Assassin's Creed

I sneak murdered all of them. I got caught at the far end of the courtyard, but by then there WERE only like four left.

Yeah, the game has always let you sneak through the levels, but you're actually navigating or doing something besides pressing 'left' for 10 mins. That's not interesting. That's not inovative. It undermines your climax and is incredibly boring.

Sure, there are games that let you bypass stuff if the player is clever with gameplay mechanics (Portal) or pulls off something a bit impressive (Halo), but the player is still having to DO something. Pressing 'left' ISN'T doing anything.

Actually, I was amazed that it was even working, and expecting to reach a dead corner at any minute. I didn't think it was all that boring.

That's the problem with these sandboxes sometimes - because they give you so many options, there's that worry about doing the "right one". Which is why I'm glad they got rid of the annoying 100% sync challenges.

Anyway, with a sandbox, the option is there if you want to stealth it. Or you can fight your way through. The problem is the game often makes it feel like combat is the "wrong" way. Much like the Deus Ex games - stealth feels more rewarding or challenging... if sometimes a tad dull.

I hate leaving an enemy alive, not because I am a murderer, but because when I'm inevitably busted, it's just yet another enemy come to kill me for my crimes. So I cut a swathe of death from the bushes in every playthrough of everything.

Assassins, on the other hand, aren't intended to be mass-murder machines, but rather folks who appear out of nowhere, murder the hell out of specific targets, then vanish. The fantasy isn't really compatible with wading through piles of corpses, although you can obviously play it that way if you want.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 17th 2018 at 3:12:21 PM

I end up wading through a mountain of desecrated corpses because I suck at stealth. It's life.

Honestly what the heck am i supposed to do about enemies who see me from behind me while i'm focusing on something else?!

You murder them, of course. Then you hide quickly and pick off the guy who got suspicious and comes looking, too.

If I'm honest, that's probably one of my criticisms for the first game. The opening critcizes Altair for murdering a guard at the beginning and arguing we could have gotten around him but

• One, there was no way around him so he would have seen us period unless you suggest we knock him out which gameplay doesn't allow.
• Two, this 'kill guard who could see us' thing happens in gameplay regularly and we can kill them freely without reprimand for not following the creed.

Admitedly, desync for killing a roof top guard seems extreme, but there's a narrative disonance from the gameplay there. Which, if I'm honest, I kind of wish we could address it in some interesting or creative way.

The problem is, we can't really explain that away. Its just Gameplay and Story Segregation. According to the story, the assassins don't just murder every random guard in sight, but for gameplay enjoyment, you can't punish the player for that, because that is simply how this kind of game works.

I mean, this is a much wider problem with video games, where there is a huge disconnect between the morality of the characters and the body count they inevitably rack up. Even when the victims are all "enemies" or "criminals", it still tends to amount to mass murder. And this is rarely if ever addressed, because really, how WOULD you reconcile that with being a good person?

Well, you could be saving millions by killing those few dozens?

I mean. Militaries do this kind of thing a lot. It's usually not all done by a single actor, but a small team of operatives, but it's still a similar bodycount, for similar purposes. Seal Team Six no doubt had to slaughter their way past a dozen or so guards to get to Bin Laden.

I don't think it was even that much for Bin Laden. But you have to remember, that was hardly a haevily fortified base. It was, like, some house with a few armed dudes.

And I'm not talking about collateral damage. I'm talking about that guard guarding a treasure chest you totally didn't need to kill, but killed anyway AFTER robbing the chest, which you didn't really need either, just because you could, and the Animus doesn't desync you, which in the Hand Wave of the plot is supposed to indicate that that is totally how it happened. As far as that Hand Wave is concerned, your character murdered each and every guard he laid eyes on.

Ah hahahahaaaaaaaaa

I've been called out XD

Heck, you can deliberately pick fights with guards that aren't doing anything to hinder you whatsoever, just because, and leave them piled in the streets. Not that I've ever done that... *cough*. The developers want you to be able to do that, because part of the point of a sandbox game is to play in the sandbox, and penalizing the player just seems arbitrary no matter how incongruent it is for the characters themselves.

If you want an in-universe explanation, the Animus only strictly enforces the user's actions when they are living out an important memory. Otherwise, it's creating a simulated environment and the user is more or less free to do as they will within it.

Did Aya sneak through that final area or murder her way through it? It's unimportant to history, so the Animus doesn't care either way. You do get a bit of What Measure Is a Mook? from it, but whatever...

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 18th 2018 at 10:02:36 AM

Well, its not MY fault that the only way to earn money is to rob tombs and ruins, plunder the houses of the wealthy, and murder every caravan in sight. It's also not MY fault I need to murder 40 lions for just one leather pouch.

At least now we know why they went extinct.

I just sold weapons. Man, arms dealing is a goldmine.

It would be interesting if you could have something like an actual job that fit with the story. Like taking jobs as a mercenary or bounty hunter, for example.

I really miss the property management systems of previous games, especially Monteriggioni and that cafe in Paris. That was so much fun to do. It really felt like you had your own place.

My point is just maybe we find some way to rectify it. Even if its just casual speculation. Idk, maybe have a hero who directly makes Altair's mistakes from the very first game... and gets praise for it. Now we have a parallel. It could be a story of hubris where we come to realize we were being a shitty person (though this then creates a disconnect between that game and the rest).

I do think bonuses to stealth is the right move in a number of places, but probably not to the point that Brotherhood and Revelations and beyond brought it out to.

Are we sure that the person Altair is chastised for murdering was a guard? I was under the impression it was just some old man who got in his way.

Yeah, Altair gets a talking to for killing an innocent, not for killing the guard. (And also for failing to even remotely try to take out De Sade from stealth)

He was an innocent, but the implication was that he was an innocent guard, some random hireling who had no knowledge or culpability regarding his boss's crimes.

Also, he was reamed out for breaking every single tenet of the Order.

I finally started Origins, and the fact that the missions don't have 100% sync rates objectives automatically makes it the best Assassin's Creed game in years.

I’m pretty sure those got soft-dropped after III, and hard-dropped after Black Flag, so...