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orcane posted:E: Wait what version of Odyssey did I play, it absolutely had level gating and wasn't any better in terms of "and now gently caress around on different islands until you can survive in the next area the plot sends you to". If you only do main story and nothing else you will get to the point where the enemies are buffed with skulls. It is bullshit of course, Valhalla is better in that regard as it just lets enemies be more dangerous, but not impossible. The point is, the game story is often telling you to go just do whatever, and there are plenty of quest chains the game wants you to take on. And unlike Origins, everything is auto leveled up, so doing a quest in a starting region is not going to give an insignificant reward. If you follow the main story but also do the quests you see on your way you are very likely to be over-leveled - on my second playthrough I was level 50 at the end of the story when the requirement was 35, I think, and I only visited a couple of regions I wasn't sent to by the story, and didn't hunt cultists or Atlantis monsters.
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Aug 2, 2023 13:10
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The future ending in Odyssey is the good one, sorry. Family stuff is alright but seeing Kassandra’s end is heartbreaking.
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Aug 2, 2023 13:11
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Arivia posted:The future ending in Odyssey is the good one, sorry. Family stuff is alright but seeing Kassandra’s end is heartbreaking. It's a cool reveal but they didn't really think about the implications (what was she doing for thousands of years? why hasn't anyone met or heard of her? is she a businesswoman? why is it so important for Layla to get the staff now?) and then when they fill in those gaps in the next game you can tell they were struggling to answer those questions (secretly guarding various Isu artifacts, she's a paranoid recluse I guess, we don't know, and so a secret Isu reincarnate can wear a wolf-shirt). Valhalla does a similar thing where about midway through they pose the question: why are Eivor's bones in America? And then they don't actually answer that question until a DLC released over a year later, and the answer is so bad you just know they came up with it afterwards to try and awkwardly fit it into the game they made.
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Aug 2, 2023 15:36
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Wolfsheim posted:It's a cool reveal but they didn't really think about the implications (what was she doing for thousands of years? why hasn't anyone met or heard of her? is she a businesswoman? why is it so important for Layla to get the staff now?) and then when they fill in those gaps in the next game you can tell they were struggling to answer those questions (secretly guarding various Isu artifacts, she's a paranoid recluse I guess, we don't know, and so a secret Isu reincarnate can wear a wolf-shirt). Also, like, so she lived for all those years why didn't she keep an eye out for her ancestors? It makes her come off as some callous deadbeat when they introduced that stupid DLC. Had she just remained a mercenary with no earthly ties, it'd make sense and she'd just spend that time globetrotting through the ages like she did around Greece during the game. That DLC was awful for so many friggan reasons. I just wish they'd go off the drat rail with that story. Kassandra showing up in modern day was a brief glimmer of hope but then flushed it down the toilet for a character who got written out of the story in the next game. A game with ancient aliens shouldn't be afraid to get really stupid. Like what if Kassandra figured out that the dumb immortality staff could support multiple people and Kassandra just goes around and collects all the games' protagonists and brings them into the modern age. Why? Who cares. They're the best face stabbers in history and the templars need a good face stabbing.
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Aug 2, 2023 15:54
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This idea would signify a close to the story because you can't go anywhere after an event like that, and franchises don't have the end, the best they can hope for is some wrap-up comic book released 10 years after people stop caring. They've already give themselves a possibility to allow Cassandra to waltz into any game they make in the future.
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Aug 2, 2023 17:04
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ilitarist posted:If you only do main story and nothing else you will get to the point where the enemies are buffed with skulls. It is bullshit of course, Valhalla is better in that regard as it just lets enemies be more dangerous, but not impossible. The point is, the game story is often telling you to go just do whatever, and there are plenty of quest chains the game wants you to take on. And unlike Origins, everything is auto leveled up, so doing a quest in a starting region is not going to give an insignificant reward. numbers in an action game O_o
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Aug 2, 2023 17:13
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Unfortunately Kassandrab lives, the Pythagoras scene shows us what happens when someone dies from relinquishing the staff (burns from the inside, dissolves into duest) and nothing like that that happens to her, she just falls on the ground and is not here the next time we visit the level.
