Assassin's Creed

I think the problem with the money is that it's 70% modern world and 30% taking in the past.

It should be more like 80 % in the past and 20 % in the modern world.

The modern world is just a framing device to see all this cool shit.

So it goes in the inverse way of the AC games? Instead of mostly period partial present, they do mostly present partial period.

Well the thing is in a game that argument works...but in a movie instead of an AC movie about the Spanish Inquisition, why not make an actual movie about the Spanish Inquisition?

I mean what reason is there to make an AC movie about any period as opposed to straight Historical Fiction? In videogames, thanks to open world and the rarity of that setting, a game set in the Spanish Inquisition a la Open World has inherent novelty and value that a movie just doesn't have.

And fundamentally AC's gameplay is about Parkouring off rooftops and climbing all those heights, which is inherently a video game thing. In a movie, well Tom Cruise actually did climb that building in Dubai but that's us paying money to watch Tom Cruise do it. In a game we have the simulation of us scaling those heights. All of us put up with those absurdities of the Conspiracy Theory Kitchensink because of that gameplay element and the Historical Fiction by other means which no game had done before. In a movie you kind of have to think carefully about what a general audience would be interested in. Because most moviegoers 1) Will not have played that game, 2) Are never gonna play your games. That is true even if the movie is good and successful. Only a handful of those viewers will come to the games.

In movies we have many historical films about the Renaissance, the Pirate era, and even the Spanish Inquisition has a few. You don't want a situtation like Ridley Scott's Robin Hood which made people interested in a Richard The Lionheart Biopic so obsessed it was in trying to de-mythologize Robin Hood and set his story n the 1st Barons Rebellion. So you have to think seriously what it is about the AC games that can appeal to people on the outside, because let's face it, AC games have always had that problem of being really embarassing to describe, "It's a modern-day sci-fi with a present where you have DNA...where's everyone going". IF you say, "The plot is silly, it's basically history games...this one has pirates, that one has you running trees." People get it.

The Movie unfortunately didn't. Ideally they should have done two things...one go back to the Crusades and show the real Assassins and basically for the first movie just introduce it. Because nobody knows about the Assassins. The problem of course is there isn't going to be a White Male Lead. The second is to take a Bill & Ted approach and do multiple eras at once...I think the second option should have done better.

x5

Yes and no. I mostly lean towards no on this because that's the thing about adaptation: You're switching mediums and have to work the source material towards the new medium. In example, Books, though we obvious have 'Show don't tell', technically tell everything to their audience by virtue of the medium. Movies and Video games have to show everything visually to compress the storytelling.

I think, yes, Assassin's Creed relies much of its storytelling on its video game medium for explaining the 'simulation', 'glitches', and the whole 'its like playing a video game' thing. But, I feel the movie seems to have taken the steps in adapting it to suit the new format with the Animus being less of a VR game and instead using the big robot arm thing. It doesn't sound like it was a total wash in terms of adaptation.

I would also say that, unfortunately, the medium would naturally gravitate to either a 50-50 split between the Past-Present or end up more in favor of the present day storyline. And that's mostly because the 'Framing Devise' doesn't work as well here than it does in the video game.

To draw back to AC 1, the framing devise never really did much. There isn't really a completed narrative arc there. You really spend maybe 10-30 mins of the game out of the Animus and I feel even that is generous. But nothing is really completed. Desmond doesn't grow as a character nor does his conflict of 'I'm trapped in this cell' get resolved. True, later games solve this (the Desmond/Conflict part, not the doing much part), but the film has a single installment to work on with no promise of a sequel. Its inevitable that the stand alone film would simply have to spend more time on the present to create and complete a narrative arc.

Compare to say, AC 3 where the modern plot took up more of the game than any previous Assassin's Creed Game and that plot, while still significantly smaller than the greater whole, had the A plot paralleling the B plot and creating a complete narrative arc in both areas. Really the only reason the framing devise in AC 3 is smaller than the past is by virtue of the game, not the narrative. Arguably, they both had the same narrative weight, but not so in gameplay.

This guy... misses the point in the second half, but his points are kind of amusing in the first half. I've only played the first Uncharted but I can kind of see what he's talking about.

I just saw it tonight and...

Its pretty terrible. And not even in an objective stand point just in a, I was never given a reason to care. I could explain better if people want to discuss it.

Most of the issues come down to the film not understanding what made the first game work.

edited 24th Dec '16 11:01:49 PM by InkDagger

So, the movie is bad? I have to see for myself.

Are there any good Video Game movies? Besides Tomb Raider.

Warcraft, I think, is not as bad as it could be, but it's still got a lot of problems.

Postal was okay.

