There’s A Little Bit Of Castlevania In Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation

Ubisoft have shared a few more details regarding Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation for the PlayStation Vita at Gamescom, revealing that the game runs on a version of Assassin’s Creed III’s AnvilNext game engine ported to the PlayStation Vita.

As previously reported, main character, Aveline, uses a sugar cane machete and a blowpipe as her primary weapons. In addition to these, she also has a whip, which she can use to pull enemies toward her, or to navigate the city of New Orleans by using the whip to swing from beams.

Developer, Ubisoft Sofia, say that the whip also has a symbolic relevance.

Aveline is born of a temporary marriage called plaçage, whether wealthy men would take African, Chinese or Native American women for wives until they could find a more “acceptable” French bride. Children born from plaçage can go either way—the lucky ones are loved by their fathers while the unlucky ones are pressed into slavery. While Aveline is one of the lucky ones, as an assassin, she’s an opponent of slavery, and the development team felt that a whip, which serves as a symbol of the slave trade, would represent the icon of revenge in her hands.

Another new addition to Liberation is the concept of a “persona system”. Under this system, Aveline can be in one of three disguises—an assassin, a servant, and an aristocrat. Each one functions differently.

In her assassin guise, Aveline is adept at combat, jumping across roofs, and so on. The downside is that she sticks out like a sore thumb, causes fear wherever she goes, and soldiers attack her on sight. In contrast, the servant guise allows her to blend in with the masses of New Orleans’ underprivileged society. She can mingle with cleaners, dock workers and other low-class workers without anyone raising an eyebrow, but is lightly-armoured and can’t take a beating.

Finally, the aristocrat guise is her public face, or her “Bruce Wayne” persona, if you want to look at it that way. She was raised by her father’s wealth, and this is how society at large sees and knows her. She’s charming, beautiful and influential, and can use these qualities to simply bypass a lot of the obstacles that would otherwise stand in her way. In this guise, she carries a parasol gun, which is a one-shot stealth weapon, but can’t run or fight.