OOC Discussion

@Kolson : I guess it's going to get the same treatment as Ocarina of Time?

@Rory : I don't get most of these impressions. Sorry.

Impression 1: Doc Brown from the "Back to the Future" trilogy.

Impression 2: Actor Steve Buscemi. He's currently in the tv show "Board Walk Empire" but he's been around a while so you may have seen him in something like "Reservoir Dogs" or "Fargo."

Impression 3: Actor Michael Cane has been around a long time. You probably remember him most from Nolan's Batman trilogy playing Alfred. This impression wasn't very good and is easily the weakest of the bunch.

Impression 4: I'm not surprised you didn't know this one Zeiss. David Letterman has been an American late night talk show host and humorist for over 30 years. He's an institution but I'm not a fan. I always preferred Jay Leno, Conan O'Brian, Craig Furguson, or Jimmy Fallon. Basically everyone else, lol.

Impression 5: Gandalf from "Lord of the Rings." 'Nuff said.

Impression 6: Actor John Malkovich has been around a long time. If you've never seen "Con Air" or "Being John Malkovich" you should.

"Con Air" is a hilariously bad Nic Cage movie where Malkovich plays an over the top villain named Cyrus 'The Virus' Grissom trying to escape from a plane transporting prisoners. This movie is notable for the bad hair extensions that Nic Cage wears through the whole thing. It's glorious.

Con Air Nic Cage:

"Being John Malkovich" is the complete opposite with the actor playing a version of himself. A puppeteer is forced to take a temp job so that he and his wife can keep the lights on and he finds himself at this weird company located on floor 7 1/2. One day he finds a portal behind one of the file cabinets that lets anyone who enters become John Malkovich for 15 minutes after which they appear in a ditch near a New Jersey turnpike. It's weird and awesome.

Impression 7: I know you know who Liam Neeson is.

@Rory Not bad. Good find.

Wrong. Cyrus tries to escape WITH the plane.

Also, Steve Buscemi is in it, playing Garland.

I was expecting these to all be bad, pesonal impressions just done for fun, but I was quite surprised at how striking his impression of Doc Brown was at the start. And Gandalf.

Oh right. Thanks K. Looks like I need to watch it again, lol. Oh darn.

Also it's almost time for Season 3 of Tabletop! Yay!

Steve Buscemi was also in Armageddon!

And I have to admit : I can't see the fake hair.

So, it looks like Assassin's Creed Unity is a bad port. On PC. Like ridiculously bad. o_o

I don't care. I think that series is dead to me, really. I didn't opt to become apathetic to it, it just happened.

Maybe i'll change my mind later, but right now i just can't bring myself to bother with it.

Talking about PC ports, I hope Dragon Age Inquisition lives up to the minimal expectations of mine, which is a decent RPG, and have detached it from the bias of it being a Dragon Age game. I specifically went ahead and gave myself plenty of free-time to play it even, the first game in weeks that I'll be able to play in peace.

I really hope it will be a decent RPG at the very least.

From the reviews I've read Javan, it seems to be the case. I'm also working everyday to finish my next week's homework in advance so I can play the game without interruption. Can't wait.

I'm just hoping they steer the series away from the naval exploration and combat, and back to their roots for #5. As I hear it, Unity's just another Yorkshire mint. I'm definitely looking forward to games made all about naval exploration and combat the likes of Black Flag, though.

I was in it for the story that was unraveling since AC1. I tried AC4 in hope that it would somehow continue, but they gutted it through and through with that videogame studio crap, just the excuse to say "We're just gonna make up random excuse plots in the past so we can keep milking it, and throwing progression out the window". I did like Edward, and the overall game in 4, but from what i've seen of 5, even what was left of the original cast has been thrown into the trash.

I'm not about to pick up an even more pointless game just because now you can press the O button to get down safer from buildings.

Well, when I say #5, I mean a proper #5, the one they label "#5", not the in-between stuff like Unity.

Yeah, the part where you leave the game to explore the Abstergo office building did not interest me in the slightest, and as opposed to other games in the series, motivated me to stay in the Animus for as long as I could until the game dragged me out and said, "fun's over, collect some stuff and listen to these people talk as an employee, and then you can play some more." They didn't give me a reason to care about what was going on outside the Animus. They turned it into a chore, with some collecty-bits, as if adding in collecty-bits was enough of a motivator, and it's not. I'm not 10 years old anymore. I also hate collecty-bits, no matter the prize at the end.

I'm just going to throw this out there but they should ditch the Animus and the future storyline. Leave that back in the original trilogy where it ended and just do stories from throughout time based on the exploits of the Assassins. No more being forced out of the Animus into draggy, uninteresting parts and they can keep all the stuff people love.

