The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Its hard for me to think of specific things i liked in the game, like how eagle vision can be used in 3rd person view, because I liked most of it but the things i dislike have stood out. The ability to replay memories is what I miss the most from the first game, especially since I created a second game only for the purpose of getting the flyswatter achievement. I also dislike how the notoriety was put into the game, I hardly notice a difference when I am notorious, I play the game as I normally and I find it doesn't contribute much to difficulty, only slightly to how easy it is to stealth kill guards and even then its quite easy to do.

Another dislike is that players can not own a spear, I would love to spend several hours playing with the spear and the counter attacks and everything but it's hard when you have to find a spear wielding seeker, not to mention the fact that i often lose them when Ezio drops the spears or fishing poles. I also dislike the fighting mechanics. Maybe it's just me but I find it tedious to fight with anything other than Ezio's fists. I find it annoying that every time I attack with a weapon that the guards deflect it, which is good but sometimes it happens so often I give up and just disarm them instead.

All in all I tend to forget most of my qualms with the game when I'm playing because I think it's just so beautiful and so much fun to just run through Venice, over the Rialto and just enjoying medieval Italy.

I like the Crusades theme much better than the Renaissance one. The new game just has too much color in it and makes it seem less serious, somehow. The original was basically monotone and it fit the dark plot perfectly.

Like - Range on airs, new weapons, money system (broken tho it is), pretty much everything
Dislike - no free Rome (see what I did there?), more linear assassination missions, no taking off armour, and no replay levels

I agree with Garnier all the way, ever since day one of playing AC:II I found that the series never went back to that raw, un-coated gameplay that was the Assassin Altair. I often associate Ezio's Charisma with the new, more "colorful" time period in the series.

Isn't that the whole point of a new ancestor? Revitalizing the franchise with every step?

It's like the Doctor from Doctor Who. Same man, different feel each time a new actor replaces the old one. It's supposed to be different so it stays fresh.

However, when you deviate too much from the origional source of ACI, then you're obviously gonna have some fans to be angry about. A prime example of this is a complex story with depth.

As for the dislikes in ACII:
- slow combat
- lack of replay story missions
- decent, but not intriguing and mysterious Assassin
- forced to become an errand boy.

For me the most disappointing aspects of Ezio are combat and his movement in general.

AC is experimental in the sense that there was no marketing feedback in the design process.

But then with ACII they wanted to please most of the players who might buy it, based on the feedback from AC. And most of the players don't spend any effort trying to get better at fighting. And they don't pay attention to details. They just stand there with their swords raised and wait for the opportunity to counter, and then they just rush trough the city from one mission to the next.

True Al-Assas, I just wish that they had already gone through the processes that they've been going through so that the game only appealed to those who made up its original fan base. NOT to say that someone who likes AC:II isn't a real fan, I just wish they kept their audience in a smaller scope instead of a broader one. People could argue both ways, I'm just on the side of what they originally seemed to have going. I still love and support the games and their makers, video games are great

I don't get why AC2 is considered more of an errand boy game when the entirety of AC1 was killing 9 dudes for your master.

Yes, I know, you're talking about how Ezio always seems to be helping out other people instead of investigating his targets by himself, but I think that was always just because his goals coincided with them. And you learn at the end that all of those people were really assassins, and that they were training and guiding him. And yes there were the odd missions that were simply to help someone out, but I think that's just the kind of guy Ezio was.

I never found Altair mysterious or interesting. It was always plainly obvious what he was thinking, and he was entirely taken in by the guy who was so very obviously shady. If it was revealed that he had at least been suspicious, I would have then have had reason to think that he was mysterious and cool. The last act (after killing Robert) was the only part of AC1 where I became interested in Altair as a character, and dang did he ever pull off that finish.

Ezio on the other hand evolves from being brash and obvious to being more thoughtful and mysterious, the culmination of which, I think, was at the point where he spared the pope. So they both come into their own at the end part, but I enjoyed Ezio's journey more, namely because it actually felt like one.
It felt like an adventure, not just a string of kills with dudes who all said the same thing when they died.

I feel like AC2 knew exactly how serious to take itself, wheras AC1's tone was a bit more oppressive than it needed to be. Things like the last level of AC1 would have been a lot more impactful if Masyaf hadn't been presented in basically the same cold and dark light as Acre had been.

