Some of the best pieces of single player downloadable content in recent years have been quirky, offbeat interpretations of their core games – the likes of Mass Effect 3’s brilliantly self aware Citadel campaign, Red Dead Redemption’s Halloween special and Far Cry 3’s riff on 1980’s B-movie action flicks are the ones that come to mind – but Ubisoft have taken a rather different approach with Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry, which is a deep and ethically delicate insight into the slave trade that builds off the groundwork of the excellent Black Flag to ensure it stands up well as both an expansion to the core game and as a story well worth experiencing in its own right.
Adéwalé is the star of Freedom Cry, your one-time quartermaster from Edward Kenway’s adventure who is now a fully fledged member of the Assassin’s Creed looking to put his skills to good use in the ongoing war against the Templars. He’s a very different character to Edward, certainly less carefree and a tad more self serious, but he never approaches Connor levels of angst and is well voiced by Tristan D. Lalla. The story begins much in the same way as Edward’s, with our hero finding himself washed up on shore after his ship is destroyed in a storm, but whilst Edward’s predicament saw him become entangled in the aforementioned war between the Assassins and Templars, Freedom Cry doesn’t concern itself with the core story of the series, instead focusing on Adéwalé’s past as a slave as he returns to Port-au Prince, a hub of the slave trade and the setting of his former entrapment.
The narrative sees Adéwalé become embroiled in the local resistance, dubbed the Maroons, who are seeking to rise up and claim their freedom. Much like the core gameplay and mission design, this type of story is something we’ve seen before, but in both cases its the context that adds a layer of significance and genuine interest in what occurs. You won’t find anyone eagerly awaiting yet another eavesdropping task or a tailing mission, but Adéwalé’s motivation to free as many slaves as he possibly can lends far more weight to these scenarios. It helps too that freeing slaves has inspired the developers to design some new side tasks, such as liberating convoys and plantations, which all generate and appear randomly on the map and means that, much like the main game, Freedom Cry maintains its ability to entice you away from simply ploughing through the story missions by stuffing the map with things to do.
Port-au Prince is comparable in size to the bigger areas from Black Flag, with plenty of chests, synchronization points and side tasks to go after, and there’s also a portion of the Caribbean sea open for you to explore on your new ship, which again can be upgraded and used to sail in to battle, explore underwater sanctums and hunt the local fauna. The reasonable size of the map, coupled with the decent offering of nine story sequences, means that you could easily spend up to six or seven hours in the shoes of Adéwalé, which offers value on the asking price.
The real value of Freedom Cry, though, is how well Ubisoft have managed such a morally and ethically difficult topic, or at least they have for the most part. There are some genuinely harrowing moments during a few of the story sequences, especially one that sees you attempting to save as many captives as you can from a sinking slave ship, knowing full well that saving them all is an impossibility, and the subject matter also compels you to deal with as many of the aforementioned randomly generated liberation opportunities as you possibly can. Everything from the combat to the chase scenes gains a degree of intensity because of the context and the motivations of Adéwalé, with the way in which you dispatch your foes offering some of the most brutal animations the series has yet seen.
Perhaps the only misstep taken regarding the source material is the slight ‘gamification’ that the concept of liberating slaves becomes in certain respects. Slavery is wrong at its core by treating humans as a resource, as an expendable currency, and for the most part Freedom Cry deals with that sensitively and admirably, but there is an unfortunate irony to the way in which Adéwalé is improved as a force of murder; you effectively buy certain upgrades depending on how many slaves you have, which in its own way, is once again treating them as a currency. Whenever you liberate slaves your liberation counter goes up, and depending on how high the counter is, you’re able to access new weapons and upgrades both for you and your ship. It’s a tad unfortunate, but clearly it’s something that Ubisoft probably deserve the benefit of the doubt on.
In fairness, the additions to your arsenal in Freedom Cry are pretty cool. The machete adds a new level of brutality to the melee combat, whilst the blunderbuss does similar for your ranged attacks, as it’s capable of taking down five or six enemies at once and blowing them back in a cacophony of blood and guts. Firecrackers are also available to you and work well as a distraction tool. The core gameplay remains untouched in the same way as the game design, but again, the way in which its embellished by these little additions and the core context of the story and the setting gives it a fresh breath of life.
Freedom Cry’s production values are also impressive. There are still major issues with the enemy AI and there’s a degree of jankiness to some of the animations at times, but the game still looks great on the PlayStation 4 and the voice work is strong across the board. The real standout, however, is Olivier Deriviere’s fantastic original score, which enhances every facet of the experience, whether it’s an intense action sequence, a point of emotion or simply the new viewpoint synchronization sound beat, it’s a brilliant piece of work and maintains Assassin’s Creed’s position as gaming’s most consistent series in terms of the range and quality of its music.
Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry doesn’t reinvent anything about the core tenets of the series, but the fact that it’s built on the framework of the best game the franchise has yet seen means that it was never going to be. It’s a terrific example of downloadable content done right, the way in which it acts as a well produced extension of the main game whilst delving into new territory in its story, tone and themes, and it’s for that reason why you can understand Ubisoft’s decision to make it available as a standalone experience. It doesn’t always hit the right notes, and the problems that still exist in the gameplay and level design do frustrate at points, but like the adventure of Edward Kenway it hits far more than it misses and continues the upward trajectory of a series that looked dead and buried after its bogging trek through the American Revolution.
Whether you missed out on Black Flag and want to experience a small slice of the greatest Assassin’s Creed pie to date, or you’re eager to see just how a blockbuster game looks to take on such an ethically delicate issue, Freedom Cry is a terrific example of a developer and a publisher taking risks with a franchise to deliver something fresh, thoughtful, and poignant.