The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Allow me to move my comments over here:

Assassins Greed Syndicate = GTA: Victorian Asylum

Syndicates = Names of London Street Gangs

also.... looks like Batman Arkham games with that "assassin gauntlet" to function as a grapling hook.

no swords because it's not too inconspicuous

WHISTLING IS BACK THANK GOODNESS!

Okay, that carriage chase was ridiculous...

Alright, there was plenty to dislike in that reveal. Here's what I like:
1 - No visible melee weapons. I never undestood how a guy with a giant sword/mace/halbeard was supposed to be either stealthy or agile or blend in with those who don't. I'm glad they're going the concealed weapons direction only (from what they said).
2 - Evey/Evie/Eve (omg, maybe SHE'S the Eve we were promised, jkjk) seems like a better character than Jacob, so maybe we'll get to play with her as was rumored last week (rumor was a 75-25 split).
3 - I like the idea of recruiting street gangs to your cause, but only if they function as something more than an ammo box and bank. I want to be able to bring them with me to act as the old thief/courtesan/mercenary archetypes.

Leo K/DAZ's Comments:

• Sticky Cover is gone. Looks like it, anyway. Learned from TLoU? I must feel it in my hands before I can judge in truth.
• New Eagle Vision is clean. Easier on the eyes than Unity's. I like it. Seems to work at long-distance if you're high up.
• Fist Combat looks responsive, quick and snappy. I must feel it in my hands before I can judge in truth.
• Rope Launcher is amazing. Quick Roof Access, and Instant Zipline. Both should make Noise/be High Profile actions. Sometimes you might just want to climb a building the good old-fashioned way to avoid drawing attention.
• Hallucination Dart is interesting. I hope it's more systemic and less lock-and-key than it looks. I imagine shooting just one enemy causes them to trip out and attack everyone nearby. Shooting a firebarrel spreads the smoke around and gets everyone high. Interesting. But again, if it's just that, then it'll be too easy to decide when and when not to use it - which means the only way of making it "deep" is to limit the amount we have. "Quantity" gameplay is worse than "Quality" gameplay.
• It's fun to see them make actual streets and sidewalks. Assassin's Creed's reaching into the modern era. This means they could make a genuinely good Modern Day aspect this time around - since the principles would be the same. Fist combat, as open-carrying weapons nowadays is tough to imagine.
• The fluidity and fast-pace of the game is something I'm curious to see fully fleshed out. The Rope Launcher will surely help with that, but they need to make Jacob and Evie's movements transition well easily. From parkour to assassinate to combat to parkour to stealth to assassinate to combat to rope-launch to combat etc. Fluid. SEAMLESS. UBI PLS. Don't just talk it up, please actually deliver.
• Gang Brawls on their own are not super interesting unless there are some kind of mechanics to manage your Syndicate and the individual gangs within it. If our soldiers are mere fodder with no means to pseudo-RTS control them like Uruks from SoM, (for roles like Distraction, Mobile Hide-Spot, Attack) then this will just be one of those "grab all the collectibles in a district, then kill the district leader, then fight a gang brawl to unlock the district for real and repeat it seven times!" deals. I do not want that. Let me Control my thugs.
• *says "Assassin's Creed Syndicate" out loud* Damn that is a sexy name.

This was an interesting way to use the environment. I also liked the idea of using a throwing knife to cut down suspended heavy objects (in the video they showed building materials, but this might be applicable to chandeliers indoors, and other scenarios). Learning from Watch_Dogs I guess, to make the environment do your bidding for you, but not like Watch_Dogs's single button every time... the need to aim and do it yourself makes this an attractive feature.

I agree with this completely. It would be a great idea. Speed vs Meticulous Stealth

I believe part of it is inspired by AC Chronicles China. You could toss Knives to chop down cargo over guards' heads, or distract with them if they fell away from one. In AC China, you could also use Knives to open certain paths forward, and to unroll netting appearing on walls. Syndicate won't really need too much of that, probably, since the Rope Launcher will be a cool device to play with.

