Assassin's Creed

I wouldn't even say "in the background". They still are at the forefront. You'll still spend a lot of time, if not most of your time, doing the usual AC stuff.

If anything I found Black Flag's Pirate stuff needed more. You have the one ship who has a strictly linear upgrade path. There's no real room for strategy or experimentation when piloting Jackdaw beyond the one correct way to use the ship. Wind is basically rarely ever a concern. It's fun, but it gets routine pretty fast. It's why I always hoped Ubisoft would follow with a real Pirate game that ditched the AC stuff and went full in, especially after they sent polls out for it.

Edited by Ghilz on Apr 2nd 2020 at 3:14:32 PM

They’re making it. They’ve been advertising it for years. It’s just not out yet.

Probably didn't want to get mistaken for Sea of Thieves.

Sea of Thieves, despite being incredibly boring, is actually a fantastic little sailing game.

Very simplified wind physics, sure, but man that water is amazing. The pitching and rolling you get when sailing is fantastic and if you CAN find three friends to sail with you, it's tremendously fun.

I'm not watching the whole video at the moment, so I don't know if this is the explanation he gives, but I wouldn't be shocked if development got moved to next-gen at some point and that's what the delays are for.

The issue seems to be Ubisoft has failed on a number of recent projects and may have decided to drop this one that spend good money chasing after bad.

Also it was criticized for being too much like Black Flag, so they put on the brakes to make it more unique.

The irony there was that, after they released a questionnaire ages ago following Black Flag, the audience fed back that they wanted MORE games in line with Blag Flag... basically, a Pirate simulator unconnected to AC.

But they then went down it being World of Warships WITH FANTASY and no real crew movement.

I think building up on Blag Flag's mechanics, giving you more ship options or (As mentioned above) upgrade pathways, would be amazing.

But as implies, are they learning their lesson after trying to make every game a massive map of question marks? I'm playing breakpoint now and the Online stuff is ANNOYING. The loot is... interesting enough but I may switch to immersive. And the setting is meh.

Oh and Nomad's voice is REALLY ANNOYING NOW.

SO, side thought - Ubisoft seem to learn the wrong lessons from their games. Best bits of of Black Flag: fighting Man O War in a storm, a real running battle.

But in Odyssey they stick in some weak Naval combat and think that's apeing it?

Wildlands had a great, gritty world, with good dialogue and a real representation of soldiers acting naturally. It had a good interface and weapon selection felt meaningful.

Breakpoint has a messy inventory, too many sub menus, weapons feel fairly interchangeable and not meaningful REALLY and the map is a cluster of too many points of interest...

Well, to be fair, naval combat in Odyssey is pretty challenging... until you start upgrading, at which point you quickly become overpowered against even the strongest enemies.

The problem is not that naval combat itself is weak, but that the enemies are not much of a challenge for your ship.

And that's partly because Greek naval combat was... pretty basic. Ram, or archers. Large scale fleet engagements. Which we don't see that much of.

Also, the whole Crew mechanic doesn't mesh well - you have 30+ soldiers who... you can't use to do anything else? We always get these mechanics that have to do with raising troops, assassins and armies... then do bugger all with it. It's an issue with RPG / Action games where the hero is the CENTRE of attention. But I'd love to see the option (like in Ghost Recon) where you can summon troops to distract or just straight up tackle an area.

Mass Effect did this as well. Dragon Age as well. Let us SEE the troops we have DO something, or have them PRESENT in the world.

I think in a new open world AC, having a settlement that acts as a HQ that you upgrade visibly, provides more "services" the more you upgrade it alongside a "follower" or "troop" mechanic that allows you to realistically impact the world'd be good.

With the next setting being Viking oriented, I wonder how they'll do naval combat, if at all. And as Vikings are all about RAIDING - having the mechanic be more about you leading a fleet to coastal settlements then setting your troops loose would be more fitting. Then using that as a cover for your "Hidden Ones" activities...

There's also that the initial announcement focused a lot on multiplayer "with some single player component", which frankly I am not interested in? Like, I want Single Player Pirate adventure.

A trireme has about roughly two hundred crew plus another 30-50 marines.

Yeah, I also vastly prefer single player over multiplayer.

I get companies WANTING multiplayer as it gives them more in terms of being able to shill cosmetics, or features... as SP games have a lifecycle of the story. And most people don't REPLAY SP games much. Wildlands did well with the whole co-op element and Breakpoint seems to be a good mesh of Division level world and a singleplayer game, but it really NEEDS an offline mode.

