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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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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 23:19 |
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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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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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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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Just finished Origins and it was pretty good. If it didn't have the AC name on it I think it's a solid 8/10 kinda game, but it's hard to divorce it from that history and not find it a bit disappointing. Yes for the obvious reasons, the dilution of the gameplay formula into something more generic and trend-chasing, but more than that it just feels like no part of the game is willing to stick its neck out and try and do something unique. It sounds ridiculous now but those early AC games genuinely did some wild stuff with social stealth, an almost obsession with diegesis, with over the top narrative choices. And not all of it worked, but the result was something genuinely original and interesting. Everything about Origins just feels safe, competent enough but everything just a little less colourful, all the edges sanded off. That said the game world is fantastic, and choosing to have everything else in service to giving you reasons to just hang out in the environments they created is a reasonable choice that I think ultimately works because of the strength of those environments, but the lack of ambition in a big budget game like this is pretty disheartening. It's a game that feels like it's carrying every ounce of the burden of the history and expectation attached to its name.
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Jan 26, 2024 23:07
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Ouroboros posted:Just finished Origins and it was pretty good. If it didn't have the AC name on it I think it's a solid 8/10 kinda game, but it's hard to divorce it from that history and not find it a bit disappointing. Yes for the obvious reasons, the dilution of the gameplay formula into something more generic and trend-chasing, but more than that it just feels like no part of the game is willing to stick its neck out and try and do something unique. It sounds ridiculous now but those early AC games genuinely did some wild stuff with social stealth, an almost obsession with diegesis, with over the top narrative choices. And not all of it worked, but the result was something genuinely original and interesting. Everything about Origins just feels safe, competent enough but everything just a little less colourful, all the edges sanded off. That said the game world is fantastic, and choosing to have everything else in service to giving you reasons to just hang out in the environments they created is a reasonable choice that I think ultimately works because of the strength of those environments, but the lack of ambition in a big budget game like this is pretty disheartening. It's a game that feels like it's carrying every ounce of the burden of the history and expectation attached to its name. Just played the second dlc and I take back everything good I said, gently caress this game
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Jan 28, 2024 01:15
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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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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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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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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 23:19 |
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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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