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So I was gonna ask if any of the Valhalla DLC is worth it. I take it that's a no then?
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Jan 28, 2024 18:53
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Kirios posted:So I was gonna ask if any of the Valhalla DLC is worth it. I take it that's a no then? IMO the ones that happen in the real world are worth it. There's some cool story stuff in Ireland and France. The ragnarok stuff looks like it could be interesting if you're deeply invested in all the Odin stuff but eehhhhh by the time I got to it I was just ready to be done and didn't give two shits about anything that didn't directly involve Eavor. Also if I want play a norse mythology video game God of War is right there. edit: France in particular is a look into how the whole game could have been designed with more heavy assassination elements to be very different and, as far as I'm concerned, better.
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Jan 28, 2024 18:57
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AC DLCs in general suffer from being mostly pointless in the grand scheme of things, except for Odyssey. They disregard the core fantasy of Animus. In most of them the animus user has no reason to go there. Some (like Freedom Cry or Jack the Ripper) make you play as someone who is not connected to Animus at all, yet they maintain the Animus gimmick. I'm not really into a modern day story but if the devs don't even to provide any justification I can't be expected to care at all. Valhalla's DLCs aren't great cause they're more of the same, and there's enough of the same in the game already. But at least these are the best versions of Valhalla (and also that Odyssey toe-in island is cool). First Origins DLC was quite disappointing because it copied the most boring biome (rocks) and didn't add anything else except lessening the impact of the original game storyline. Turns out Bayek and Aya are not really not together anymore. But the second DLC was the greatest hits of the original game, it's best form in a small package, and also with some additions. This is the best model for AC DLCs I think, but they don't make much sense when the base game is so bloated. Kirios posted:So I was gonna ask if any of the Valhalla DLC is worth it. I take it that's a no then? So yeah, if you somehow want more Valhalla in your life then both Ireland and France DLCs are fine. I like Ireland DLC but for no objective reason, maybe it's story felt less psychotic to me (France DLC goes to interesting places trying to explain why looting Paris is self-defense really). ilitarist fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Jan 28, 2024 |
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Jan 28, 2024 19:35
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I really liked the Jotunheim DLC for Valhalla, loving with space and perspective was a cool new thing. Climbing the Enchanted Tower was a perfect example on how to turn AC into more Tomb Raider, shame it was so short.
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Jan 28, 2024 19:47
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AC has historically had a mix of DLC and the difference between the good and the bad is the good is generally taking the opportunity to experiment with some novel gameplay to see if its worth carrying into the next game. e: I would say that the Jotunheim roguelike dlc is of the good kind except a) Valhalla's combat model is easy and boring and b) if you tack a roguelike on top of a game that is already bloated and bland I'm just not going to play it no matter how good it might be.
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Jan 28, 2024 19:49
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Curse of the Pharaohs is easily the best DLC that Ubi's put out for any of their games.
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Jan 28, 2024 20:20
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ilitarist posted:AC DLCs in general suffer from being mostly pointless in the grand scheme of things, except for Odyssey. They disregard the core fantasy of Animus. In most of them the animus user has no reason to go there. Some (like Freedom Cry or Jack the Ripper) make you play as someone who is not connected to Animus at all, yet they maintain the Animus gimmick. I'm not really into a modern day story but if the devs don't even to provide any justification I can't be expected to care at all. TBH I kind of like how the Bayek and Aya thing was semi-walked back. Yeah, I know it undercuts one of the big emotional beats of the ending, but I think it rings true that they couldn't really stick to a clean break after everything that happened.
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Jan 28, 2024 23:44
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With the Animus stuff it kinda feels like that's what they were already doing with Origins at least? I know a lot of people hated the modern day stuff from the beginning but I always liked the premise, they definitely could have pulled it off better though. It seems like they've just almost entirely given up on it by Origins though, it might as well not be there at all (which would probably be the better option given how terrible what is there).
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Jan 29, 2024 00:07
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Ouroboros posted:With the Animus stuff it kinda feels like that's what they were already doing with Origins at least? I know a lot of people hated the modern day stuff from the beginning but I always liked the premise, they definitely could have pulled it off better though. It seems like they've just almost entirely given up on it by Origins though, it might as well not be there at all (which would probably be the better option given how terrible what is there). It becomes much more important in Ody/Val. Still not as central as it was in 1 or the Enzio trillogy, but very much there and a core part of the narrative.
