Assassin’s Creed: Best Gadgets, Ranked

The hooded brothers (and sisters) in the Assassin’s Creed series have been known to take out their targets with just about every weapon imaginable, from the simple blunt instrument to some of the most sophisticated (and anachronistic) firearms. But besides climbing the closest available hand-hold-riddled structure, how do Assassins infiltrate their target’s base or make their escape after the deed is done?

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The answer is gadgets, and the series has a ton of them. Whether they are used to create a distraction, favorably control crowds, or move around the city as fast as an eagle’s shadow, these gadgets ensure that everything is permitted for those who use them.

7 Money (Assassin’s Creed 2)

It Can’t Buy Brotherhood, But It Helps

Whereas the original game conditioned players to shudder when seeing the one enemy that couldn’t be pushed aside in high-profile mode, making assassination missions extremely frustrating to complete, Ezio’s ability to toss cash on the ground in Assassin’s Creed 2 to rapturous cries of joy made dealing with such obstacles a trivial matter. Providing that Ezio and his coin purse are good for it, Ezio can disperse street beggars, gatherings, and even some of the hired thugs on the other team.

It may seem low-tech compared to some of the other tricks in Ezio or any other assassin’s arsenal, but it is a kind of social technology, and there is something gleefully fun about being able to manipulate crowds by hurling (what would be to Ezio) pocket change at the gutter. Viewed in another light, coin tossing is a more humane way to create an escape than the usual method, which tends to go from stinging eyes with smoke to stinging vital organs with a hidden blade.

6 Parachutes (Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood)

The Obvious Answer To The Problem Of Gravity (Besides Screaming)

The ability to climb up pretty much any surface is an idea so strong that it has sold every one of the Assassin’s Creed games. However, one snag to this semi-superpower always becomes obvious once players reach the top: getting down. While everyone enjoys a good leap of faith, especially from high places, there aren’t always conveniently placed bails of hay sitting around to break the fall. As a reward to Ezio for helping him destroy his machines of war in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Leonardo da Vinci handed him a solution to his gravity problem (and in a super-compact size, considering 15 can be carried at any one time): parachutes.

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After proving their usefulness, knowledge of the gadget spread across Rome, and just about any tailor could make them (although they probably reserved their stock for Ezio, the only one brave enough to use them), then beyond, as far as the Otterman Empire. After Revelations, this gadget was not used for a few hundred years. Although parachutes seem like they should be a part of any Assassin’s core provisions, it could be argued that knowing that one is always there to save them could compromise a recruit’s instincts, preventing them from fully embracing the fearlessness required of being an assassin.

5 Hook Blade (Assassin’s Creed Revelations)

A Hook, But Also A Blade!

It’s a blade, but it’s also a hook! While the hook blade has plenty of potential as a great weapon, it also improves movement in a minor but important way. When climbing a building, Ezio is able to reach that little bit higher. Not only that but retracting the hook blade throws him up slightly, keeping the climbing flow and the realism and white-knuckle tension going.

With Ezio hitting the late stage of his life in Assassin’s Creed Revelations, the hook blade came at the perfect time, as he can use all the help he can get to spare his poor, worn-down joints. Besides its killing and climbing functionality, Ezio can use it to zip-line across Constantinople’s skyline in style and with great speed, making traveling to some of the regular mission locations a breeze.

4 Bombs (Assassin’s Creed Revelations)

A Non-Lethal Tool With Explosive Versatility

While explosives might seem to contradict the Brotherhood’s penchant for quiet, unseen kills, bombs, even when used nonviolently (or indirectly violently), are an indispensable gadget. In Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Ezio learns to use them to their full potential. Constantinople-made bombs incorporated ideas from some of the series’ most useful tools, including creating distractions with fool’s gold, smoke, noise, and sulfur.

While some could be crafted with weapons, Ezio’s own brand remained true to the Creed’s first tenant (even when used in bustling parts of the city): to stay blades from the flesh of the innocent. Some of the more interesting non-lethal bombs include stink bombs, which help disperse crowds; thunder bombs, which knock over anything not bolted down with non-lethal force; and blood bombs, which coat their target in lamb’s blood, tricking people into thinking they have been maimed and causing them to run in fear.

3 Grappling Hook (Assassin’s Creed Syndicate)

A Hook, But Also A Grapple!

A good grappling hook is perfect for any situation, real or video game, so it’s surprising that it took Assassin’s Creed, a series about trying to climb up to high places, nine games before they finally included it in the player’s toolbelt (or gauntlet). Granted, climbing a building’s ornate features with hands and feet the way most architects or architect-enjoyers enjoy doing with their eyes is one of the foundational draws of the series, but regardless, it is nice to have the option to simply shoot straight to the top with the pull of a trigger at one’s leisure.

Earlier iterations of the grappling hook appeared as rope darts and rope launchers, but the gauntlet-mounted grapple is undoubtedly its coolest incarnation. The grappling hook appears in Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, but due to the series’ soft reboot and return to much earlier eras in human history, this gadget took a short break from use. Thankfully, as well as borrowing from Syndicate‘s duel protagonism, the grappling hook made a triumphant return with Assassin’s Creed: Shadows.

2 The Animus (Every Game In The Assassin’s Creed Series)

The Ultimate In Gaming Immersion & Historic Recreation

This gadget is perhaps the only one to appear in all the Assassin’s Creed games, even if the player cannot fully experience the world outside it. The Animus, an invention of Abstergo Industries and, therefore, the Templars, not only allows people to access their genetic memories, which is a miracle in and of itself, but it also allows them to live the lives of their ancestors in a fully immersive simulation.

Abstergo eventually released the Animus Omega, an immersive gaming product that was, in reality, distributed in order to widen the search for powerful Isu artifacts. However, even with its nefarious data-gathering true purpose (and the potential side effects of going mad due to lingering bugs), it would be hard to pass up such a gadget if given the opportunity to use one, especially for historians, gaming enthusiasts, or those just curious about their family’s past.

1 The Apple of Eden (Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood)

The Illusionary Key To Paradise

Although the Brotherhood trades almost exclusively in wetwork, they ultimately fight to combat evil figures and forces to create peace in the world. What faster way to spread peace than to use the Apple of Eden, which has the ability to control people’s minds and create grand illusions? Unfortunately, the Brotherhood also seeks to grant humanity freedom, and so enslaving the world under the power of the Apple would cross that line.

However, in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Ezio takes a bite of the Isu artifacts’s power when he uses its power to overwhelm an army, changing the loyalty of its soldiers or frying their minds. As the artifact was so dangerous, Ezio couldn’t exactly walk around Rome with it in his pocket (as fun as it may have been to free-roam with it equipped), so he seals it in Rome’s Coliseum for Desmond and the Assassins of the future to find.

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