The Assassin's Creed franchise has only continued to grow in size year after year. From the franchise's beginnings in the cities of Acre, Jerusalem and Damascus to the open ocean of the Caribbean, each Assassin's Creed entry continues to add more detail, more activities and more historical settings for players to explore.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate is no different. After the disappointing Assassin's Creed Unity, Ubisoft has a lot to prove with its latest entry in the series. Thankfully, Assassin's Creed Syndicate is not only shaping up to be the biggest Assassin's Creed yet but also looks to be breathing new life into the franchise with a variety of new features. Like we've done before with Batman: Arkham Knight and Mad Max, let's break down the size of Ubisoft's latest open-world adventure.
World Size
If you thought Assassin's Creed Unity's Paris was big, you haven't seen anything yet. Ubisoft says Syndicate's virtual London is roughly 30 percent larger than its virtual Paris, with the city broken down into seven different boroughs: Westminster, the Strand, London, the river Thames, Whitechapel, Southwark and Lambeth. Each borough will have a unique architectural style to help it stand out. That the city is the largest ever seen in the series makes sense. The game takes place in the year 1868, at the tail-end of Britain's mighty industrial revolution. That means more people (and more buildings) than ever before, as men and women flocked to London looking for jobs and opportunities, only to find harsh working and living conditions.
You've likely heard that Assassin's Creed Syndicate introduces vehicles to the franchise for the first time in the form of carriages. This means the space between many of the city's buildings will have increased to make room for the vehicles, with on-foot NPC characters now relegated to the sidewalks. Buildings themselves will also be larger and taller than ever before, making the game's new grappling rope launcher an essential tool in navigating the city.
Game Length
Assassin's Creed games are always filled with different activities for players to engage in and weapons to unlock and Syndicate is no different. Each of the game's boroughs will need to be liberated from Templar controls. To do that, players can participate in a wide range of side activities ranging from assassinating specific targets to rescuing children from factories. Once the Templars' grip on the borough has been broken, a gang war will break out that will allow players to liberate the area once and for all. Players can also take part in fight clubs, street races and train robberies to earn cash. Murder mysteries, one of the more interesting side activities from Unity, will be returning, too.
As for the length of the game's main story, we don't yet know all the details. Jacob will be playable for the majority of the main story missions, around 75 percent of them, with Evie stepping in for the remaining 25 percent. Players can swap between the characters with the press of a button when outside of a mission. Upgrading the Assassin's home base and the player characters themselves has been an important part of the franchise in more recent entries, and that feature returns here. Both Evie and Jacob will have their own unique skill trees that will unlock additional abilities, with Evie's focusing more on stealth while Jacob's skills focus on combat. Their gang, the Rooks, can be upgraded as well, and the game will also include a mobile train hideout for players to upgrade and customize.
Install Size
While a game's file size isn't always an accurate indication of how much content is contained within (impressive visuals will require just as much storage space as a massive open world), it does give users a rough idea of how large a game might be. In the case of Assassin's Creed Unity, which featured some impressive, if occasionally glitchy, visuals and a large game world, it clocked in at around 37 GB. So where does Syndicate fall? It's only slightly larger, featuring an install size of around 40 GB on the Xbox One. We don't yet know the exact storage requirements for the game's PC and PS4 versions, but they are usually close if not the same across all platforms.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate is shaping up to be a promising entry in the franchise. It's size and visuals are impressive, as are its dual protagonists and unique setting. But only until the game is in the wild will we know whether or not Ubisoft learned from its mistakes with Unity. If it has, Assassin's Creed Syndicate may be the best, and biggest, Assassin's Creed yet.
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