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Jan 29, 2024 02:26
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Kirios posted:So I was gonna ask if any of the Valhalla DLC is worth it. I take it that's a no then? I never played the Ragnarok stuff (I hated the Odin parts of the base game) but the problem with the France/Ireland DLC is that it's really just more of the same, but the game itself is already too loving big and you need to finish every single region to see the ending, so you've either already sunk 100 hours in and are sick of it or you're prolonging seeing the ending by another 20-40 hours for some middling side stories. Ireland does at least give you a bobcat mount and some ridiculously overpowered weapons/armor to steamroll the rest of the game with, though, so that's a little fun.
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Jan 29, 2024 03:05
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The thing that bugged me about the Odin stuff is that I kept trying to figure out "what actually happened," since you're basically seeing Eivor's "Norse mythology" interpretation of all the Isu stuff. Like Fenrir is presumably a person, etc. It just feels a bit muddled in a way that's hard to explain. The Odin areas are visually very pretty, though.
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Jan 29, 2024 05:33
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e: whoops 
Carlosologist fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Jan 29, 2024 |
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Jan 29, 2024 05:42
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Want Kiryu to have his own AC game...
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Jan 29, 2024 05:47
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Ytlaya posted:The thing that bugged me about the Odin stuff is that I kept trying to figure out "what actually happened," since you're basically seeing Eivor's "Norse mythology" interpretation of all the Isu stuff. Like Fenrir is presumably a person, etc. It just feels a bit muddled in a way that's hard to explain. yeah i got to the end and i was like oh okay. so loki hated odin and piggybacked on his resurrection immortality to kill him and ruin his plans (because it seems like this resurrection only operates once unlike the other precursor human resurrecting in the earlier games?), and he did that because of his kid fenrir, who's....the result of a precursor human love affair? which was taboo for unclear but i guess political reasons given what the jotun-aesir divide symbolizes? anyways odin had the kid imprisoned or maybe killed because....i guess implicitly the computer that predicted the solar flare that would destroy their civilization also predicted loki's love affair kid would somehow kill odin? also at some point in all this baldr gets murdered in retaliation (with poison from a berry in a reference to the mistletoe myth?) except odin never reacts to that and never mentions loki in the present day because he still thinks he died permanently? the central idea of the ending works okay but all the scaffolding the whole game builds around it doesn't amount to much in the end. Valentin fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Jan 29, 2024 |
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Jan 29, 2024 09:47
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christmas boots posted:TBH I kind of like how the Bayek and Aya thing was semi-walked back. Yeah, I know it undercuts one of the big emotional beats of the ending, but I think it rings true that they couldn't really stick to a clean break after everything that happened. I know I'm asking too much from a stabbing game, but it didn't look like they semi-walked back, it looked like they never separated, and one of them was on a work trip.
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Jan 29, 2024 10:12
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Cyrano4747 posted:It becomes much more important in Ody/Val. Still not as central as it was in 1 or the Enzio trillogy, but very much there and a core part of the narrative. I just started Odyssey and this is filling me with dread lol. I absolutely do not want to spend any more time than i have to with these reddit-rear end characters
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Jan 29, 2024 10:32
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Ouroboros posted:I just started Odyssey and this is filling me with dread lol. I absolutely do not want to spend any more time than i have to with these reddit-rear end characters The vast, vast majority of the time you spend with her is in the end game, and the DLC that explains how you get from Animus'ing around in Greece to Vikings.
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Jan 29, 2024 14:05
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Ytlaya posted:Want Kiryu to have his own AC game... Even though I know what thread I'm in my mind first went to Kiryu in a huge mech.
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Jan 29, 2024 16:09
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Ouroboros posted:I just started Odyssey and this is filling me with dread lol. I absolutely do not want to spend any more time than i have to with these reddit-rear end characters The good thing is that you can usually just hop right back into the animus.
