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EmmyOk posted:Why didn't Aiden kill that incredibly powerful mob boss when it certainly wouldn't cause any kind of backlash? Truly a head scratcher. Yeah, for as much as I hate Aiden, he made the right call there. Getting on the wrong side of a mob boss without allies or a real plan is basically suicide. Especially when he knows you've seen him commit a murder (why he did so himself in front of a witness is an issue in itself), giving him enough reason to kill you already. Keeping your head down and leaving as soon as possible was the best thing he could have done short of not letting himself blunder into the situation to begin with. I've got some problems with that scene, but AIden's behavior during it wasn't one of them.
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Aug 18, 2015 03:43
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While I absolutely agree that not killing Quinn was the right call, the problem is thanks to the terrible writing you basically have two Aidens. You have "The Fox" who operates from the shadows, who sneaks into places and uses his hacking ability to get the job done without being seen. This Aiden is the guy who just wants too keep his head down and keep what's left of his family safe, so of course he would slink away the moment he got the chance. But you also have "The Vigilante" a guy who uses his magical smart phone to know the exact moment he needs to leap out of the bushes and club a criminal too death like he's a god damned harp seal, a guy who guns down heavily armoured gangbangers with machine guns and grenade launchers and a guy who chokes his partner because she lied when he asked "A/S/L?" Him I'm more iffy about. But yeah, Aiden not killing the guy isn't what made the scene bad. What made that scene bad is the fact that they looked like they were going to subvert a cliché by having the dude not only survive Quinn's attempt to murder him, but actually turn it around and kill Quinn, only for the writers to go "Hahaha, nope!"
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Aug 18, 2015 04:40
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In the grim cyberpunk future of a couple years ago filled with evil corporations and ruthless mercenaries, Watch_Dogs reminds us that the real criminals are the blacks and Italians.
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Aug 18, 2015 04:52
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Another nice subversion would be for Quinn to not actually execute the bumbling henchman and to say, "relax, son, you made it out with the package and weren't IDed. I can see this is kind of stressful for you, so I'll put you on a much lower-stress operation like house-sitting one of my nephews for a while. You can play vidya games with him and everything." "Thanks, Mr. Quinn!"
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Aug 18, 2015 04:58
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Speedball posted:Another nice subversion would be for Quinn to not actually execute the bumbling henchman and to say, "relax, son, you made it out with the package and weren't IDed. I can see this is kind of stressful for you, so I'll put you on a much lower-stress operation like house-sitting one of my nephews for a while. You can play vidya games with him and everything." "Thanks, Mr. Quinn!" Yeah, but that would make him more likable than Aiden and they just decided that it would be easier to make Quinn look worse than to rewrite Aiden's character in a more consistent and likable way.
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Aug 18, 2015 05:12
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Secretly, the real villain is all of them. The ending is as much of a mess as everything else in this game.
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Aug 18, 2015 05:23
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Speedball posted:Another nice subversion would be for Quinn to not actually execute the bumbling henchman and to say, "relax, son, you made it out with the package and weren't IDed. I can see this is kind of stressful for you, so I'll put you on a much lower-stress operation like house-sitting one of my nephews for a while. You can play vidya games with him and everything." "Thanks, Mr. Quinn!" I can't believe they pulled the "mob boss executes a henchman to make us not like him" thing twice in this game. With two different mob bosses!
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Aug 18, 2015 05:30
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Bar Crow posted:In the grim cyberpunk future of a couple years ago filled with evil corporations and ruthless mercenaries, Watch_Dogs reminds us that the real criminals are the blacks and Italians. Yeah, the whole drug fortress felt cartoonishly racist. Like, they've pretty much made black people look more evil than anyone else so far in the game.
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Aug 18, 2015 05:32
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Patter Song posted:I can't believe they pulled the "mob boss executes a henchman to make us not like him" thing twice in this game. With two different mob bosses! Who are working together no less.
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Aug 18, 2015 05:34
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Patter Song posted:I can't believe they pulled the "mob boss executes a henchman to make us not like him" thing twice in this game. With two different mob bosses! 
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Aug 18, 2015 06:06
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I'm surprised during the weasel scene Iraq didn't grow a mustache with each slam of the briefcase then mugged for the camera, twirling it when he finished.
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Aug 18, 2015 06:11
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I forget, do we ever find out what was in that package that was so loving important that Lucky Quinn needed to pick it up personally?
