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So I haven't played an AC game since the Ezio ones and inexplicably had a jonesing for some AC. I had a brief look and am I right in guessing that Origins and Odyssey are the two best options for recent-ish titles? Should I start with Origins first or skip to Odyssey? The Greek setting maybe is a little more interesting to me but am I going to be lost storywise if I skip to it? I started playing a bit of Origins and I'm liking it okay but I'm getting the distinct feeling that its one of those games I am going to get bored with well before I run out of content.
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Jan 17, 2024 03:53
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Ouroboros posted:Should I start with Origins first or skip to Odyssey? The Greek setting maybe is a little more interesting to me but am I going to be lost storywise if I skip to it? Personally I think Origins is better of the two but there is plenty to like in Odyssey.
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Jan 17, 2024 04:32
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Ouroboros posted:So I haven't played an AC game since the Ezio ones and inexplicably had a jonesing for some AC. I had a brief look and am I right in guessing that Origins and Odyssey are the two best options for recent-ish titles? Should I start with Origins first or skip to Odyssey? The Greek setting maybe is a little more interesting to me but am I going to be lost storywise if I skip to it? I started playing a bit of Origins and I'm liking it okay but I'm getting the distinct feeling that its one of those games I am going to get bored with well before I run out of content. While most people seem to prefer Origins/Odyssey, it's worth trying Valhalla (particularly if you have Gamepass since it's currently on that). I personally liked Valhalla more for a few reasons.
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Jan 17, 2024 04:57
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Origins is a far more interesting stand alone story. Valhalla has a few things that are major plot points and will be a big wtf if you didn’t play odyssey. Origins is also the most reasonably scoped and paced of the three. I’d start with it and do the others if it grabs you.
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Jan 17, 2024 05:23
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I just came across a very funny/weird bug in Valhalla. I'm riding with Ubba/Ivarr/Sigurd/Coelbert for a main quest, and just randomly on the side of the road is my longship, turned on its side with everyone in it. Not even very close to any rivers.Regensburg? Edit: lol my game crashed soon after, and the second time around there are two flipped over longships in the same place! Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 05:46
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it's kind of incredible how not a stealth game valhalla is lmao. it's not a question of "well it's not the only route," it's simply not a stealth game in any real meaningful sense (it's at like a horizon zero dawn level). there is afaict literally no option for handling two guards near each other from stealth without getting into combat. the advanced stealth tree you unlock has 11 new skills and exactly one relates to assassination or stealth, the rest are either archery or literally intended for combat. and it's not like the combat's good! e: since we're discussing the modern games generally i'll chime in to say odyssey also has basically no stealth gameplay but the sailing and combat are better than valhalla by a country mile. double e: i do wonder what people will think of red if it keeps to this model. japanese myth is not exactly resonant for western audiences the way greek or norse myths are, and the reason everyone wanted a japan game was to be a ninja. but that kind of stealth gameplay really hasn't been part of the game since 1, or maybe the ezio games if you're really generous. and we already did a major ubi-style open world game that was pretty well received about being a samurai. Valentin fucked around with this message at 08:21 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 08:10
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Valentin posted:e: since we're discussing the modern games generally i'll chime in to say odyssey also has basically no stealth gameplay but the sailing and combat are better than valhalla by a country mile. This is very amusing opinion because Odyssey has the most complex and involved stealth in the series. It's hard to name any game in any series that would have as many stealth options as Odyssey. Hitman is a better game but it does more with less and concentrates on intricate level design and scripting.
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Jan 17, 2024 09:14
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I think that is an absolutely wild characterisation of Odyssey's approach to stealth.
