Parkour experts review Assassin's Creed's parkour mechanics
A few experts reviewed clips of parkour from various Assassin's Creed games, including Shadows. They had some great takes and fun facts to share.
PC Gamer recently had two parkour experts sit down to react to some clips from the Assassin’s Creed franchise, including the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. You can now read our review of this entry as well. The experts come from a parkour group called Storror that is working on their own parkour-focused video game called Storror Parkour Pro, which launches in Early Access on Steam later this month. In the ten-minute video they cover a lot of ground, but some moves, like the iconic Assassin’s Creed leap of faith, proved to be rather unrealistic. Otherwise, these two experts, Benj Cave and Toby Segar, shared some great information that developers including parkour in their games may want to pay attention to.
“It’s packed with absolute dream moves” parkour experts break down Assassin’s Creed
Overall, Segar had a great quote to summarize their review: “[Assassin’s Creed is] packed with absolute dream moves.” While some of the traversal was actually realistic to some level, even those tended to require a practically inhuman level of precision, balance, control, and positioning. They covered eight types of moves, from simple climbing up a ledge to sliding down the pyramids. Early on in the video, a clip from Assassin’s Creed: Shadows of Yasuke using his knee to climb up a ledge had both experts reeling. They explained that “that’s a hate crime to parkour,” and that generally, you will always want to “avoid your knees and elbows at all costs” because they are such sensitive parts of your bodies. So Yasuke using his knee to pull himself up over a stone ledge would not be advisable.
On the other side of the spectrum, the experts also pointed out some flaws in the assassin’s methods of sliding down the pyramids in Assassin’s Creed Origins. They explain that in that situation, you would want to lean as much of your weight backwards into the pyramid as possible, because the moment your feet come into contact with a crack or uneven stones, you would start tumbling head over heels down the pyramid. So, while sliding down the pyramid is ridiculous, the technique is also not advisable.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a proper video unless they talked about the iconic Assassin’s Creed leap of faith, where the assassin can essentially jump from any height and land safely as long as it’s in a cart of hay or leaves. The experts admitted that this is doable from a short distance, but even then, it would require perfect positioning and precision. “You clip the edges and you’re dead basically…” and if you jump from high enough “there’d be a perfect assassin’s outline in the floor underneath the actual cart that the leaves are in…” While iconic, and worth keeping in the game anyway, don’t try this at home.
One last clip that surprised me, as it’s a very common mechanic in plenty of video games, not just Assassin’s Creed, is walking along ropes. While this is, of course, doable, the challenge that comes with the speed that the assassin is moving is impressive to overcome. Then, the experts agreed that it would be nearly impossible to jump from even one story and land cleanly onto a rope. The precision and balance are just too much, and they imagine the attempt would end with the person rag dolling into the river below. So next time you’re in a video game traversing between buildings on a rope, pay attention to how fast the character moves and if they are able to easily jump and land on that rope. It might not be the most realistic.
Overall, these are fun facts to learn about the reality of moving around these environments, and if you ever find yourself in a situation like Assassin’s Creed, it can be good to know you shouldn’t use your knees. But as long as they don’t completely ruin the immersion and fun of the video game, these ridiculous feats of balance and precision are worth keeping in the games.