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Aug 2, 2023 18:46
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ilitarist posted:This idea would signify a close to the story because you can't go anywhere after an event like that, and franchises don't have the end, the best they can hope for is some wrap-up comic book released 10 years after people stop caring. Ten years of gathering the team, ten more years of said team stabbing face. After that? Ten years of stabbing face... in space! After that? Reboot. Kuiperdolin posted:Unfortunately Kassandrab lives, the Pythagoras scene shows us what happens when someone dies from relinquishing the staff (burns from the inside, dissolves into duest) and nothing like that that happens to her, she just falls on the ground and is not here the next time we visit the level. 
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Aug 2, 2023 19:20
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Kuiperdolin posted:Unfortunately Kassandrab lives, the Pythagoras scene shows us what happens when someone dies from relinquishing the staff (burns from the inside, dissolves into duest) and nothing like that that happens to her, she just falls on the ground and is not here the next time we visit the level. If it wasn't for "duest" I wouldn't have second-guessed "Kassandrab" as a great name for her boring pantsuit era but now I'm wondering if it actually was just a wonderful typo.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:55
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i feel like the inconsistency and length of the story in Odyssey doesn't really matter that much because Kassandra is still a fun character and a lot of the side characters are very entertaining as well, so I can enjoy myself whether its technically "good writing" or not. whereas the characters in Valhalla are mostly some combination of angry, depressed, consumed by stupid petty grudges, etc and the whole thing just has an overly serious vibe that drags the game down. there is some good humor and occasional fun or interesting writing in the little encounters out in the world and some of the side stories and regional quests, and i thought Fulke was a cool charactr/villain. but any time either Sigurd or Dag were on screen it just sucked imo, they are some of the worst characters in the whole series. and i wasn't much of a fan of the portrayal of the Ragnarssons in the game either
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Aug 3, 2023 05:23
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Ulio posted:Ya I know it was a big success and maybe you are right I am being too defensive about it's criticism. What kinda I meant was lets say if both GoT and AC had the same issue, AC would get way more flak for it and they kinda do. GoT has shitload of collect/checkmark poo poo which AC gets blasted for. I do think GoT does a better job at making those side repetitive stuff more rewarding with real upgrades and not random loot but AC has been getting better with that as well. Also I know it's for branding reasons but this game is just two different series in one and lots of the criticism for the old series have stuck even though they are not there or have been improved long ago(new issues did come up though). I 100% agree with you that every criticism leveled at an AC game is just as valid when it comes to GoT. It's like people were just so drat ready for a samurai japan game their critical brains just evaporated. Did people actually enjoy chasing a fox to an area you already knew where it was going? Did people really enjoy slowly picking disjointed lines to form a an anachronistic poem? I also thought the main story was kind of boring (turns out samurai are giant fuckin egotistical dumbasses!), but that the sidequests showed a profound lack of imagination. Every single one boiled down to the same "bandits/mongols did it, kill them" and any possibly imaginative setup was abandoned soon after to reveal it was just that. I dunno, it looks real good, and the extra rock, paper, scissors think layered on top of the combat was fun but man it didn't really offer much that any other AC game did.
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Aug 3, 2023 06:50
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I like the duel against the fake samurai
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Aug 3, 2023 08:44
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kassandra didn't change her hair style in 2000 years e: uh the side content in these rpg style AC games is a million times more repetitive and annoying than GoT, what universe are you people living in? there's probably like more enemy bases to clear in a single island in Odyssey than in the entirety of Tsushima. Mantis42 fucked around with this message at 09:03 on Aug 3, 2023 |
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Aug 3, 2023 09:00
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Regarding something the thread was talking about, AC:Jade spoilers (the mobile one, set in third centuary China): Kassandra shows up
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Aug 3, 2023 12:57
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Mantis42 posted:kassandra didn't change her hair style in 2000 years If you nailed the sidebraid on your first try, would you change your hairstyle, either?
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Aug 3, 2023 12:59
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exquisite tea posted:If you nailed the sidebraid on your first try, would you change your hairstyle, either? If we're taking this criticism seriously then it would make sense for her to use exactly the same hairstyle Layla would remember from using Animus. But then I think it's exactly the same in Valhalla, so your justification is better.
