The Fastest Man Alive
Chronicles: India comes out January 12, and Chronicles: Russia comes out February 9.
A bundle of all three Chronicles games is also coming out February 9.
The Wanderer
Story trailer.
edited 10th Dec '15 9:51:47 AM by rmctagg09
Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
40 Year Old Evie Frye looks cool.
Damn. This looks REALLY intense. I'm kind of excited. Though, I worry if its implying that we'll play as Jack the Ripper and that seems a little... distasteful to me.
The Fastest Man Alive
It kind of looks like the thing they used to do in the early seasons of Criminal Minds, where Gideon would go "I'm the killer" and have someone else walk him through what happened at the crime scene.
That is, it looks like playable Jack sequences are us, playing as Evie, playing as Jack, as a profiling technique. Commit the murder in your mind (synchronizing with it, as per series norm) in order to figure out who he is.
Evie Frye, Victorian Profiler is a badass concept, and I hope I'm right.
That would be really cool.
But, I don't know if that's giving Ubisoft too much credit, unfortunately. I'm not trying to be mean, but my gut tells me that.
Lost in Space
Okay, I'm nearing the end of Sequence 7. New thoughts:
- I maxed out my skill levels before even completing Sequence 5. It would be nice if there were some in-game reward for earning XP past level 10.
- Mary Disraeli is quite a figure, both historically and in the game. Her request for Jacob to show her around the slums would have been a highlight of my playthrough save for failing a secondary objective because two thugs noticed me before I could double assassinate them. Her dog is named Desmond... and Shaun's database entry on it is tragicomic. I hope that's historically accurate, or else someone at Ubisoft has a really mean sense of humor.
- I hopped into the Helix rift to World War I and got an earful of Juno. While the retelling of the franchise's meta-plot is rather interesting, and has a few previously unknown tidbits, it does seem a bit ham-fisted. Why is she telling all these would-be Assassin recruits her Evil Plan?
- Lydia Frye is awesome: stabbing German spies on the one hand and telling Winston Churchill off about the lack of woman's suffrage on the other.
- Jacob is a real idiot, isn't he? I share Evie's frustration with him, as she is constantly forced to divert from her search for the Shroud to clean up his messes. I'm trying to avoid advance spoilers, but since Lydia is Jacob's granddaughter, we know he lives to reproduce, so clearly she doesn't murder him in his sleep, much though he might deserve it.
- I had a feeling that something was going to get between Henry Green and Evie; it's rather amusing that it's because he's startlingly incompetent at being an Assassin.
edited 14th Dec '15 11:39:23 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lost in Space
Yay, done. Well, not so yay.
Modern Plot Spoilers: Otso Berg is dead (thank fucking God), Rebecca's been shot, Abstergo has the Shroud, and now Juno's going to use it to reembody herself using the Aita clones that Gramática has so helpfully been creating. Have I got the gist of it?
Edit: Incidentally, this makes Juno's plan far more coherent than it initially seemed.
Historical Spoilers: Jacob and Evie make up, aww. And Evie decides to forgive Henry and shack up with him. Aww. And they're all knighted by Queen Victoria. Yay. Got some Queen V missions to do afterwards, it seems. I'll do them tomorrow, and I think that'll wrap us up just in time for Jack the Ripper.
edited 14th Dec '15 8:31:38 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
The Fastest Man Alive
Must...resist...urge...to...peek!
The Wanderer
Warning for spoilers.
Highlights:
- The DLC's main story is about ten hours.
- There are side missions where you actually play as Jack the Ripper, and you can go around collecting the Letters of Jack the Ripper.
- New weapons include brass knuckles and guns, chakrams (Probably an AC Chronicles India tie-in), some sort of hook based tool, and fear bombs. (Which are related to an Arkham style fear system.)
- There will be snow.
- At least some of the missions are solved Dreadful Crimes style.
- New skill tree for the new stuff.
- Level 11 enemies.
I REALLY want to say Jacob is Jack at this point.
EDIT: NVM. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNltGFv9C1g
Jacob is shown investigating them in the beginning of the DLC. And being killed by the Ripper.
But... The two victims are shown next to each other. Katey and Lizzie? As in Cathrine Eddows and Elizabeth Stride? But, they were killed in separate events. I'm a bit confused. It also seems that all of the women were Assassin Agents, and that's why Jack is targeting them.
Jack also has a specific target on Jacob. My first thought was that it might be Roth who somehow survived, but Jack seems like he WAS an Assassin (Eagle Vision and all) and his beef with Jacob doesn't seem to be romantic in nature or anything.
Eddowes and Stride were part of the "Double Event", they were murdered in the same night in a short distance from each other. In actual fact, investigators aren't sure if they were murdered by the same man, they think the two murders happened simultaneously by different folks...a Contrived Coincidence yes but that happens all the time in real-life in slum districts.
As far as Jack the Ripper stories, Syndicate's take is not quite on the level of Alan Moore's From Hell but it makes sense as an Assassin's Creed take on the story. It's really dark and quite sad.
Yes, I know that they were apart of the 'Double Event' and all that. I know the details of the Jack the Ripper case.
The problem is, the women were killed in separate locations. Dutfield's Yard was the location of Elizabeth Stride and Miter's Square for Catherine Eddowes.
They weren't killed 5 feet from each other how the game portrays the event. Both of their bodies are shown to be right next to each other when, in actuality, they were murdered in very different locations. Sure, within an hour or so of each other, but not that close to each other. That's not accurate in the slightest.
This... doesn't instill much faith in me for the rest of the DLC.
EDIT:
I just watched the first part of the DLC and they take Evie to the first murder scene. Apparently Abberline knew Polly... Somehow?
