The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Meh. The main things that could possibly make me interested again are:

• A story focus. What we have seen so far seems lackluster although I am intrigued by the story premise, with desperate working class people resorting to their final option - organized crime... Also the dual protagonist thing might be successful, depending on the execution, of course. Then again, Unity's story premise seemed to have everything in place - but the execution was lacking. I remain cautious.
• Modern day gameplay. Not walking around "hacking". Ubisoft has been relatively silent about it so far, though they said it would follow in Unity's footsteps, or something like that, which does not have to be a bad thing - though I suspect it will be.
• A secondary location. The kukri and nepalese assassin mentor has my hopes for a few sequences, or maybe a [grim face] DLC, set there. Maybe it's just a FC4 easter egg. Some article feaured a very vague answer by Ubi saying that what they've said so far is that the game will take place in London.
• Proof that they really have revamped Unity's engine, and especially the controls, and not only in combat. Something like the jump from AC3 to AC4. The current footage feels like the "jump" from AC4 to ACRo.
• [insert obligatory generic graphics/performance rant]

I'm not "hyped", but I'm definitely interested. As far as the way the game will feel (which is most important to me), I think it's really difficult to tell from the footage. Unity looks really responsive and fluid when you're not playing it, but the player in this case was dealing with more complex navigation than the first Unity demos and performing pretty well. I don't have access to Unity to compare at the moment.

But what concrete things we can tell from the footage: the need to snap to cover is gone, which would have made even Unity's ponderous stealth mode movement tolerable, and discrete combat animations seem much shorter and faster, parries and enemy attacks too. Difficult to tell because of the similarity in stances, but entering combat seems to be much smoother.

The time it takes to launch into a full climb seems to be reduced, which was the main issue in the climbing in Unity: you felt like you had to mash yourself against a wall for too long before making any headway. The actual climbing speed and lateral navigation was really good, so it's not a problem that isn't too different. That's one of the things they nailed and should definitely leave alone for a bit.

Something I wasn't expecting/was surprised by: the hook launcher appears to have three different modes. creating a swing-point, creating a zipline, and the familliar arkham-style "bring me up to the nearest grapple point" quick-fire version. More than that, I'm surprised that it isn't dependent on discrete anchor-points, and apparently can be free-aimed at any applicable surface.

I also appreciate the addition of environmental kills that aren't explosives, as well as logical environmental combinations with your tools.

Presentationally, I actually think that the visuals, especially lighting, are pretty far behind where they will end up. E3 is traditionally where they bring a section of the game up to final polish, and that polish is usually still in process around this time. You can tell by the way the demo cuts around that this is probably an actual section of the game in its current overall state, rather than something specifically designed to be shown off in a 10 minute form. This is why games usually take a long time to come out even after a final quality demo is released: the rest of the game doesn't look like the E3 demo yet!

I don't care all that much about fidelity in this series anymore, but a cursory glance around the internet says that a lot of people want to be reassured of a certain level of polish, and E3 is the place to show that, as well as some set-pieces. Despite my appreciation of their lack of flashy stuff in this reveal, lots of people like flashy stuff and want to know that kind of thing is still in the game. AC2's Flying Machine was what got a lot of people's attention.

I think a lot of people reacting to this think they want more change in the basic gameplay than they actually do. Obviously AC's style of play is very particular and won't appeal to everyone, but for those who do enjoy it what is most important is keeping your abilities/tools distinctly useful, making progression meaningful and well-paced, and structuring content in a friendly and inviting way. The gameplay doesn't need the radical shake-up I thought it did. It just needs to be well-polished and manage new additions in a thoughtful way.

I had to pick the last option. I think the only things that impressed me with this game was that one-hit kill throwing knives are back, you can use the environment for distractions/kills, and the trailer showing Jacob's weapons was well choreographed. It just doesn't win me over at all. I was hoping to be persuaded otherwise.

But at least Jacob can whistle. Somehow, Arno never learned.

