Yeah, I always felt that Assassin's Creed had a good idea in playing through periods of history, but the modern portions were either really shallow in some important aspects or not very well thought through.

 

Still somewhere in Revelations, so, not really up to date with AC3 and AC4 but what I know of it really curbs my enthusiasm for the series.

I never really liked the modern aspect. Desmond's story never interested me and this whole gods/aliens and whatnot thing, basically everything "supernatural", seemed really silly and out of place. This would have worked just as well, if not better, if they had stuck to a game about assassin's and their struggle against their enemies.

That said, I am not too hot about the time periods they now focus on. American Civil War, barring any surprise twists, is really not that interesting and new, and i have even less interest in the Caribbean. I just wish they would go back in time, like ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt, Persia or Babylon (like with the order before the Assassin's as we know them). Or if they have to go "modern", something like the French Revolution, the 100 year war (Jeanne D'Arc), Spanish Inquisition, the Mayas, Japan during the end of the Edo Period, China, the Mongolia with Genghis Khan, Russia during the Napoleon Era, the period of Alexander the Great, Troy, the period with King Arthur (whenever they decide that is) or World War 1.

That was really the biggest allure for me, the opportunity to visit those legendary places and experience them and I hope that they will return to the more interesting times. And I hope we will get to see a female assassin protag too. They could tell the story of the assassin who killed Cleopatra or something.

As it stands, dunno if I am even going to play AC3, let alone AC4. Will probably wait until an AC game comes out with a more interesting time period.

 

I really think people are overly harsh on the modern elements of the game... they are less than 10% of any given game in the series and, while not nearly as alluring as the past settings, it *does* allow for a rather neat "in-game" way to explain deaths/saves/loading from checkpoints, etc...

"Oh no, I died! ...Oh, right, it's OK, I just got out of sync with my ancestor's memories, let's reload." It's a neat narrative quirk and wink to the gamer to put a bit of a grin on my face.

 

I can't help but wish they'd touch on the other Pieces of Eden, myself.

Given the hintings in AC2 in particular about various historical figures having Pieces of Eden and the attendant Templar/Assassin fuckery, it'd be a fun direction to take the series.

Ezio was fun, but even he was old (literally and figuratively) by Revelations. Connor isn't interesting at all, his dad wasn't terribly interesting (but imo would have been more so than Connor).

Altair was a almost-blank slate with a frowny face until his bits in Revelations. Imo, some fresh air would be nice for the series.

 

Well the staff is beyond human hands. The other pieces are apparently mostly apples.

I do remember mention of the Sword and Shroud. Apparently the Sword made you a great conqueror, and Genghis Khan owned it at some point. The Shroud healed people, even from death, and was apparently used on Jesus in their version of history. Plenty of cool there to work with.

 

Meh, that's not really something that needed any kind of in-game explanation, in my opinion. Never did I care WHY I would re-spawn in stuff like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Shin Megami Tensei, Skyrim or the Zelda Games. Check Points, saves, loads, re-spawns are all game mechanics that are just part of gaming and you can't really get rid of them.

That's like if a book were trying to explain why you could, in fact, put down the book any time you wanted and pick up where you left off. Completely unnecessary.

That said, I don't believe that AC was obnoxious or anything with that mechanic. Just saying, that I would have no problems if that modern aspect was dropped. I would never question or complain about the fact that there are save points and that the protag can respawn after he dies.

There are reasons for the modern aspects of the game, don't think this is one of them.

 

Honestly, I think one of the biggest problems I have with Assassin's Creed's modern portion is the idea that human DNA stores your ancestor's memories. That premise just never sat right with me for various reasons. The alien thing also falls flat.

I feel like Assassin's Creed would be better as a straight-up conspiracy story weaving throughout human history, without all the advanced technology stuff shoehorned in.

 

Ezio was the best thing to happen to the series. He had depth, character progression yet you could still see where he'd come from. He was easily the greatest character they've had.

 

Yeah, after Ezio I found Connor to just be irritating. I mean, he was just a dick.

 

Thats actually one of the complaints I had with AC3. Course thats probably because we spend more time with Ezio in that we actually see him change as person and grow older and wiser.

