The Text Adventures That Never Were: Assassin's Creed III

Ever wonder what the PC games of 2012 would be like if they were text adventures? Of course not, no one in their right mind would ever wonder that. In related news: I wondered that! So, rip out your GeForce GTX 680, plug in your dusty 10" CRT monitor, and stuff your programmable eight-button mouse in a stocking, because this week we're going to imagine five of this year's games the way all PC games used to be: as text adventures.

This year, Assassin's Creed III took gamers to colonial Boston to unravel the ever-denser mystery of the Assassins and Templars, let us hunt, fight naval battles, and participate in American history, and exposed us to roughly 436 hours of cutscenes. Oh, it and occasionally let us assassinate someone! That was nice of it. Now, climb a church, stand on the steeple, and watch as massive expanses of words unfold around you in Assassin's Creed III: The Text Adventure!

TOPICS

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.