More different types of environmental scenarios would be awesome.

Distractions are another thing I've been itching to talk about for a while, and how to make them feel more compelling to use.

I really wish the devs would be open to guards being distracted more reasonably instead of only with specific items. In TLoU you could throw Bricks and Bottles to distract guards. That was very specific, but it was still fine. Why? Because no other item really gave the illusion or hope that it could be used as a distraction. Actually! The Bow's silent arrows could be used to distract guards as well. In Dishonored, you could distract guards with literally anything your imagination cooked up. Bottles. Silent Crossbow Bolts shot into the ground or a wall nearby. Grenades, if detonated far from the route you want to go through.

Unity gave you the Phantom Blade, but I really would have liked to be able to make a guard turn around for a second if I shot it into the wall behind him. That never really happened in Unity, leaving the only distraction item to be an often malfunctioning or badly coded Cherry Bomb. Splinter Cell, another Ubi franchise does this very successfully for the most part.

I was surprised to see that they didn't speak with a French Canadian accent. And pre-alpha footage my ass.

Honestly, I'm somewhat underwhelmed with this walk-through. Mixed feeling on the hat. From what I gathered, they seem to be borrowing a page from Brotherhood: gaining territory by recruiting oppressed people. I'm loving the fisticuffs, but the grapple gun seems a bit too much. Overpowered? Sort of reminds me of those Batman Arkham games. I understand why they place carriages in, but their mechanics seem to similar in Revelations. Hopefully, there won't be an abundant of those carriage crashing missions. Those were a drag.

And the AI still needs work. I'm not sure how any NPC or guard could NOT have noticed someone yelling out in pain when a DAGGER flies into their face.

Hopefully they still keep customization in the game. I'd love to ruffle the hair of adorable street urchins and toss them a shiny penny, before replacing a guard's memory of his mother's face with my hidden blade.

Rope Launcher is my favorite part. As mentioned, it'd be best if it made loud noise. If you use it, you're forsaking Stealth for Fast Movement. It gives AC a new fluidity and flow that I'm liking. Whether something is overpowered or not depends on how the missions and levels are designed in relation to it. A tool like this is fantastic, and what they need to do is run LOTS of playtests.

Dishonored's Powers were first seen as too useful by the devs, since some players figured out clever ways to use them. Instead of nerfing them and removing their power, the devs altered the missions themselves to support it. It allowed players who discovered cool ways of playing the game to feel smart, and let the game remain challenging enough.

The Rope Launcher should be treated the same way. Test it a lot, see what players do with it. If they do something OP or unexpected, take a page from Arkane's book and try to support it by changing the level/enemy placement/environment, so on. If it absolutely cannot be helped, then they can nerf some of its function somehow. They would still have to design all of their missions (maybe RE-DESIGN even) around this nerf, though.

*lists 3 possibilities that carriages give*
"The possiblities are endless!"

No. They fucking aren't. I hate that expression, it's never true. It's just the possibilities that are mentioned in the video: transportation, hiding in them, and running people over. That's it. That's NOT endless.

For real though, it looks pretty good.

The hat is not my style, but I understand that it's appropriate to the time period and it will be replaced by a standard hood when in stealth mode.

Rope launcher seems OP, but I'm OK with it if they make it ridiculously loud, so it attracts enemies, as DAZ suggested.

Environmental kills look cool, I hope there's a lot of variety and the dosage is good (not too few, not too many).

Fistfighting looks cool and more challenging than "hit this button to disarm and kill".

The carriage chase was a little too much. What is this, AC Brotherhood/Revelations?

How is the hallucination dart any different from the berserk dart?

I like the idea of having gangs work for the protagonist, but like DAZ, I want some control over them. It would be interesting if they took a lesson from Shadow of Mordor.

