Cheese or Font exercise and sketches
Visual Design Analysis of Assassin’s Creed
As a kid, there was only one thing that could keep me still for hours, it showed me incredible tales of history, bravery and charisma. And yet my mom was never happy about it. I’m talking about Assassin’s Creed, and specifically for today I’ll talk about Assassin’s Creed ‘Brotherhood’, the second game I ever played and my favorite of the early games in the series.
One specific design choice this game made that was incredibly powerful, was the addition of eagle vision. When activated eagle vision used the power of visual contrast to highlight what was important to the mission at hand. It made it much easier to figure out who was the target in gold (to be assasinated of course—sorry mom) and who was just the henchmen I would have to avoid.
Another example of how the game used perspective and visual hierarchy to reduce complexity of the game was lookout points. Basically there were certain places on the map that you could go to that were incredibly high up, and when you looked up it would show you the scenes below, giving you a better idea of your surroundings and also improving your personal map. This design choice not only explained why the character’s personal map knew certain areas and not others, but also actually helped understand the vast environment of the game.
One final highlight is the elegant typography of the weapon selection. Because (to make a long story short) Assassin’s creed actually takes place in the future, where the future protagonist lives through memories to learn more about the past, something like weapon selection is made to feel futuristic and like an improvement from the future with the typography choices. This helps you understand that you’re operating as the main futuristic protagonist in that moment and not the character he is playing from the past.
