Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate took place during the Victorian era in London during the height of the industrial revolution. Players even got to meet the queen herself in the game.
But there is a little part of it that caught me by surprise. I had no idea this game hid a little World War I segment in it and I was even more surprised to see a young Winston Churchill in the game too.
The segment was short and took me about two hours to see everything it had to offer, but it was a lot of fun.
Wait, What’s That?
Halfway through the crazy story of Syndicate I noticed a rift to the side of the River Thames. I recognised it from Assassin’s Creed’s Unity segments, which saw players go to different time periods for brief moments of platform based gameplay.
I ignored it as I wanted to finish the game first before jumping into whatever this was.
Once I had finished the main story, I ventured to the spot on the map and dived into the rift only to be transported to the London during World War I where I stepped into the shoes of Lydia Frye (Jacob Frye’s granddaughter).
World War I
London is a mess during this time with military vehicles scattered around ruined dirty streets and planes racing around in the smoke filled sky.
The game segment started off with a crazy siege segment where Lydia has to help fight off an attack on the city before meeting up with Churchill to begin her hunt for spies but it turns out these spies were not Templars. In fact, they served a Sage.
The Sages were introduced in Assassin’s Creed III and Black Flag as the reincarnated lover of Juno, one of the Isu. I love Assassin’s Creed lore but it gets annoying when the games just forget about their own established lore. It was nice to see this aspect brought back.
Other than that, the gameplay was the same. The map was smaller and the missions even shorter.
It was really just a little bit of extra stuff to do in the game and felt like a tease for something that never came as the series moved back to the age of antiquity with the next instalments.
Though this segment was a lot of fun and added to Syndicate’s fun factor.