Graphics don't look much better than Unity, even if I haven't played it and I don't know a lot of technical stuff about graphics so I can't say for sure. I think this is a good thing. Graphics are fine as they were, focus on gameplay and mechanics first.

just a few more ideas off the top of my head that could be possible: parkour over them, parkour under them, hide under them, use them for cover/break line of sight, hang onto the side of them to travel through an area and not get detected from the other side, use them for corner kills, use them to damage the environment and opening new navigation paths not otherwise accessible, jump from one to another to take it over like boarding a ship in Black Flag

That's more like it. I was also thinking about sabotaging a carriage before you attempt an assassination, and thus avoiding having to chase the target when the assassination fails and the target flees.

Or how about telling your gangsters to crash a carriage, creating distraction/chaos?

Three possible actions does not equal three possibilities. All depends on what you're using those actions to accomplish. And what is it with the internet that makes people get offended at harmless figures of speech?

I don't want pseudo-RTS stuff in the gang brawls. Simply having a big fight is fine.

other thing I noticed: pretty sure Jacob stole a gang-members' pistol to do a finishing move near the end. I'm assuming it's not just his pistol, since he has a hidden gun. (I think)

Gamespot says that Evey and Jacob have different skill trees and each can be chosen for any mission, even though some missions are designed with them in mind. Jacob more for aggressive players, Evey more for sneaky ones. (though it seems like you'll have to play both ways when appropriate regardless of who you pick.)

And something else: Jeffrey Yolahem has mostly confirmed he's writing the game, though it hasn't been said officially. He's the guy who wrote the "Truth" puzzles in AC2 and brotherhood, as well as the story of Brotherhood, The Lost Archive DLC for Revelations, and Unity's Dead Kings DLC. I liked dead kings' story a lot, even though it compounded a lot of Unity's gameplay issues. So I'm optimistic for the story.

EDIT: oh, it sounds like this game is not going to have multiplayer. Not counting rogue, first main series game to not have multiplayer since AC2.

What we thought was the Hidden Gun is his Dart Launcher. He carries a Revolver with him at all times as one of his signature weapons. One of the trailers drew special attention to it, saying he could combo into and out of it, as well as make distance kills with it.

Do you mind elaborating on that, and why you feel that way? I expect the new fighting mechanics to be good, but do you expect them to be so good that's all it will take to make gang brawls interesting instead of just flavorful? Fighting amid a huge crowd is nice for context and flavor, but it doesn't do much differently gameplay-wise from any ordinary fight. What do you feel about managing your Syndicate in general then?

I realize now that it wasn't a hidden gun, yeah. Funny that it looks so much like a miniature cannon!

I just don't see why the context of fighting in a big group can't be enough? That's what it's trying to represent, and it looks like it's doing a good job of that. If the fighting is fun, then fighting in a group will be fun. No need to spend time on an extra layer, just make what is there fun. Assassin's Creed is already trying to be so many things at once. Any bit of simple and fun design they can get away with, they should.

It's just like the mod missions. There's already a thrill to assassinating a target by slipping through this intricate pattern of guards, using the geometry of the level to your advantage. When you also add in these really complex scripting things, I think it gets a bit too much. Instead, they now have environmental interactions: things that you communicate with through the language of your tools, rather than having to learn a new gameplay language.

The fact that entering a specific confessional at a specific time triggers a kill cutscene doesn't elevate confessionals above their function as hide-spots, instead it means there's an explicit goal to kill a target in a very particular way. It's an over-inflated "kill target from hide spot" constraint rather than something that gives you more possibilities. It's an abstraction made concrete despite the fact that staying abstract could have probably resulted in a stronger play experience overall.

The fact that your gang is fighting on your orders is indicated by audio cues, context, and animations. Trying to represent that explicitly when it's not the focus of the gameplay would mean drawing too much attention to the illusion that any of this is actually happening.

Thank you for your clarification. I definitely find common ground between us when it comes to abstract things staying more abstract instead of becoming explicit goals. It makes the experience feel more player-driven, and that's something I'm always advocating for. A big fight for the sake of a big fight could still be great - especially if the combat system is amazing enough. I could appreciate it lots from both a player perspective and a design perspective if Brawls were mainly used to draw attention to how good Fighting feels. If that's the case, there's no need to control the fight Shadow of Mordor-style. That said, outside of micro-level control like in fights, it would be nice to see what managing a Syndicate entails, if anything.

