The tropemaster
Does anyone think Syndicate has some elements of Revisiting the Roots? The big tipoff to me is that they brought back the mechanic of staining something white with the target's blood. Something we haven't even seen since the beginning of the series. There's more high ranking templars overall..much like the first and 2nd game, and there generally isn't as much direct history made by the player despite fighting the templars much as it was in the 3rd crusade. After Unity, you could claim this was their way to bounce back. Thoughts?
Lord Eric Wu, Grandmaster of the order of Troping. Hide / Show Replies
To some extent yes, to other extent, no.
Like AC 1 - Syndicate is set in one year, it has white room conversations where people move around, it does that staining blood of targets with kerchief/feather thing that you note. Not sure what you mean by high-ranking Templars because all our targets have been high-ranking targets in all the previous games. The whole, killing targets makes city worse, is reminscent of Altair killing Garnier and unleashing the lunatics. But in other respects, it's a lot like Brotherhood with the Rooks being a reworked example of the Assassin Recruits in that game. The whole City/Gang/Territory takeover motif comes from Rome in Brotherhood as well. In terms of traversal, it borrows from Revelations' Hookblade and especially the Eagle Flight in AC-3's Tyranny DLC (made by the same studio and director as Syndicate). Likewise, the game, unlike AC-1, does have that simple Assassins=Good (albeit Chaotic Good) and Templars=Evil thing which is straight from AC-2. Starrick is very much like Cesare Borgia (in brotherhood), only smarter and cooler. The game's stealth system, like Unity, borrows from Black Flag (entry points/alarm bells/X-Ray Eagle Vision).
The thing is UNITY was intended to be Revisiting the Roots and Reimagining the Artifact. The whole open Assassinations and black box stuff was intended to go back to AC-1 style Assassination, paring down side missions and focusing on main campaign is going back to AC 1 as well. The Assassin-Templar romance is likewise developed from Altair-Maria. Unity kept the history in the background just like AC-1 does with the Third Crusade (albeit not as much as people assume). It worked better with Syndicate because the Victorian era was a time of stability where not a lot of exciting stuff happened so putting that in the background makes sense since that's all there is, but Unity was set in the middle of the most explosive events of history and putting that in the background is a stupid idea. Of course you can go back further, AC-3 was also intended to go back to AC 1 with Gray-and-Grey Morality Templars (after Ezio and Borgia), with a hero who wasn't as flashy as Ezio, with the Frontier being The Kingdom done right.
So there's this eternal recursiveness there of games being Decomposite Character of AC-1.
Edited by JulianLapostat
&)$;@9?@4$/8&;’
Is the Artistic License – History entry already making you concerned about the game's quality yet?
Edited by manhandled I got my political views from reddit and that's bad Hide / Show Replies
No, its just pointing out the Artistic License of the Game's Premise.
Late reply, but it didn't worry me pre-release, and post-release I still think it's fine. For me the Artistic License being mostly about the specifics of social and gender division at the time isn't an enormous problem, especially considering the game has a running concept on how Templars twist current views on history. For some it doesn't work, and there's no problem with that, but I never saw it as major.
Well what makes Assassin's Creed unique is that the history is unusually good and competent a lot of the time, so the errors and mistakes are useful to cite.
Yes, naturally, and of course inaccuracies will be more noticeable given how the Industrial Revolution is much closer in time than the late Renaissance or even Colonial era. I still enjoy Syndicate's historical aspects about as well as any other AC game, barring Brotherhood since I really like how they tied in the deaths of Rodrigo and Cesare to history. Like you said, their historical elements are fantastic, making inaccuracies even more important to list.
Does anyone know if they will bring back the recruit mechanic? Missed that sense Revolution
Hide / Show Replies
I've read they still have the recruit mechanic, though I don't recall where or if the source is reputable.
Still think it was such a missed opportunity in Black Flag. would have loved to summon some Man o Wars to help in combat, or For the Evil
Not entirely connected question, but it's always bothered me. Is it "Man 'O Wars" or "Men O' War" for plural of that ship? I think the non-English countries just call them Galleons, but again I might be wrong.
The plural is Men O'War, you are correct. But a modern ear might make it Man O' Wars, i.e. shift the plural to "war" since they consider the whole word a proper-noun.
The 'Repressive, yet Efficient' entry is not really justified, as the explanation makes in perfectly clear that the system introduced and maintained by Templars is anything but efficient. First and foremost, it seems to be based on centrally-planned monopolies (merging the worst of the two worlds) that show critical single point of failure, as the death of one crucial person can crumble entire sector of industry. Think personal computers being unavailable after the death of Steve Jobs. Ridiculous, right? We need to remember that this happens in the mid-19th century, when people could die of various causes pretty suddenly (modern medicine was only taking off) and yet Templars for some reason do not have regular chain of command when key figures can be replaced by their partners or appointed successors as it is a norm in any organizations, from small-scale enterprise to ancient conspiracies. Besides, this is the whole point of the Templar plan - to make their grip over the world so complex and intricate that the elimination of key persons (main modus operandi of the Assassins) won't work anymore. If I'm not mistaken, one of the Templars even states that while death of a king would have easily plunged country into chaos but a death of a banker or an industrial magnate usually only means a promotion of one of the chairmen.