Assassin's Creed

Yeah, plus the whole "Native American" influences just aren't there either, considering that was also a clear locale they were involved with.

Atlantis was great but but the end of the DLC it felt really unused. HOWEVER I was impressed with how closely they stuck to Plato's description of the place (His writings on the societal structures, the districts etc... even if they didn't cover ALL of Poseidon's children).

Ironically, not having a ship in ATLANTIS felt a bit weird.

One of the things I am noticing with the later games is that, though the maps are lovely and the gameplay dynamic... you don't DO MUCH with the actual world. No stores, no interactions. One thing I enjoyed about the Witcher was that even though it had an open world you still entered taverns, could buy drinks and engage in little Gwent. It grounded the experience to each region.

Hopefully the Flyting and other aspects in Valhalla will do that here. Plus Norse Isu will be interesting to see.

I also think they overdid the verticality thing a bit in Atlantis, and all the DLC since Origins, really. Why does every important structure need to be built on a mile high cliff? Where do these things come from, anyway?

Yeah, compared to Witcher, or RDR, or even Breath of the Wild, Origins and Odyssey have worlds that feel empty and often lifeless despite their size. Hopefully the smaller size of the next game sees this change.

"Smaller size"? Where do you get that idea from? All indications are that this game is going to encompass the entirety of England, likely Scotland and Wales, maybe Ireland, at least part of Norway, and likely the region around the Channel. Iceland and Greenland are very likely locations, and the rest of Scandinavia is certainly possible.

This game is likely going to be huge.

Huge enough to sail out of sight of land?

Maybe, not that many islands in the North Sea.

That History Respawned video on Unity had an interesting bit on why the idea of "social stealth" in these games is rather ludicrous, even in big cities like Paris. Locals would know exactly who belonged there and who didn't, and they'd soon stop you and question why you were there.

Edited by Redmess on Jun 5th 2020 at 8:20:07 PM

That sounds like excuses to me.

Travelers would pass through all the time, especially large cities on major trade routes in the midst of massive trade empires.

I could understand disguising oneself as a soldier to be ineffective, since the grunts would quarter together, mess together, and train together, and thus would definitely know each other's faces. But disguising as an officer would likely get you brought before other officers, who would likely recognize someone who didn't know the courtesies of being a uniformed officer.

The point was in that case that in such a time of upheaval in Paris, anyone unfamiliar would have been suspect. Yes, including travellers. Especially if they popped up in areas most travellers would not even pass through to begin with.

...yeah, that makes sense. That whole "Reign of Terror" time period was called so for a reason.

It's interesting how the historical King Alfred seems to have had more friendly interactions with the Vikings, even having some godsons amongst them. I wonder if that will come up in the game.

Also, I hope they do a better job with hair colour. Odyssey had this odd thing were a lot of people seemed to be grey haired, even younger characters.

I found a series of interesting articles discussing the historical (in)accuracies in Odyssey:

The first hour or so

Exploring Cephalonia

Adventures in Megara

Ousting the Athenians from the Megarid

Consulting the Oracle in Delphi

The Spartans at war: Myth vs reality

The glory of Athens

A farewell to arms

Exploring ancient Knossos

Exploring ancient Mycenae

Edited by Redmess on Jun 22nd 2020 at 9:12:41 PM

I mean. How historically accurate has Assassins Creed been historically

No one was claiming otherwise. It is just interesting to point them out and learn about actual history.

There is some interesting stuff in there. For example, misthios is the wrong case ending for Kassandra, who would be a misthia. And misthios is a generic term for someone working for pay. A mercenary would have been a misthophoros.

Why misthios and not misthophoros? Maybe the devs thought that was a bit too difficult for players?

Edited by Redmess on Jun 22nd 2020 at 10:43:07 AM

So "misthios" more properly means "hireling" rather than "mercenary" huh

Basically, yes. The game has more of these linguistic errors, most of them stemming from using the wrong ending, wrong plural/singular, or using modern Greek words and pronunciation.

Which I honestly find annoying. How hard would it have been to have a Greek scholar go over the text? It's not like they use that many Greek words. It's an... odd sort of laziness. As if they spent an hour looking up words in a dictionary and called it a day.

Just as another example that would have been an easy fix:

Edited by Redmess on Jun 22nd 2020 at 2:09:18 PM

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla creative director steps down, accused of sexual misconduct with fans:

From the ancient world magazine blog, there turns out to be a rather unexpected ahistorical detail in Odyssey: banners and flags are everywhere, but the ancient Greeks used neither of them. They are a more modern invention, and in the case of banners, are more evocative of Third Reich iconography than Ancient Greece.

Yikes.

"Evocative of the third Reich"

Guess these bumblefucks never heard of Khorugv then if they think Nazis got monopolies on banners.

Yikes.

That's a good point, but I think this is a case of association with the closest known example.

I think the point was also that it was not just the banners, but the way in which they were used, and the design it uses (a banner with a round circle containing a faction sigil (which the Athenians didn't have either, by the way).

You'd be surprised at how many visual tropes made their way to widespread pop culture usage via Triumph of the Will. The Million Mook March is another example that comes to mind.

Yes, that's probably how they reached that conclusion, along with, of course, being a blog about ancient Greece and Rome, which were major inspirations for the Third Reich.

I wonder what the Nazis based those banners on, then.

Mostly the Roman signum, IIRC. But the combination with Classicist architecture does make for a distinctly Nazi-ish imagery.

Not saying that the devs were secretly alt-right, obviously, but Nazi propaganda has a far-reaching pop-cultural impact, more than we consciously recognise, and they often drew inspiration from the same places as other Western powers did - the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials in DC, with their Classicist style and larger-than-life statues, were very purposefully meant to evoke the Greco-Roman divine hero cult, for instance.

It probably comes from earlier games, which also featured banners in presumably more historically accurate settings.

If I guess why is because we know nazi imaginary but only in a void, forgetting it wasn't all new.