I wouldn't hold my breath for it being anything more than the "Mediterranean Defense / Kenway's Fleet" mini-game that we've seen before, if there's anything like that.

I would much rather it be a source of you to recruit allies in the old Courtesan/Thief/Mercenary thing. Point at a guy - you're coming with me - get there - distract that guard post.

The unspoken contract that you sign when you start playing a game is "Oh, this is how I'm going to see the world now." In AC, things happen in real-time, sometimes character moments are represented in cut-scenes, sometimes time skips ahead, but it feels natural because it's styled like a "cut" in a movie. The introduction of an AC game trains you to expect your role in this world to be as an active participant.

Throwing a strategy minigame in the world breaks the unspoken contract. It says "Oh, you're now seeing the world as some weird computer AI puppetmaster." Strategy games work on entirely different perceptions of the world. They can feel just as authentic and immersive as AC does on their own, but when you apply a simple strategy game to a complex world, it hurts the authenticity of both, and when you combine a fully realized world with a fully realized strategy game, both of those things are fighting for prominence within the finished product.

Mini-games work best when they're actually intended as distractions and self-contained challenges within the actual world. The Truth worked as well as it did because both the game aspect and the story aspect it unlocked were abstract and sparse, carried almost entirely off the atmosphere and presentation. The Truth only ever pretended to be puzzles containing information, and that's exactly what they were. Their obvious honesty and the fact of their separation from the rest of the game is what allowed the people to enjoy them without also resulting in people who didn't being forced to engage with them.

TL;DR:

I don't think there should be any kind of "secondary game" tied to the core gameplay loop and content. I have no problem with those things existing as self-contained and justified-in-world diversions, like the tabletop games in AC3 or The Truth in AC2 and ACB, but the world itself should be a chess game, your actions in the core content representing "moves".

EDIT:
I've talked before about playing as both the mentor and an assassin, with the mentor choosing targets. I now feel like it would be best for that kind of thing to be reserved for a spinoff game, maybe something on the ipad. It would be interesting to see something dedicated to a strategy-game interpretation of the templar-assassin conflict.

A solid expansion of your original points. Considering it, you're probably right. I'd rather the Core Gameplay be fantastic, and as long as we have that, other on-the-side stuff is mostly unnecessary. SoM was only about killing Uruks and nothing else. That's why it could afford to have Uruk management be a thing, because in its case it wasn't extraneous. It would be in Syndicate's case. At first glance, you'd think SoM were a very shallow game but on a first and second playthrough it feels like the opposite. Its focus on a singular idea and game concept was what allowed it to achieve such high quality. I'd be down for AC to have a strong, undiluted core, but that's the caveat. It has to be great. Syndicate looks good so far, and I'm curious to play it myself as soon as possible to really feel what's been changed.

Yeah, I'm not saying that the core will undoubtedly be great, but that having a strong definition of what the game's core actually is and focusing on it is the best course for improving it.

That's an awesome quote that I want to remember. Can't say it's wrong, either. SoM did just that. Every really fantastic game does exactly that.

There is one specific thing I'm concerned about: they went ahead and said the typical thing you'd expect: "And this time this is our biggest open world map yet, london is 30% bigger than Unity".

My biggest hope is that they figure out a way to make the world feel rewarding to explore without making it feel overwhelming, like you're stumbling over chests and collectibles everywhere you look. Something I slowly realized about Unity is how easy it can be to make your own fun when roaming, baiting guards into chases and setting factions against each other, simply exploring. I'd almost not seen that, underneath all the constant distractions that were begging for me to "stay engaged".

I hope that they pace the content of this world out better than Unity did, and understand that even though this should be more of a game than it is a toy, an open world feels claustrophobic if activities are CONSTANTLY beckoning. The player should sometimes find themselves in quiet areas, and have to actively seek out objectives.