And then they DON'T take her to the murder scene. A back ally with grass, dirt, and plans and a pile of planks? Mary Anne Nicholes was killed, quite literally, on the street. Her body left in front of a garage warehouse door for all to see. Unless they're trying to suggest she was killed elsewhere and then moved (which the game doesn't bring up so that's giving them too much credit), I'm not impressed.
edited 15th Dec '15 8:45:19 AM by InkDagger
Well it's not quite From Hell as I said before. The game also implies that the prostitutes were apparently Assassins or Assassin agents somehow. It's not quite explained and I feel that the backstory is not as clear as it should be. It's basically going for Emotional Torque, which I think is all Ubisoft cares for these days, it's all about effect and shiny stuff rather than aesthetic and structural coherence.
I mean the problem with the DLC is that Whitechapel is too pretty. It doesn't look like a f—ked up slum district should look like.
That's a waste.
The Fastest Man Alive
Did we learn nothing from Ezio? Thieves and prostitutes are extremely useful to the Assassins, so if they're not officially associated with the Brotherhood, they're probably helping somehow, wittingly or not.
True, but its odd considering the base game's complete lack of prostitutes and it kind of unfermines the mystery of Jack the Ripper if he's only targeting prostitutes because they were employed by the Assassins... Which is even stranger because its JUST the prostitutes, none of the other gang members or anything???
But, like I said, it undermines the mystery to me. Why harvest the organs?
Not to mention the DLC gives Jack significantly more credit than he's worth. Jack has underlings??? And leutennents??? And 'control over the press'??? What the bloody hell does he need underlings for? I think Jack is far more terrifying if he's completely on his own with no assistance at all.
Jack was likely a German sailor, who actually continued his killings in NYC and got caught. So, yeah, Jack was executed, but no one knew it at the time.
My theory is that Jack the Ripper eventually stopped killing, settled down into a life of anonymity and died happily married with children around him and is probably a forgotten grandfather of some harmless family in England. That's it, he got away with it completely.
In the Ripper DLC, Jack the Ripper is a Serial Killer/Mob Boss. That's because he's an Assassin himself. A guy called Jack who Jacob Frye recruited after Syndicate.
Another day, another pointless Jack the Ripper theory. The fact is that it doesn't have new evidence. It's just conjecture and inference. Similar cases have been made for other suspects, using the same inductive reasoning.
The thing about the Jack the Ripper murders is that the most plausible theories such as this one by this police investigator (and another by an American investigator a year back), or that fake DNA match from last year...is that all of them use the same pieces of evidence that has been endlessly pored and repored over. They keep reviving dead theories and all just to convince people that eventually forensics will build a real-life animus that will transport us back in time so we can see Jack kill people with our own eyes.
Ultimately, in the case of the Ripper, the most wacky and improbable conspiracy theory is just as valid as the most plausible sounding. The joke is what we see in Syndicate is pretty valid.
I just wish the DLC used more of the actual case evidence to build and solidify their 'theory'. And, even when they do bring up evidence, its often times wrong. And it drives my mystery loving heart bonkers.
Like, I'm not trying to say the game should have done it exactly this way, but I really apprecieated how 'Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper' used A LOT of case evidence to build their theory and really explored the living conditions of Whitechapel and the actual tensions building in Whitechapel. It felt more in tune with the actual case and also fairly plausable where as AC just feels... fiction that takes MASSIVE liberties with it to the point of 'In Name Only'.
The Wanderer
The resemblance is pretty uncanny
edited 15th Dec '15 3:38:59 PM by rmctagg09
Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
I'm watching the DLC and I'm nearly done with it. I'm also done with it in a different manner of speaking.
WHY are so many of the details changed? I don't get it. Why is this Jack the Ripper at all???
- Cathrine Eddowes and Elizabeth Stride were not killed in the same location as the DLC opens up on the scene of.
- Jack the Ripper did not kidnap people and hold them hostage.
- Jack the Ripper was not some gang leader who had underlings carrying out his bidding.
- Jack the Ripper did not run some prison out of some old derelict ships.
- Jack the Ripper did not massacre the police in broad-daylight.
- Annie Chapman was not murdered in a Cemetery.
- Mary Anne "Polly" Nicholes was not murdered in some backstreet dirt area, but murdered just in front of a garage door on the street for all to see.
- While the comment from her husband is accurate from witness testimony, it had been only 3 years since they had seen each other, not a decade.
- His victims did NOT put up a fight and there were not massive blood spatters everywhere. Or, for most of them anyway. Mary Jane Kelly was by far the worst.
- Abberline retired the morning of Mary Jane Kelly's murder; this lead to some confusion as the police refused to enter the crime scene until Abberline arrived but, since he retired the day before, it took awhile to get someone down there to investigate the scene.
I could go on for hours at this point about how many details they've either outright changed or not even discussed to almost an absurd degree. This is so halfassed and... God its making me mad just thinking about it.
Not to mention the in narrative reasons for this nonsense. Yes, let's have one of the most famous killers in the world not be killing women because of the women themselves, but killing them to get the attention of Jacob. Yes, great motivation there. And it totally makes sense with the case details.
Syndicate gave me a bit more faith in Ubisoft as to their ability to do a good Assassin's Creed game.
Jack the Ripper's DLC just robbed that faith from me again.
I finally got Syndicate on Steam sale, so now I'm faffing about London with Jacob and Evie. First impressions:
Anyway, I've been open worlding since Sequence 4, and am only now completing the story missions. Good job sucking me back into this world, Ubisoft.
edited 7th Dec '15 11:20:51 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"