AC2 had humor, set-pieces, exploration, intrigue, and moments of darkness which stood out because the whole game didn't feel like that.

Story-wise, I love it. It makes me feel so fulfilled every time I play through it. Gameplay-wise, it opened up a lot of new options, but more importantly fixed so many of the glitches that plagued free-running, issues such as the camera's floatiness, control of the player feeling freer, and made a lot of the moves easier to pull off, which is a good thing in a game where messing up makes you want to/have to either quit, blunder forward, or reset the mission. Plus all the new moves and options they added.

About not opening the game up to a wider audience:
Game developers, unless they are extremely silly, are going to listen to criticism when they make a sequel. Pretty much anyone who makes anything is going to listen to criticism when they make more.

let's say someone made a three legged chair, one that was beautifully made and had the potential to be a really nice chair, and then they sold it, and most people hated it, and some people liked it for the parts of it that were good.

If they then made a second chair, listening to the complaints of the people who hated it and gave it four legs, but also made it more comfortable, then maybe the people who liked the first chair would be upset, because it's not the same as the chair they liked. It's more comfortable for most people to sit in, and it takes no balancing skill to use.

But is the four legged chair more complete, and a better chair overall? yes. Do you get more profit when you sell a more complete product? yes.

I know you guys are aware that AC1 was not perfect, but I think there's this idea that an AC2 built around the same investigate, assassinate, investigate, assassinate concept would have done well.

I really don't think that's the case. I think people would have gotten tired of that very fast, so fast that an AC3 would have been in doubt, let alone brotherhood and revelations.

And they knew that when they made the choices they did making AC2. And so they made a game that more people would enjoy. Not because they just arbitrarily decided that they would choose the majority over the minority, but because they decided they would choose selling the game and being able to sustain it as a franchise over AC crashing and burning.

Choosing to cater ONLY to your core fans is a luxury that is only afforded to indie devs these days. These games cost millions and take years to make. Making your game acesssible yet unique is the best you can do, and I think AC2 succeeded.

And I don't think most of the things that annoyed people about AC1 were design choices. I think they were things that seemed unfinished. AC1 didn't seem totally finished to me. It seemed like the framework for a game, 9 awesome assassinations, cool environments, awesome gameplay, amazing final level, story that seemed like it was building to something. AC2 felt like a full game to me. And if you had made it play like AC1 and made the missions more AC1 style, then I would have felt the same about how complete it feels, though I'd like it less.

No. Not at all.

Those who like the three legged chair use it for sitting on it. They pay attention to the details, and they delve into it and unearth the awesomeness. They play the game that the designer had in mind. Because the designers delved into it as well. That was their mistake from the marketing point. They didn't look at it in a shallow way, as most of the players do.

Those who don't like it, the majority, whom the marketing department is interested in, never really get to the core of it, because they don't really want to play. They just want to experience the game. They stand on it to reach the top shelf, they rock it back and forth, and then they discard it. They don't even notice most of its more subtle functionality.

AC1 is a trillion times more complete than ACII. It is the paragon of completeness. (I'm talking about the PC version.)

ACII is the typical example of more being less. A pile of stuff is not completeness.

I watched a lot of let's play AC videos, and I totally understand how people who just run from one mission to the next get bored of it. They don't see a percent of this game.

I haven't got bored of it yet. I just killed Talal yesterday while he was held by vigilantes. Something I never did before.

Well, you gave the answer yourself:

That might have been Ezio, but me being directed from one marker to another in order to get someone some milk isn't fun to me. If I'm playing Assassin's Creed, I want to sneak around and stab some people, investigate them, however I want to. Dishonored does this really really well, only the investigation part is a bit thin (but it's there).
Also, that's a complaint about AC2, but AC2 is very good; it has a lot of assassinations. Brotherhood and Revelations are the arthritic stepdad games.

I never really saw Al-Mualim as obviously shady, and I like to think I can see these things coming.
You're focussing on the final plot twist here and it's logical that you don't see Altaïr doubting Al Mualim, that would've put a slight doubt in the mind of the player, making the twist way less dramatic.
It's about the journey Altaïr makes, from arrogant master assassin, to arrogant newbie, to slowly learning what the creed really means. After the Sibrand assassinations, he mentions how he's is empathizing with the targets. There's a story, it's just not really upfront.