I noticed a while ago that eagle vision seems to be unlimited but ended by the merest movement, but it could be correlation w/o causation due to no visible UI confirming those suspicions.
The actual eagle vision pulse seems to be a lot faster: in Unity it often lagged in actually displaying the things it marked. I also really like the new grey aesthetic and subtler trigger effect: it looks less distracting to look at all around.

Also of note is that the parkour down function seems to let you drop down bigger heights safely, wheras in Unity you'd often auto-grab ledges even if you weren't high up enough to take fall damage.

Interviews with some figures in the game industry that push for Immersive Simulations, namely Raphael Colantonio (Dishonored) Harvey Smith (Dishonored) and Warren Spector (Deus Ex) often come to a point where one of those three people will bring up the subject of "The One-City Block Game." The entire game world is a single city block, but there are so many systemic and unscripted possibilities within that city block (and using the things the designers have peppered in like keys, doors, vehicles, conversation paths, people, weapons etc.) that its content is deceptively deep while only appearing small. I hope AC Syndicate doesn't exemplify the opposite. Things shouldn't vie for players' attention using pop-ups and UI elements, they should vie for players' attention with their placement, the lighting around them and what the piece of content happens to be.

I really like the new Eagle Vision pulse. I love the way it unfolds, or the way the alternate vision mode materializes into the game world by converting all the different things we see into it instead of sweeping over everything. I just think that's a nicer effect than Unity's. I also mentioned already how much cleaner it is, and how it's easier to read than Unity's.

Yeah, I think I mentioned the idea of a main AC game set in a single isolated village where every person has a name and personality and daily routine, and that discussion was what inspired that.

But I think the large city is kinda necessary to allow the Assassin to have so many tools for navigating it quickly yet not feel like it's small. There are obvious reasons why it fits with the themes and systems of the game, I'm just hoping it doesn't also accrue the potential pitfalls that come with the benefits. After all, you can't give the player a carriage and then NOT give them a whole bunch of space to drive it around!

Yeah, I think I mentioned the idea of a main AC game set in a single isolated village where every person has a name and personality and daily routine, and that discussion was what inspired that.

But I think the large city is at least partially necessary. There are obvious reasons why it fits with the themes and systems of the game, I'm just hoping it doesn't also accrue the potential pitfalls that come with the benefits. After all, you can't give the player a speedy carriage in an open world game and then NOT give them a whole bunch of space to drive it around, and much the same applies when you add some new super-fast parkour navigational tools.

EDIT: in the thumbnail of the video in the OP, Jacob's outfit looks strikingly like Ezio's original assassin outfit. I always liked how period-appropriate that outfit looked minus the hood, and this sorta confirms it, as the style is similar even if the fashion is distinctly victorian.

EDIT2: I think I've nailed down why I like the hood/hat dynamic so much: it feels like a more naturalistic version of Altair's prayer pose. I've always wanted more expressive character actions, and it's not the same for all of them to be relative to the crowd ala AC3 and Unity's blend spots.

One of the things I envisioned for AC3 (when I thought it was going to be just Desmond) was for Desmond to put headphones on and his hands in his hoodie pockets when walking past suspicious guards, rather than wearing the hood up.

It's this kind of era/context-appropriate action that I truly miss from AC1, more than absolutely anything else. The fact that this time it's not also tied to moving unbearably slow is a bonus! I'm interested to see how they vary it up in the future, there's definitely potential in the concept of clothing alteration that goes beyond headgear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf9TEsekV0M&feature=youtu.be

It's vague, but they mention a bit about how the Rooks (the gang Jacob and Evie lead) are meant to be a tie between the main story and side activities. They hadn't said it that specifically before. Also the footage of the gang fight in there reminded me: jacob makes an "attack" signal before the gang rushes in to fight.

Seems very much like the faction system of allied help: set them on a target and they do what they specialize in. This was always more intuitive than the brotherhood assistance maneuvers, and with the added benefit of being more grounded in the game world.

With that in mind, I'm going to guess that the way it's set up is that each sequence will focus on a district, and you have to free that district before you can do the first mission in a sequence. (with the very first sequence being more reserved for introductions and missions that serve as training)