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Aug 3, 2023 13:11
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screaden posted:It's like people were just so drat ready for a samurai japan game their critical brains just evaporated. Did people actually enjoy chasing a fox to an area you already knew where it was going? yes? what makes GoT special to me is not the fact that its set in Japan, its little touches exactly like that. following a fox instead of following a glowing icon. following a pillar of smoke on the horizon instead of following a different kind of glowing icon. following footsteps on a path that just look like natural footsteps on a path instead of going into some kind of special "vision mode" bullshit. to me that kind of thing makes a huge difference and I would appreciate it whether the game was set in Japan or Rome or Egypt or wherever else, i would love to see much more that kind of thing incorporated into AC and other open world games
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Aug 3, 2023 14:31
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I never played Ghost of Tsushima but I agree with the notion that flavor like that is important. AC writers sometimes try to write complex good story and it's all for naught. They should write boring predictable story appropriate for the setting. Odyssey and Valhalla are at their best when they just copypaste anecdotes about the era. There are a lot of generic stories in these games that could happen in any setting, and even when they're decently implemented they feel like a filler. Valhalla is weaker in terms of story (I rarely see world events that tell me "this is Dark Ages", especially with how everyone leaves notes everywhere. Odyssey has more quests concerning theater, statues, slaves, prophecies and all that stuff you'd recognize as Greek) but I appreciate it having activities made specifically for a Norseman, not just generic mini-games. I never heard about stone stacking before playing this game but it feels personalized for the setting and it's clear that Basim or whoever we play in the future won't bother with this. I hate this mini-game but I'm sure glad it's there.
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Aug 3, 2023 15:02
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the thing is for all the historical research they do, they are also sometimes extremely sloppy. or i guess, broad. like yes, if you look at the specific year the Valhalla is set in, and the historical characters who appear in the story, thats technically "the Dark Ages". but they also brought in a huge amount of architecture, weapons, armor, clothing, etc. from much later into the medieval era, and even from other parts of the world. there are huge Norman-style stone castles all over England two centuries before the Normans even showed up (and it took them two more centuries to build that stuff after they did). you can wear brigandine armor, which wasn't introduced to Europe until the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, and you can wield a claymore, which was invented in the 15th century, almost into the renaissance. so it's not really going to look or feel like the Dark Ages, even if you've got Alfred and Ivar there to say that's what it is.
Earwicker fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Aug 3, 2023 |
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Aug 3, 2023 15:13
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One thing I really liked about GoT that I don't see most open world games do is give you the tools and clues you need to find everything. If you want to make things go quickly then sure you can pop open a GameFAQs page or YouTube tutorial but between the diegetic visual indicators, those chirping birds, the Traveller armour, and maybe something else I'm forgetting, you can both naturally discover things by yourself and also track down every last little thing you've missed without needing any outside resource or checklist and without it straight up actually telling you the location.
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Aug 3, 2023 15:44
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Earwicker posted:the thing is for all the historical research they do, they are also sometimes extremely sloppy. or i guess, broad. like yes, if you look at the specific year the Valhalla is set in, and the historical characters who appear in the story, thats technically "the Dark Ages". but they also brought in a huge amount of architecture, weapons, armor, clothing, etc. from much later into the medieval era, and even from other parts of the world. there are huge Norman-style stone castles all over England two centuries before the Normans even showed up (and it took them two more centuries to build that stuff after they did). you can wear brigandine armor, which wasn't introduced to Europe until the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, and you can wield a claymore, which was invented in the 15th century, almost into the renaissance. so it's not really going to look or feel like the Dark Ages, even if you've got Alfred and Ivar there to say that's what it is. It has been talked about to death already. Gameplay comes first, and if you want any cool locations or equipment in your game about Dark Ages then you have to make it not about the Dark Ages. You wouldn't want to climb wooden huts and wooden forts throughout the whole game while using simple equipment that does the job (though here as you play as an influential Viking they could totally get away with allowing you to import the equipment from all over the known world). I'm talking about the feels here, not historicity. Odyssey includes SPARTAN KICK from 300 and it has nothing to do with history, but you look at it and say yeah, this is Sparta indeed. I'm talking about these elements that help to distinguish the setting and add to the theme. I don't like Unity but one thing it did was giving a nice flavor to repetitive small missions, some of which didn't even get voice acting. A lot of them were based on Paris urban myths or rumors. If I post their description here you'll be able to instantly tell it's a story from 18th century France. If I post descriptions of many side stories from many open-world games, including Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, you will not be able to tell where this story comes from, maybe it's even from Witcher or Skyrim or whatever.
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Aug 3, 2023 16:00
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GoT also had good combat unlike every AC game ever
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Aug 3, 2023 16:16
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Sakurazuka posted:GoT also had good combat unlike every AC game ever origins and odyssy has pretty good combat but yeah GoT had really good combat, just different from AC.