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Aug 18, 2015 07:24
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I thinkBar Crow posted:In the grim cyberpunk future of a couple years ago filled with evil corporations and ruthless mercenaries, Watch_Dogs reminds us that the real criminals are the blacks and Italians. I think Quinn is supposed to be Irish or something.
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Aug 18, 2015 07:25
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Dreadwroth posted:I think Quinn is supposed to be Irish or something. 
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Aug 18, 2015 07:45
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Patter Song posted:I can't believe they pulled the "mob boss executes a henchman to make us not like him" thing twice in this game. With two different mob bosses! It would've been much better if each of them had executed the other one's henchman to make us not like him. Imagine Iraq running into the alley to suplex the driver out of nowhere, then Quinn killing Stoatman from off camera with a pistol before hobbling onscreen to establish his criminal bonafides. Spikey posted:I forget, do we ever find out what was in that package that was so loving important that Lucky Quinn needed to pick it up personally? IIRC, it's the same package we just saw get decorated with one of Iraq's helpers' brains- an invitation list to an auction.
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Aug 18, 2015 08:02
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Patter Song posted:Assassin's Creed 1 is probably the hardest one of the lot...I died like half a dozen times to that one bit where you have to go 12 on 1 with the entire Templar Order. Then it led to an absurdly easy final boss fight with an old man. ...I, uh, suddenly feel sorta bad because hidden blade counterattacks completely cheesed that fight.
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Aug 18, 2015 12:37
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Nekomimi-Maiden posted:...I, uh, suddenly feel sorta bad because hidden blade counterattacks completely cheesed that fight. Assassin's Creed combat, at least in 1-4 (the only ones ive played) is basically just "counter to win".
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Aug 18, 2015 13:36
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kalonZombie posted:Assassin's Creed combat, at least in 1-4 (the only ones ive played) is basically just "counter to win". I remember how the first Assassin's Creed actually designed combat in such a way that anything other than countering during melee combat was almost completely pointless. They built it so that your own strikes got blocked most of the time, so the only effective way to deal damage was through instant kill counterattacks. One thing I did a few times was climb that one really tall tower in the countryside and just let enemies reach the top so I could shove them off. I ended up with dozens of bodies piled at the bottom. It's a bit ridiculous that it wasn't until the third major game in the series that the combat was expanded to "Ezio can actually go on the offensive now instead of just countering all the time", and this was a loving selling point in the previews.
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Aug 18, 2015 16:45
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Yeah and also you don't even unlock countering until you've killed a guy or two, so gently caress you up till then, button mash until enemies die. I asked my friend how you're supposed to win fights without countering and he said something about attacking after a step but you unlock *that* after killing *seven* people. Out of nine. E: And it doesn't always kill people, just lets you get a normal hit in, you have to do it two or three times to normal guards. And also countering with the swords doesn't always kill people. And having the hidden blade out to counter with means you can't block poo poo. I think the only other viable way of getting through combat is grabbing people, throwing them on the floor and shanking them. Dabir fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Aug 18, 2015 |
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Aug 18, 2015 16:58
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The more you look at it, the more the first Assassin's Creed seems really experimental. The modern segments are very bare bones, with nothing but walking around and reading emails while everyone talks. The graphics are highly desaturated and the environments are fairly simple despite their size. And it all follows a strict formula: get into a debate with the boss and a new ability or item unlocked, get sent to a city, perform a few missions while getting into a debate with that city's Assassin representative between each one, finally perform the assassination and cut to mysterious blue fog land where you hold an extended conversation with the dying victim in a way that doesn't fit in with events at all. In a way it's a bit like Far Cry 2. Far Cry 3 and 4 follow the very basic elements, but 2 itself is extremely basic and lacking in polish. In the case of both series, the first game seems like the creators are still feeling out exactly where they want to take the game and figuring out what's fun about it and the next one actually finds their "voice" and ramps up the awesome as much as they can. I'm not including the first Far Cry or its spinoffs in this because it has virtually no connection to the current franchise except the name and isn't even running on the same engine or made by Ubisoft. If we're lucky, the inevitable sequel to Watch_Dogs will be the same. This will be the desaturated, clumsy attempt at figuring out where they want the franchise to go and the next game will be much more focused and polished. And probably have little or nothing to do with Aiden.
