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Inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, a gamer took the extra time to complete a no-damage Assassin’s Creed franchise run — on the highest difficulty.
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An ambitious gamer has managed to complete all twelve of the mainline Assassin’s Creed games without taking damage — and did so while playing on the highest level of difficulty, no less.
Hayete Bahadori posted the second half of his Valhalla no damage run on April 11, officially completing his self-imposed challenge. In an interview with Kotaku, Bahadori explained he started doing no-damage game runs during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to pass the time. He began with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order before seeking something more challenging. He eventually settled on playing the Assassin’s Creed series in chronological order because he said he enjoys games with “stealth, subtlety, precision and various approaches to a given scenario.”
To begin with, Bahadori set several rules. From the “first possible instance [of] damage to the game’s end credits,” the health bar could not fall below zero except in moments when the game forces damage on the player for plot purposes. In those cases when he took forced damage, Bahadori made a point to acknowledge it in the video description. Each game from Brotherhood to Syndicate had to be 100% synchronized for each level without reloads or restarts for gameplay benefits. On top of that, every game with difficulty modes had to be completed at the highest level possible. Bahadori refused to use any glitches to skip content, as he wanted to play the game as the developers intended. If he failed a single objective at any point, he would restart the entire run.
Bahadori played through each game multiple times before attempting his challenge, taking note of problem sections for a no-damage playthrough on the first fun. On the second playthrough, he devised strategies for each section to eliminate as much risk as possible. Every plan had to be repeatable, consistent and avoid the use of luck. In total, Bahadori estimated it took him over 100 hours to complete each game on average, with a couple of standouts — Black Flag, due to some of the challenges being luck-based, took 250 hours to complete, while Valhalla’s extensive main campaign required 800 hours to prep and complete successfully.
Having completed the entire series, Bahadori said his favorite to challenge-run was Odyssey because of a lack of forced damage, while his least favorite was the first game due to being “camera reliant.” He also called Unity the best for stealth play and Valhalla the best for combat. Syndicate bug issues caused the most restarts of all the games. However, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood’s sequence when Ezio uses the Apple of Eden proved especially challenging for the playthrough as the attackers are entirely randomized. Since the scene comes near the end of the game, one random arrow could have meant a restart and many more hours of play.
With the Assassin’s Creed series completed, Bahadori said he is currently eyeing God of War for his next no-damage run, a game that reportedly inspired Valhalla’s newest expansion, Dawn of Ragnarök.
Source: Kotaku
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