Assassin's Creed

Aw, man. I don't want to get my hopes up for that and be disappointed. I've been missing the deeper involvement of the First Civilization meta-plot in the last few games.

It is 1868. The year of the first term of Benjamin Disraeli, he would be ousted by the end and back in the 1870s. It's actually a fairly interesting year and obviously the developers thought well when they chose a good midpoint.

If they chose a later period you might not have gotten Darwin and say young Graham Bell.

Source for that date? Everything else I've seen says '67.

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2015/05/assassins-creed-syndicate-confirmed-set-in-1868-london/

Generally it has been that date since the beginning, the Livestream launch.

Three of the Templar targets recently revealed (David Brewster, John Elliotson, James Brudenell, all historical figures) died in the year 1868. It's a middle period after all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring-heeled_Jack

Spring Heeled Jack was actual Victorian folklore and here its apparently some kind of Cult of Romulus thing encouraged by Templars. As usual.

I don't know if it's connected to Jack the Ripper. Jack was a popular "common man name" and folklore characters name "Jack the Giant Slayer, Jack the Beanstalk" it was a long tradition and when the Ripper started cutting women and removing organs, well they started calling him Jack too.

Spring-heeled Jack was basically the Mothman of the day. He's not connected to Jack the Ripper (unless somebody wants to invent wild conspiracy theories, and AC is the perfect playground for that).

edited 25th Sep '15 12:43:33 PM by SpaceWolf

Thought everyone called him Jack because he called himself Jack. Could be mistaken.

"I am Jack's complete lack of surprise." Wait, wrong franchise.

His name was Ezio Auditore. His name was Ezio Auditore.

The only reason that I made the connection was what the guy claiming to be Spring-Heeled Jack said in the video.

"The scum of London are as base as animals and we treat them as such!"

"We take our inspiration from Jack, who knows how to treat the lower class."

While it is potentially a stretch, I find the connections interesting. Jack the Ripper's killings are often described as 'like gutting an animal' and the killings also had a predominant focus on the lower class. And 'Spring-Heeled Jack' is already pretty seemingly obscure to adapt into the series.

I'll be really excited if my connections prove true.

I'm really bothered because I'm starting to get hyped again.

But I got really hyped for Unity too and... Gah! Part of me loves what I'm seeing and another is still so sore about what happened with Unity that I want to believe this is all one massive lie.

After Unity, Ubisoft would have try and make a worse story.

I feel like everything we've seen of Syndicate is an indication that Ubisoft is learning from their mistakes. They're aware that Unity was a turkey, and unlike say, Activision, who are perfectly happy putting out terrible iterations on a franchise until it stops making money, Ubi seems to have a degree of artistic vision. They want to put out good product.

On another note, I've decided that I really do not like the new combat system. Or at least the new combat AI. Fights are stacked so hard against you once you're engaged by more than three enemies, and the overwhelming majority of them have guns that you really can't do anything about. Combine this with late-game missions that expect you to succeed through combat (not providing any reasonably achieved stealth option) with huge swarms of enemies and it just becomes frustrating and almost like the game delights in spitefully killing you.

Also, they either need to make the guards less sensitive to your presence, or mark restricted areas way better. The guards need to not be chasing after me just because I ran through an area that used to have a chest in it, or stood on a fence.

Also also, there had just better not be snipers on all the rooftops in Syndicate. They have no reason to be there. If there's any argument for why a modern-day Assassin's Creed is a terrible idea, it's that 18th century muskets are already awful to deal with, and firearms only get better as time marches on.

That and it never seemed that logical in the first place. Some rooftops looked built for patrols. Others looked really unsafe and not designed for Enemy AI.

To me there won't be a real evolution until they rework stealth thoroughly. It must be possible, via Achievement or NG+ only bonus goal, to complete the game, open-world/side-missions/main-missions/freeroam without being detected once, without triggering a single guard alert. That's true social stealth, ghosting an entire sandbox.

As you advance in modern times, there has to be stuff like destroying evidence, hiding bodies, assassinations that look like accidents, killing and attacking targets with differing modus operandi to throw off the cops. Stuff that any black-ops/mercenary/underground-movement ought to do. It's a pity because the Victorian Era is a perfect setting for this. Instead they imported Gangs of New York and GTA. As Italian NP Cs would say in the Ezio games, "Vergonia".

That said I kind of do look forward to Syndicate.

Agreed. I'm praying that the floating words around the crime scenes aren't just trailer fluff.

I do think they DID take a step in the right direction with Unity's stealth and going back to the 'Here's a place, go have fun' assassination style.

That was a step in the right direction but it's bad tango. One step forward, 9 steps back. And the Assassination missions in Unity, aside from the one in Notre Dame and maybe the one in the graveyard is forgettable. They are all the same interior-movement with four different ways past the door.

Compare that to Dishonored which is mission design on an incredibly intricate scale. I mean of course there you have the choice mechanic, but even without that, there are a wealth of opportunities for movement, infiltration and exfiltration. There's no one correct way to complete the mission.

I kind of liked AC-3's two big open missions, the one in the forest and William Johnson, and the one on the battlefield. I would have liked something more dynamic. I mean its criminal that a game set in the French Revolution doesn't feature activities or events on that scale.

So stuff I noticed:

• Main weapons are the kukri, cane sword, and brass knuckles
• Crafting returns
• There's separate gang upgrades, including one that makes the Rooks better fighters.
• Jacob's belts are stat modifiers, whereas for Evie it's her capes
• Skill trees are separated into Combat, Stealth, and Ecosystem (Dealing with stuff like carriages)
• Jacob's unique skills: Gunslinger 2 (Always gets headshots with the revolver), Defense 3 (Takes less damage from melee and ranged attacks), and Mutilate 3 (Allows Jacob to get his enemies into the near-death state much more quickly)
• Evie's unique skills: Chameleon (Which we know about already, but with the caveat that it won't work if enemies are too close), Knifemaster 2 (Can carry more knives and do more damage), and Stealth 3 (Makes it far less likely for her to be detected while sneaking, assassinating people, etc)

edited 29th Sep '15 7:33:55 PM by rmctagg09

One of the Uplay rewards visible in the video is called "Arbaaz Mir's cane-sword."

Innnnteresting.

I think that was in one of the earlier vids as well.

I generally don't watch the videos (I'm not going to be getting the game for at least a year after it comes out, so why bother getting myself excited for it), but I was curious to see if Evie also used Kukris, since the preorder statue has her with a Kris instead.

History Respawned covers AC Chronicles: China.