I think the main difference between us is that your look on the game is much more casual. Thus you like to see big set-pieces and a very upfront story-telling. Thing is, with games like that you're done really quickly, and if I'm spending 60 bucks, I want to be playing for a long time.

I know that they were trying to go for a journey on the part of Altair. But for me, that journey very obviously happened all at once immediately after the 9th assassination.

It's not that I expected Altair to SHOW his doubt, but that a character seems less mysterious if at the end of the game you realize that they weren't hiding anything. He didn't have any hidden doubts of Al Mualim, he was totally predictable.

I find AC1's story EXTREMELY obvious and up-front. And I don't find that it was subtle storytelling at all. It required you to stand in front of people or over dying people listening for long periods of time. Don't worry, I got every story beat. And it was mostly delivered through exposition. Show, don't tell. I also felt like it took itself too seriously in the wrong way. It seemed to think that it was something that it was not, and that always bugs me.
I also find it lacking in variety and the set-pieces and presentation lack-luster.

I was done with AC1's story and all side objectives in about 20 or maybe less, AC2's story took me longer than that, and the side objectives themselves ate up a ton more time.

I played that game for 300 hours. I found endless replayability. I didn't love it for the set-pieces, but just moment to moment gameplay, environment, character, everything. It did set-pieces a little better than AC1, however, which was good.

And the things I most enjoyed about AC2 was how many things about its story WEREN'T up-front. the glyphs gave all these subtle clues as to how things really happened in the history of the AC universe, the Assassin-Templar war was a mysterious thing looming in the background until the last act started to make things clear that you were not just on a mission for revenge.

I rarely saw story beats coming. I knew Ezio's family would die because of the trailers, but even so it and his reaction to it was very well done. And the main villain becoming the pope was a shock.

I want to be clear on something: I love AC1. I think it was a fantastic game. I love the Assassination missions, and I love the last act to bits. I love searching out and killing Templars. I love searching for emails as Desmond, I love climbing view-points and stalking people through bazaars and alleyways. I love the visual style. I love the hidden blade.

And when I played the game for the first time I loved it in all those ways but I never felt like the game really knew where it wanted to go. I never felt like the game mechanics were gitch-free enough for me to actually role-play during a kill, instead using techniques that would look strange from an outsider's perspective to avoid death. Combat was sluggish and obtuse, though when mastered it merely became tedious repetition of "break block, combo kill, counter kill, kill idle animation guard with hidden blade", or even easier "counter with hidden blade or kill idlers with hidden blade". You could do other things with it, but there was never any point.

I never really felt like I was actually investigating anything beyond the basic premise of the mission, and those things which I learned often had very limited application to the mission itself, as well as the fact that you physically got maps and diagrams was not very clear at all.

The voice-acting beyond Altair and some other main characters was awful, and sounded like it had been recorded badly.

I never saw AC1 from a casual perspective. I was really into it, but there were some huge, glaring problems that soured me on it.

I love AC2 not just for any one aspect of it, like set-pieces or storytelling, but ALL of it.
Every single bit of it was an improvement for me. The only slight exception is the graphics, but I felt like it ran smoother than AC1 did and I prefer the more balanced and vibrant art-style anyways. Every single other aspect is obviously improved, IMO. Sometimes you get your information about where your target is directly, yes, and you don't go find informant missions for yourself, you're funneled through them. Fine. It was rare in AC1 to really know anything more about your target's location than just that after investigation. It's just streamlining the process. and what people really want is the observe the situation and then plan through trial and error or as they go. Because that's what you always ended up doing in AC1.

Unguided cut-scenes are a useful tool for getting across story beats without using crippling paragraphs of exposition. I'm not going to list every single thing that I thought was improved with AC2, because I'd then be here all day.

I'm currently re-playing AC1 and I still feel the same way about it. Skeleton of an amazing game there, held back by clunky presentation, overly bleak tone, and gameplay issues.

Brotherhood and Revelations, I liked more for the story aspect, though I found the new gameplay additions fun for a few hours. I was far more dissapointed with revelations, because with brotherhood I had expected crap and got a decent upgrade in presentation polish and gameplay, despite the Ezio story being uninteresting for the most part and the content style being far more limited and linear. ACR however failed to match up to the kind of step forward Brotherhood was, with it being obvious that part of the game which had been talked about in earlier interviews had been cut for time. The presentation took a bump but a certain parts of the game it degraded in quality significantly.

