Assassin's Creed

R-L stands for Real Life because she (presumably a she for reasons later in story) is the Real Life (Present Time) Protagonist of the game.

Some concept art◊

I can hear bells just looking at that XD

From a design standpoint, sure. Within the context of the game, it's simply the closest thing to an official designation. Even then, the wiki prefers the term "Abstergo Entertainment research analyst."

edited 25th Jun '14 9:01:42 PM by illegalcheese

That's because there is an RL as part of the team writing the database, and they're not the same person as the protagonist.

R-L is a really stupid nickname for the protagonist, and I've never cared for the idea that they must be canonically female because of the plot. Especially when everything Ubisoft has ever said about them is that they're the player themselves.

Personally, if we're not playing as the same person, I hope we never hear about them again. Canonizing anything about them completely invalidates the presentation style of IV's metaplot. And I hope we're not playing as them again, for that matter. "I" was easily a far worse modern-day protagonist than Desmond ever was.

The AFGNCAAP has a long and storied history as the protagonist of video games. Don't mock it without justification. As I've said many times before, Black Flag was written from the perspective of a new player to the franchise, in the form of a new persona that is that player. It was executed perfectly.

Different strokes.

I thought it was stupid. Really, as time goes on, I'm coming to realize that I really didn't like Black Flag very much. It was a blast to play, but the story was handled really badly.

You're entitled to that opinion of course. I prefer to take a holistic approach to games. Rather than what I want or expect, I go in looking for what the creators of the game wanted me to experience. What was the emotional tone they were going for? What am I supposed to think about the characters and the situations? How is this game supposed to relate to the larger story, if there is one?

Then I compare my experience to that intent to see if it succeeded or not. Did I find a scene funny when it was supposed to be serious? Could I accept the verisimilitude of the universe presented to me? Did the characters behave as one would expect them to within their particular stories? Was my suspension of disbelief broken by anything blatantly absurd or unrealistic, or by technical glitches?

In other words, my evaluation of quality is based on what the game attempted to present versus what I actually experienced. You, on the other hand, seem to evaluate games based on whether they conform to your preexisting expectations. I think of this as the two sides of an "is-ought" problem.

If a game has a premise that I find innately unsatisfactory, I don't play it; I don't spend time griping about it. I only gripe if it fails to live up to what it promised.

edited 25th Jun '14 9:37:01 PM by Fighteer

I still disagree with that but let's not have this debate again.

Black Flag was fun to play, but it just wasn't an Assassin's Creed Game.

edited 25th Jun '14 9:37:41 PM by lancesolous13

Sure it was. You play as a guy killing people in an historical fiction setting, viewed through the lens of the Animus and interacting with First Civilization artifacts. That's the franchise in a nutshell.

That your character doesn't become an Assassin officially until the end is kind of irrelevant; more to the point, it's very similar to the second game, which is widely regarded as one of the best.

That he's a pirate first and an Assassin second is only peripherally relevant; he fights like an Assassin and that's what matters to the gameplay.

The only real gripe I had about the plot was that the Templars were too generic as villains; they didn't do all that much to establish themselves as a credible threat — a personal threat, more specifically. Edward's motivations for fighting them were mainly about greed and about making up for his earlier mistake, not because they'd done anything to harm him per se. This is a bit of a departure from Ezio's and Connor's stories.

edited 25th Jun '14 9:43:59 PM by Fighteer

I'm making a new post because I assume there'll be a new post by the time I press the 'send' button.

I evaluate a game based off of the experience intended, the experience that was actually gained, and also in comparison to the rest of the series if there is one.

An example of this would be the Mass Effect series. I found the first two installments to be fun action-adventure games where it was about bringing together and awesome diverse team with all odds against them and kicking ass and beating impossible situations. Mass Effect 3 ended up... controversy aside, not being consistent with that and very very tonally different and just sort of depressing.

ACIV is a good game; an excellent pirate game, but it sucks as an AC game because the Assassin's Creed elements don't pick up until, like, what? Sequence 8? 9? Everything prior is "Yo-ho! Yo-ho! A Pirate's Life for me!".

Did you miss the part where Kidd introduces Edward to the Assassins in, what, Sequence 4? The story is about Edward's growth from pirate to Assassin, paralleling his growth as a moral person. Who said it had to be Assassins, Assassins, Assassins from Sequence 1?

