Assassin's Creed

Well, it shouldn't be a surprise.

To those who read Oliver Bowden's books. Are they actually good, both as standalone and tie-in to games? I know that people say Forsaken (III novel about Haytham) is really good, but I haven't heard anything for the rest of his books.

Oh goddammit.

Just more stuff to buy and gather dust on a shelf. What happened to the days when we could include important exposition into the damned manual? Companies wised up and realized they could sell you three-quarters of the story and get you to pay a little more for the supplemental material?

"Ah but the game is still serviceable on it's own." But it's still keeping some juicy parts out so that the novel and the miniseries having something interesting to show us.

Infamous and Prototype did this too. I loathe it.

edited 7th Jul '17 11:41:04 AM by Soble

What's the general opinion of Rogue in this thread? The big reviewers seem to have a consensus of "Black 1.5" and "good concept but not enough resources or innovation".

Thinking of grabbing it after I play the other games.

I've never played it.

Rogue is primarily praised for a unique and interesting storyline. Gameplay-wise the general consensus is its Black Flag 2.0

Never played it but I watched it.

I feel like they took the cool concept of 'Assassin's Creed Game from the Templar perspective' and really really bastardized it and why people wanted that in the first place.

The writing is mostly what undoes it. The characters are under developed, especially Shay and his targets who were suppoed to be his friends at some point, the entire plot could have been solved if everyone had calmed down for 5 seconds at the beginning of the game and explained their situations, and the entire game runs on Shay being used as a patsy and played the fool by the Templars the entire game which isn't some big Reveal but something the player should be obvious to from the first second.

Seriously, if we have a 'Templar's Oath' Game and the final climax ends with our Assassin antagonist going 'You were right, I was wrong. I missunderstood what you meant at the beginning', then we have a problem. The conflict wasn't a battle of the Templar/Assassin Ideologies.

The conflict was 'Oh, these Assassins are going to be assholes because conflict' rather than maybe a more critical look at the Assassin's Creed and what it promotes. The Assassin antagonists should have believed the creed as much as Ezio, Altair, and any of the others did. But, they forced characters to work counter to what we've expected of Assasins to make the conflict work.

And, like I said, the Templars are clearly playing Shay the fool from day one. They orchestrate everything for Shay to end up in the care of a lovely kind couple who nurse him back to health and brush off or hide their more terrible actions from him. And Shay REALLY isn't indoctrinated into the Templar Order out of believing in their idology, but more because they're offering him a means for revenge. Admitedly, some of the other Assassins get brought in similar motives, but the idology thing usually comes up at some point.

And the battle of Templar-Assassin ideologies was where this whole concept of a 'Templar' game came from in the first place. If you don't address the ideology, you're not providing the fan service or completeing what you originally set out to do in the first place.

Shay just didn't feel like a genuine Templar and his character felt inconsistent. The most obvious being that he can kill innocent people unlike any other Assassin, but his entire charcter motivation is attonement for the innocent deaths in Lisbon.

Lastly, while this is more split between BOTH Unity and Rogue, the ending feels like a massive plot hole, continuity issue, or retcon. They make a big deal about Shay trying to find Ben Franklin in France, going to Versailes, and Shay ends up assassinating Arno's father as happens in the beginning of Unity. Shay insinuates that, while the Assassins sturred up a revolution in the American colonies, the Templars should start one of their own in France.

But, none of this makes sense or is followed up on in Unity. The identity of who killed Arno's Dad NEVER comes up again despite the game making a major point of starting the game off with his death (only to kill another father figure an hour or two later). Shay never factors in as a motive for Arno. His father's death really doesn't come up past the intro come to think of it.

Not to mention Shay isn't even behind the revolution that wouldn't start until over TEN years after that scene in Versailes. He doesn't ever come up either. In fact, the whole Revolution (as per Unity) was orchestrated by Germain and long after Shay's assasination of Dorian in Versailles. The events aren't connected and the Templar Order as a whole have no connection to the French Revolution since Germain had a coup from within.

So, the whole 'Sequel Hook/Narrative Bridge' from Rogue into Unity makes no sense. Shay isn't relevant to Arno's story in the French Revolution, his talk of a 'revolution of (their) own' isn't relevant either, and the whole thing never gets followed up on. It was stupid.

Castlevania producer teases a ‘warring ideology’ as basis of Assassin’s Creed animated series

So there's going to be an AC animated series on Netflix.

(Coincidentally, I just realized this year marks the 10th anniversary of the AC series.)

The issue with the creed is that overall it self defeat, sure the chararter offer their on interpretation but it feel it have to be strech because otherwise it kind colapse on is own.

Also the asasin kinda suffer the same issue the jei: they are reactive, depending more jerkness of the templar than any goal, so for a while feel a lot like "the templar are bad because they are dick and assasins are good because they punch people in the dick."

