Assassin's Creed 4

So, i just finished playing Pirate's Creed last night. I won't go into spoilers, but let it just be said after the last game, i didn't really have much faith in it at all. It is good to be wrong sometimes, especially when you were being pessimistic.

Seeing the trailers vs playing the game kind of reminded me of my initial reaction to AC2, when you saw images of Ezio and all it seemed like he was, was a clone of Altair, just with another hidden blade, because that's what someone in marketing came up with when he thought he was being clever. Then, of course, you actually play the game, and find out otherwise (to be fair, in AC2 i had followed the development more closely, so i knew Ezio had more to him than that before i played, but in AC4 i was disinterested, so i had barely watched anything besides the first trailer).

Gameplay-wise, it had only gotten better in AC3, and no surprise here, it's been further improved. It's the story that had taken a big dip (along with a certain rage factor for me that, if you know anything about me with regards to this series, you'll know what i mean), and not so much - i think - that the writing itself had been bad, it just... failed.

So that said, Edward is in serious risk of being the ancestor i liked playing the most. I would daresay he has more humanity and depth to him than even Ezio, but that's for you to judge. Most every character in the story is very likable, even the Templars, so it's not like he shines alone either. But while Altair, eventually Ezio and (rather begrudgingly here) even Connor - bland as he was, were or became more or less the near-embodiment of the wisdom the Creed calls for, Edward is very much humanly flawed, yet with a good core that sees him through, and it plays out very very well, to stop myself from using less objective words to describe it. Saying any more would be spoiling, but suffice to say this one played at strings that the previous installments had only glanced at by comparison, and the resulting tune came out awesome.

So TLDR, i kinda liked this game. A lot.

PS: Oh, and people are gonna cry at that ending, i'm not kidding.

Awesome. I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully it'll be my next game rental from Gamefly.

Oh yeah, and Ed shifts his hood on and off real-time.

Like I said once, I never played the Assassin's Creed games for their stories. I always found them uninteresting. An ancient civilization leaving technological artifacts everywhere on Earth? I can buy that. But when you add a technology that can "play" the memories of our ancestors which are stocked into our genes, you're starting to stretch your narrative framework. Especially when the two interact.

But the gameplay is fun, so I'll buy Assassin's Creed 4 on Steam when it's on sale.

Well, tooth be troll'd, when you sum up the content of any story to the cold core facts like that, the result always sounds bland and unappealing. Even ludicrous. This is nothing new.

A future world where material needs are supressed by matter replicating technology, thus allowing humanity to go off exploring deep space. A world where some unknown ancient civilization left nigh-instant matter transport devices that essentially connect the known galaxy at large. A world where an evil totalitarian empire has built a planet-shaped, moon-sized space station capable of blowing up planets in an instant with a green superlaser (all of the above having little to no language problems due to either some miracle never-even-remotely-explained tech that converts everything into standard 20th century american english, or the presence of COMMON). A world where humanity has broken the technological singularity and now earth has been engulfed into a gargantuan Dyson Sphere spanning Earth's Orbit to Jupiter's, in which automated builders randomly and uncontrollably take up the space with nonsensical structures due to the whole megastructure's operating system having become cut-off from it's functions thousands of years ago, sending everything spiraling out of control into total chaos since time immemorial, essentially snuffing out civilization as we know it.

Yeah, and that's the tip.

But we accept these things - or don't, based on how good a setup and development they receive. Likewise, the AC series, at least for me, has had good enough presentation and development that i just happily go along with it.

Read that:

I actually agree with saying the Assassin's Creed series' story is entertaining. The twists at the end of each game were something I was looking forward to. But the enjoyment I get from it is the same I would get from watching Fast and Furious 6 at the movie theater. I only think the story would have been better if the writers had focused on the Animus and the Templar/Assassin conflict. In my opinion, there was no real need to introduce an ancient civilization so that we could have a End of the World scenario with Assassin's Creed 3. It makes me go "meh" when the first part of a story focus on a specific conflict then do a face-turn and say we should focus on THAT instead.

Star Wars' story in "IV" was the fight against the Empire. "V" was all about this conflict and the relation between Luke and Darth Vador. Then "VI" intertwines the two and everything comes to an end. Good buildup and pacing. These two big plots complement each other very well.

