully, some semblance of these problems being addressed might be seen in Assassin's Creed Shadows, and I eagerly wait to feel the grappling hook in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.