Wednesday, 1 September 2021

DLC #152 - Assassin's Creed Unity - Dead Kings

It's been quite a common reoccurrence for Assassin's Creed DLC to contain additional story-driven content as part of it's extra offerings through the years, and this is reinforced with the Dead Kings pack.

Adding an extra 7 trophies, Dead Kings focuses on events post-Unity, where Arno Dorian meets up with Marquis De Sade. He offers Arno proper closure on his story - a boat heading to Egypt, which will allow him to leave Paris for good and the memories of Elise de la Serre behind.

The simple request is that Arno finds a manuscript which contains information on the whereabouts of an Artefact possessing great value, which is also being hunted by a group of Tomb Raiders led by Napoleon's army.

The location has been refreshed, with this content taking you into Saint-Denis, which is of a much smaller scale, though it does contain an underground area, where you'll be encouraged to spend most of your time via main story missions and the collectibles you'll also need to find to complete this list. It's fairly obvious that there is a deliberate focus on the catacombs within this DLC, and most of Sequence 13 takes place within them. The new lantern mechanic, which allows you to navigate past wild animals within the catacombs, was also built specifically for this DLC.

The trophy list is fairly straight-forward, but also very demanded, requiring you to complete everything this content has to offer to finish the list. With that in mind, the easiest way to break this down would be to discuss one particular trophy;

Hydrogen Bonded - Achieve 100% synchronisation in Dead Kings.

The "Hydrogen Bonded" trophy, awarded for achieving 100% synchronisation in Dead Kings, requires you to complete everything checklisted within the progress tracker as part of this DLC package. The other 6 trophies in addition to this one will be unlocked on your way towards fulfilling the obligations of this task, so it's effectively a Platinum trophy within it's own merits of this list. The main game never required you to complete everything to 100%, so it is a somewhat surprising requirement, and there is a fair amount of content to get stuck into here.

Aside from having to complete the new 13th Sequence as part of the extended story, along with the secondary objectives within each memory, there are also a large handful of Artefacts, Bicorns and Chests to find and collect (because that's exactly what you wanted after collecting 400+ of those in the main list). These requirements also come with 2 new Co-op missions to complete, a handful of riddles and some side questing in the form of murder mysteries.

There is alot of variety here, and it will all take you somewhere in the region of 10-15 hours to complete everything in order to reach 100% synchronisation. As long as you commit to working towards this trophy straight away, everything else will come naturally along the way.

Just like the main list, there aren't any difficulty-sensitive trophies, and with the map of Saint Denis being fairly small in comparison to Paris, it makes it much easier to jump around grabbing collectibles and completing side tasks. This ensures the DLC carries through the fairly relaxed undertones of the main list, and makes for an fairly comfortable completion to complete the experience.