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Aug 3, 2023 17:14
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ilitarist posted:It has been talked about to death already. Gameplay comes first, and if you want any cool locations or equipment in your game about Dark Ages then you have to make it not about the Dark Ages. You wouldn't want to climb wooden huts and wooden forts throughout the whole game while using simple equipment that does the job well yeah, but in that case there's no real reason to even set the story in the dark ages, they could have written just as decent (or much better) of an AC game story if it had been set in 13th century england or france or whatever, it's just kind of seemed to me that its set in the dark ages because thats when vikings, an extremely popular video game subject, were around so they just kind of mashed it all up into a more generic medieval-ish experience. but there's nothing really about the "viking-ness" of Eivor or the other characters that serves either the gameplay or the feeling well, imo. in terms of feeling it just kind of coats everything in this layer of additional angst and brooding, and in terms of gameplay i feel like the whole longboat/crew thing had potential but they completely half-assed it, and the raids were mostly kind of irritating, and the combat has a more sluggish feel. i don't think the series does well with set piece battles in general - i found the battle system in Odyssey a bit more fluid and dynamic at least, though also not one of that game's strengths either. really the only positive thing that the "dark age/vikings" layer adds to the setting was getting Wardruna to contribute to the soundtrack
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Aug 3, 2023 19:07
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Ubisoft has a month of Ubisoft+ for $1 if anyone wants to try Ragnarok or whatever. (I'm pretty sure the subscription now includes it) https://store.ubisoft.com/us/ubisoftplus?lang=en_US Offer ends tomorrow. Rinkles fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Aug 7, 2023 |
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Aug 7, 2023 14:43
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I just finished my first playthrough of Unity, and it wasn't so bad. Arno's kinda boring but I liked how his parkour felt different from Ezio's. Since I'm waiting for Starfield to come out I'm going through and playing stuff in my library I either never played or never finished, so I installed AC3 remastered. What a terrible loving idea to make you play for 3 hours before you even get to be the main character!
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Aug 16, 2023 18:35
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i remember really really wanting to like AC3 because Last of the Mohicans is one of my favorite movies ever and AC3 was basically looking like the closest thing we were ever going. to get to Last of the Mohicans: the Videogame. but it was such a loving disappointment. there were moments in the game where i had fun but imo its by far the worst game in the whole series. i'll add the caveat that i never played Rogue, but i heard it wasnt as bad.
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Aug 16, 2023 18:49
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Rogue is quite good and can actually be closer to what you expected from AC3 cause it's set during the same war and the feeling of unexplored frontier is much stronger there. A lot of it takes place around Canada so it's more snowy though.
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Aug 16, 2023 19:13
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Ha, I realized I somehow had Rogue so that's what I'm playing now.
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Aug 16, 2023 19:43
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The first AC game to acknowledge how loving conspicuous the standard assassin's getup is?
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Aug 17, 2023 03:56
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The outfit concept in Liberation is really cool.
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Aug 17, 2023 04:06
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yea i really wish this series had just straight up stolen the disguise mechanic from Hitman, most of the default Assassin outfits are kind of ridiculous. plus all the different disguises you could potentially use in different eras would be really fun honestly a crossover between the two series' would be amazing. like Hitman-sized sandbox levels in which you can disguise yourself as anyone and set up crazy shenanigan assassinations, except in a bunch of different historical eras Earwicker fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Aug 17, 2023 |
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Aug 17, 2023 06:18
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Earwicker posted:well yeah, but in that case there's no real reason to even set the story in the dark ages, they could have written just as decent (or much better) of an AC game story if it had been set in 13th century england or france or whatever, it's just kind of seemed to me that its set in the dark ages because thats when vikings, an extremely popular video game subject, were around so they just kind of mashed it all up into a more generic medieval-ish experience. I like that AC1 doesnf have any dissonance because youre just straight up one of the hashashin
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Aug 17, 2023 06:45
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Earwicker posted:honestly a crossover between the two series' would be amazing. like Hitman-sized sandbox levels in which you can disguise yourself as anyone and set up crazy shenanigan assassinations, except in a bunch of different historical eras It sounds fun, but on a fundamental level Hitman and Assassins are very different. A perfect job for 47 is when nobody knows he was even there, and the target seems to die in an accident (I assume investigation later shows it was a murder but by that time 47 is on the other side of the world and the Agency probably tampers with the evidence). Assassins - both in-game secret society and I think the historical society too - want the murder to be seen, they want to scare their enemies. Even when AC game gives you some special murder way it's very obviously a murder that puts everyone on alert.
