(Almost) Perfect Minimalist Stealth - A Dinner Engagement
[Front-paged. -stabguy]
I ended up changing things, scrapping my original plan because the route slembroccoli wrote out is much more efficient and it turned out my planned route had a serious flaw. The main run in the video is exactly what slembroccoli described here: http://www.thehiddenblade.com/looking-future-again-thread-text-walls#com.... It is indeed the best way of doing this mission in a minimalist fashion, which I think is pretty sad honestly. Regardless, awesome work, slembroccoli. I included my original infiltration route as well, after the main run, and I talk about its flaw in the video's annotations.
Happy holidays everyone.
No problem, it's the holidays, everyone should be relaxing.
I actually think the smoke bombs are one of the few (or couple even) tools in the entire series that are fairly well balanced. Their problem is that you can use them over and over, and in a short space of time. Moving some tools to a cooldown model like abilities in Unity would be beneficial, I think.
Man, those blend assassination reaction behaviors sound super weird. I'm curious about what's really going on under the hood there (heh, Assassin's Creed, "under the hood"). I don't feel motivated to test like I did with AC3 though, this is harder to set up and there's no clear benefit to me since there isn't anything in the game I really want to master.
And thanks for the frontpage, stabguy.
And thanks for the frontpage, stabguy.
You're welcome. Sorry it took so long. I've sort of been on vacation myself.
Nice video Inteh!
I'd have to agree with you that this assassination is poorly scripted and that disguise is a ridiculous ability.
To me this assassination feels like a good example of Ubisoft implementing a unique kill and only focusing attention on that way of killing the target, the rest is poorly implemented and thought out. I mean sure the target does have a kind of interesting speech after being chased but that doesn't make up for the poor way that the actual assassination is set-up.
When I walked into the party area I was expecting/hoping Peletier to be located in the crowded outdoor party area (the detection area on the minimap is really large compared to where the target is actually located) but it turned out Peletier is just another boring indoor assassination mission, with no interesting kill opportunities besides the 1 unique kill. It definitely feels like last minute added filler to me.
Yeah I know, I was referring to the other topic when I mentioned the window infiltration.
http://thehiddenblade.com/looking-future-again-thread-text-walls#comment...
If anyone can actually do it I'd love to see it, and I'd bow down to their skill and ingenuity.
Challenge accepted. As it happens, there is a design in the mission I expect few players to know about. Would have already been well known if it wasn't for the stealth difficulty in the mission.
Once again I agree with you completely, Calvar. The big problem is indeed how poorly designed the tools are. There's so much redundancy and overpoweredness. Neither scenario design nor player ability design stands up to much scrutiny in these games, and that's why I try to play in an extremely minimalist fashion. I really like playing games this way, setting my own limitations; it's a great way of seeing if the very core of a game is worthwhile, and if it is, it allows you to focus on its best aspects. This makes me sound like I'd be an arcade game fiend, but I also crave a certain amount of freedom in my play. The stealth playground that AC is at its best really appeals to me.
You're welcome, slembroccoli. The unexpectedness of the wall route was half of why it appealed to me so much; the other half is how it uses the series' core mechanics to great effect. Wallcrawling and parkour indoors for stealth purposes has so much potential and it's never seriously encouraged, it's tragic. The entrance you pointed out into the courtyard to steal the wine is pretty close though, and I like it because of that.
Aurllcooljay, that's a great idea, it never came to mind for me because in my experience blend assassinating while in direct line of sight would reveal you (making blend assassinations quite useless). I've been experimenting with this and it seems it might be possible in certain circumstances (what exactly I'm really not sure, it's weird), but it doesn't seem to be possible in this particular scenario. Even when the blending indicators stayed up all the way through the assassination, a nearby enemy detected me immediately afterward in my tests. If anyone can actually do it I'd love to see it, and I'd bow down to their skill and ingenuity.
I was talking about the window I use to both enter and exit the palace there, not the window you can bribe someone to access. The pre-assassination confession is indeed pretty cool, but it makes me want to be able to talk back. It's a very videogame moment, where the limitations of the design become glaringly clear, and I don't know if calling attention to those limitations is a good idea on the whole. Writing in games is a very difficult subject.
Once again I agree with you completely, Calvar. The big problem is indeed how poorly designed the tools are. There's so much redundancy and overpoweredness. Neither scenario design nor player ability design stands up to much scrutiny in these games, and that's why I try to play in an extremely minimalist fashion. I really like playing games this way, setting my own limitations; it's a great way of seeing if the very core of a game is worthwhile, and if it is, it allows you to focus on its best aspects. This makes me sound like I'd be an arcade game fiend, but I also crave a certain amount of freedom in my play. The stealth playground that AC is at its best really appeals to me.
I also agree with your response. I like the concept of a tool that aids in stealth, but when that same tool is extremely powerful in so many situations it all breaks down. That's the main problem with all of AC's tools: they're all WAY too general purpose and jack-of-all-trades. the smoke bomb would be greatly improved, for instance, if it only affected guards who aren't alerted to the player or searching for them (concept being they were ready for it and covered their mouth and/or squinted their eyes) and also if it was permanently limited to a certain amount of ammo slots, regardless of gear.
I think the reason blend assassinates are difficult to make useful is because the game world de-loads when you go into the memory corridor cutscene, and things like blend states and smoke and such aren't present in the instant the game loads back in.
related to that, I blend assassinated Marie Levesque, and somehow avoided detection by blending back in after the memory corridor. however, as I made my way through the crowd, I noticed that some guards were following me. they weren't detecting me, they had no idea I was there, but they acted like they were tethered to me. One of the few really serious gripes I had with the main path level design in Unity was that: clearly designed to artificially trigger a loud escape even if the player did everything flawlessly.
One of the few really serious gripes I had with the main path level design in Unity was that: clearly designed to artificially trigger a loud escape even if the player did everything flawlessly.
This becomes even more clear when using the Ultrablend exploit. I used it on the same mission just to test the mechanics, and ended up with a trail of 10 guards following me anywhere.
Wouldn't it be possible to assassinate him while blended with the group without being seen? Or quickly leave the group, kill him and rejoin before the blend state ends. All in all a great example of ghosting a mission.
At first the window infiltration seemed like a joke but now it has a point because
Great work! And thanks for the credits. Your route wasn't too bad either – I would never have thought about climbing the high wall decorations inside the mansion. Now all that remains is an exploit that lets you escape without using abilities… maybe getting through a wall by jumping at it from an angle like in AC1, though I guess that wouldn't be very minimalistic. 
nice job!
I kinda appreciate that tools are necessary for the perfect route on that mission, actually. if they're there, might as well be a reason to use them. Though I definitely think said tools should be less all-encompassing in general.