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Aug 18, 2015 17:13
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chitoryu12 posted:If we're lucky, the inevitable sequel to Watch_Dogs will be the same. This will be the desaturated, clumsy attempt at figuring out where they want the franchise to go and the next game will be much more focused and polished. And probably have little or nothing to do with Aiden. It would be genuinely good if this was the case, too. Like, we all give this game so much poo poo because I, for one, remember seeing the original reveal of concept and thinking it looked really intriguing. Stuff like using the profiler to pick out which security guard was just a rent-a-cop and which one was a badass martial arts instructor and then taking the route that kept you from fighting, or rescuing civilians and getting them out of the big firefight at the climax seemed like cool ideas and a guy who has a ton of information and tricks available but relatively limited force would make for a great stealth game. If Ubisoft makes a Watch_Dogs 2 and refines and does things better, finds some focus for their plots, and figures out how to make the missions and gameplay less bland, it would be great.
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Aug 18, 2015 17:24
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chitoryu12 posted:I remember how the first Assassin's Creed actually designed combat in such a way that anything other than countering during melee combat was almost completely pointless. They built it so that your own strikes got blocked most of the time, so the only effective way to deal damage was through instant kill counterattacks. One thing I did a few times was climb that one really tall tower in the countryside and just let enemies reach the top so I could shove them off. I ended up with dozens of bodies piled at the bottom. That tower story makes me think of one of my playthroughs of one of the Hitman games. I was trying to find a target in an asylum, and I kept missing a camera that would summon guards. So I would kill the guards and kept dragging their bodies off to this one room no one would enter. Before I finally gave up and started over, that room was lined wall to wall with two or three layers of guard bodies.
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Aug 18, 2015 17:31
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Right now, focus would be the key to fixing up Watch_Dogs. The lack of focus is twofold: the script clearly went through tons of rewrites and conflicting writers until it can just barely hold characterization straight-ish, and the gameplay tries to incorporate virtually everything decent open world games have incorporated until it's bloated and does a lot of things poorly instead of a few things really well. Making a good Watch_2ogs would involve having a very small amount of scriptwriters (preferably no more than 2 working together on the majority of the content) and deciding on a handful of important minigames or sidequests that can have plenty of attention given to them.....if you want to keep it an open world game. It may be beneficial to scrap the sandbox altogether and further focus it into a semi-linear game, where you go through a set series of missions but have multiple paths to complete them or even fully open areas like in Hitman: Blood Money. Honestly, the Hitman series may be a good one to emulate for this. The idea of semi-open or completely open levels performed in a linear plot would really help keep the game focused and cut down on dissonance while still allowing for creativity and things like Aiden maintaining a certain reputation depending on how he completes objectives and the body count he leaves behind. It feels like the decision to make Watch_Dogs a sandbox was less that it was integral to the idea and more that someone decided that sandbox games are big and they need to make one. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Aug 18, 2015 |
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Aug 18, 2015 17:32
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Alpha Protocol would be another good place to look for inspiration in two respects: Firstly, information is used really, really well in that game. There are all sorts of situations where you go in knowing something the other person didn't know you knew and you can use it to get the upper hand or guide things. That would be very in-theme for a game where the main character's power is 'I am a superhacker'. Secondly, the idea that positive OR negative interactions both have some sort of benefit to the player. Something like the reputation giving different benefits for being either a cold killer or a skilled professional.
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Aug 18, 2015 17:46
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Night10194 posted:Alpha Protocol would be another good place to look for inspiration in two respects: Firstly, information is used really, really well in that game. There are all sorts of situations where you go in knowing something the other person didn't know you knew and you can use it to get the upper hand or guide things. That would be very in-theme for a game where the main character's power is 'I am a superhacker'. Secondly, the idea that positive OR negative interactions both have some sort of benefit to the player. Something like the reputation giving different benefits for being either a cold killer or a skilled professional. Except the AP hacking sucked and after hours of play, I was completely unable to leave that first room.
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Aug 18, 2015 17:50
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Samizdata posted:Except the AP hacking sucked and after hours of play, I was completely unable to leave that first room. I was talking about the concepts of how information and interaction with NPCs are used rather than the specific gameplay mechanics (on that front, AP could also use a refined sequel).
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Aug 18, 2015 17:52
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Samizdata posted:Except the AP hacking sucked and after hours of play, I was completely unable to leave that first room. Tell me you're not serious. quote:Secondly, the idea that positive OR negative interactions both have some sort of benefit to the player. Something like the reputation giving different benefits for being either a cold killer or a skilled professional. This is something that always needs tweaking in games with karma or reputation systems. Along with the problems of balancing out how you become good or evil, they need concrete rewards of equal value for good, evil, and neutral.