Everything I've seen of AC3 gives me hope and it is obvious to me that it's an entirely different game from the last two sequels scale-wise and focus-wise, and you can bet your bottom dollar that after I've completed it and all its achievements I will be on here explaining why it's awesome and why you should play it, Phi!

Anyways the reason I dislike AC1 is not because I have less taste for subtlety in storytelling, or that I'm more casual about AC, but because it has huge glaring flaws that I'm not able to overlook, wheras those flaws are something a lot of you guys WERE able to overlook. Just as the linearity of Brotherhood and Revelations was easier for me to overlook, since the basic gameplay was building on my favorite game ever: AC2.

Um...Altair had character development, too.

And the main gripe against the story was that there was no analysis or complexity. Ezio merely went from point A to point B, killing all the conspirators that played a role in the death of dad and brothers. He never seems to question, never seems to learn much more a while. True, he did end the suffering of that elderly man when Rodrigo stabbed in the those ruins in the Tuscany area, but...that was about it.

Altair actually questioned what he was doing, why he was doing, and the ramification of such actions. Ezio barely did any of that. We know this from this interactions with his Master and the Rafiq.

And that's what ACB and ACR should've had: complexity. Self-doubt. Slight confusion. Brotherhood had the chance for a darker story. They could have gone in dept with the Catholic Church, the Borgia family, corruption, oppression, questioning the Creed; ect. But never once did they do any of that. Hell, Lucrezia's rape wasn't even in there!

ACI had a more darker tone - reflecting the obvious violent era of the 3rd Crusade. ACII had a dark tone as well - just more subtler and hidden beneath a facade of Renaissance enlightenment. Only problem, that portion just wasn't placed enough emphasis as well.

No.

Just to mention an early one: it strikes him that some of the patients were thankful to Garnier, and he mentions his doubts to the rafiq.

"the side objectives themselves ate up a ton more time"

Yeah, now there's a difference between you and me. I would never think of a mission as something that eats up time. When I complete a mission I think more of it as a lost mission. Because I can't do it again. For example, I usually kill the last of the save citizen guards after I got so far that the mission resets. So that I don't lose it.

"I love AC1. I think it was a fantastic game."

It still is. There's nothing past-tense about it.

"break block, combo kill, counter kill, kill idle animation guard with hidden blade"

There's grab and throw, and there's leap forward. Both of them there from the beginning, because they are the two most important moves. There's a lot of point to them. These two moves are what makes it possible to control proximity and pace, making it possible to kill the enemies in a quick, safe and continuous way. Of course you have to experiment if you want to learn how to fight.

There's storytelling in a movie or a novel too. That's not what makes a game. Gameplay is.

"I know you guys are aware that AC1 was not perfect"

Erm... What do you mean?

The animations could have been made more continuous, but that's a very hypothetical imperfection. There are some technical limits. Even Connor often suddenly jumps from one position to another.

What, so you think AC1 was perfect? Why do you think that I was talking about animations? No game is perfect, and when I went down this line of discussion before here, people acnowledged that AC1 was not perfect. I didn't meant anything by using the past tense, oh my goodness.

And yes, I know Altair was doubting the whole time, but he never really changed from "doubting" to "enlightened" until the last missions.

I understand that he had character development, but it wasn't a gradual thing IMO. A lot of it happened at once.

Ezio learned about his targets and questioned their motives many times. Its true that the men he met were more often than not legitemately terrible people, but the Templar Order of the Italian Renaissance was meant to be as corrupt as the people who made up it. And yes, he moved from person to person quickly, but he had very obvious and clear motivations

At least the discussions they had before death were not ALL "I did terrible things, but I did them for a purpose". If you do that EVERY time it looses impact.

"There's grab and throw, and there's leap forward. Both of them there from the beginning, because they are the two most important moves. There's a lot of point to them. These two moves are what makes it possible to control proximity and pace, making it possible to kill the enemies in a quick, safe and continuous way. Of course you have to experiment if you want to learn how to fight."

Grab and throw is a part, yes, but it honestly isn't that big of a change. Guards are still circling around you, attacking one at a time and unable to hit you if you're in an animation. Combat in AC1 is not exciting. Combat in AC2 is not exciting. Combat in Brotherhood is easy. Combat in Revelations is fiddly. The only AC game whose combat I think looks actually enjoyable and deep is AC3, and I haven't played that yet.

