Assassin's Creed was, at one time, a series defined by the act of running across rooftops and jumping off rooftops. But another type of gameplay arose and has become just as indicative that you’re playing an Assassin's Creed game as climbing on things; sailing.
One of the most surprising features of Assassin’s Creed III, aside from now climbing trees instead of buildings, was that Conner would occasionally trade his hood for a captain’s hat and engage in massive ship vs. ship combat. It was a great dash of variety and the battles were excellently staged. The ship crashed into the water with weight. The changing weather offered great visuals. That feeling of properly lining up a shot and blowing a British warship to pieces was like drugs. There had never been naval combat that felt like this so, it should be no surprise that Ubisoft decided to take this feature and make it the basis for the next installment.
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag seemed to be designed around sailing. Did you like hunting? Well, now there’s fishing. Sneaking into enemy bases gave rise to nautical invasions of fortresses. And most importantly, open world traversal shifted from primarily running across roofs to sailing. While there were still cities where Edward could climb on stuff, the Caribbean Sea was clearly the game's main setting. Everything that made sailing in Assassin’s Creed III was refined and expanded upon to the point that Ubisoft claimed that the player’s ship, the Jackdaw, was the game's second protagonist. In the month after Black Flag’s release, I remember talking to a friend who joked that he may be disappointed with whatever the next instalment was because it might not have sailing.
While the next game, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue kept the same mechanics from Black Flag it was only one of two releases that year, with the next mainline game being Assassin’s Creed: Unity. There they chose to return to the series' roots and focus on a single city. With both Unity and it’s follow up Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate shifting the focus back to climbing up buildings and jumping off rooftops, it still felt like there was a demand for more of those sweet, sweet boats.
So it came as a pleasant surprise when 2017's Assassin’s Creed: Origins had a number of specific missions (Spoilers!) where the player took control of the secondary protagonist Aya and her large Trireme. Sailing had made its grand return the following year in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey where, much with Black Flag, sailing became the main way that the player would travel the different islands and landmasses. Which brings us to the most recent installment, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, where sailing is mainly for traversal and not for combat (although I’d argue the Viking experience would be lacking if you didn’t get to ram a ship on a beach and watch your men unload and charge an enemy encampment).
At this point it feels like allowing the player to command a ship is as much a given as dropping them into a city and letting them perch on some dude's chimney. What does this mean for future installments in the series? One way to go seemed to be to take the existing sailing mechanics and create a new series based on it. Since Skull & Bones (a game that promised to do exactly that) has been on hiatus for a few years, hopefully to release sometime in 2021-2022, it seems that AC is the only place it will live. Personally, I would love to see new installments experiment with different types of vehicles and build traversal and combat around those. Great depression-era cities with car-based mob shootouts would be awesome, as would expanding upon the trains used in Syndicate. They could also double down on the series' roots and focus all efforts into climbing and on-foot traversal and find new ways to let players experience that parkour that made Assassin’s Creed popular in the first place.
The sailing in Assassin’s Creed is awesome and it’s interesting to think that it has become a core part of the series identity. But this is a franchise that can go in so many possible directions and take players to locations that may not afford aquatic gameplay. Wherever this mechanic goes, I hope Ubisoft will, in some form, keep it around.
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