The Main Story
The main section of the game is broken into sequences of memories that you go through as Shay Cormac. There are brief interludes in the modern day, but the primary action takes place in the past. Each sequence has two to five memories associated with it. Think of each memory as an extended scene with a variety of goals and challenges that must be met before you advance to the next one.
The game’s interface leads you through each memory. You don’t have to guess where to go or what is required of your character. The tricky part is to complete optional objectives (and survive). Optional objectives are revealed when you start the relevant section of a memory that is associated with the objective. You might have to avoid killing, stay undetected, or finish an opponent off in a specific way.
It’s entirely possible to beat each memory without doing anything to complete the optional objectives. You lose 10% of your synchronization in that memory for each objective you miss, but that is only a big deal if you’re trying to get 100% synchronization for the game (something that is required for achieving all of your challenges).
Fret not! You can replay memories later. If an objective is giving you too much trouble, leave and enjoy another portion of the game. Return when you’re ready to face the objective with a new perspective.
Side Activities
Between memories, you’re left with a great deal of freedom. Shay can explore the North Atlantic, River Valley, and New York. Each of these locations has a wide range of areas to enjoy, items to collect, and enemies to squish. You can hunt, upgrade your ship and equipment, change outfits, collect hundreds of items, and wander to your heart’s content.
One way to really have fun is to mix up your goals constantly. Play a memory or two, stop for an hour or so to collect and explore, and then try another memory. This ensures that Shay has a good amount of money and upgrades to help with completing the main story.
That said, you can rush through the game if you really want to. The story ends after you beat the last sequence and a short follow-up section, but Shay is given a full sandbox mode at the end of the game. So, you can explore and try to complete everything later if that’s more your style. Play however you want!
Replaying Memories
You don’t have to get everything right on the first run through your memories. Indeed, most players want to see the world and won’t stop to get everything just right before moving on. That’s totally fine in Rogue; you can return to any of the memories that you’ve completed and work on optional goals (or simply sightsee) at any time.
This lets you turn on cheats to wade through hordes of enemies or show off cool scenes to your friends.
To replay a scene, pause the game and look into the game to see the sequences and memories that you’ve been through. Any optional goals that are missing show up clearly, so you can see which portions of the story are missing some synchronization. Go there when it’s time to get 100% on everything.
You won’t lose your progress through the main game when you go back into these memories. When you’re done with your task, you return to the main game and can continue with your new synchronization and all of the goodies that you grabbed after beating that memory the first time around.
Note that you must play back entire memories for your changes to make a difference in the main story. To raise your synchronization, complete optional objectives that you missed and get to the end of that memory. You return to the point in the story where you left off, and the improvement is then recorded.
Menus and Options
Your Pause menu has several great features to mention.
The Progress Tracker is where you can view your percentage of progress in memories, side activities, and so forth. This is also where you replay memories that you’ve already beaten.
The Morrigan Upgrades menu lets you view your ship’s systems. You need to go to a harbormaster or to your Captain’s Cabin to actually improve these.
The Shay Upgrades menu lets you view your collection of weapons and outfits. Change these in your Captain’s Cabin.
Crafting can be done anywhere. This lets you turn animal parts into permanent upgrades for your health, weapons, and carrying capacity.
Your inventory is a tally of the quest items, ammo, hunting goods, and rewards you’ve gathered.
Abstergo Challenges are an in-game achievement system. They give you fun goals to work toward and reward you with cheats that modify the game and are required for several of the actual achievements that you can unlock.
The database contains a manual (for many basic game concepts), stats for your character, a leaderboard, and Animus information that you unlock by exploring, gathering fragments, and playing through the game.
Finally, the Options menu controls your sound features, video display (including subtitle languages), and many control settings.