Assassin's Creed

I think another question of this child plot is... Why does it need to exist? Ok, plot hook, sure, but what's the net gain? We're trading the LGBT representation of a character out for... what? A child sub-plot that probably has nowhere to really go? Why does this child need to exist? What are the plot threads culminating or sprouting off from this specific turn of events?

Since it feels like nothing is ever going to come from it and it doesn't matter, we're losing a positive and trading it for a... resounding meh to negative gain?

It's going through the motions and I cannot fathom why. If it were back in the Desmond era, we had an in-story justification for it. Maybe not on the LGBT-friendly side, but there's a reasoning and we can also discuss execution of that ideal. But we don't have that framing anymore and it's not like we get some reveal of a lineage passing from Kassandra to Modern!Protagonist Layla or some other significant resonance out of it. In fact, Kassandra/Alexios meets Layla at the game's end and it REALLY would be more significant if there was that kind of a bloodline connection.

There is absolutely no narrative gain out of this plot cul-de-sac and it just winds up pissing off those who are even going to have a reaction to it and those who don't react to it are hardly waiting with baited breath for the conclusion of that plot thread.

I think is kinda the net gain is that: it ties the origins story of bloodline into the game, it wasnt the best way and it feel this plot point which should be just a way to said "and that is how we get here" is going to be surrond by controversy.

Like I said, the child plot exists for thematic reasons. Not actual plot reasons.

It's very much a case of the authors doing something more for themselves than for the player.

Sans DLC, Odyssey sort of exists in a bottle. It's pre-assassins. The enemies aren't the Templars or even the Proto-Templars. Much mockery was made on the pre-release that the latest Assassin's Creed featured neither the assassins or the Creed. The only link to the other games is Layla's plot. And since the modern plots haven't been going anywhere, that's easily forgettable.

The DLC mostly exists to fix that. Suddenly Kassandra's story exists in the greater whole. She DID fight the proto-templars! And she did meet Darius whose hidden blade would be passed out to Bayek ^note Can we talk about how Darius' hidden blade looks fuck all like Bayek's?. She's Aya's great great great grandma and maybe an ancestor of any future protagonist! Suddenly the whole plot isn't just a 75 hours long tale to get a stick to Layla's hand. It's suddenly tied into the series' core narrative!

It really doesn't. Myrrine, Leonidas and Pythagoras' own being super full of Isu genes is not covered. Bayek is also super full of Isu genes and he's not related to Kassandra.

They haven't given an origin story to the bloodline. They just added a link in the chain.

An origin of the bloodline game would've been an Adam and Eve game.

Edited by Ghilz on Aug 14th 2019 at 8:58:31 AM

It's the seeming attitude of "nothing worthwhile was lost, anyway" when anything being lost is not a thing to shrug off for a demographic which needs as much representation as it can get.

Yes, there should be better representation. However, erasure such as this is nothing more then a pothole in the path to better representation. A solution to bad representation is not, in any universe, not having any representation at all.

And, let's make no bones about it, this was erasure. From being able to play a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight character to now actually playing a straight (or, at best, bisexual) character, this is not good for representation no matter how crappy you thought the original representation was is in the first place.

I'm trying to get that point across, which is why I may come across as...emphatic.

I also want a meal now. Good thing I got one already by me! Chicken sandwiches, come to me. Nom nom nom nom.

Edited by fredhot16 on Aug 14th 2019 at 9:40:47 AM

I never said there shouldn't be any representation at all. You are winding yourself up over assumptions. Again, we are on the same side here.

Part of it is also that I want to encourage people to raise the bar on this sort of representation, instead of wildly cheering for every little table scrap they get. If developers get glowing praise for doing the absolute minimum, they will never be tempted to do more.

A lot of this could have been avoided simply by tying one of these romances into the main plot, removing the optional quality and making it definite canon. Odessa would have been perfect for this, actually, having been set up as the ancestor of Odysseus and wanting to retrace his footsteps. They could have gotten a lot of mileage out of that. Instead, her storyline sort of peters out into a bog standard RPG romance of "flirt - fuck - abandon".

Not even standard. In ANY good rpg you can keep coming back to your boo. In this game once you're done with their side plot they disappear from the overworld.

Ubisoft tried their hand at RPG style dialogue, choices and branching...and did alright with it. No surprise, considering their lack of experience, that the result was below AAA RPG standards.

I literally ran around lykanaos's house looking every goddamn npc in the face trying to find him afterwards. He was just gone. His deadbeat mother was still there. He was just gone. I got ghosted by a video game wtf.

They must all have migrated to Kephalonia. That was the one place Kassandra never wanted to go back to, after all.

Yes, even Daphnae.

I don't know about you but Odessa was part of my crew.

Which I took as, "She is now my common law wife."

:)

Awkward when I recruited other Love interests but hey, its Greece.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 15th 2019 at 2:58:16 AM

Yeah, it was fun being able to recruit her. Sadly, that means reducing her (and anyone else you recruit for that matter) to a name and a picture. It doesn't even tell you who is who, so at some point I start forgetting what name goes with who.

It would have been nice if you could at least, you know, TALK with them on board your ship, or even just have a snippet of dialogue, like Barnabas.

Edited by Redmess on Aug 15th 2019 at 1:02:18 PM

O.K, I'm torn between continuing the conversation with Redmess here and taking it to private messages since it seems, well, most of the forum that has an opinion on this seem to agree with me on this nonsense and I kinda have a bit to say in response so...

Show of hands, who wants this to continue here?

Eh, go ahead. I enjoy the argument.

Just drop the argument. Or take it to the P Ms. Especially if you already know it's going nowhere.

It'd also have been great if Odessa at least leveled with you as you got stronger. The fact that she stays as a low-ranking lieutenant made me sad.

It's like they got the "concept" of the crew of Mass Effect but then... didn't follow through with it.

Ubisoft is too systems focused and not that great at integrating the very slick systems it makes into emergent gameplay.

Imagine being able to TALK to your crew, maybe have some dialogue or ambient conversations in the background - actually STATE that one of them is your LI. I did like how one of the L Is does turn up in story, though, if you make the right choices, which is at least a smidgen of a move towards showing that your choices knock on down the line.

But, again, this is where narrative and player choice collide - how can they dictate a story if everything's too fluid...?

That certainly explains the mercenaries being a half-assed Nemsis System.

That is exactly the problem with this game: lots of systems shallowly copied from earlier/other games that often don't mesh together all that well. Mercenaries lose most of their personality (such as it is), for instance, by being reduced to a name and picture.

And yes, lets drop the discussion about representation, especially since I agree with Fred, but he doesn't seem to realize it.

Right here, dude.

And the problem is...in a private message later.

So, when’s that Viking game?

Edited by fredhot16 on Aug 16th 2019 at 9:24:09 AM

You play Ragnar Lothbrook and you are a Viking.

I'd much rather drop it, Fred. No P Ms, please.

I will respect your wishes.

So, erm, thought exercise: if you were to divide the franchise into “eras”, which would go into what era?

1. Tech Demo Era - AC
2. Ezio Era: 2, Brotherhood, Revelations
3. Boats are Awesome Era: 3, Liberations, Black Flag
4. Soullessly Thrudging On Era: Unity, Rogue, Syndicate
5. "Lets take a break and re-assess how we're doing this" Era: Origins, Odyssey

Edited by Ghilz on Aug 16th 2019 at 10:10:46 AM

I disagree, Rogue is still in the Boats Are Awesome era, if only because it is an extension of Black Flag, which was generally a good thing.