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Jan 17, 2024 09:17
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stealth game design is pretty much entirely down to level design, enemy layout and behavior, and responsive, understandable mechanics. it straight up does not matter how complex or involved your stealth systems are if those aspects fall down and in odyssey and valhalla they fall down pretty reliably. there are many games that tout the complexity or realism of their detection/stealth system and often those claims are true and they result in an absolutely garbage game, because complexity of systems really has nothing to do with stealth feeling fun. i do not want rush assassination or heroic strike. i want ways to engage with enemies that aren't just killing them, and level and game design that incentivizes me to do so. this is clearly intended as part of the experience in 1, gradually drops off over the course of the later games, and by the time of the modern rpg titles it is basically gone. ilitarist posted:It's hard to name any game in any series that would have as many stealth options as Odyssey. great news: MGSV is real and you can play it right now! Valentin fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 09:35
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Odyssey literally made enemies that were impossible to assassinate because they had too much hp. But it was noticeable that in Valhalla's Paris DLC they were flirting with the Unity/Syndicate assassination mission style again. I do like historical parkour hitman and they should just go all out on that as a project.
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Jan 17, 2024 09:35
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Valentin posted:stealth game design is pretty much entirely down to level design, enemy layout and behavior, and responsive, understandable mechanics. it straight up does not matter how complex or involved your stealth systems are if those aspects fall down and in odyssey and valhalla they fall down pretty reliably. there are many games that tout the complexity or realism of their detection/stealth system and often those claims are true and they result in an absolutely garbage game, because complexity of systems really has nothing to do with stealth feeling fun. It's fair to say you don't find the stealth system fun or engaging, but you started talking about the number of skills relating to stealth. Both you and Alchenar here seem to not understand how stealth works in these games. It's probably a fault of the designers - the series historically made stealth a gimmick where you find the intended path and one-click enemies for victory. They should have better explained there's a proper stealth in the game now, but they failed to do that and people are under the impression that there are enemies with a lot HP that can't be killed (there are bosses that you can't approach in stealth but there are few of those and it's a staple of the series) or that there aren't enough tools in the game. Valhalla walked back on it and indeed became simpler (and also more effectively ), but Odyssey was the most fun and engaging stealth in the series for me, and it has enough depth and connectivity with the other mechanics to not feel like just a gimmick.
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Jan 17, 2024 09:59
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Speaking of stealth in Valhalla sucking, I just did what I assume is a Mirage tie-in quest with a lady with a smoker's voice. I tried to stealth it because the lady implied I should. I have no idea what the gently caress is up with the "use a disguise and stop at these various points to blend in" mechanics. At most, the disguise appears to marginally slow down enemies aggroing you. I frequently found myself completely trapped at one of the "blend in nodes" with some enemy looking right at me and never leaving. And the instant I stopped blending in he'd aggro. I was able to (sorta) get through the whole thing undetected, but it required a lot of save-scumming at various points, just hoping guys wouldn't aggro me. And even then, I reached one point with no blend-in places or other places to hide, and one enemy was a heavy who couldn't be assassinated. I was able to duel it out with him without getting detected elsewhere, at least. It wasn't good! I feel like the whole "wear a hood to disguise yourself and blend in" set of mechanics was some vestigal thing they had plans for but ended up mostly abandoning.