Whereas with Conner...

Well AC3. Thats about it. XD


As for "Shark jumping"

Frankly by the end of Brotherhood, hell the end of 2 really I was firmly in the "This is no longer an alternate retelling. this is shit is balls to the wall AU and I'm going to enjoy its crazyness."

Same with 4. Im going to enjoy being a pirate with 4 guns and assassin blades damnit!

 

The four guns thing is actually pretty accurate, really.

Flintlock pistols were a single-shot proposition, so most pirates tended to think "the more the merrier" when it came to guns.

 

Don't get me wrong. I fucking love AC, and will play every installment. Being a huge history nerd, and a no-life game nerd, it's just the best of everything. That said, Connor was bleh. He was needlessly cruel to his allies, and pretty hypocritical.

 

I think Connor could have been interesting if the opening twist wasn't. Haytham as an Assassin who reconnects with his Indian-raised, Achilles-taught son and trying to turn him from a vengeance-driven killer into an actual Assassin could have been an interesting relationship and would have made it feel like an actual Assassins Creed game, and if he was made a co-protagonist it really could have highlighted the difference between traditional climbing-and-stealth assassins and Connor's more predatory, violent moveset.

My biggest gripe with 3 was that it didn't feel like it was about Assassins, it felt like it was about America. Connor was an assassin in name only and his 'trainees' were just people who agreed to help him and were still running around in their street clothes and brandishing goddamn meat cleavers.

Edward Kenway, being an actual Assassin, will hopefully be more tied in to the Order and have a continuous subplot regarding the expansion of the Order into the New World. And it really seems like they're putting the present-day shenanigans on the backburner, with the 'protagonist' being a nameless, faceless chump - no hours of Desmond, just a five-minute plot recap and into the pirate shenanigans? Yes please.

I'm hopeful.

 

We'll probably have to see the new protagonist at some point as it'd be pointless to have all these games and not realise what ramifications your jaunts into the past uncover. For me, at least.

 

Haytham seemed like he had a lot more depth that could have been explored. Why did he turn on the Assassins? What did he really think of his son? Why is his hair so ballin'? So many questions.

On a more serious note, does Connor not just seem like a jerk to anybody else? I mean, if you have a villain who does evil, they're not necessarily a bad person, just a person who does bad things. Connor, to me, felt like a bad person who was doing good things. He was needlessly selfish and conversationally abrasive to people who tried only to help him for no damn reason whatsoever. He despised the colonials, and eventually Washington, because of how they treated the natives, but he seems just as racist as they, albeit in another direction.

On the whole, I just didn't think he had many redeeming features. Ezio, for instance, started AC2 as a moderately selfish teenager. Well, who isn't selfish at 17? Even then he's obsessively loyal to his family and allies. We're even shown how he grows into a much wiser older man.

Even Altair has good character development. He starts the game brash and arrogant, convinced that his way is always going to be the right way. By the end of the game we have him apologizing to someone who was wronged by him indirectly, sparing a templar's life for no better reason than because he feels it'd be wrong to kill a woman, and walking into the midst of two armies to diffuse a conflict that he could have just walked away from.

*El Shruggify* Hopefully, Edward will develop half as well.

 

On a somewhat unrelated note, this came back in my mind after thinking about reinstalling the first two Bioshock games, since the new game's coming out soon. I think the revival pod things they used in those games to explain why you could continue the game after dying were entirely unnecessary as well. A normal load-from-checkpoint feature would have been just as effective.

 

Well... I'm mildly surprised no one has posted in this thread, given that the game has been released for a week now; surely I'm not the only one to have purchased it?

I'm not too far in the actual story just yet... but here are my initial thoughts so far...

1. Edward is a VASTLY more interesting, fleshed out and "human" character than Connor. While I didn't disdain AC3 as so many, apparently, did, I did agree that Connor was a tremendous let down after Ezio. Edward is, even as early in the game as I still am, easily my second favorite character in the AC universe after Ezio.

