Assassin's Creed: Uprising, Volume 1: Common Ground

Assassin's Creed: Uprising #1-4

by Alex Paknadel, Dan Watters, Jose Holder (Illustrator)

A game-changing new chapter in the ongoing Assassin's Creed saga!
With the Phoenix Project nearing its completion, tensions are running high for both the Brotherhood and the Templar Order. A new world order is on the horizon and only Charlotte and her new allies have the knowledge and skill to save humanity from subjugation!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Video Games, Science Fiction, Fiction, Comic Book, Fantasy

112 pages, Paperback

First published July 12, 2017

Reviews

[Khurram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Betrayal

A very good first book, a bit rushed, but I got yo know the characters enough. I will admit I am not a gamer anymore and not a huge Assassin's Creed fan. However, I did enjoy this book.

Both the Assassin's and the Templar Knights are having problems. What should have been an easy mission has been turned into a massacre. Who is responsible? Both groups blame the other, but there seems to be so much more to the story.

A good start to this series. I am definitely looking forward to seeing what happens next. The book finishes with a thumbnail varient covers gallery, including the sketch covers.

[Achilles Lanis · Rating 4 out of 5]

It all has been leading here for a while.

Assassin's Creed Uprising is the culmination of all the Assassin's Creed comics so far and also the present day storyline from the games since the very first one.

This takes place after Assassin's Creed Syndicate and two years after Charlotte De La Cruz joined the Assassins brotherhood.

I personally loved this as a longtime assassin's creed fan and I found the developments and the plot twists here amazing. But i can't give it 5 stars because if you haven't played the games you won't understand a lot of stuff.

You at least need to watch some vids telling you the present day storyline of the AC games from the first until Syndicate. And you also need to have read the Assassins and the Templars comic series before this.

But for Assassin's Creed fans and especially the present day storyline fans as this takes place solely in the present this is amazing.
Also the fact that they decided to end the Juno storyline in comics and not in the games is disappointing, but that's not relevant here as the comic itself is great.

Recommended only if you know your AC lore.

[ellie · Rating 3 out of 5]

i find it disconcerting how much charlotte’s appearance changes over these comics

[Ben Nealis · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars. I love the depth and double crossings that are found throughout the assassin's Creed franchise especially now with cultists of Juno showing up in the Assassins and the Templars but even for a die hard fan like myself this volume was a bit much. I picked it up in hopes of finally seeing Desmond's son in action and wasn't entirely disappointed but I was hoping for a bit more from him. The introduction of the Black Cross was my favorite part of this collection and I hope to see him in a mainline game at some point.

[Colleen Villasenor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a continuation of Charlotte de la Cruz's Assassin's Creed story. She has become a full-fledged assassin with a new team. There is a new threat that affects both templars and assassins. If they don't find the threat and work together to alleviate it, the threat will be worldwide. As usual, the artwork is the best part. This book went into some of the mythology of Assassin's Creed and didn't contain the usual historical references. I do miss that, but the story was engaging with a number of twists and turns and risks. This is the first in a 3 volume series about the Phoenix project

[Todd Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its impossible to review this comic as a fan of assassins creed without bringing up the small controversy surrounding it. Assassin's Creed 1 came out in 2007 and since then, over the course of 9+ games there has been an ongoing story taking place in the Modern Day. AC1, 2, 2B, 2R, and 3 all dealt with Desmond Miles becoming an assassin, running from Abstergo and eventually stopping an apocalypse from occurring by sacrificing his life. But in the process of sacrificing himself he released an entity from a precursor race called the Isu back into the world. Juno was this being, and she wants to kill off humanity and bring back the Isu race.

Now, the controversy. The games after AC3 started focusing on the modern day plot less and less. AC4 and Rogue had the player in a first person mode as an Abstergo employee uncovering secrets and learning about "the Sage", the husband of Juno who is reincarnated into humanity. But then Unity and Syndicate had only cut scenes for the modern day and relegated important plot details to hidden data logs you could find. Many fans are angry because this major plot of Juno and what she plans to do wouldn't be tackled in a main Assassin's Creed game, but instead in this comic book "Assassin's Creed: Uprising".

Now for the book. Its pretty good, the biggest complaint I have is that it is extremely unfriendly to new readers of all the Assassin Creed comics. Its frustrating to move the culmination of the video game's major plot to a comic book and then have the comic filled with characters you've never met and never given an introduction to. Heck the main people we have met in the games, Rebecca, Shawn, William Miles...

But I'm enjoying the back and forth between the Templars and Assassins as the discover Juno's plot and will probably have to work together.

[JJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Common Ground collects the first four comics in the Assassin's Creed: Uprising series, as well as a cover gallery, some character sketches, and a few Q&As with the artists. It's a solid opening third of the 12-issue series, although it's more notable for its position in the lore than it is for its execution.

The Uprising series closes out the second chapter of the Assassin's Creed modern-day story, which started in the 2013 game Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. This second chapter, unlike the first, wasn't a huge part of the games. As a big fan of fictional universes, I'm always happy when side-media like this actually makes a difference in the overall story, so Uprising is notable and I really enjoyed Common Ground from that perspective.