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Jan 17, 2024 10:04
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"social stealth" in valhalla is pretty much broken, yeah (because social stealth in AC has often just been differently modeled bushes, and in valhalla your stealth doesn't go much further than "in bush" and "not in bush")ilitarist posted:It's fair to say you don't find the stealth system fun or engaging, but you started talking about the number of skills relating to stealth. Both you and Alchenar here seem to not understand how stealth works in these games. It's probably a fault of the designers - the series historically made stealth a gimmick where you find the intended path and one-click enemies for victory. They should have better explained there's a proper stealth in the game now, but they failed to do that and people are under the impression that there are enemies with a lot HP that can't be killed (there are bosses that you can't approach in stealth but there are few of those and it's a staple of the series) or that there aren't enough tools in the game. Valhalla walked back on it and indeed became simpler (and also more effectively ), but Odyssey was the most fun and engaging stealth in the series for me, and it has enough depth and connectivity with the other mechanics to not feel like just a gimmick. i would honestly love to hear how stealth works in these games now if it is apparently different than what i've gleaned from beating odyssey and (oh god i'm hope i'm like) getting about halfway through valhalla. i named skills because they are, as far as i am aware, almost always the only different verb i have in these games that is not "attack" or "run" (god, i miss AC2's coin; e: i did forget odyssey had a whistle command that works! making it basically infinitely better than valhalla). i would sincerely be happy to have the stealth in odyssey explained to me. Valentin fucked around with this message at 10:22 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 10:12
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I haven't played Mirage till the end but the mission design irritated me. At the first major target at Caravan Sarai you're told there are opportunities, what you're not told is that you must use the opportunities, there's no other way to complete the mission even if you stealthily kill everyone on the map. I think this tie-in mission from Valhalla was similar in that regard, but at least you were told about the opportunity right away, you didn't have to look at seemingly optional helping opportunity. A few missions later I got smoke bombs. For a while, I thought that this game was an old AC formula done right. In old AC games youre hero is a killing machine and only goes for stealth when the alternative is a game over, or just for fun. In Origins/Odyssey high enough difficulty makes fighting dangerous so you want to go stealth. In Valhalla ahem. Initially, in Mirage it looked like the combat is not dangerous, you want to go stealth. But there are smoke bombs. You can throw them under your feet and they give you time to stealth-assassinate 4 people who just wanted to kill you. You can only have 4 smoke bombs (as far as I know) but you can use them to kill a dozen or more enemies in a compound without really trying and it's easy to find a replenish. You can also get a trap gadget that stuns several people for a long time, so all and all I think you can walk into any location in the game and throw your gadgets killing all the enemies. For me, this turned a game into something that I'll get through as fast as possible, I was handed an "I win" button and have to design the game in my head with self-imposed challenges to get any fun from its systems.
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Jan 17, 2024 10:24
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Ouroboros posted:I started playing a bit of Origins and I'm liking it okay but I'm getting the distinct feeling that its one of those games I am going to get bored with well before I run out of content. Skip to Odyssey. Which game is better depends pretty much entirely on personal interests and tastes.
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Jan 17, 2024 10:30
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Most of Odyssey's stealth-related skills are about making stealth/assassinating stronger rather than more interesting.
Doctor Spaceman fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 11:19
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Valentin posted:i would honestly love to hear how stealth works in these games now if it is apparently different than what i've gleaned from beating odyssey and (oh god i'm hope i'm like) getting about halfway through valhalla. i named skills because they are, as far as i am aware, almost always the only different verb i have in these games that is not "attack" or "run" (god, i miss AC2's coin; e: i did forget odyssey had a whistle command that works! making it basically infinitely better than valhalla). i would sincerely be happy to have the stealth in odyssey explained to me. Ok, I hope you're not going to say you were just joking and no one would ever be interested in Odyssey stealth, it would break my heart! The tools. If you play as an assassin in Odyssey you have your usual series staples like hiding in bushes and on roofs, whistling, assassination, shooting arrows (people investigate the noise of arrow striking something hard). With