But yeah, people wanted to have fun in pve piracy. B Ean counters thought that meant MULTIPLAYER. T He irony is, you have to sink much more in terms of support costs in servers, support and ongoing events. I can't see how ANYONE thinks that's viable; yes you have a revenue stream and don't need to produce new ideas, but it's not a guaranteed one, considering you have to front a lot of free content for these things.

There are ways to tack on a decent multiplayer onto a singleplayer game, and I find it baffling that more companies don't do it. Dawn of War II had the "Last Stand," and Mass Effect 3 multiplayer was the same basic concept.

Maybe those exact styles wouldn't be applicable here, but there's plenty of area between "only singleplayer" and "only MMO."

Assassin's Creed has something pretty good figured out in that there's a pretty spectacular photography mode.

This makes the cosmetic awards much more awarding.

Yes, but for whatever reason the camera has an infuriatingly small range.

Yeah, I think AC could do a cracking job with a Predator style multiplayer. Even AC 2 had an interesting take which could have developed further.

Unity had an interesting Co-op take, it just shouldn't have been shoe-horned in as part of the CENTRAL experience. AS the phrase goes, "If you build it, they will come" - Mass Effect 3 multiplayer showed that.

The problem with AC is that it doesn't REALLY let you do assassinations the way you want (a la Hitman) - it's too story driven for that. Same issue that Breakpoint suffers from - it wants to be a soldier simulator, but then yanks away your experience so it can do an Under Siege or Steven Segal growled dialogue homage.

Wildlands only stuffed that in during the extraction cutscenes and let most of it go along as you wanted. AC lets you do your thing in the open world, then stuffs all that for story missions with far too many scripted points that makes it feel like they just wanted to make a movie rather than a game...

Actually the Ezio trilogy was pretty good at letting you do assassinations the way you want.

Except no stealing guard uniforms.

Assassin's Creed's social stealth has always been a bit funky.

Magical invisibility park benches ftw.

The fact that in the Ezio series they even refer to him as the "man in the white cloak!" highly conspicuous assassin FTW.

That was when the series hit its sweet spot of map size, collectibles, combat I think.

I like most of the AC games, but I do miss Ezio - the character, the setting, the balance.

Well, that's in all the games. As soon as the guards are alerted, all the guards seem to know exactly who you are, even if they can't possibly have seen you yet.

Less the gameplay, more the narrative - the Borgias even refer to Ezio as the man in white. It's VERY much Ezio's earlier Hubris that he doesn't change his style (Gameplay and Story Segregation not in effect!)

A historical version of Hitman would be rather interesting. My complaint with the series is just that it sometimes doesn't matter HOW you do things; there's no reflection in the world of your actions beyond plot advancement.

I remember IOI's "Freedom Fighters" - in each mission there were seperate areas, when completing objectives in one meant impacts to others - clearing out a helipad meant no enemy choppers in the next phase of the mission, etc.

They did it with Far Cry, with the bases; but i'd like it to go a step further - remove a particular base type, or location, and watch as it impacts things - so, assassinate the local leader, the soldiers all armour up but there are fewer patrols showing control has loosened. Or in Ghost Recon - destroy a local SAM site... it STAYS DESTROYED.

I think the most extreme version of this (in my head) would be to give the AI a set number of assets - troops etc - that as you work your way towards targets, it actually reduces the number of soldiers. So, no endless waves, no endless troops. Devote enough time and you can whittle down their whole guard - have the AI move troops to reinforce, but that means they leave other areas vulnerable.

Of course it'd basically turn the game into you, the player, operating against an RTS AI. And to compensate, the risks would have to be higher. But at the least, I'd like to see impacts - reduced patrols, changes to the "social" terrain (Friendly NPCS returning, bases getting set up, vendors appearing, friendly patrols increasing) - to at least imply some level of change.

But Ubi have shown their AI isn't great so a macro level change may be a bit much to ask for.

Having a full AI do all that is probably a bit much, but you can fake it with triggers reasonably well. World of Warcraft started that in Burning Crusade, and I think the point where they really got the hang of it was Warlords of Draenor (I didn't play past Warlords, though).

And that's an MMO. It should be easier in single player.

You don't want AI to be too good, either. I'm not really wanting to be up against more super snipers like Unity, or be in a situation where only an expert can even survive.