While it's a shame Shay is underdeveloped, targets and side characters being underdeveloped is basically a staple of the series (To the point where the movie having poorly developed side characters might make it accurate to the game). This goes double if the side character is a historical figure. We rarely ever get to know them.

Water Life

Man, AC 2 is almost completely great from start to finish. But then you hit Bondfire of the Vanities....

Never played it. What's wrong with it?

Just a bunch of genetic targets with plenty of auto fail if detected missions. Nothing more than padding.

Beat Brotherhood, game is great when you ignore the optional objectives.

Started Revelations and good God whoever came up with those first person segments should be banned from designing games. Other than that, its probably the the best of the Ezio trilogy.

edited 27th Jul '17 7:18:34 PM by Rationalinsanity

Yeah, I remember AC 3 also had a few bad eavesdropping missions, such as when you had to follow a target and his buddy down an alleyway...that was completely open...with almost nowhere to hide, not even people...and if you went up a building you would fail because you were out of range.

AC 3's assassination missions still piss me off. Connor walks by a guy, telepathically detects he wants someone dead. Find the target (always a generic soldier dude). Kill him. No idea who you killed, no idea why he had to die.

It annoy me coz the game is brimming with random side quests. But they couldn't give any effort for assassination missions. The fucking crafting had more voice acting involved. It's Assassins' Creed not Random Task Creed.

I'm saddened subsequent games didn't lessen the Ubisoft bloat of side crap barely related to the game. I am REALLY hoping that after the time off they took, they learned from it, and Origins becomes a more focused game.

You know, I wonder if a AC story set in WW 2 would work.

They would have to retcon FDR and Churchill into not being templars.

They basically retconned Churchill in Syndicate. (I believe the reasoning is that the Templars purposely put false information in their data to trick people, out-of-universe it gives Ubisoft an out if they want to do something that contradicts the Brotherhood data packets.)

edited 28th Jul '17 4:02:06 PM by rmctagg09

Been discussed before. People fear that the technology arriving by the time of WW 2 and the fact that its a pretty common game setting would be counter to the series.

My personal opinion is that those should just be opportunities for the writing and gameplay to evolve and overcome.

So, we have more modern and accurate weapons? We're going to have to be more clever with stealth and also allow the player character more use of their own tricks. Stealth would have to be harder enforced without losing the fun.

WW 2 is too common of a setting with games like Call of Duty and Wolfenstien? Find a part of the setting that ISN'T too well explored in video games. As I outlined ages ago in this thread, I think the best course would be to Japan during WW 2. Female Japanese-American Assassin sent behind enemy lines to try and cripple Japan's military and she feels like an alien in both her home country of America and her homeland of Japan with neither accepting her (one for being Japanese due to the Japanese Inturnment, and the other for being a woman in a society that doesn't value them). The stakes raise higher as plans to bomb Japan get laid and our protagonist tries desperately to stop that from happening and stopping Japan from being a threat.

You could make a great character piece narrative out of that.

This is definitely because of the K Drama I'm watching right now, but I'd love to go to South Korea during World War 2 and Japanese involvement there given their conquest.

Also, I wouldn't mind more with World War 1, if possible. If we went to America, Roaring 20s I think would make for a fun time. Or maybe prohibition era.

I think the biggest problem I have with getting more modern is that the versimiltude will be harder to achieve.

Hundreds of years ago in some war? Sure, I'll believe that there was an Assassin prowing the battlefield and killing off important commanders.

Hundreds of years ago during the Renaisance? Well, yeah, we have evidence to show that our records of that time weren't accurate and the game has already built in falsified records.

But, the closer we get to modern day, the harder it is to accept the whole 'fake evidence' thing. Things get harder and more complicated to falsify. The logistics of pulling it off are worse. It was easier to believe a massive conspiracy that had hundreds of years to clean its tracks and make more evidence to back up their claims.

I understand it happens in the modern era of AC and I can accept that as long as I don't see and start picking at the logistics of how that's done because that's where things will fall apart.

So The Saboteur but with more illuminati?

Also, we don't have much in the way of modern day Generals being assassinated inside their command tents in Afghanistan - the areas are simply too well controlled, hence the reason you need infiltrators.

You can't have a soldier wander in HITMAN style and slot the Politician AND getaway. or if you did it'd have to be some Splinter Cell...

Waaaait. They own that one too.

How long before we find out Sam Fisher has secretly been unknowingly serving the Templars?!

Ughhh, so I bought the Lost Archives DLC for my Revelations replay, wanting the complete experience and all...and just found out its one level, a few items, and all the content is more of those god awful Desmond's Journey sequences. I just wasted 10 bucks. Granted, totally my fault for buying DLC while drunk and not reading reviews