arrows, I think we're bumping in developers not explaining mechanics well, cause I don't think people know about it. There are also adrenaline-consuming skills - most importantly critical assassination. There's also Hero Strike which applies Assassination damage in melee combat and it's a main tool for assassins in combat, but it's also very useful in stealth because it's silent and can be used immediately after assassination. There's Call to Arms (summon a member of your crew to fight for a while) that can distract a lot of enemies, and you can combine it with Rush Assassination which can be a good segway into a combat. There's Shadow of Nyx that makes you invisible for a while but I haven't used it much. There's Vanish and it's very useful when you're caught: if I screw up and there are enough enemies around I prefer to run away. There are also stats. This part is especially poorly explained and it's easy to forget about some boons. I understand that people want an action game, not a theory-crafting experience. Still if you just use items with an Assassination bonus you'll be fine, but it's better to spice up your stats with some additions. Mastery levels allow you to get bonus critical chance, damage, and a critical chance at full health - and these apply to assassination too, and when you're in stealth you probably have full health. Cooldown is very important too, more so for fights cause you rely on Hero Strike skill a lot, but it also helps in stealth. Same for adrenalin generation. Plenty of special bonuses provide some interesting takes on stuff, like there's a bonus making Shadow of Nyx (temporary invisibility) free. Anyway all of this doesn't mean much in itself, let's talk about how it plays. In practice, you have to see an enemy camp/fort/cave as kind of a Doom arena. Different enemies require different levels of effort, mainly adrenaline investment. If your stats are fine then even on the highest difficulty you can kill a simple mook like archer with a simple assassination. And when you have the right passive skill it will even give you adrenaline, so these guys are kind of a resource, you don't want to kill them first. With slightly stronger enemies you can spend the adrenaline to secure a kill with a critical assassination, but you can also hope for a critical hit, or if they're isolated enough you can finish them off with a couple of hits. Hero strike is as silent as assassination but it takes time and is on cooldown, so you can take your chances with a simple assassination and spend an adrenaline point with hero strike if needed, but if you're caught you're in risk of having no adrenaline and your main offensive ability on a cooldown. There are stronger enemies like captains or big guys, and they can often survive critical assassination and require additional hero strikes. This means you must have 2 adrenaline (sometimes more) to dispose of them and you can only regenerate 1 adrenaline naturally, this is where you need low-level mooks to restore the adrenaline from them or your stealth is over. Finally, sometimes there are mini-bosses like polemarchs or national leaders or even mercenaries. Sometimes you can kill them with critical assassination, but often even a hero strike is not enough and you can finish them off with a 3-adrenaline Overpower attack, so 5 adrenaline in total, plus it takes a long time and is relatively loud. So unless you want it all to devolve into combat (and these guys are often the ones you don't want to fight, except for leaders who have a lot of HP but aren't dangerous by themselves) you must isolate them and bring a lot of adrenaline to get rid of them without putting everyone on alert. Note though that with the right stats and depending on circumstances a single critical assassination might be enough to kill the mini-boss, and I'm not talking about broken builds but just some sensible investments in the right stats and having the right gear. Animals owned by some people are similar in that they can't be stealth killed, and here hunter abilities can help you, but this is another story. Depending on the layout and what's there on the level you have to disable the alarm turning it into a free kill and then look for opportunities. You have to balance your adrenaline play and not waste it on weaklings. There are grading levels of how "isolated" an enemy is. If you're going for a quick assassination this means there's nobody in ~5-meter radius around the enemy and no one is looking directly at them. If it's a buff enemy that will require a hero strike you have to make sure no one is patrolling nearby and won't see you during your long dispatch of the enemy. With some enemies you can't be sure you'll land enough damage quietly, so there's a third level of isolation - making sure there's no one in hearing range to help polemarch/mercenary. So what you do is thinning the herd gradually making the enemies more isolated, you can't just kill the enemies one by one when they're not observed by someone else, you have to plan and adapt. You can create opportunities by whistling, but this makes a lot of people suspicious at the same time, so you can combine shooting arrows and whistling to divide the enemy's attention. The AI is dynamic and looking at the enemy patrols you can create some opportunities, like luring a big guy to an edge so that you can kick them dealing damage you won't be able to do yourself. Every facility has a place for dead bodies and dudes move the bodies