"There's storytelling in a movie or a novel too. That's not what makes a game. Gameplay is."

Yes, and I stated that I liked AC2's gameplay more than AC1's, didn't I?

"Yeah, now there's a difference between you and me. I would never think of a mission as something that eats up time. When I complete a mission I think more of it as a lost mission. Because I can't do it again. For example, I usually kill the last of the save citizen guards after I got so far that the mission resets. So that I don't lose it."

Now you're nit-picking my phrasing.

All I was saying is that the side missions offer a large amount of content, and previous to that I mentioned that AC2 main story itself without any side content is significantly longer than AC1.
I don't see how stating a fact shows the "difference between me and you"

About the tone: I understand that the crusades were dark, but it's not just that the tone was dark. I don't feel as thought the story was paced fast enough or had enough energy to be as good a fit with that tone as it could have been.
AC2 was not light-hearted fun. It was intensely gray at points, and I remember as I played through it for the first time realizing that I didn't really agree with what the Assassins were doing, with how many people they were killing and their rationalization for doing so. I just feel as though it knew that there were moments to ease up. and the fact that it was set over several years instead of a few weeks gave us an opportunity to feel the impact of changes that happened in history, as well as pace the game better. I just enjoyed and was captivated by the story more. And again, dumping exposition into long conversation does not count as subtle or good storytelling.

I guess I have to say this again because it's not being heard correctly:
I think that Assassin's Creed 1 IS an amazing game that didn't live up to its full potential due to problems with pacing, general gameplay, and tone. I am fully aware that some others disagree with this statement. However this is how I feel, which is what this thread is for, right? you don't need to find the ways that I'm a "different type of gamer" than you or whatever. You can just accept that people have different opinions, right? I accept yours.

Oh yeah, the tone. That's also one of the things that I can't even imagine how any other game could live up to any time soon. I couldn't have imagined that a game can be this serious. It's an enormous artistic feat that they didn't lighten it up a little. Death is gruesome in AC1. And that in itself multiplies immersion by two for me.

Of course ACII couldn't repeat that either.

But if I want to be honest, it's probably basically just a very few factors, partly unconscious, and then the rest is rationalization and the result of positive attitude and attention.

That's what's so great about making videos. It's easier to show what you like about it than to explain it, and at the same time they can open up some of those mental realms for others. That's what they did for me, the videos that came from the THB (and ac-maps) crowd.

At this point, I can just read the first few paragraphs of Calvar's novel-sized comments and understand where he's going, so I'll just say right now that I didn't read 90% of what you said (because at this point, I know your views on all this stuff).

Now the majority of feelings about the AC franchise from the THB community is very direct and thorough. We want these games to be what the original concept was. Having it devolve into another series of "kill these people, but do chores for random citizens in-between each kill" is what frustrates us about it. We look deep into it and appreciate what Ubisoft was originally going for because almost all of that is scrapped, it seems.

A player like Calvar is the complete opposite. You love the series, but didn't look into the intricacies of the original template like THB does constantly. The closer the series moves towards other mainstream game types, the happier those players get.

Because who cares about gathering information yourself and planning ahead simply by listening to a few guards talk for 10 seconds? Who cares about replayability years after the game's release? Who cares about gameplay mechanics that few players take the time to find themselves ("roof dents", parkour vaulting, advanced combat, etc)?

Ahaha, I suppose there is no point explaining myself if you're going to just assume you know what's in my head from a few sentences, but I'll try one more time.

The difference between me and some other people is not that I think that the more something is mainstream the better it is, but that I don't think that any element of mainstreamness is terrible and unforgivable.

And anyways, games ARE mainstream products. They cost millions and millions to make, and so no-one should be shocked that they're aimed at mainstream audiences.

When you can't bring yourself to consider other people's views and have to place them in a different category of person than you, that's called cognitive dissonance.
You don't care that my posts are long, but that they don't affirm your own opinions.

But you are correct, you and I have already gone down this road.

This topic was for posting opinions on AC2. I did just that.

I find it funny how you assert that I don't care about replayability. I KNOW that Brotherhood and Revelations were not as replayable. I know because I spent more than 400 hours playing AC2 and I still love playing through it from the start, messing around in free-roam, or replaying side missions, learning every nook and cranny and learning every secret of the mechanics. Brotherhood and Revelations never had that kind of staying power with me. They were a truncated version of more of the same AC2. I enjoyed them, but I never fell in love with them.

