Assassins Creed displays something along the lines of "this product is a work of fiction and has been produced by a multiethnical team of various religious beliefs" when it starts up. This is the most hilarious/concerning quote I have ever seen in a video game. They should have written instead "we are a scared bunch of spineless pussies who are afraid that our studios are blown up by christian and/or muslim fundamentalists". What's coming next, a disclaimer in a World War 2 game, that members of various - uh - political beliefs have worked on the team just to appease the nazis and communists? The end is near I say.
The game is much more controversial where it probably didn't intend to be: game-design and game-play. There are many things I absolutely love, and one or two things I absolutely hate. I haven't played through yet, so I'm not qualified to write a "proper review", but I think I can already say that it is definitely a must-have game. It does many things different then the mainstream, and that's already enough reason to buy the game, even if it tries sometimes to be too innovative and too avant-garde which may put off some players. We'll have to see how it does commercially. I hope it does well to demonstrate to publishers that innovation may actually pay off. As a gamer I'm usually more conservative though, a game should do at most one or two completely new things, and use established mechanics and even clichés for all the other elements in the game, otherwise I'm not really feeling comfy and at home, especially in the beginning of a game. On the other hand, some games have to be the forerunners and crash-test-dummies for new game-play mechanics. Otherwise we'd still be stuck with Pong.