I don't know, I really liked the 'out of animus' parts in the series. Most people say that it is bad for various reasons, but I disagree on grounds that up to AC3, AC was mostly about Desmond, even if he wasn't in the spotlight as often as his ancestors, and both in and out of animus parts gave it identity and charm.

That said, I'll probably not play another AC games after Black Flag, because Ubisoft decided to ditch the sci-fi stuff, if Unity is representative of anything besides being a beautifully broken game, and I doubt they would go past early future with the AC franchise.

The Desmond stuff is what made me interested in the game to begin with, and what made me keep playing.

The past thing was over and done with before it even started, from a story standpoint; the part where things were actually hanging in the balance was the present day storyline. As it stands, i have no inkling to what path or purpose is supposed to be to this story, and i certainly have no engagement or agency in it.

They might expect me to have some new character and story thrown in my face at every turn and have me care about it, but the thing is, i won't. And i don't.

It's erm..... a bit buggy.
Actually, it's Very Buggy.
http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/13/7213671/assassins-creed-unity-patch-update

It's almost so bad that you want to get it just to experience the bugs...
https://youtu.be/hhl5yjMY0Ws
Almost.

All hail the crappiness!

I will admit, Desmond's story was interesting. But then AC3 happened. I stopped liking him. He started acting spoiled and reluctant the moment he met [spoiler], and up until that point he seemed willing to accept who he was raised to be and to participate in this physical and mental clash of ideals. And that attitude gets 180'd just as quickly. You know what I mean. But he keeps on acting spoiled after that.

As for the storyline, I agree with Kolson, make the whole Animus deal just the setup. Abstergo employee walks in, gets into the Animus, the actual game starts, then at the end of the game we see more Abstergo bits to sort of tie in the events of history we experienced to something happening during or after Desmond's story.

And eventually, they need to continue it from the end of Desmond's story, where it's not set in the Animus but in the world after the end of AC3, because unless I'm not mistaken, the assassins haven't defeated the eeeevil evil. Yet.

I dunno Rory, Desmond was really just a bartender not so long ago, and then he was thrown into various roles in rapid succession, had his conscious shattered, his body possessed, killing someone he liked in the process, and so on. And when he started to understand and accept his role as a assassin, he discovers his role is somewhere else. Because screw you Desmond, you are the Savior. And a dead man walking.

I'm pretty sure that would be more than enough to break someone, and it did break Desmond, but not enough to ultimately stop him from doing what he had to do. I only have respect for the guy.

Edit: Because Unity.

Well to point it out, if we ditch the future stuff, since that story is over, why do we even need the Animus at all? It's a means to an end not the reason we play these games right?

So I ask you what makes Assassin's Creed Assassin's Creed to you guys?

Mechanics? Still there without the Animus, you just don't have to dick around with synchronization anymore.

Lore? The future storyline effectively ended with the death of Desmond in 3. Sure, the Assassins and the Templars will continue to struggle but their relationship is an eternal one and can still take place in games set exclusively in the past. I'll also point out that they have gone on record as saying they have no interest in taking Assassin's Creed to the future since the core of the game, the mechanics, get lost there.

They what? The assassins need to win, Minerva needs to die! I mean wow, she would have been like the "ultimate" assassination, the big bad boss at the end of a game moving forward in the timeline. Normally I like the idea of, from a gameplay perspective, that storywise, conflict is inevitable; that baddies will always rise, and the heroes will be around to be heroes. But leaving off on a note like that in AC3 and declaring that nothing exciting or good(ideologically) can occur beyond that point...well, it's terrible. Dismal.

The story is what matters to me the most, but what makes a game an Asssassin's Creed game is the gameplay. Which is why that news pisses me off, and now I'm going to suggest something radical in my blind rage.

If game mechanics is the issue, then they should create some new game mechanics. If it means moving away from stealth and parkour, then fuck it, they should move away from the Assassin's Creed title and on to a different kind of game if that's what it takes to continue the story. It certainly would be commendable.

So guys, I figured out yesterday that I could connect to a Korean server and unlock Dragon Age Inquisition the 17th November at 10 am. While I am really happy that, I just wanted to share one thing : I am so excited to play this game that I couldn't sleep more than five hours. I tried to go back to sleep but my mind just won't let me. It almost feel I am eight again and I must wait for my parents to wake up so I can unwrap my Christmas presents. And you know what? Very few video games ever made me feel this way. The company that was the most successful in that aspect was Bioware.

3 hours and 7 minutes before I can unlock the game. I hope it turns out to be good.

*Goes back to killing time*

Dear Zeiss, thanks for the tip, didn't even know about this trick. Also take a deep breath.

I've tried it myself and now it is less 14 hours of waiting compared with the original release time. Hopefully, everything will work just fine.

So, how are you guys liking the game?