Unfortunately, Common Ground tries to do a lot and only partially succeeds. Not only is it setting up a major conflict that is supposed to tie up this portion of the modern-day story, but it's also juggling the casts of not one but two previous comic series. While the dedicated Assassins and Templars series that preceded this one were interesting looks at the two sides of the conflict that focused on their own main and side characters, both in the past and the present, no character really gets their time in the sun here. On the Assassins side, Charlotte falls to the wayside while a bloated, thinly-characterized cast moves the plot forward. On the Templar side, Otso Berg is probably the most memorable character in these four issues. But I found myself wishing we got to spend more time with him instead of all those annoying Assassins. And besides a brief memory I won't spoil here, we don't spend any time in the Animus at all -- so if you only love Assassin's Creed for rooting around throughout history, you will leave wholly unsatisfied.

In short, Uprising is as close to essential as you'll get from a tie-in comic like this, so long as you care about the modern-day Assassin's Creed story. But while it moves the plot forward, it buckles under the weight of both the Assassins and the Templars. If you only care about the history, you can steer clear.

[Alex Smith-Petersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was largely dynamite. It's, shockingly, a little inaccessible due to having so much come before it in the form of video games, other comics, and book series. But it starts a new chapter in the "modern" story, that weaves through the Assassin's Creed franchise, which is full of thrills, betrayals, and of course, lots of death. The characters here at least are new to me since I didn't read the prior comics, but there are plenty of things relating to the games where I am coming from into this series. Paknadel and Watters are both wonderfully gifted writers, flexing their abilities with dialogue consistently here. Jose Holder and Marco Lesko do a solid job bringing the world to life and make it feel lived-in, with some very nice character designs to boot. If anything, I wish it was easier to pick up and read, or hand to someone who's a fan of the series, but I honestly had to do so much digging around online for story bits that were necessary to understand certain events in this book. I appreciate a dense story, and it works pretty seamlessly in the grand scheme, amazingly, just wish it was made clearer where it all fits.

[Philip · Rating 2 out of 5]

Assassin's Creed: Uprising is the culmination of Titan Comic's previous Assassin's Creed offerings, Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed: Templars. This story serves as a decent setup for what's to come, but more strongly as a reminder of what could have been, as this comic blatantly exists to conclude a storyline the games had been building up for quite some time and abandoned in favour of a reboot.

[Vitek Novy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Další příběh s mladou asasínkou Charlotte de la Cruz, tentokrát to začíná vypadat že asasíni a templáři možná mají společného nepřítele. A vypadá to že se v dalším pokračování naváže na dějovou linii kolem Desmonda Milese a bohyně Juno, ta byla v několika posledních hrách opuštěna a myslím že je to docela škoda. Zatím dobrý, tenhle Assassin's Creed nezklamal...

[Tomáš Drako · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nietko nový dáva pekne na búdku Assassínom aj Templárom.
Obe frakcie sa snažia zistiť kto a prečo to robí.
Ako rozjazd novej série od Crew viac než v pohode. Celá kniha je zasadená v prítomnosti, ale tento raz mi to neprekáža. Je tam akcia, napätie, a dokonca menšie ,,nečakané,, odhalenie.

[Kati · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, though quite short for so many characters who were brought together in this story. I liked the modern design for Black Cross.

[Roman Egorov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Started off a bit slow and confusing, but ends up explaning itself fairly well. Worth a read, especially for a fan!

[Luci · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is good if you take it as a sub story to the games. The concept is the crossover idea here with very little overlap to the game story. It’s a fun comic on its own.

[Edd Sanders · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Mediocre 2/5 Graphic Novel Volume

[Sesana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Judging this book on its own merits first, it's ok at best. There are so many characters that just trying to figure out the cast is confusing. You'll be slightly less lost if you've read the "main" Assassin's Creed comic and Templars, because those lead directly into this and introduce many of these characters. The plot is naturally convoluted, because of course it is, and there's a bunch of new concepts and an entirely new branch of enemies all shoved in at once. Besides, the art is decidedly mediocre. At least Charlotte isn't screwing everything up by being self absorbed, again.

As a part of Assassin's Creed canon, it frankly annoys me that Ubisoft decided to go in this direction. The problem is that Juno was being set up as the next big bad of the series, a truly threatening presence. And then they just abandon that storyline in the games and shuffle it off to the comics line to settle possibly the biggest threat the series has ever faced. Clearly, they either got bored of Juno or realized that it would require more time in the present day than they were willing to program. Incredibly unsatisfying for fans, especially if you don't care for the comic book leads.

[Jamieson · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the Phoenix Project is mentioned in the present day storylines of Assassin's Creed: Unity and Syndicate, it is then dropped when Origins rolls around. Uprising is the story that concludes that arc. Volume 1 kickstarts this as Charlotte de la Cruz (from the Assassin's Creed comic series) and friends begin to dicsover a third cabal that threatens everything at the same time that Juhani Otso Berg does.

The story is enjoyable taking place mostly in the modern day with one flashback to Isu times which reveals things about the main villain. There are some interesting ideas as Otso Berg takes the mantel of Black Cross and Violet De Costa is revealed to be a member of the Instruments of the First Will. The art isn't bad and for the most part is pretty good. There are places though where it feels rushed and muddy. But it's not anywhere near the level required to take me out of the story. The story feels like Assassin's Creed with each comic issue being labeled as an Animus sequence. If you wanted to know what became of Phoenix Project, then this is the comic for you.