It’s not the first game to say two heroes are better than one, but ‘Assassin’s Creed Syndicate’ helped pave the way for an ongoing gaming trend.
There are a lot of Assassin’s Creed games, but only a handful are really important to understanding the series’ evolution. Among those is Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, which was released on October 23, 2015 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Beyond righting the ship after 2014’s Assassin’s Creed Unity stumbled out of the gate—something Ubisoft developers openly wrestled with in a video revealing Syndicate to the world—this entry began what’s become a staple of the franchise and action-adventure games more broadly: the ability to play as two fully formed protagonists.
Across various genres, games have let players inhabit multiple characters. But not all implementations are equal, and for franchises, this application has grown over time. A shooter like Halo has evolved from making Player Two a second Master Chief to making them the Arbiter or a fellow Spartan from the series’ canon, depending on the game; Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V (and its incoming sequel) has playable leads introduced over time, whereas its Red Dead Redemption games introduce a second character late into the story and preceded by the explicit death of the nominal lead.
When a game shifts to another point of view, it can introduce new mechanics (see Ratchet & Clank), create new feelings of vulnerability or power (The Last of Us), or just simply offer another perspective on its story (Metal Gear Solid 2).
In the examples above and plenty of others not mentioned, the developers treat having another protagonist like a big deal. When it comes to Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, that status was outside its control. Co-protagonist Evie Frye is the series’ third overall female lead, preceded by Aveline de Grandpré of Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation and Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China’s Shao Jun. But when it comes to mainline games, Evie was the first woman, which was quite important back then: Unity noticeably lacked playable women, because, according to creative director Alex Amancio, it would’ve been extra work to make them playable.
That controversy hung over Evie alongside concerns of how she’d be handled in Syndicate.