I never said it had to be Assassins Assassins Assassins from Day 1, but its incredibly annoying when I'm wondering 'Hey, when is he going to learn what 'Templar' actually means?' or 'Hey, no, go that way! The Assassins are that way! THE PLOT IS THAT WAY DAMN IT!'. Its incredibly annoying and a valid criticism of the plot.

And, yes, I understood what they intended as "The story is about Edward's growth from pirate to Assassin, paralleling his growth as a moral person". I'm not stupid.

(I'm editing that out because wow I sounded like an asshat...)

I feel like it wasn't an Assassin's Creed game to me because I didn't feel immersed in an Assassin's Creed world and would constantly be thinking the above comments of 'Hey, when is he going to stop being a pirate and actually be a Capital-A Assassin?'. I feel like it took far too much time enjoying its Pirate antics and setting up the players on the board not enough time actually driving. I don't feel like the plot finally catches until Mary Reed dies and that's just so late into the game. Its also telling when I had completely forgotten that the Gov., the supposed Antagonist for the Templars, I'd completely forgotten that he existed until I killed him.

When I think of Assassin's Creed, I don't think of stabbing my way through people and parkouring and stuff (though, obviously, I visually think that), but I think of the awesome historical figures (I'M NOT DENYING THAT IV HAD THIS!), and Templars vs. Assassin's and the Ones who Came Before and being completely immersed in the universe with evil popes, sudden plot twists, wrist guns, and Casanova Italians. I just wasn't immersed in IV, I felt like Edward's character development didn't integrate well with the Assassin Templar Plotline which just refused to move anywhere, and his development just happened too late in the game for me to be into everything long enough before the game ended.

When I look back on IV, I don't think about beating up the Pope, or hammy Italian Dutchesses (I think she was a dutchess?) or Assassinations on the Battlefield and learning about new cultures. I just remember driving a boat for hours on end, pirating, and I don't remember much else; fondly or otherwise.

That's just my experience, but that's why IV was not an AC game for me. A fine game and a find Pirate game, but not AC.

edited 26th Jun '14 12:18:37 AM by lancesolous13

Assassin's Creed Unity Is Bringing Back The Series' Greatest Experiment

Countess. She was a Countess.

And the idea of making combat harder sounds good but not for me, because my usual AC gaming experience is thus: trying to sneak up on people, failing at it, and subsequently having to murder every single thing with a pulse in a ten miles radius.

Agreed. I was always terrible at the stealth, hated it when arbitrary stealth missions appeared, and my friends told me that Brotherhood was apparently full of Stealth so I just skipped that game. :( In fact, I got the DLC for AC 2 and I never finished the game because the second DLC pack had so many stealth missions.

But, since they're apparently re evaluating Stealth and fixing it all up, I'll be happy to see the results and hopefully become the silent assassin and not Guns-Akimbo "Assassin".

I love stealth. The only problem is when some missions present ridiculously challenging stealth paths in order to complete optional objectives.

I've never really had any trouble with an optional objective.

I remember one stealth mission in III (Naval Fort???) where I had to take out a bunch of patrolling guards in some warehouse, but the environment was so dark that I couldn't tell where I was stepping in the rafters and it was so annoying.

That wasn't so bad; you need to use your radar and Eagle Vision. The missions I'm talking about are the ones where you need to do a moving eavesdrop while not getting detected and your target goes through restricted areas that are crawling with guards.

There's one bit in 3 (I think it was when you were tailing the Cockney dude and another) in New York where their path took them down a whole bunch of empty alleyways with barely any people or cover. And it was an eavesdropping mission.

I raged at that one.

It was REALLY bad. The Radar can't tell me where the beams are in the dark. I could see the guards perfectly fine from the rafters, but navigating the rafters was a pain in the ass and I kept pressing too hard in the wrong directions in my lack of vision of the level and Connor would jump down and be seen.

So Initiates is being upgraded again and is therefore down indefinitely for the interim.

Read an article that suggested that the Multiplayer-Co-Op Missions can be run solo if Arno is upgraded/Leveled Up enough.

I wonder if they'd ever consider having skill trees in AC. Might not be a bad idea since they usually do upgrades with equipment and there's already a massive arsenal at our disposal; Skills trees might slow that down a tad.