I couldn't stop noticing that Jacob's face never changed expression or moved naturally in that weapons trailer. Especially weird since they did cool things with his expression in the gameplay footage trailer

They had to sacrifice things like that to focus on the female animations.

Meh... the only thing I've seen out of ALL of the videos released sofar that got me slightly hyped is a Brock Lesnar easter egg in one of the concept arts,seriously,the only thing.

Gameplay wise it doesn't look too far off from ACU which is expected being they're on the same engine. I wonder how many more games they'll make on this engine? Anyway I like the whole the evironmental kill thing and the return of throwing knifes.
The carriage thing just makes the game seem like a old-timey GTA. Don't get me wrong, it looks ok, just odd seeing an AC game in such a technologically advanced setting( compared to the other games). Lastly on the carriages it looks like they control pretty...funky and that's probably the case.

Also a grappling hook! Why? No idea...seems abit much. Though now think about it that makes this branch of Assassin's just a bunch of Spider-Men ( and Women).

Now we get to switch between a Male and Female assassin and that's all fine and dandy but I'm skeptical on how the whole switching protangonist thing could work in a AC game. I think that focusing on one protagonist would've proved better in terms of story telling, especally in this game since it has no multiplayer or co-op apparently. But maybe the writers over at the québec studio can do some magic with the whole brother/sister dynamic.

One weird thing I noticed watching the game play over and over again is that some of the map shown in the demo looked alot like Unity's. Nothing too crazy, some minor assets when it comes to the architecture. Maybe I'm just seeing things though. Speaking of visuals I wonder how much better game will the game look compared to Unity. Considering they are run on the same engine I'm expecting something good.

All-in-all I'm not impressed. I'm going to have to wait for the reviews when it comes out. No more shall I be swindled by well produced gamplay and CGI trailers.

I'm curious, and interested. I'm not as hype as I usually am when it comes to new ACs.
I want to see if it'll be a solid core experience. Maybe that's why I like AC1 so much. It may not have much content, definitely not enough for some players, but for me, the content AC1 does have is designed really well, and it's always a blast to play through. That's pretty much all I could wish for Syndicate. I definitely want to play it, and I want to see if the Rope Launcher tool changes the game's speed as dramatically as I think it does. Controlled Descent improved the core gameplay experience a bunch, and the Rope Launcher feels almost like this generation's Hookblade. It's just a tool that makes it easier to climb quicker and reach ledges that would normally be too far. The switching between characters is something I'm curious to see as well. I just want to see how they do what they do, and whether it's better than Unity's execution of well-intentioned concepts. Most of all, I want the game to feel good like Calvar said, and I want to feel capable of making my own choices, without the game stripping meaning from them all.

I feel like some of the art assets are similar or the same due to the similarity in architecture of London and Paris. Obviously they're unique cities, but stuff like the way a chimney from that era looks is pretty consistent across Europe, from what I've seen. I really liked that crazy complex looking scaffolding seen right when Jacob exits the pub, and all the textures on the rooftop tiles as well as the design of the storefronts and landmark buildings looked pretty authentic to me.

It really did feel like the lighting engine wasn't final, though.

Yeah, the lighting engine is definitely going to be worked on some more, it seems. Lighting does wonders for a game's atmosphere, and they're probably going to want to take their time playing with it for Syndicate for that reason.

(edited this out cause I think this thread is more about impressions of existing video content than speculation/wants for future stuff)

I really don't give a damn about the game. Knowing Ubi it's just going to devolve into a follow-the-marker fest with uninteresting mechanics completely lacking depth.

tell us how you really feel

Reading back, it comes off really hateful, but it's more of a "meh"-feeling. I honestly don't care.

Normally I don't like large streets and buildings too far apart, but the grapple hook will change that. Speaking of which, one problem I have is how unrealistic the mechanics are. It'd have to be powered by the PoE itself for me to believe you can launch up that fast. Although I gotta admit the zipline launching looks great.

Don't mind the carriages because it's not much different from regular horse riding, and it will help prepare Ubi for modern day mechanics when the time comes. I wonder if the environmental kills are considered accidents and don't rouse suspicion like in Styx Master of Shadows.

