Assassin's Creed

I always hand wave the Animus because to me the Modern Day is not what the games are about. Across all 9 games they count for what, 5% of the total experience.

The Modern Day is more a case of function than form. It's a Framing Device that allows developers to go to any era they choose, to do Time Skip, to make it a multi-character franchise, and give them a lot of flexibility. The problem is that it's a highly distracting Framing Device and in the movie it's getting more focus than the games ever game it. I always liked okay these guys think Magic has cooties and so they don't want to call it that, so they invent pseudo-science to depict the past.

I disagree. The modern plot has needed A LOT more focus in the recent years. Its practically starving at this point. NONE of the previous couple of games have advanced the plot at all. Say what you will, but the Modern Plot is what (is supposed to) tie Ezio, to Connor, to Arno, and to Jacob/Evie and bring the entire series of events into form.

The movie might be the first step in a long time of finally getting the plot back on track and going SOMEWHERE.

And, no, that's not how muscle memory works. Sure, Desmond would remember experiencing certain things and probably get some sense of training in the 'This is how to block' sense, but his over all strength and endurance wouldn't have changed because his body is not physically going through any conditioning. Like, say we had an ancestor who could break bricks because they spent years breaking their bones to be able to do so. Desmond could never be able to do that through the Animus because his bones haven't gone through the break-reform cycle.

The big grappling arm Animus at least kind of handwaves those issues away.

Some are content to ignore the MD to get to the good stuff and make it as non-intrusive as possible. Like Black Flag did that very well. I doubt a better MD would have improved Unity or Syndicate in any significant manner.

The idea of learning skills through the Animus has nothing to do with muscle memory; it's caused by your ancestors' genetic memories literally leaking into your brain and becoming your own. Your brain is "remembering" how to do stuff that your ancestors could do. "Muscle memory" is really cerebellar programming anyway, so I suppose you could make that leap if you wanted.

What the Animus subject would lack is the physical conditioning needed to use their skills without fatigue or self-injury.

that's what I mean. I couldn't figure out the right words and just used Muscle Memory as a fallback. The user would remember how to do things and possibly without a second thought but probably wouldn't have the physicality to perform them properly without injury and fatigue or anything.

Well, that's probably true that a better modern plot wouldn't have saved Unity, but Unity was more fundenentally flawed so I'm not sure the addition of anything would have saved it.

I feel like AC 3 was the step in the right direction with the Modern Plot and Black Flag was a massive step backwards. The stupid 'You' are the player character and how the whole thing didn't really move the plot forward. How is our evil corporation going to take over the world? THROUGH THE POWER OF VIDEO GAMES!!!

I'd rather pretend that whole thing never existed and Black Flag was all Edwards Story and nothing else.

... I literally cannot even

Hmm. I now have this urge to shell out for the package that gets you a wearable Hidden Blade.

I posted about that in the movie thread a long time ago.

I have no problem with IV's modern day stuff, half of it is an epilogue for Desmond's story, and the other half sets up a plot for Juno and the Sage.

It's everything after IV that does jack shit that I have a problem with.

I like AC IV. I think it's the best game in the series. I think it's a little better than AC II. I thought the modern story was interesting and that Edward was one of the best protagonists I ever played as.

Highlights:

• Aguilar's missing his ring finger, which is odd since the Assassins phased that out centuries ago. (Will probably be explained in the story or in the pre-release materials.)
• The mobile MMORPG is only in China ATM since Ubisoft's working with a Chinese developer, but will likely be released elsewhere if it does well enough.

Modern day (way above): I agree that the modern-day segments have been lacking in recent games. Some of that was to tease Juno's rise to power, but I have yet to see much payoff on that front. (Rogue was the last one that I played.) It'd be nice to go back to an actual modern-day protagonist to tie things together. It's not as interesting to play 'you'. Desmond's arc was part of what made the early games so good. It put a lot of focus on the conspiracy/disaster side. Now, we're in this weird interim. If Juno could actually do things, we could maybe have another 'real' protagonist.

Yeah, at first it was relevant because of the solar flare thing but now that that's resolved we just have Juno, who appears to be trapped in a computer and thus pretty much impotent.

Well, as of the end of Syndicate, that's not going to be the case for much longer.

Alright, I'll see how soon I can get Unity and Syndicate.

And here's the final trailer for the movie.

So apparently the movie is pretty good. Haven't seen it yet, can anyone confirm?

Considering it doesn't officially release for a few days yet, it'd be hard to have seen it at this point.

Oh. Google is telling me it came out five days ago. For what it's worth, IMDB has it at 9/10.

Maybe in other markets. The U.S. release is Wednesday.

Rotten Tomatoes is at 18%, so the movie's actually taking quite a beating critically.

It would be surprising if the movie got good critical notices!

I mean the premise of AC as a whole is something that isn't really cinematic as a whole, even if it seems that way to many gamers. It's really a concept that really works in the games but would fall apart in another medium.

Pity that the movie's reception is bad because it really needs good critical notices to protect itself from Star Wars.

Rating sites like that are averaged, don't forget.