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Aug 17, 2023 08:28
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ilitarist posted:A perfect job for 47 is when nobody knows he was even there, and the target seems to die in an accident (I assume investigation later shows it was a murder i mean yea technically but do most people actually play the game that way? i mean yes its kind of fun to try to do it perfectly and to get achievements or whatever, but its way more fun when everyone in the level is running around freaking out trying to find the murderer, while you're standing there mopping the floor and yeah i know it doesnt quite fit with the AC lore. i think it'd be better as just a Hitman game, but set in different periods.
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Aug 17, 2023 08:37
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Some of the challenges for Hitman require louder/more public approaches and the recent rogue-lite mode rewards (and basically necessitates) a wider range of styles than a maximum stealth one.
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Aug 17, 2023 09:43
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Doing a historical Hitman is tricky too because a lot of Hitman design relies on understanding social roles, modern technology and gadgets. That Vita game featured a girl switching from slave outfit to lady outfit to be unnoticed in specific places, you can't go blunter than that. I can imagine, say, Basim using a guard outfit and a nobleman outfit, but not much else except for rare cases where he'd need to infiltrate, say, mine and have to dress like a miner. And with gadgets and opportunities it might feel too handholdy if the game has to constantly explain too you what is going to happen. Like when you replace a golf ball with a ball you don't need a lot of context, I imagine it would be different if you have to exploit a hobby of someone from a different time and culture. There are many generic creative murders like heavy stuff falling or wild animals getting out, but this is already in the game, just used in a general gameplay, just not used for scenic murders. But now that I've thought about there's nothing impossible here. The biggest issue I see is that Ubisoft and many other developers are probably really afraid to tell players that this game will probably take 4 hours to complete but wait, if you go for all the achievements and special cool stuff you'll spend hundreds of hours here.
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Aug 17, 2023 11:35
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ilitarist posted:Doing a historical Hitman is tricky too because a lot of Hitman design relies on understanding social roles, modern technology and gadgets. That Vita game featured a girl switching from slave outfit to lady outfit to be unnoticed in specific places, you can't go blunter than that. I can imagine, say, Basim using a guard outfit and a nobleman outfit, but not much else except for rare cases where he'd need to infiltrate, say, mine and have to dress like a miner. I thought it was a really neat touch that in the part of AC: Syndicate when you go to the ball, where as Evie's wearing a formal dress she can't move like she normally does. Disguises actually impacting what you can do physically in games would be a really interesting mechanic that would work with that. But probably an annoying mechanic for most people I imagine.
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Aug 17, 2023 12:16
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10 Beers posted:I just finished my first playthrough of Unity, and it wasn't so bad. Arno's kinda boring but I liked how his parkour felt different from Ezio's. Since I'm waiting for Starfield to come out I'm going through and playing stuff in my library I either never played or never finished, so I installed AC3 remastered. What a terrible loving idea to make you play for 3 hours before you even get to be the main character! Unity is a game I like the setting and what they could have done, but the bugs and execution killed it. The combat changes weren’t the best either, I think most people are fine with the one hit kills and nothing too challenging combat wise unless you get swarmed
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Aug 17, 2023 13:13
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ilitarist posted:Doing a historical Hitman is tricky too because a lot of Hitman design relies on understanding social roles, modern technology and gadgets. That Vita game featured a girl switching from slave outfit to lady outfit to be unnoticed in specific places, you can't go blunter than that. I can imagine, say, Basim using a guard outfit and a nobleman outfit, but not much else except for rare cases where he'd need to infiltrate, say, mine and have to dress like a miner. You can easily get a lot more variety than that for a specific location. A generic Hitman area might have outdoor staff, indoor staff, kitchen staff, important people, normal guards and elite guards (plus a few unique disguises) and you could easily translate that to pretty much any AC setting. But Hitman's globetrotting formula gives them a lot more scope to mix things up whereas AC's more localised setting is going to lead to more uniformity. A conspiracy gala on a remote Scottish island is going to feel different to a Miami racetrack in a way that two different buildings in Victorian London won't.
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Aug 17, 2023 13:18
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