ASSASSIN’S CREED SYNDICATE – THE STEALTHY MIND OF EVIE FRYE

09/01/2015 04:51 PM

Though she’s older than her twin brother by just a scant few minutes, Evie and Jacob Frye are nearly polar opposites. Where Jacob is brutish and headstrong, Evie is patient. She plans. She considers every angle to ensure her mission has the best chance of success. She never leaves anything unfinished. But sometimes her careful nature gets in her way. Evie could probably afford to think a little less, just as Jacob should think a little more. Throughout Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, the Frye twins will often need to meet in the middle, because while they have their own personal weaknesses, they’re a force to be reckoned with when they work together.

TRUE BELIEVER

Evie Frye is a firm believer in the teachings of the Assassin Order, and wants to use what she’s learned to take on the Templars. Jacob believes the path to victory over the Templars is to use the Rooks to force them out of power. So while he’s on his own personal mission, Evie is gathering clues to the whereabouts of a Piece of Eden known as the Shroud – an incredibly powerful, incredibly mysterious artifact that can’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.

In the Gamescom demo for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, those wrong hands belong to Templar lieutenant Lucy Thorne. A consummate Templar (and therefore Evie’s target), Lucy is haughty and overconfident – although you might be too, if you had enough influence to effectively occupy the Tower of London while searching for the Shroud. “Evie wants to get her hands on the Shroud before Lucy, and the best way to ensure she does that is to eliminate Lucy,” Associate Producer Andrée-Anne Boisvert tells us. Getting to Lucy takes every tool at Evie’s disposal – and even when the two have their final, postmortem conversation in the series’ familiar White Room, Lucy remains uncooperative, even ominous about the Shroud’s true power.

IT TAKES TWO

One of the questions we’ve seen a lot is, Why make the main characters twins? Wouldn’t it also make sense to have them be a couple whose children also go on to be Assassins? Sure, but the series has already been there, done that. They wanted Assassin’s Creed Syndicate’s story to feel as fresh as its gameplay.

“We’ve already done the romance angle in the past, and when we started making this game, we asked ourselves how we could make the story different,” explains Creative Director Marc-Alexis Coté. “We know our fans, and this is something they want. They want the experience to feel fresh year after year, and this kind of dynamic is not one we have really explored at all in the franchise. So much of the Assassin’s Creed brand has to do with human DNA, and seeing into the past through that DNA. Having a brother and sister – twins who share the same DNA – feels like something that really plays into the strengths of the franchise.”

Together, these two very different individuals form the ideal Assassin and though their means are seemingly at odds, their motivations are the same. Through their trials, they both realize they need the other to see their mission through. “Evie is very clinical,” actor Paul Amos (Jacob) says of his in-game twin. “She’s very ordered and precise and she likes to plan, but don’t mess with Evie because once she gets going she is lethal. Between Evie and Jacob, they’ve got all the skills that make up the perfect Master Assassin. As they learn to work together as twins, they’re a powerful force.”

“Jacob is much more like, ‘Let’s get it over with. I’m going to get my guys and we’re going to end this,’” says Boisvert. “Evie, on the other hand, sees London and everything around it as a political spider web that needs to be studied. She needs to have a perfect understanding of the situation before she jumps in. Of course, this is going to spark some heavy discussions between them. But their differences are complementary, and I think this will provide a lot of freedom to the players – plus, it’s a fun story to see unfold.”

Check out the rest of this article on the UbiBlog

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate will be making its way onto PS4 and Xbox One on October 23 and PC on November 19th.

Author : Anne Lewis | Communication Specialist