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[Future Games] Preserving Motion and Flow throughout Stealth Killchains

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Leo K's picture
Leo K
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Toronto, Canada
Joined: 12/30/2009

I wish there were more ways to preserve flow or motion through a killchain.

AC3, Black Flag and Rogue were pretty good at this, actually, but Unity and Syndicate, for one reason or another, are not.

I'd like future ACs to be much more responsive to the player's inputs overall.

When I want to shoot a Phantom Blade out at someone, Arno takes a second to put out his arm, then he puts out his arm, then he shoots the person. It doesn't feel very good kinesthetically.

In both Unity and Syndicate (or most of the AC games except AC3/4/Rogue) it's not guaranteed that your stealth projectile will instant-kill the enemy you threw it at, and there's often no real way to determine whether it will until you just try it, and maybe get Detected during your stylish parkour chain. This completely destroys the feeling of grace and ghostlike elegance of flowing through an environment. (Unless you toss it at a Gunner in Unity, I suppose, who always die.)

In future AC games I'd like to be able to use projectiles more smoothly and quickly during a sprint or run.

Many of the High Profile Assassinate animations in Unity and Syndicate are not conducive to continuing flow through an environment, which dampens the experience and introduces too much negative friction, I feel. I'd like to be able to stab someone and flow out of that animation into sprint or parkour effortlessly.

In Mirror's Edge (original), Faith can kill someone with a firearm, toss her gun away while running, sprint-Slide through the enemy's dead body, grab the enemy's gun while sliding and fluidly begin shooting at another enemy even while coming out of her slide, tossing that gun away as she stands up into a sprint, where she can then continue onto the next enemy's corpse, and slide-grab the next gun. This is incredibly satisfying to chain. Assassin's Creed lacks something like this, really.
In future AC games I'd like to have a mechanic that lets the Assassin throw either their Main Weapon or secondary weapon at an enemy for a running Stealth kill, after which they can slide over their corpse and retrieve it to continue their Flow through an environment.

I'd like kill animations to interact and intersect with parkour animations more. I'd like to be able to use projectile weapons while hanging from ledges or climbing. I'd like to be able to attack or kill either with our Hidden Blade or a projectile while falling or while in the middle of a jump. I'd like to be able to break off from whatever the Assassin is currently doing into a Kill or KO animation.

Holding down [Assassinate] while performing any action should 'queue up' an [Assassinate] action to be done as soon as possible, whether that's during the animation (break-off Assassinate) or as soon as the animation is finished (flow-out Assassinate).

I'd like for this game to have more depth in terms of the things that a player can do in a smooth, fluid, time-efficient manner. I want to be able to have a smooth run through an area, stealth killing or KOing various enemies in a way that ensures I never have to stop moving.

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Stab, spin out of the stab to a short horizontal wallrun, to an Air Assassinate, roll on the ground out of the Air Assassinate and throw a knife at an upcoming guard, slide to grab the knife out of his body, run up a wall, Ledge Assassinate the guard on top of it while getting onto the ledge, finish the animation by tossing his body back, which thrusts yourself forward to continue sprinting, Air Assassinate your Target, then roll out of that and keep sprinting through the crowd.

As long as the player is holding Left Stick Forward during a Kill Animation, the game should always have the Assassin perform a Flow-Out.