Sulphur on 9/2/2018 at 16:13
Quote Posted by Thirith
Sulphur: I like the series, I've played most of the games to completion (story completion, that is - I don't think I 100% any of them), but I can't really disagree with you. It's more that I mind the negatives less, or I'm better able to ignore them, while enjoying the positives more.
Origins feels least like it's trying to incentivise you to explore through shallow gameplay, mind you, at least so far. In terms of more interesting activities, I quite liked the
Syndicate music boxes, where you have a picture of a location and you have to find it due to the landmarks and how they relate to each other spacially. I'm not as big a fan of
Black Flag as many others, but I liked its story and characters, more than the new gameplay elements.
Yeah, I play the games for the story, because the gameplay generally leaves me cold. The stealth, combat, and parkouring aren't nearly as good as you'd find in a game that focuses on just one of things. It's never bad per se (bar the odd occasion where a rooftop run ends with your protagonist deciding to jump at a random angle instead of where you were pointing him/her), but there's not enough depth to fully enjoy those elements. That's why I feel Black Flag is the one to go with for now - it seems pretty entertaining in terms of story and characters.
Thirith on 9/2/2018 at 16:34
In those terms I can definitely recommend Black Flag. If it just was "yay, pirates!", I wouldn't have been a huge fan, but it gets surprisingly (and IMO effectively) poignant at times without becoming maudlin.
Thirith on 25/2/2018 at 09:28
One thing I really don't like about Origins and the series in general is how rarely the Templars feel like anything other than panto villains. Every now and then throughout Assassin's Creed there are hints that this is a battle of ideas and ideologies, with individual Templars being motivated not by wealth or power or sadism but by what they think is actually better for mankind, and you also get Assassins whose views are shown to be more ambiguous or flawed - but most of the time the games default to "Nah, this guy is actually ludicrously, cartoonishly evil, so put a few stab wounds in his torso and through his neck." The closest I've yet got to an antagonist who is the teensiest bit sympathetic is a mother who wants to bring back her dead daughter, which is a nice parallel to Bayek - but before we find out that she's doing what she does out of sorrow, we already know that she kidnaps and sacrifices innocents, so our sympathy doesn't go beyond "Yeah, let's put her out of her misery".
There's potential in the series for a more interesting conflict, and I wish they'd actually do more with this, but as it is, they obviously prefer their cartoon bad guys, which I'm sick and tired of. By now the Assassin's Creed villains usually just differ in "Oh, this is the one with the luxurious moustache" and "This is the one who's folksy instead of haughty" and "That's the one with breasts instead of a penis."
Pyrian on 25/2/2018 at 09:41
Would it work if the villains were more sympathetic? I mean... You're playing an assassin. If you were killing decent folk over differences in philosophy, that might feel more than a little uncomfortable for a lot of people.
Thirith on 25/2/2018 at 10:50
It would work for me - but even in a series where you're playing assassins, I think the games would benefit from offering other kinds of interaction. Look at The Witcher: you're playing a monster killer, but you do lots of other things. Or look at Hitman, where all you do is assassinate, but the actual gameplay is much more varied and interesting. It's not like Assassin's Creed has perfected assassination gameplay - they don't even seem to be all that interested in this.
They occasionally show more ambition with respect to characterisation and storytelling (Rogue puts the Assassins in a worse light, Unity has you team up with a Templar some of the time and one of its sort-of-villains is an Assassin), but it's only glimpses of what an Assassin's Creed that has more to offer than virtual tourism could be.
Thirith on 26/2/2018 at 06:05
I agree that Rogue is one of the more interesting games in the series in that regard. Thinking about Unity, which had a sympathetic (and female) Templar character, and Syndicate, where you could switch between two characters, one male and one female, I would like to see an Assassin's Creed game that lets you switch between a Templar and an Assassin and that works at making both characters argue they're *ethically* right from their own point of view. Again, there are hints of this in some of the games, but they're usually half-hearted and undermined by the rest of the plot.
henke on 25/3/2018 at 12:19
Picked up AC Origins (PS4) in the shop for 23€ today. What a deal! Tho I do also have plans to pick up FC5 this week, and I'm not crazy enough to submit myself to 2 Ubigames at once, so I might have to shelve Origins for a while.
Thirith on 25/3/2018 at 13:34
Curious to hear what you think of Origins, henke, once you get around to playing it. It does some things very well, but on the whole I think it's still got the same flaws as all Assassin's Creed games - it's just that the flaws aren't quite as egregious this time round, while the strong points are as strong as they've ever been in the series. I finished the main story yesterday and, as so often in Assassin's Creed, I thought they did some really interesting things with the story and characters without quite understanding what they were doing and why there was the potential for something more interesting and more ambiguous.
scumble on 1/4/2018 at 08:24
I decided to pick up Syndicate in the PSN easter sale, resisting buying more of them in bundles...
I think in the Far Cry thread there was some mention of Ubisoft and "diversity". I noticed the message when I started up stating the development team included various political beliefs and gender identities. Is that really necessary?
N'Al on 1/4/2018 at 10:54
That message has been in every AC so far, afaik.
You have to bear in mind the first game was set in the Middle East during the Third Crusade. It's just Ubi's way of covering their ass.