there. When the camp is alert (like when they find a body) they start moving unpredictably, often in groups, especially if the leader is present. You can divert some attention by throwing bodies and making someone take this body to a resting place. I can't be sure but I think usually big fat guys do that so this is a good opportunity to isolate them and, say, restore some adrenaline in 1v1 fight. If the level is inside the city you're guaranteed to be spotted by some civilians, which means mercenaries will come for you which always makes things interesting. I'm not saying you must have a perfect plan for when you clear out a fort, but it helps. In a small camp or a cave, you can clear out in a simple way just using banked adrenaline but with a big fort, you have to be inventive or risky. Will you try to kill a guy without using the adrenaline and try to restore some adrenaline out of a fight with him, hoping he's far away enough from the others to not attract the attention? Sometimes you realize you should have done stuff differently and now the stealth section turns into a search for a good combat starter. Sometimes you are spotted and have a second to decide if you can salvage the situation by quickly dispatching the dude or if it's time to rush assassinate everyone around ensuring the fight but crippling the enemies. This whole system is on another level compared to previous games where your verbs were hiding in bushes/crowds, whistle, and instakill unaware characters - or use a gadget that is either a whistle or an instakill, and in most games you could carry dozens of instakill gadgets. I also imagine that on lower difficulty levels you can get by without thinking about any of this, but even then you should probably do something about mini-bosses. On Nightmare getting into combat in a fort is still very often deadly for me even after 2 playthroughs, so I find stealth necessary and thrilling enough for me to use all the tools available. As I've written earlier today, Mirage, a supposedly more stealth-focused game, allows me to drop smoke bombs to stealth assassinate whole garrisons of people, and pre-Origins games were even worse in that regard, making their stealth systems (both simple and unnecessary) extremely low bar to beat. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 12:09
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Valentin posted:there is afaict literally no option for handling two guards near each other from stealth without getting into combat. just wanted to point out you can: upgraded sleep arrows Goa Tse-tung fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 13:38
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Alchenar posted:Odyssey literally made enemies that were impossible to assassinate because they had too much hp. God that was so loving refreshing. I did the Paris DLC as the last major thing before I wrapped up and uninstalled and it was just a goddamned breath of fresh air to have assassination missions that were more than "rush up to some chump in a market place, stab in the kidneys, run away into a bush to break guard aggro before fast traveling to the next quest, I dunno maybe you'll need to wear a hood"
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Jan 17, 2024 15:24
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ilitarist posted:Stealth So, the issue with all of this is that the game doesn't actually incentivize you to use stealth. Yes, there are tools there for you to use. Yes, you can make a stealth build. Yes, the stealth gameplay can be fun because who doesn't like sneaking around and shanking dudes? But the game pretty actively disincentivizes it, because if you build a melee build it's stupidly faster to clear those same camps and combat arenas. For the longest time on Odyssey I ran a kind of hybrid stealth/melee build that leaned heavily on stealth but had a fair bit of melee to help out if poo poo got bad. Archery was my dump stat until I got enough points that it didn't matter. And it was fun. Basic sneak around stabbing like you describe, then when I got caught out go ham with the sword. But then I tried a respec to focus on melee and holy poo poo it was way faster to just walk to the quest objective, kick the first dude I saw in the balls, and then melee, dodge, melee then spam my insanely over-powered skills. I forget the exact break down I had, but it was typical resource generator / spender rotation like an ARPG. If it wasn't a boss battle, by the time I ran through the rotation twice the whole loving fort was dead at my feet. Compare that to games that actively incentivize stealth, either because you're just kinda weak at melee or because there are specific mission objectives surrounding not getting caught or sounding an alarm raises the difficulty level or makes side-objectives impossible or forces you to kill people that shouldn't die etc. Sniper Elite, the Thief games, and the Dishonored series all come to mind. Oh and Hitman, obviously. Odyssey is a sandbox that lets you do stealth, and to their credit they give you the tools to do it well (as opposed to Valhalla) but the game never really pushes you to use them and it leads to a more inefficient play style.
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Jan 17, 2024 15:37
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Stealth is the most efficient way to play Odyssey because of Chain Assassinate, perhaps the most broken skill in the history of video games.