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Jan 29, 2024 16:18
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i've played hundreds of hours of odyssey and i dont even remember who the modern day character is or what they look like or what their surroundings are. i know i'm a filthy main-story avoider and have spent most of those hundreds of hours cruising around the aegean doing completely random poo poo but like.. once you get past the intro sequence, there's a whole ancient greece for you to play around with for as long as you want without seeing any of that animus crap if you don't want to
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Jan 29, 2024 16:25
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Odyssey also doesn't even let you leave the animus whenever the way Origins did so even if you wanted to pop out to read emails it's not happening I think the modern day section is like...0.5% of game time in Odyssey? Maybe a whole 1% when you throw in the bad Atlantis DLC
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Jan 29, 2024 16:34
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edit misread
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Jan 29, 2024 19:12
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Alchenar posted:AC has historically had a mix of DLC and the difference between the good and the bad is the good is generally taking the opportunity to experiment with some novel gameplay to see if its worth carrying into the next game. I fully agree with you. To me it seems like DLCs are both auditions for smaller / branch - studios along with gauging new game models. The biggest example i can point to is say the experience of France vs Druids (Ireland) vs Jotunheim vs the Roguelike experience in Valhalla. I would only play 2 of the 4 ever again.
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Jan 30, 2024 01:18
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I've been playing Odyssey after finishing Origins, at around level 25 so a fair way in. Initial impressions are that it's a cool evolution of the ideas introduced in Origins, though I could see why this would be the straw the broke the camels back if you were unhappy with the new direction for the series, because it absolutely is a doubling down. I'm more familiar with the setting than I was with Egypt and so far the characters and plot seem a little more compelling than they were in Origins (the writing is still absolutely nothing special though), although visually I think Egypt was much more aesthetically pleasing with greater diversity of landscapes and a more interesting colour composition; Odyssey looks great but it doesn't wow me in the way Origins frequently did. I love the expanded naval combat which I thought really didn't work in Origins as a sort of short enforced detour but does far better here. I like the expansion of the combat system and the choice to add dialogue options is neat, though it's not really fleshed out enough; I get the impression they are caught between wanting to offer player choice and wanting to have a protagonist with a defined character, and they kind of end up in no man's land and fail to succeed at pulling off either. I'm not sure about the expanded gear system, I generally am not a fan of loot RPGs and this goes too far down that road for my taste and ends up feeling like irritating admin much of the time. Also I noticed a weird issue with level scaling where I seemed to be consistently getting weaker as I levelled up, although that has evened out a bit as I got above level 20; the enemies are absolutely way too hp-spongey in general though, and in that 15-20 range it seemed absolutely ridiculous how long it took to kill individual guys of my own level. I would also say it has some pretty baffling polish issues and backwards steps it has taken from Origins, which is weird as it is clearly heavily built off the back of that game. Parkour especially feels significantly worse than it did in Origins, way glitchier and often it doesn't let me climb certain terrain or objects when it seems like I should be able to, and not consistently at all. I didn't love the massively simplified 'hold A to climb anything' system from Origins, but at least it was consistent that I could climb anything and it felt like the system worked properly, Odyssey's just feels kind of broken. And finally the modern day sections seem somehow even worse, genuinely some of the worst written characters and dialogue I've ever seen in a game, it's almost impressive. Mercifully they seem to realise this limitation and so far it has been even less prominent than in Origins. I always liked the idea and setup for the modern day stuff in AC, but it's clear at this point they obviously cannot pull it off and should probably not try.
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Jan 31, 2024 19:50
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IIRC there were alternating teams, so the Origins team worked on Valhalla and it was a different one that did Odyssey. Maybe that accounts for some of the weirdness?
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Jan 31, 2024 22:08
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christmas boots posted:IIRC there were alternating teams, so the Origins team worked on Valhalla and it was a different one that did Odyssey. Maybe that accounts for some of the weirdness? I would really like a deep dive documentary or long read on how development at a place like Ubisoft works. Not as ammo to fuel my nerd rage against them but because it is truly fascinating. There are different teams but since they are obviously all under one umbrella it'd be interesting to know how sharing and collaboration and coordination happens among the different teams. And then there's how all the outsourcing fits in. You can see how certain story elements need to be consistent but gameplay mechanics are a toss-up between "let's iterate on this" or "let's abandon this" or even "hey this is making a return" and some of it could be explained by teams leapfrogging sequels but not necessarily.