Assassin's Creed (from 1 to 3) is about the Templar/Assassin conflict that is lurking in the shadows of our civilizations, which leads to the discovery of an ancient civilization that affected our world up until today. Then the writers take these core elements of the story, put the conflict to the background, and introduce an End of the World type of scenario. And me, I'm like : "Heh, what happened to the shadowy war?". And the writers are saying : "Shh, you have to save the world so that you can go back to killing them". 

I think that it would have been better if the Templar and the Assassins stopped killing each other after learning of this coming calamity and teamed up to do something about it. Can you imagine? Sworn enemies working together. You don't even need to have peace between the two when the problem is resolved. One side or the other can try to betray their temporary allies, thus creating a bigger conflict when the next sequel hits (the Templar coming up on top, naturally).

Now that's a good reason to add this catastrophe scenario to the overall story. But, oh well, it is entertaining enough as it is. I'll do what I always do when I play an Assassin's Creed game : turn on my popcorn mode.

I actually expect the fourth instalment to be enjoyable, like the others were.

Angry rant:

Well, in 3, the matter of making nice is touched on for a bit, and the Templars' intentions with regard to the calamity has some decent focus. Actually, the focus of 3's ancestor segment is pretty much the effort of trying to make nice and failing miserably. It just sucks so bad at making us give a lick of care about it, that it ends up going by without much attention. A pity really, since they could have really done something good with it, had they found a way to better say what they were saying.

Plus, this is a plot thread that has been growing since 2, so it's not like it was sprung on all of a sudden. I guess it just rubs different people differently.

Oh, and her:

I've had the time to go through Assassin's Creed a few weeks ago, and I'm ready to give my opinion on it.

Edward's story is great. He starts out seemingly two-dimensional, but he grows as the story unfolds, and things change him. The assassins are presented from the perspective of a man on the outside looking in. Instead of being born into the life, he becomes inducted into it, and takes significantly longer on account of his worldly attitude towards life.

The reason it takes a dip is because the way the game is played changes. There's a lot to do and a lot to explore. Most of the time Kenway will be sailing around in his ship stealing cargo, collecting cargo, exploring shipwrecks, buying upgrades, only to repeat the process again. There's far more of the sailing and pirating(excuse me, "privateering") than there is of assassination. The player can level forts, board cargo ships and get hunted down by maritime bounty hunters, dive for treasure chests, hunt sharks, hunt monkeys, hunt deer, hunt everything, even chase down legendary ships if they dare. But when it comes to assassinations, which is supposed to be the bread and butter of the series, there's less of a focus on planning the assassination, tailing the target, and then executing them. Sure you tail some targets, and there's a lot of "kill this guy to get this and do this", but they're not built up as much as they were in the games before it. I appreciate what they've created, which is probably the forefront of naval combat simulation technology, and they could probably create an entire separate series with its own story/stories and I'd be keeping my eyes peeled for them, but this game is not what I've come to expect from the series. It would more appropriately be called Black Flag: Assassin's Creed. Maybe they were just really proud of the maritime combat, or maybe the fans demanded to have more of it in the Assassin's Creed series(idiots), or maybe they demanded more of it, but just not in the Assassin's Creed series and Ubisoft decided to strike two birds with one stone anyway(idiots). The gameplay is great. The story is great. Even though the assassins are there are people to assassinate, it is not the same as it was before and that's a net loss.

And then there's the crafting. They thought the fans loved it so much in the previous game, they decided to give us more. I apologize, but I hate crafting when it involves collecting ingredients. I was infuriated when I discovered that in order to max out a ship upgrade, I had to find the blueprints for said upgrade, and in order to find them you need to find a map to said blueprints(they have coordinates, else I'd be foaming at the mouth), the location of which is unknown to me. In order to be the best at one activity, I need to do another. It turns the activity that the player is uninterested in into busy work, a chore, which is unfair to both of the activities and the player. In regards to both the crafting and the upgrades, why can't I just show the harbormaster my cannons and say "give me forty" or "make them better"? Why can't I just buy another holster for my fourth/fifth pistol at the store? What about armor? It's not like nobody's ever thought about making pistols more efficient by maximizing the number that a man can holster. What am I, the premiere inventor for every "make it harder/better/faster/stronger" plan in the world?

I haven't finished playing this game yet, and I intend to, but I just I was just so overwhelmed by all the stuff they threw at me that I don't think I'd ever play it again. I don't like working hard/cheating to buy or craft every upgrade in a game *twice* if the speed is "with story progression" and "with ingredients/blueprints collected". It's grinding is what it is.