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Jan 17, 2024 15:38
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Cyrano4747 posted:God that was so loving refreshing. I did the Paris DLC as the last major thing before I wrapped up and uninstalled and it was just a goddamned breath of fresh air to have assassination missions that were more than "rush up to some chump in a market place, stab in the kidneys, run away into a bush to break guard aggro before fast traveling to the next quest, I dunno maybe you'll need to wear a hood" in the end it was a bit cruel, because it was something good they learned from HITMAN and then forgot instantly they kinda have it with the two Giant powers in Svartalheim, but having to suck flowers every coupla seconds kills that dead imo
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Jan 17, 2024 15:39
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I'm still playing through Origins and while it is reasonably entertaining and very pretty to look at, it's not really scratching that AC itch. It's kinda crazy how almost everything that made those games unique has been winnowed away, I guess not that surprising but still. My memory of assassins creed is a game that was at its heart mechanically very much about the fantasy of playing as an assassin, while this is kinda... I dunno, Witcher 3 with parkour and bad writing?
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Jan 17, 2024 15:41
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Hey, that's a pretty cool writeup! I've played all the AC games and rarely put this much thought into any particular playstyle.
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Jan 17, 2024 15:44
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Ouroboros posted:I'm still playing through Origins and while it is reasonably entertaining and very pretty to look at, it's not really scratching that AC itch. It's kinda crazy how almost everything that made those games unique has been winnowed away, I guess not that surprising but still. My memory of assassins creed is a game that was at its heart mechanically very much about the fantasy of playing as an assassin, while this is kinda... I dunno, Witcher 3 with parkour and bad writing? Something like Syndicate is probably what you’re looking for in terms of “classic assassins creed but newer”. In fact I’d wager it’s probably one of the strongest. You could also check out Mirage, it’s the most recent and is designed to be “back to basics”.
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Jan 17, 2024 16:10
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Cyrano4747 posted:But the game pretty actively disincentivizes it, because if you build a melee build it's stupidly faster to clear those same camps and combat arenas. If you mean to say that fighting open combat as a fighter build is easier than doing stealth as a stealth build? These are different sets of skills (slow crouching, planning and resource management VS twitch reflexes) and it's not like one completely invalidates the other the way in previous AC you could ignore stealth and combat by using gadgets. I'd guess that stealth feels justified to me because I'm bad at fighting in Odyssey but I have no problems in open combat in any other games except for Origins and Mirage (again, when I don't just press "I win" button in Mirage). Also note that plenty of people say that Odyssey enemies are HP sponges and require too much hits. Plenty of ways to play this game and the real difference only clicked for me on my second playthrough where I switched from a fighter who sometimes does stealth to a stealth dude who is sometimes forced to fight and realized how unexpectedly intricate these systems are. Mokotow posted:Hey, that's a pretty cool writeup! I've played all the AC games and rarely put this much thought into any particular playstyle. Thanks! It's no wonder all the complexity is hard to notice. First, the series is known for superflows mechanics a la Rockstar - most previous games felt like a tutorial for a game that doesn't exist. Second, in this particular game devs didn't do anything to make you think there's more to it.
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Jan 17, 2024 16:14
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man nurse posted:Something like Syndicate is probably what you’re looking for in terms of “classic assassins creed but newer”. In fact I’d wager it’s probably one of the strongest. You could also check out Mirage, it’s the most recent and is designed to be “back to basics”. Honestly the classic AC's still play pretty well on modern systems. I'm chewing through the Ezio trillogy on my steam deck right now in periodic 1 hour bursts as a gently caress around in spare time thing.
