Assassin’s Creed Rogue: The Darkest Chapter Closes a Console Generation

Assassin’s Creed Rogue closes a console generation by asking players to hunt the people they once fought for. Ubisoft Sofia developed and Ubisoft published the game in November 2014 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with a Windows release following in March 2015. It is the seventh major installment in the Assassin’s Creed series, and the last one built for the seventh generation of hardware.

Trailer, via IGDBcom.

Shay Patrick Cormac Turns on the Brotherhood

The main plot runs from 1752 to 1760, before and during the French and Indian War, across the North Atlantic. Shay Patrick Cormac is a new recruit to the Colonial Brotherhood of Assassins, whose talent is undercut by insubordination. After a dangerous mission goes wrong and an argument follows, the Assassins turn on him and try to kill him. Shay survives, cast aside by those he once called brothers, and sets out to wipe out all who turned against him.

The game frames that story in the present day. The player is an unnamed employee of Abstergo Entertainment, researching Shay’s memories. The employee trips a hidden memory file that infects the Animus servers, forcing a lockdown, and the only way to clean the servers is to live through Shay’s life. The employee also uncovers secrets about the Assassin-Templar conflict while doing it.

Three Maps, One Ship, and an Air Rifle

Rogue is an action-adventure and stealth game played from a third-person perspective in an open world. It has three main areas: the western North Atlantic around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, a fictional River Valley partly inspired by the Hudson Valley, and New York City. The first two hold small islands, settlements, naval forts and shipwrecks to explore.

Naval combat returns from Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and carries much of the game. Shay captains the Morrigan, which has a shallower draft than Edward Kenway’s Jackdaw and can therefore travel rivers. The ship can carry Puckle guns, oil slicks that can be ignited, and an icebreaker. Enemy ships can board the Morrigan. Certain icebergs can be destroyed to send waves that damage smaller ships.

Underwater diving missions from Black Flag are gone. Swimming in the North Atlantic drains the player’s health fast because of the cold, though Shay can swim freely in the warmer River Valley. Combat adds an air rifle, similar to Black Flag’s blowpipe, for silent kills at distance. It takes different projectiles, including sleeping darts and firecrackers. At a set point in the story, a fictionalized Benjamin Franklin gives Shay a grenade launcher attachment that fires shrapnel grenades and other loads.

The Lisbon Earthquake and the Break With Achilles

Shay trains under the Mentor Achilles Davenport. The Assassin Adéwalé arrives with news that Port-au-Prince was destroyed by an earthquake during a search for a Precursor temple. Shay retrieves a Precursor box and manuscript from the Templars. He starts to question the Assassins when they refuse to talk to the Templars and order him to kill them regardless of the situation.

In 1754 he hands the box and manuscript to Benjamin Franklin, whose experiments produce a map of Precursor temple sites worldwide. Sent to investigate a temple in Lisbon, Shay removes the artifact at its center and triggers a devastating earthquake. He is left remorseful over the innocent lives he killed. He works out that Port-au-Prince fell the same way, confronts Achilles, and learns the Mentor means to keep hunting Precursor artifacts.

What Rogue Gets Right

The inversion is Rogue’s clearest idea: the targets are Assassins, not Templars. The Lisbon sequence gives Shay a grievance he can point to. He saw what removing the artifact did to a city, and he works out that Port-au-Prince fell the same way. That is a concrete cause, and the game builds its remaining hours on it.

Rogue arrived as a companion piece. It launched on the same day as Assassin’s Creed Unity, and the ties between the two games are real. The Morrigan’s shallow draft, the icebreaker and the air rifle are additions to the Black Flag formula. They are additions, not a new game.

The modern-day frame, in which an employee fixes servers, is a thin hook. It explains why the player watches a man hunt Assassins instead of join them.

The Score

Rogue is the Assassin’s Creed game of 2014 that asks the most interesting question and gets the least attention for it. The story of Shay Patrick Cormac justifies the series’ shift in perspective, and the naval combat remains strong enough to carry a full game. The cost is familiarity: this is a game built on the previous entry’s systems.

Its later life tells a similar story. A remastered version came to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in March 2018. The Nintendo Switch got it in December 2019 as part of The Rebel Collection alongside Black Flag, and Google Stadia got it in October 2021.

That is the shape of it: a smart premise, solid execution, and a release plan that put it in the shadow of its sibling. Worth playing for anyone who wants the Templar side of the argument.

Hard Numbers

• Developer: Ubisoft Sofia
• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Release: November 2014 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360); March 2015 (Windows)
• Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, Nintendo Switch
• Series position: Seventh major Assassin’s Creed installment
• Setting: 1752-1760, North Atlantic, during the French and Indian War
• Protagonist: Shay Patrick Cormac
• Remaster: PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, March 2018
• Switch release: December 2019, in The Rebel Collection with Black Flag
• Stadia release: October 2021
• Score: 7.1 of 10

Rogue’s debt to Black Flag runs through the whole game. The ship, the open water, the stealth tools and the fort-clearing all come from the 2013 title. The changes are practical ones: a shallower hull to open up rivers, an air rifle in place of a blowpipe. The real break is whose side the player is on.

Assassin's Creed · Assassin's Creed Rogue · game review · naval combat · Shay Patrick Cormac · Ubisoft Sofia