London, 1868. The Industrial Revolution has made the city the richest place on earth, and the Templars own every inch of it, from the factory floors to the halls of Westminster. Assassin's Creed Syndicate puts twin Assassins Jacob and Evie Frye on a train into the capital with a simple plan: build a gang, take the boroughs back one by one, and cut the Templar Grand Master out of the heart of the empire.
Two Assassins, One City
Syndicate is the first entry in the series to hand you two protagonists, and it treats them as genuinely different characters rather than costume swaps. Jacob Frye is the brawler, happiest with his fists up and a cane sword in reach, chaining lightning-fast multikills and counters through a crowd of Blighters. Evie Frye is the Assassin proper, a patient stealth specialist whose skill tree leans toward near-invisibility, silent takedowns and the perfect single strike. Most of the campaign lets you pick which twin to play, and their personalities pull the story in two directions at once: Jacob wants to smash the Templars out of London, Evie wants the Piece of Eden they are hiding.
Victorian London, Built to Be Climbed
This is the largest and most vertical city the series had produced at the time, stretching from the docks of Whitechapel to Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and the Thames itself. Two additions change how you move through it.
- Rope launcher
- A wrist-mounted grappling hook that fires a line to any rooftop or ledge in range. Zip up a factory chimney, string a tightrope across a busy street and cross it above the crowd, or set up an aerial assassination from a line your target never looks up to see. It turns London's tall, sooty skyline from an obstacle into a highway.
- Horse-drawn carriages
- Every carriage in the city can be hijacked and driven. Race through traffic to shake off pursuers, ram enemy vehicles off the road, or climb onto the roof mid-chase and fight the driver at full gallop. Trains and steamboats on the Thames round out a city that is constantly moving, and you can board any of them.
Lead the Rooks
London's boroughs are held by the Blighters, the Templar gang that keeps the city's workers in line. Jacob's answer is the Rooks, a gang of his own that grows as you complete the activities that free each borough:
- Gang strongholds - infiltrate a Blighter base and clear it out however you like, from a silent rooftop approach to kicking the front door in with a pistol drawn.
- Child liberation - the factories run on child labor. Slip inside, deal with the foremen and walk the kids out, which also costs the Templars their income.
- Bounty hunts and Templar hunts - track down a named target, then choose whether to deliver them alive to the police in a carriage or simply put them in the ground.
- Gang wars - once a borough is loosened, the Rooks and the Blighters meet for a full street battle to decide who owns it. Win, and the district's shops, income and allies are yours.
Rob trains for cash, upgrade the Rooks' fighting and pickpocketing skills, and watch the map turn green as your reach spreads toward the Templars at the center of it all.
The Age of Steam and Steel
Syndicate leans into its setting harder than almost any other game in the series. The soundtrack is period strings and music hall, the streets are packed with newsboys, street preachers and police in top hats, and the people you meet include Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Alexander Graham Bell, Karl Marx and Queen Victoria herself, each with their own thread of side missions. It is a brighter, funnier Assassin's Creed than its predecessors, one that finds room for Jacob's bad jokes between the assassinations, and it delivers one of the series' more satisfying villains in the Templar Grand Master Crawford Starrick.
Step off the train at Whitechapel, pull on the Rooks' green, and take London back for the people who built it. The Frye twins are waiting for their orders.