And I don't find it offensive, since I know of plenty of other series that have released non-numbered, smaller scale games in between numbered ones. It's a very common practice.
If AC3 delivers the same experience as Brotherhood or Revelations, however, I will be as upset as the rest of you. But I've spent so much time combing through interviews and watching gameplay that I am confident nearly beyond a shadow of a doubt that it will be so much more.

TL;DR: Don't use me as a straw-man just because I don't share every single view that you do. I don't think that any AC game has been without its share of flaws, I just am able to overlook AC2's the easiest and AC1's stick out to me the most.

EDIT: inb4 "you're taking this too seriously Calvar"
I don't write a lot because I'm taking things seriously. I write because I think a lot about what I want to get across, and I enjoy conveying that through writing.

EDIT2: I don't think that AC1 was dark in the sense that it was gruesome and chilling, but in the sense that it was oppressive and muted. And that tone just aggravated my grievances with the rest of the game.

I was actually confused why it was just about AC2. It ended up that we were referring to every game in the franchise so far. I think we all know that AC2 was great, which is where this confusion is coming from. Don't have to get all defensive about it.

I have greatly enjoyed this discussion - everyone's views and opinions.

"EDIT: inb4 "you're taking this too seriously Calvar"
I don't write a lot because I'm taking things seriously. I write because I think a lot about what I want to get across, and I enjoy conveying that through writing."

" Don't have to get all defensive about it."

-.-

I was restating my thoughts. And now it appears that you DO understand my point. So it worked.

Before I was implying that you repeat yourself so much that a lot of us could probably expect what you're going to say. So we understand it very well. No one said we didn't.

Yeah Lisa, I think Calvar and Al-Assas are my new go-to guys! AC:I was to me and remains to me the best game in terms of direction. I do agree with Calvar, it wasn't so much dark as it was raw, and not so much serious as it was muted. I'm thinking for me it was just easier to get into that wicked violent template they had going because it didn't have a grasp on it's own direction so I assumed the one I wanted. I do agree with the broken mechanics in AC:I, and the bland combat in any of the games. I do like the fighting, but I wish you could still string together combos the way you could before brotherhood. Now it just seems like kill, kill, kill. That's it.

However AC:III looks a little bit more fun in terms of massacre, and I think I'm REALLY going to enjoy being a bush-assassin. That bow has my attention completely AND I am going to say it (risking sounding like a hater) but I'm SO GLAD to be done with the entire renaissance. One of my least favourite times, especialy for the assassin who is ideal to me. It just seems too fun-loving, or, dramatic I guess. not my KIND of drama probably.

I liked the emphasis on poverty and hate and all the philosophy in AC:I. Just how it was all so exposed, wasn't to be taken too lightly at all lol I think too that alot of my love for the original assassin came from that very first playthrough where my brain was going "nothing is true, everything is forbidden. Al-Mualim is shady, what's he doing? How can all these people justify themselves in their actions? How come I cannot justify their actions? Is there right, wrong, and the assassins? Is there just right, and the assassins? Why are there alien artifacts? I think I just saw adam and eve, wtf?? WHERE IS THIS GAME GOING, OMG I'M BUYING INTO THIS."

It was obviously an apocalyptic conclusion, but there were so many variables and directions to be had, so much information that not many video games prefer to enlighten people with. I find I barely asked questions playing AC:II and it seemed like I was watching a movie, what with all the cinematics and how they weren't presented the same in AC:I. I think the complexity (or rather the amount of things going on) is what makes me continue to love Assassin's Creed as a franchise.

So far there's Desmond in 2012, Ezio in 1500's, Altair in..1109? And that alone opens my head up to so many possibilities, era's, Characters, nationalities and tools of the regional trade! (still don't like the hook blade that much though)

Assassin's Creed has definitely been the best source of entertainment for me over the past 3 years. I don't watch as much tv, movies, I'm not even online that much unless I have a good reason, and with THB, I have a very good reason

I apologize for the rant but I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to say. Basically just why AC means so much to me, I guess.

Hey, no need to apologize! I really wish I had been able to get into AC as much as some of you guys here and I enjoy hearing you talk about your memories of it!