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Jan 17, 2024 16:26
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The best classic style AC is Ghost of Tsushima
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Jan 17, 2024 16:37
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Cyrano4747 posted:So, the issue with all of this is that the game doesn't actually incentivize you to use stealth. Yes, there are tools there for you to use. Yes, you can make a stealth build. Yes, the stealth gameplay can be fun because who doesn't like sneaking around and shanking dudes? i don't really understand this mentality. one choice means slowly getting rid of enemies, one choice means it takes longer. the faster choice is only "incentivized" by the game if you assume that all players prefer the faster experience. this isn't at all true. i love taking my time and handling stealth situations in Odyssey, it's by far my favorite game in the series to do stealthy stuff out in the open world, away from scripted missions/stories. i understand that i could handle a lot of those situations faster with combat but the mere option to do so faster isn't an "incentive" unless you are already playing with a mentality that you need to, for some reason, get through video game situations faster. if thats how you play games, thats great, but its hardly universal. there are lots and lots of people who play games without efficiency or speed being part of their goal. i take my time doing stuff stealthily because i simply find it more fun than doing stuff with combat, and that's all the incentive i need since, after all, like any video game this is a toy i'm playing with, not a goal i'm achieving. that said i'd argue that in Valhalla stealth truly is broken because there's poo poo like chests that literally cannot be opened by the player alone, and can only be accessed with NPC aides during those semi-scripted raid sequences, which are generally terrible Earwicker fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 17:22
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Earwicker posted:i don't really understand this mentality. one choice means slowly getting rid of enemies, one choice means it takes longer. Part of the efficiency focus for me is just based on how bloated Odyssey and Valhalla were. I'm all for an open world game, but both of those got huge to the point where I eventually just wanted to see the story beats faster because I could tell I was burning out on the game. Doubly so after I inevitably put it down for a few months, came back, and had to do a lot of work to re-orient myself on where I was in the story. They're both games that took me multiple years to beat so, yeah, after a point I just wanted to clear Fort #346 ASAP and grab the quest mcguffin inside it so I could move on. edit: another part is the repetitiveness. You've really seen the game by the time you're 20 hours in or so, but after that you've still got a loving LOT of very similar things to clear. Doubly so if you care about optional but still story things like whacking all the order dudes on the map. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 17:32
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Cyrano4747 posted:Part of the efficiency focus for me is just based on how bloated Odyssey and Valhalla were. I'm all for an open world game, but both of those got huge to the point where I eventually just wanted to see the story beats faster because I could tell I was burning out on the game. yeah, I understand, I just dealt with it by going in the opposite direction. I've been playing Odyssey once or twice a week, for just an hour or two at a time, pretty much since it came out. Once I got about halfway through the story, I mostly avoided doing anything story related. I start it up, spend some time stealthily taking out a fort or doing some side mission, and then put it down again. sometimes I just cruise around the sea and listen to the music. Every once in a while I dive back into the story for a bit, but never for long. It's very relaxing and feels a lot less likely to burn out than pushing though all those hours of the story and achieving all the games goals etc at any kind of pace, and i'm unlikely to burn out because i spend more time playing other games or just doing other stuff with my free time.
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Jan 17, 2024 17:38
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Earwicker posted:yeah, I understand, I just dealt with it by going in the opposite direction. I've been playing Odyssey once or twice a week, for just an hour or two at a time, pretty much since it came out. Once I got about halfway through the story, I mostly avoided doing anything story related. I start it up, spend some time stealthily taking out a fort or doing some side mission, and then put it down again. sometimes I just cruise around the sea and listen to the music. Every once in a while I dive back into the story for a bit, but never for long. It's very relaxing and feels a lot less likely to burn out than pushing though all those hours of the story and achieving all the games goals etc at any kind of pace, and i'm unlikely to burn out because i spend more time playing other games or just doing other stuff with my free time. Yeah, that makes sense. And I know all this sounds negative, but this is coming form someone who's played Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla to completion (minus some of the Odin DLC which I really couldn't care less about). Obviously at a certain point I do find this stuff enjoyable otherwise I wouldn't be wasting my time on it. But I'm also absolutely seeing the cracks. Eventually I have to hunker down and push through, because eventually I hit a story mission where I'm like "wait, who's this dude? Why is he important?" and when I'm browsing a wiki for a summary on why his heel turn is a big deal I know I need to focus in and get it done before the main plot is just meaningless gibberish to me.