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Aug 18, 2015 17:59
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chitoryu12 posted:Tell me you're not serious. Unfortunately, I am. I could stare and stare and look through squinted eyes and everything the FAQs recommended but I just could not see the unmoving numbers anywhere. Night10194 posted:I was talking about the concepts of how information and interaction with NPCs are used rather than the specific gameplay mechanics (on that front, AP could also use a refined sequel). Well, had I been able to get any further on, I would have known. I SO wanted to like the game and heard so many things that got my interest, it ended up being a double disappointment. Samizdata fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Aug 18, 2015 |
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Aug 18, 2015 18:03
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Samizdata posted:Unfortunately, I am. I could stare and stare and look through squinted eyes and everything the FAQs recommended but I just could not see the unmoving numbers anywhere.
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Aug 18, 2015 18:16
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Accordion Man posted:You're actually supposed to relax your eyes, it makes it far easier to see the numbers that way. Then you can just put a point in Sabotage and then just EMP every minigame. As I said, I tried everything I could think of and everything I could find in FAQs. Just chalked it up to "not wired that way"/"God doesn't want you playing this".
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Aug 18, 2015 18:18
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chitoryu12 posted:I remember how the first Assassin's Creed actually designed combat in such a way that anything other than countering during melee combat was almost completely pointless. They built it so that your own strikes got blocked most of the time, so the only effective way to deal damage was through instant kill counterattacks. One thing I did a few times was climb that one really tall tower in the countryside and just let enemies reach the top so I could shove them off. I ended up with dozens of bodies piled at the bottom. Assassin's Creed 1 suffered very heavily from not telling you what was happening, or even explaining it in a misleading way. When you say that your hits get blocked most of the time, you're actually being fooled. If your blow is neatly deflected, with a sort of ssssching sound, that is in fact a block. This doesn't happen very often unless you're facing down a templar. If it's simply a head-on block that clanks, that is a hit, and you have done damage. In fact, no more or less damage than if you had hit them in the face with the blade. And I couldn't tell you what likely-high percentage of people went through the combo attack tutorial, and assumed they should be able to kill anyone in two hits if they did it just right, when that's based on damage (you can only combo-kill if you've just brought them down to one hit or less of health, and every combo hit before that just makes your next strike smoother and faster). Even the counters are damage-based, and you'd knock down or kill based on whether the counter did enough damage to put their health down to 0. AC1 takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what's actually going on, but once you do, and put that knowledge to practice, the combat is way better than most people give it credit for, and can actually be a pretty smooth back and forth of offense and defense. At least once you actually get counter, dodge, and grab break; who the gently caress thought it was a good idea to delay those? AC2 really helped this by the introduction of letting you see the enemy's health so you knew when things were happening (because actually explaining things correctly would be hard), and giving you all the vital stuff straight away. But then they slowed down the attack speed for some reason, and made the hidden blades able to block and able to counter anyone, so everyone still just countered everything because it was faster. 
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Aug 18, 2015 19:26
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chitoryu12 posted:I remember how the first Assassin's Creed actually designed combat in such a way that anything other than countering during melee combat was almost completely pointless. They built it so that your own strikes got blocked most of the time, so the only effective way to deal damage was through instant kill counterattacks. One thing I did a few times was climb that one really tall tower in the countryside and just let enemies reach the top so I could shove them off. I ended up with dozens of bodies piled at the bottom. I believe the "blocked" attacks really were knocking off health, at least for the most part. The idea is that enemy hit points represent you wearing down their defenses until you can strike a killing blow, rather than dealing an arbitrary number of cuts before they keel over. That said, counter kills are so much faster and easier it's hilarious.
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Aug 18, 2015 19:31
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Felinoid posted:Assassin's Creed 1 suffered very heavily from not telling you what was happening, or even explaining it in a misleading way. When you say that your hits get blocked most of the time, you're actually being fooled. If your blow is neatly deflected, with a sort of ssssching sound, that is in fact a block. This doesn't happen very often unless you're facing down a templar. If it's simply a head-on block that clanks, that is a hit, and you have done damage. In fact, no more or less damage than if you had hit them in the face with the blade. And I couldn't tell you what likely-high percentage of people went through the combo attack tutorial, and assumed they should be able to kill anyone in two hits if they did it just right, when that's based on damage (you can only combo-kill if you've just brought them down to one hit or less of health, and every combo hit before that just makes your next strike smoother and faster). Even the counters are damage-based, and you'd knock down or kill based on whether the counter did enough damage to put their health down to 0. So what's the difference between the short sword and the longsword, other than the throwing knives?