There isn't much to say about combat from what we saw, but I'll say this: there better be a lot of variety and options. Fighting needs to be fun not repetitive.

Nostalgia is the one thing missing in the demo. Right now it looks like Templars and Assassins are mainly two groups fighting for control (which the previous games have also done, but only to a certain extent). I hope they keep the whole secret society aspect going.

Grappling hooks have been proved to not work at all IRL, so yeah, none of that is very realistic. What I like is that they make it look reasonably grounded: like reverse rappelling, rather than the sort of magnetizing pulling force you see in something like Batman.
I made peace with the fact that hidden blades basically seem to be triggered by telepathy and ancient Assassins made ridiculously complex automated platforming challenges, so it's easy for me to also make peace with functional grappling hooks.

AC games have in the past avoided introducing interesting mechanics due to their function being too fantastical, and I don't think that's really good for the series. If they started again and built it to be 100% grounded, they'd be free to get rid of a lot of baggage that suggests weird things could plausibly lurk around corners, out of fight. But as it is, you've got clockwork machinery skull-locks in the renaissance, pseudo-scientific memory exploration in the far-off future of 2012, and two secret orders that have existed since the dawn of time represented in almost every single place on earth throughout all of history. It's just begging for some goofy stuff to happen!

---

Regarding focusing on the Assassin elements:

I looked back at the Brotherhood launch trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCD0LmXrkm8

Something that struck me is how misleading it is about Ezio's motivation and personality throughout the story. He's not focused on revenge on a massive scale, or really on recruitment. In the main story, he acts much the same as Assassins always do: helping out their allies, taking out important targets, gathering information that will lead them to bigger ones.

There is a disconnect between what the actual plot of the game is focused on and what the larger open world allows you to do, and the marketing team tried to sell the game as if those two things were feeding into each other on a really deep level. The actual plot of Brotherhood doesn't FEEL like you're retaking the city or turning its citizens against the Borgia. It feels like it's floating above that premise, tethered to it by the barest thread. The Assassins can be cool, but you can also focus too much on them and not enough on the world around them to the point where it feels like the open world might as well not exist, or exist as its own game.

Syndicate seems intending to unify those two halves of itself, by making Jacob and Evie mid-level members rather than leaders or novices, and having them really get involved in the street-level aspects of the city. They are Assassins, but they don't seem like they're just moving through the world on Assassin business, the city seems to matter to them.

Contrast that brotherhood trailer with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCD0LmXrkm8

It's not a story-heavy trailer, but it has narration just like the brotherhood one. But this narration is grounded in the situation of the setting, not in lore. It seems to be setting the stage for a kind of give and take, between the reality of the world and the assassins' goals in them, represented by the open world and the main missions. Unlike Unity's marketing, this isn't vaguely suggesting fighting an entire giant conflict, but "waking them up" in a very specific way that is consistent with what we know about the character. (unlike Arno, who was explicitly stated to not be very political but recorded saying very political things in marketing)

This one is even more explicit about exactly how the Assassins fit in with the place they are occupying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF3-QAs0pxg

So if all that rests on how the main missions and the open world feed into each other, both in terms of themes and mechanics:

-Will taking over certain territories be required to advance the plot? Since if not it seems like you could just not take over anything and they wouldn't be able to reference your level of control in the story.

-Will important assassinations unlock new territories to be taken over?

-Will having a lot of territory controlled increase the number of things you can use your gang for during main missions? Can you directly order your gang to do anything or will they just be scripted to do things in certain missions, like the Assassin recruits that help Ezio out at the play in Brotherhood?

It's a complex system to try to represent within the already complex set-up of a secret order of Assassins, but it helps that setting up criminal contacts fits into the politics of the order. If they do this right, it could be like playing a whole game as La Volpe: Assassins, but specialized ones rather than the people directly focused on the large scale all the time. If they do it wrong, it could be like Unity, where the intrigue of the Assassins gets set up but never paid off, and the personal quest takes sole prominence.

