Review: Assassin's Creed Rogue Remastered — Four years too late

Assassin’s Creed Rogue has a bit of an odd reputation in my mind. It was announced alongside Unity in 2014, though at the time it was only planned to release on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, completely skipping the current-gen consoles that came out the year prior. Despite its release on inferior hardware, it was generally regarded as the better Assassin’s Creed title that year, with Unity mired in performance issues and controversy. It’s fitting to finally see Rogue release on Xbox One, but it’s hard to ignore that it’s about four years too late.

Rogue is in a weird limbo where it hasn’t released long enough ago for a remaster to pack a huge punch yet enough time has passed to where its age is apparent. It’s stuck between a rock and a hard place in that regard out of sheer misfortune.

While on the surface the series appears to be a binary good vs evil story—Assassins vs Templars—the franchise has always tried to muddy those lines. Rogue was Ubisoft’s greatest attempt yet to tell a morally grey story through the eyes of an Assassin-turned-Templar named Shay Patrick Cormac. Rogue offered us a chance to understand the Templars’ point of view, and it did so with fair success. The Assassins aren’t infallible and it’s easy to see why a young man could grow disillusioned in their cause. We haven’t received another narrative quite like it in the main game series, so it’s certainly something I’d like to see Ubisoft attempt again.

It’s hard for its narrative to feel ‘dated’ in a sense, but Rogue’s gameplay sure does. Going from Assassin’s Creed Origins to Rogue feels like swimming in a tropical ocean and then getting ice dumped on you. It’s quite a shock, though it is a testament to just how far the series has come in a few short years. It might seem a bit unfair to compare Rogue to Origins, which completely overhauled the series’ gameplay mechanics and combat, but the timing of their releases make these factors all the more noticeable. In terms of the franchise’s legacy controls, Rogue can hold its own. The gameplay can still be fun; it’s just stuck in the rut that made Assassin’s Creed feel stale for so many years. Of course, going back to this after Origins could also have the opposite effect where it feels rejuvenating. Even if the gameplay in Rogue is inferior in my opinion, some may find it nostalgic to experience its classic controls and combat.

As for its performance, you’ll be getting essentially the same experience as you would from its Xbox 360 version. I never encountered too many glitches or frame-rate drops when I played the original, and that holds true for the remaster.

I played Rogue on a standard Xbox One, so I didn’t get the full visual enhancements such was 4K resolution like I would have on an Xbox One X. Still, the game looks good. It doesn’t stand up to Unity from the same year, but there is an improvement compared to Rogue’s last-gen counterpart. Colors are slightly deeper and more saturated like in the Ezio Collection, making it look less washed-out in certain spots. Environments are more detailed, though not stunning. It’s generally what you’d expect from a remaster, nothing more and nothing less.

This isn’t the first Assassin’s Creed title that Ubisoft has remastered, and it’s hard to say if it will be the last. What makes Rogue unique in this case is that it wasn’t part of a compilation. During the series hiatus in 2016 Ubisoft released the Ezio Collection, which remastered all three games in Ezio’s trilogy. Because of this, I would have liked to see Assassin’s Creed 3 remastered with Rogue as well. It’s difficult to tie their stories together as they star different Assassins and the modern day story completely shifts, but the games are closely related by their locations, both taking place in Colonial New York City and surrounding areas. Rogue Remastered offers a good value for its $30 price tag, I just would have liked a little bit more content.

Hardcore Assassin’s Creed fans should certainly take the opportunity to revisit Rogue, but if you’re a casual fan who has already played it, it may be better to give this a pass. Rogue was a good game for its time and that still stands today, but enhanced visuals don’t do much for it other than make it slightly prettier. The story is where the real value is if you’re invested in the series’ narrative.

7/10

Xbox One

Purchase Assassin’s Creed Rogue Remastered on the Microsoft Store