2. I didn't love the naval aspect of AC3... I appreciated it from a technical standpoint, but it just didn't jive all that well for me. Here, while I worry if AC will ever be able to distance itself from naval combat in future games set in different time periods, I do think the Naval combat/exploration is FUN. As many reviews have said, I'm not sure that raiding other ships will ever stop being fun... and actually having a HUGE world to travel in via ship is really cool (there are plenty of fast travel options if/when it becomes boring). I'm actually really enjoying upgrading the Jackdaw, too... which I thought would be tedious.

3. They seem to have scaled back the weapon variety... my choices with Edward so far are dual hidden blades, dual longswords and pistols... that's it. It's my understanding that I'll gain a blowgun later on with requisite darts, sleeps darts, beserk darts, etc, but gone are some of the variety of weapons in the old games... particularly Ezio-era. On that note, and without getting TOO spoilerish...

Spoiler

I don't care for the fact that Edward is an instant Hidden Blade master once he gets his hidden blades... you'll understand within the context of the story, but it's jarring. For that matter, who trained him in freerunning, etc?

That's about it for now... Like I said, I haven't had much time to play yet, but I'm curious what everyone else thinks.

 

Long-ass post incoming.

 

I'm just sitting here waiting for the PC version to release...

 

Alright. This first part will be relatively spoiler-free.

You should know I had the game re-ordered, so I've been playing it for some days now.The game is awesome. Although Brotherhood remains my all-time favorite, this game is more fun than even Brotherhood was. The world is massive, the characters are interesting, the plot is engaging, the main character is awesome, flawed, and progresses as time passes. Also, pirates.
You will never get bored of ambient events. And there are a FUCKTON of ambient events. I have finished the main storyline, and I was taking long times between story missions to do other stuff. I'm still not even halfway through finishing all there is to do. All these events, far from being repetitive and farm-fest, are all fun and engaging.

I was one of the rare few ho actually liked Desmond and the modern day sequences, and my stance has not changed. The modern day stuff is much shorter than it used to be, but no less fun, interesting, or connected. If you take the time to figure everything out, you can construct a decent timeline, and find out some pretty interesting stuff.



From this point on my post contains SPOILERS, big and small.

Although I wouldn't consider it a flaw, exactly, it is a fact that there is not as much conflict as there was in previous games. The final sequence, though not dissapointing, was not as hard as Ezio, Altair, or Connor had it. It was mostly Edward fixing problems of his own making and cleaning up loose ends.

However, this stems from Edward's nature, itself. He is, even by the end of the game, more of a pirate than he is an Assassin. For the majority of the game he has little to no affiliation with the group. THIS IS OK.
I can explain away Edward's free running to however long he'd been sailing until the timeline picked up, and excuse the hidden blades away with similar ease.

Most of Edward's problems are of his own making. This is important, both in context and for in-game plot. He acts mostly on his own or his group of pirate friends, and not all of his endeavors go well. Many, in fact, backfire horribly. Most of the plot is Edward acting, and then reacting to the consequences of his actions. That is a big part of his character, I think. As time progresses, he leaves this phase, and slowly slips into a more Ezio like mindset, but mostly has his own goals.

The characters are the most engaging and interesting they've ever been in a AC game, imo. I was rooting for Edward/Mary all along, and I was crushed when she kicked the bucket. I was frustrated during Vane's descend into madness. I fucking cried when Thatch bit the bullet. I blame the goddamn music for it. Jesus, one of the saddest pieces I have ever heard. I was d'awwwing all over the place at the epilogue.
/end spoilers

I was mostly happy for the fact that Edward cannot change from the default double blades I always felt like we should go with what each Assassin personally preferred and stick with it.
Everything about the ship and the sea is awesome. The landscapes are amazing, the map is fucking huge, and by the time the storyline is over, you have not even visited about half of the map. There are tons of things to do, challenges seemingly impossible to tackle (looking at you, Legendary Ships), collectibles and remote locations, not to mention PIRATING EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE.


Incredibly fun game, worth every single cent. I haven't been surprised like this in a long time. The game had good humor, tragedy, actions, plot, incredibly fun gameplay and PIRATES, all rolled into one.


Buy the fuck out of it. Give it ALL your money.