It's different for hidden blades because they show that a hidden mechanism activates it. I don't have issues with the grappling hook itself, but with how fast it pulls. One good explanation is that the Animus speeds time up during that, like with leaps of faith in all but the last few games. That's what I'll take it for if there isn't going to be an explanation in-game.

the hidden blade definitely doesn't work like that in the games. That was the very earliest teaser trailer for AC, and none of the animations have ever shown anything like that.

And hey, maybe just dislike or appreciate the weird parts of this series for what they are. Don't try to will them into a more pleasing shape, that always just creates a thousand contradictions. There is a reason AC's writers are distancing themselves from the "because animus" line as much as they can: it's not actually a good excuse for all but a few things.

Unity straight up admits that ridiculously high leaps of faith are real and Arno actually did them, whereas the old excuse was that they were hacked in to help animus subjects get down from high spots faster. The old excuse never held up if you paid even a little bit of attention to how leaps of faith were used, and how the story clearly acknowledged them.

One key piece of the Victorian London era is Jack the Ripper. Players who looked forward to seeing this creepy historical figure weren't happy to hear you'll only see him in the DLC, labeling it as Jack the Ripoff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riJv2B61ul8

it's a dlc with a historical character in it. wow. truly shocking, unexpected, in this game about history.

'key figure' of the era is a stretch, also

Defense of the dlc aside, I hate their visual design for jack the ripper and I hate that they're treating him like a big scary villain instead of just a messed up piece of trash.

Key figure of the era's a stretch if you consult people that are genuinely knowledgeable about History. It probably makes more sense when you ask any random person, "Is Jack the Ripper one of the most important figures in Victorian London?" Their answer will always be "Hell yes, of course he is, right!?" Makes sense that it'd be a DLC, from Ubisoft's point of view. I'll elaborate on that two paragraphs down. I don't see why Jack can't be a piece of trash as well as a villain. I don't think he should be glorified - hopefully an adequate amount of hatred and disdain is poured over him and his actions - but he seems like a no-brainer choice to turn into a character that people would want to see taken down. I doubt he'd be the kind of villain people like or find cool. (The Joker, etc.) He's just a sick man with no justification being possible for his actions. He hates all of womankind. Ubi can't justify that, they'd look a fool by trying. ESPECIALLY in today's current political climate, both in videogames and out of them.

I'm not sure if I'll buy this DLC. It doesn't seem to advance the AC Lore in any meaningful way; highly doubtful they'd do that with one of these "novelty" DLCs. If it's a DLC that advances the story or changes it, I'll consider it. Usually, these also tend to be pretty short. I'll have to wait and see what actually happens with it.

To explain why I believe people feel ripped-off; I do feel like they should have included this on-disc as some form of additional courtesy. I've let it go by now, I'm just excited for Syndicate at the moment, like I always get. But this explanation is for all the other people. Not everyone who bought Unity bought the Season Pass along with it. Many players undoubtedly still feel Ubisoft should be walking on egg-shells, should owe them an apology, or if not, at LEAST shouldn't be pulling "moves" like this. I don't think that's unfair in any way considering Consumers are what drive industry. They made their mistakes back then, they will not be let off until they prove - through Syndicate itself - that they can still make a great game. It's what's clearly going on, and everyone expected it back when Unity hit. Much is depending on Syndicate's success right now, I don't think anyone had the impression that things would go down any other way. This DLC backlash is just being colored by all that.

I'm not excited about Syndicate at all.

In fact, it is probably going to be the first AC I will not be purchasing (I might wait for a sale later on).

I'll probably buy it. I'll probably buy it at release and hate myself because of the AC slut that I am.

Then I'll buy Fallout 4 3 weeks later and ignore ACS until I've played enough of Fallout 4.

I must confess I don't know much about Victorian London. The only things that come to mind are the widowed Queen Victoria, design of architecture/clothes, and of course the unknown evasive serial killer labeled Jack the Ripper.

The DLC isn't a big deal to me; I just care if it's worth playing. I respect both sides of the argument. On one hand it's just extra content that Ubisoft gets a bit more money out of. But on the other hand many would expect an infamous murderer from that era to be in a game showing primarily murders and assassinations.