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Jan 31, 2024 22:18
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christmas boots posted:IIRC there were alternating teams, so the Origins team worked on Valhalla and it was a different one that did Odyssey. Maybe that accounts for some of the weirdness? There have been alternating teams (with some overlap) for most of AC's existence, which is why a lot of the adjacent games using the game generation of their engine feel like watching an argument play out over what the game is supposed to be.
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Jan 31, 2024 22:23
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Alchenar posted:There have been alternating teams (with some overlap) for most of AC's existence, which is why a lot of the adjacent games using the game generation of their engine feel like watching an argument play out over what the game is supposed to be. Whichever team it was that stared the argument with "so you've played Sid Meier's Pirates!, right?" is the right team 
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Jan 31, 2024 22:24
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Also the constant QoL regressions like the teams aren't even talking to each other or playing each others' games (they probably didn't).
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Jan 31, 2024 22:24
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orcane posted:Also the constant QoL regressions like the teams aren't even talking to each other or playing each others' games (they probably didn't). It's not a question of teams not talking to each other. There is so much turnover, and general dept shuffling at big companies like UBI, that they're basically starting from scratch with a new crew every time they start a new game. Same reason DICE seems to forget how to make a Battlefield game with every new iteration.
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Jan 31, 2024 22:45
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Cyrano4747 posted:Whichever team it was that stared the argument with "so you've played Sid Meier's Pirates!, right?" is the right team Are you sure? It was Valhalla's team and the director got metoo'd 
Deakul fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jan 31, 2024 |
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Jan 31, 2024 22:45
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I like how this series falls apart the moment you spend more than a minute thinking about any of it’s aspects. Like, why does the Greece you run around in need to be a miniature if the real thing, where you cross a real-life 10-mile wide valley in two hoppity hops.
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Jan 31, 2024 22:49
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Mokotow posted:I like how this series falls apart the moment you spend more than a minute thinking about any of it’s aspects. Like, why does the Greece you run around in need to be a miniature if the real thing, where you cross a real-life 10-mile wide valley in two hoppity hops. this is...every open world game that has ever existed
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Jan 31, 2024 22:54
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Still dumb
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Jan 31, 2024 23:01
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Lobok posted:I would really like a deep dive documentary or long read on how development at a place like Ubisoft works. Not as ammo to fuel my nerd rage against them but because it is truly fascinating. There are different teams but since they are obviously all under one umbrella it'd be interesting to know how sharing and collaboration and coordination happens among the different teams. And then there's how all the outsourcing fits in. You can see how certain story elements need to be consistent but gameplay mechanics are a toss-up between "let's iterate on this" or "let's abandon this" or even "hey this is making a return" and some of it could be explained by teams leapfrogging sequels but not necessarily. Yeah it would definitely be interesting to see the inner workings of a AAA content mill like Ubisoft. Probably also kind of depressing lol, but interesting nonetheless. I recently learned that AC:Revelations was co-developed by SIX internal Ubisoft dev teams across the world as they rushed to turn it from a mobile game into a full fledged AC game to fill the gap until AC3 after it got delayed. The fact that they managed to gaffer tape together literally all their dev teams, totally pivot the direction of the game and stitch something together in about 10 months, let alone a game as solid as Revelations, is totally crazy.
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Jan 31, 2024 23:06
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I find it fascinating a separate studio was doing just the Thames and boat traffic in Syndicate.
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Jan 31, 2024 23:07
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Mokotow posted:I find it fascinating a separate studio was doing just the Thames and boat traffic in Syndicate. there's nothing really like that in any of the other games. syndicate also has carriages, a train, and the grappling hook so overall quite a lot of different movement options than a normal ac game up to that point i like the game a lot, though i do get a bit bored with the strictly "one city" style of map and wish they had also included some countryside. would've worked great with the carriages and trains etc
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Jan 31, 2024 23:57
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Deakul posted:Are you sure? eeeewwwwwwww. Goddamnit, should have known better than to say something positive about Ubi.
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Feb 1, 2024 00:04
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I was frequently thinking of my time in Syndicate while playing Watch Dogs Legion. Especially while crossing the Thames (on a big cargo drone...).
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Feb 1, 2024 00:49
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Whoever's job it was in AC Syndicate to make London look like a filthy disgusting shithole deserved a medal. Probably the most well-realized concept of a game you can smell.
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Feb 1, 2024 01:25
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