Mainly because the original game was terrible, the sequel was passable as an absurd, poorly voice-acted power trip where the main character was a wannabe Duke Nukem, and the sequel-sequel was so bad it flew under everyone's radar.

The games were so low key on plot and logical sense that Uwe Boll's "ignore the f'ck out of whatever made the original good" style of filmmaking actually made the film So Bad, It's Good.

x4

I ended up putting almost all of my thoughts on why the movie didn't work in the respective thread in the Film Topic section. Its too long to copy-pasta unless someone really wants to discuss it here instead.

Rumours of a prequel set in ancient Egypt due later this year has apparently been confirmed as legit by the Eurogamer sleuths.

And still not Japan, or Africa, or a dating sim?

You disappoint me Ubisoft.

They seem to be doing fan favorites ever since Unity, really. French Revolution? Age-old suggestion. Victorian London? Age-old suggestion. Ancient Egypt? Age-old suggestion.

The only classic suggestions I haven't seen is Feudal Japan and Ancient Rome.

Well in AC 4 the Abstergo!Ubisoft group disregarded Japan, saying it was "too cliche". Though I'd love one set in China, since we know there are Assassins there.

x3 Egypt is in Africa you know.

As I've said in this thread before, I'd kill to see Japan but during WW 2. Its certainly a setting that doesn't see much western focus compared to Nazi Germany. The most people remember about WW 2 Japan is their attack on Pearl Harbor and the bombing of Hiroshima.

I have an AMAZING narrative in mind of an American-Japanese woman being our assassin. As Pearl Harbor is attacked, her family begins getting rounded up and forced into the Japanese Inturnment camps. She goes to the Assassin Brotherhood and goes 'What the hell? Get them out of there!' and they say they'll work on getting them out, but what would help is if the war on Japan ends.

So she sets off from America to her homeland of Japan to end the war from behind enemy lines and learn about the land she came from. However, just like America never accepted her for being Japanese, Japan won't accept her as a woman AND American.

There could be a lot of amazing themes in that narrative alone if we have a character who wants to do right in two worlds: America and Japan, that won't accept her for her race and her gender. Disillusionment from your homeland and nationality, gender politics, desperation to complete your mission and save your family as things get worse climaxing with America dropping their bomb on Hiroshima. Not to mention all the transition Japan was still going through culturally at the time. Basically it'd cover from December of 1941 to 1945 when the war ends.

Plus, fans have long since wanted to see both Japan and WW 2 as a setting. Why not combine them?

Anyway, for those curious about when this Egypt game will be, it mentions King Umas which would be 5th Dynasty Egypt and around 2375 – 2345 BC.

edited 9th May '17 2:42:13 PM by InkDagger

AC games don't really function outside of their timestamp (i.e up until the car is invented, according to them, so both world wars are out of the question). The gameplay changes would be far too drastic.

So cool idea, but no. A novel, maybe.

See from II on I thought the gameplay/narrative would gradually work its way towards cars, actual guns, and futuristic technology. The franchise was going to "evolve" with each iteration until it finally became a full-fledged Metal Gear Rising ninja game taking place Six Minutes Into The Future.

I guess those dreams have been dashed.

Because we TOTALLY didn't have what ammounted to cars in the last game.

Oh wait...

And the exact same argument of 'carriages would act too much like cars' was used well before Syndicate came out.

They could totally still do it. Or, heck, if they have such a problem with cars being used, then make a running gag or a joke out of it (the main character doesn't know how to drive, thus driving isn't in the gameplay) or use it sparingly. AC 2 and on avoided horse and carriage with a handful of exceptions despite the fact that they were used a lot back then.

The "no cars" thing seemed to be Ubisoft's stance circa Black Flag. That may have changed since then. Still, they've been avoiding contemporary assassin playable characters for years now.

edited 9th May '17 11:34:19 PM by illegalcheese

Well, I don't disagree about the contemporary part. AC 3 seemed to be building up to a full 50-50 split between the modern and past storylines. And then Black Flag kind of sent the series on a backwards slide of not moving the plot forward.

Still, the basic structure for doing one in a moder modern period is there and, hey, they also used to say that they wanted to do a lot of settings that never get depicted in video games. WW 2 is overdone when it comes to the European Front, but the Pacific is almost ignored. I think a story there has great potential for emotional, matural, and overall strong writing.

I'm excited for Egypt since it'll be a completely unique setting and should have an entirely black cast. But I worry that the installment won't move the plot anywhere because its occuring so far before anything else.

...I would significantly lower my expectations. :(

I do wonder what sort of weapons we'd have though.

Indeed, considering the climate there will likely be black and white people in the cast. Have you seen modern-day Egyptians?

It's 5th Dynasty Egypt. We're talking 2000 BC. I suppose my knowledge of Egypt isn't the greatest, but I'd be shocked to see a ton of white people.