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Jan 17, 2024 17:43
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Thank you for this! I found it quite interesting and am continuing to digest. My initial thought is that the route and kill-planning you describe is definitely adjacent to what I am talking about in a stealth game, but they are not quite the same. It may be mostly a matter of design (particularly level and objective) rather than mechanics, though. also I just got to Lincolnshire in Valhalla and while I should've seen the possibility of something like this happening with a UK voice cast, it was extremely funny to be in the middle of a cutscene and be like "hang on, who's that abbess...Y'shtola????" e: I'm running around these loving enormous sewers in Lincolnshire and like...why did they choose "pre-1066 England" as a setting if they were going to remove literally everything that might distinguish it from any other point in time? also the Roman fetishism in the game is frankly loving weird Valentin fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 18:51
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So far, Origins is pretty good when it leans into the stealth mechanics. When it doesn't it kinda sucks. I just did a mission where I approach a bandit camp, scout it out like usual and get everyones location, go to approach it stealthily and surprise! When I hit an invisible boundary around the camp, I am instantly detected and everyone aggros for no reason. I ended up having to turn down the difficulty not because it was too hard, but because the game seems to constantly like to force me into the lovely combat where everyone just has way too much hp.
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Jan 17, 2024 21:09
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exquisite tea posted:Stealth is the most efficient way to play Odyssey because of Chain Assassinate, perhaps the most broken skill in the history of video games. Yeah it's ridiculous. The problem with stealth in Odyssey is that there's a very fine line between it just not working (because your gear isn't set up for it or you lack the skills) and it being an effective but relatively one-dimensional approach which doesn't need much creativity. It's only interesting if you introduce self-imposed challenges and even then it's still not as mechanically rich as the best stealth games.
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Jan 18, 2024 00:03
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Stealth in Odyssey is powerful but always felt weird to me. It's one thing to accept Batman doing his undignified crawl through ductwork but I played Kassandra in Odyssey and it's like seeing Wonder Woman, who is like a goddess of war, slink between poles and trees cartoon-style, where every step gets an accompanying piano note.
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Jan 18, 2024 00:33
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Another random Origins thought, the parkour in general and the viewpoints in particular feel kinda disappointing? I remember these being in many cases almost kind of a puzzle, trying to figure out a way to get to the top by scouting the exterior for usable holds and chaining various moves together. Sure not all of them were that involved but many of them were fairly major undertakings, at least in my 15 year old memories. So far I think I've only come across one viewpoint that wasn't cleared within 10-15 seconds of just running at it and holding A, and that one was more just long than involved (the pyramid viewpoint).
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Jan 18, 2024 04:40
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Yup, that's what parkour is like now.
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Jan 18, 2024 04:50
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yeah "climb anywhere" has really hosed the traversal. It's all the worst elements of BOTW climbing with none of the charm or ease or the part where the game eventually lets you bypass it entirely
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Jan 18, 2024 12:42
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Making it stamina-dependent would probably be cool, but I'm not sure if it would mesh well with the other systems. But basically, I don't think there's a better way than climbing (almost) anywhere, especially after playing Mirage. Unity and now Mirage have complex environments and don't want you to miss jumps and comically fall like Ezio, so your character feels as if they're on autopilot. It's a very frustrating experience. I can show you a screenshot from the Ezio trilogy and if you played it for a couple of hours you'll be able to show me all possible paths through the environment. With Unity I've completed the game and every side mission and I still have no idea what can be climbed and what can't. Mirage is a little bit better about it because there are clear tells and a lot of elements are put there, but it makes the game look like a videogame instead of a window into another world. It's like Tomb Raider game that has to mark where you can climb with bright paint.
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Jan 18, 2024 13:21
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