If he at least makes some sort of appearance in the normal game it could be excusable. Just think of Machiavelli. He only appeared during that initiation scene. I remember after starting to play the Bonfire of Vanities and Battle of Forli I had long since forgotten about him and wondered, who is this guy I'm escorting around?

I never bought Black Flag. In fact I though it was stupid they would make a game focusing more on the naval gameplay mechanics. But after playing a borrowed copy, I was surprised just how good it was. There wasn't that much of an emphasis on riding around on a ship, and even then it was somehow made fun.

Then the game appeared on Games for Gold.

considering the nothingness of him as a character in history, the only reason someone might expect him to be a big part of the game is because people expect AC to have no form of restraint or subtlety, at this point.

The fact that he and darwin/dickens are relegated to pre-order bonuses and DLC is one of the most encouraging things about syndicate yet, though it's a far cry from why I want things to be in this series.

I am kind of coming around to the idea of a total reboot, if that's the only way a lot of this baggage could be shed. Though I'd probably play this game if there weren't so much other stuff I'm interested in this year and early 2016.

A few years ago, some fans threw in the idea of a Jack the Ripper AC game. I always liked the idea of Templars using such a ruse against an Assassin that made him look like a psychotic serial killer in "history books". Somehow the true identity of the Assassin couldn't be revealed. Regardless, this was before the series went "full r*tard" and lost its good ideas about how scary big corporations (Abstergo) can be (messing with history to make their past members look "good"). Now they're not taking any good intriguing risks and making Jack a disturbing Hollywood monster.

man, just have a newspaper article referencing the killings and don't put the dude in the game in any way. there is nothing interesting about jack the ripper as a character, the actual fascination with him is more integral to the setting than he is.

Been awhile since I last been here...
I'm going with the "meh option," last Assassin's Creed game I played and finished was Revelations. Personally will admit I didn't bother buying the rest of the franchise after Ezio Trilogy. In my opinion once Patrice Desilet's Storyline ended and Ubisoft took it over with a convoluted and non-interesting story loop that is when the franchise had it's downfall. Plus Jesper Kyd was no longer doing the Soundtrack.

One thing I will mention that this series still has going is the overall Time Era Theme, this is actually the main reason why this franchise is popular. People want to see ancient buildings, settings and historical vibes.

Strange how Assassin's Creed 1 sorta forefront Open World Game Design as of today. But I hope Open World game Design becomes improved and not copy/paste with shallow objectives and narrative. Bring back Old school Level Design with Open World. Plus combat and platforming is very important to improve as well. Some open World games are still fun today while others are forgettable.

o/

just posting again in here to say that I think the trailers dramatically undersold the tone and writing of the game, based off what I saw of the intro missions. Unity kind of forgot to ever really establish who the main characters were as people, while this game does this effectively (albeit not super subtly) right from the start.

Agreed. I've watched quite a bit of the opening and a decent amount of roaming thus far. I quite like it up to this point. The marketing for the recent AC games has been pretty misleading, which I don't like. But I suppose underselling is way preferable to hyperbole.

I think it's hyperbole in the wrong direction. The marketing is basically a parody of what people expect from an assassin's creed game, at this point.

Back when they weren't obsessed with "brand pillars" and "iconography" the marketing folks just kind of showed bits of the game in stylish ways, didn't really try to keep it "on-message".

Now it's like clockwork: establish the heroe(s) as fighting for the poor/opressed, make it appear as they are acting on their own judgement about who should die rather than selectively targeting a single organization (assassins prefer non-lethal solutions to non-templar problems, I guess) and take a single aspect of their personality and extrapolate it out into the worst cliched interpretation of that kind of character.

They try to say too much about the game and end up communicating less than a more hands-off approach could.

this trailer is actually pretty fine tho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT5Ws-RDUI0

sure it's super obsessed with the "Iconic Hidden Blade", but it's kind of funny to think of a Templar having nightmares like that.