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Aug 18, 2015 20:00
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Dabir posted:So what's the difference between the short sword and the longsword, other than the throwing knives? Less damage, faster, and it changes up the types of weapons you can counter if I remember right. I still prefer the way AC1 does hidden blade counters (high risk, high reward) to the 'simply the best' status in its sequels. There's something about standing in the middle of a group of guards half-terrified out of their minds, thinking "Yeah, I'm vulnerable here, but if I time it right this will look really cool." It might also be a decent approach to W_D2, too. The baton is clearly highly effective, but it really shouldn't do that much to stop a bullet. If you're putting yourself out in the middle of the room, there should be a high risk to go with the high reward - and on the subject of 'high reward', rather than just eliminating the target, let's say they change up the takedowns so that you always put your target between you and the gunman about to fire, so that either it stops them or they shoot their buddy by accident and freak out.
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Aug 18, 2015 22:03
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chitoryu12 posted:I remember how the first Assassin's Creed actually designed combat in such a way that anything other than countering during melee combat was almost completely pointless. They built it so that your own strikes got blocked most of the time, so the only effective way to deal damage was through instant kill counterattacks. One thing I did a few times was climb that one really tall tower in the countryside and just let enemies reach the top so I could shove them off. I ended up with dozens of bodies piled at the bottom. Eh, the way I got through 1 was literally just hammering on the counter button and attack button at pretty much the same time. Let you still attack while countering.
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Aug 18, 2015 22:03
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Dabir posted:So what's the difference between the short sword and the longsword, other than the throwing knives? The biggest difference is reach: whiffing with the short blade because you attacked from too far away may not actually take that much time, but it still pisses you off. The short blade is also faster (and thus better for crowds), upgrades less (it's actually equal to the sword in damage at the start, but the sword upgrades earlier and does so twice to the short blade's once), and has cooler counter and combo-kill animations imo. The sword's big draw (and the reason most people think it's always stronger when it isn't for half of the game) is that you can do a "big swing" by holding down the attack button, which does more damage than a regular swing. I don't remember if the big swing is double damage or just +base damage, because I never bother to use it since it's way slower, can only combo "big swing -> normal", and I seem to have trouble getting it to happen on a first attack. Damage upgrades are +50% of the base, sword gets its upgrades before the 5th(?) mission and before the 9th, while short blade gets its one upgrade before the 8th mission. There's a third "upgrade" the sword gets at one point that is actually the defense break, but just not worded properly. I forget whether you can defense break with the dagger because I never bother using that ability either unless I'm up against a templar.
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Aug 18, 2015 23:19
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Templars are really easy, just grab break them or counter them and beat their heads in. Or be a stealthy assassin and stab 'em before they know what's coming, you can do that most of the time.
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Aug 18, 2015 23:31
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Dabir posted:Templars are really easy, just grab break them or counter them and beat their heads in. Or be a stealthy assassin and stab 'em before they know what's coming, you can do that most of the time. No, the best thing is to go straight up to them, stop just short before they knock you down because they'll be in the shoving stance if you walk straight at them, and then when they start to taunt (because templars will start EVERY fight with a taunt), walk the last couple steps and shank them. It is the stupidest thing, but also the greatest because taking advantage of their hubris is incredibly appropriate.
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Aug 19, 2015 00:51
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I do like that most of these mechanics are still in newer AC games. But ever since Brotherhood introduced the execution streak option there's almost no point to them. Or at least until Unity the combat degenerated into "hit man until you do canned finisher animation, move stick to nearest man and mash, block and counter kill as necessary to win". Granted the execution streak was harder to do at first and even now you can throw a knife or use your gun to kill a guy instead and finish a fight stylishly.
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Aug 19, 2015 03:21
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Samizdata posted:As I said, I tried everything I could think of and everything I could find in FAQs. Just chalked it up to "not wired that way"/"God doesn't want you playing this". The first time I played AP I had this exact same problem. Put it back in the case, ignored it for a while, eventually ran across Bobbin's LP of it and was intrigued enough to try it again, and I promptly solved those puzzles with minimal difficulty. I really wish more people were aware of the good parts of that game, because so many games would be better off for being influenced by it. Also, I think it was in 1, and very definitely 2, if you were wailing on guards and they were not really "blocking" like a Templar would, they'd still bleed and act hurt, even if you never actually 'hit' them.
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Aug 19, 2015 06:45
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