The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

It's sad but I think it might actually be true :/

How flattering, Joey. Yet it's eerily true.

Haha, guys. It's probably because it just isn't their style. Anyway, it will help if you could change things in assassination missions. Just think of it like this: If at the beginning of every assassination you were automatically detected by the target, it wouldn't be as fun. In fact, this website wouldn't have existed because most of the early videos that started it wouldn't have been possible. But if we had the option to make stealth or other alternatives possible, it would change things and open up more possibilities.

Okay, where did you get that from (more like, how did you make it)? Pictures like that can really help us visualize things better.

Or maybe...maybe this is a conspiracy hatched from Ubisoft. YES!

They plan to lobotomize their once proud AC franchise and placate them to a more mainstream audience by adding unnecessary shit and a linear mission structure. After all, why try if you're gonna make money irregardless?

Ha! I got them now - those Templar bastards!

Large companies like Ubisoft usually have multiple tiers of management, so the people who do the actual creative stuff rarely have any say in their schedules. Things are planned out ahead of time and there's little room for stuff like, "I have a new idea, lets play around with this for a while".

I didn't at all intend for it to work that way. Of course that wouldn't be fun.

Picture Abu'l's assassination. If he was laying a trap for you, it will still go down as normal, but you'd have to keep on the move a bit during the speech to avoid the searching guards. Once the speech concludes and people start keeling over from the poison, he then addresses you (not by name, of course) and dares you to stop him. You see him step back behind a gate that closes and suddenly you hear a guard shout "There he is!"

That means you're not sneaking up on him. It means that you'll have a tougher time getting to him. But it might also mean he won't flee this time. Instead, he'll be waiting for you with some elite guards. But once you've dealt with the archers and other guards in the courtyard, perhaps you're smarter then he thinks and you manage to sneak up on him and his guards while they lay in wait...

It wouldn't (and in my opinion shouldn't) change the final mission much. Just some slight (realistic) changes if you screwed up during your investigations. The whole idea is to make the investigations feel organic and make your choices feel like they have some weight to them.

I just whipped it up for that post using an image editing program. The idea in my head is actually more complicated than that, but I didn't have the time to do anything better. A quick hypothetical was all I needed.

There were a few missions in AC3 that actually had more freedom than what we've gotten used to. Bunker Hill is a prime example. Once you get past the battlefield, there are several options on how to execute the assassination. Most of the assassination contracts are probably the most freeing ones.

William Johnson is a great example... you can approach him 360° and get him... tree routes from both sides, the house behind him, blending with people (for a while) from the front... then he flees (if you don't get him)... chase by land? chase by tree? SO many options for him...

Including Kill By Bear -- today I'm going to try to find one of every predator (bear, male elk, bobcat, cougar, wolf) close enough to kill him so I can put together a Doctor Dolittle Assassination Pack on him.

You can make this type of graph really easily with a program called yEd.
Look:

I guess the one question I'd have for the "tiered" investigations would be whether or not we'd know what the various options at the "A" (or first) level are.

For instance, say we had four choices:

1) Eavesdrop
2) Beat Up
3) Pickpocket
4) Bribe

Would they all be indicated by the same colored circle or would they be different colors so we could knowingly choose our route? Say I didn't want to eavesdrop, but wanted to beat someone up for my info, would accidentally going to the eavesdrop circle trigger the start of that data collection and negate my choice of going the beat up route?

I think a different colored circle structure might be nice for the player to have some freedom in choosing HOW to obtain the information without being forced to replay the mission to give everything a shot (not that that wouldn't be done anyway).

It doesn't have to be any different from how any of the AC games work already. When you discover one of the four, it becomes an icon or circle on the map. You'd get a tooltip (if you didn't turn off that HUD element) telling you to eavesdrop or whatever. It would also be obvious from what the NPCs were doing, so it could be done without any HUD elements at all.

If you don't like that investigation option, ignore it and look for another.

Fixed.

I'd like to see a HUD selection screen on new game, with the default set being as we'd like it.

I really think the hand-holding should go. These are grown-ups playing, not 3 year olds.

Unfortunately, we're in the minority. Most gamers are much more casual than we are and would be lost without such things. It would never be off by default.

That's not a bad thing though. How hard is it to turn it off once? The first thing I do upon booting up any game for the first time is hit the options menu and configure the hell out of it. Always have, always will. This would just be one of those changes, especially if particular HUD elements were labelled as making the game easier to play. Perhaps an asterisk beside certain options with a caption at the top or bottom of the list saying "Turn these off for a challenge."

I wish the same could be said about the multiplayer.

It could just tell you what kind of mission it is when you approach it. Anyhow, one thing I'm thinking about are those mini missions. Ubi sort of brought back save the citizen in the form of liberation missions. Of course there is a lot more variety. But there are two problems I see:
1. They can't be replayed.
2. Until you complete them they sort of clutter up the map.
A good solution would be to have a memory where the objectives are to do a bunch of those missions. They would be in a bunch of random places and can only be done during the memory. That solves both problems. And I'm thinking the purpose of the missions is to either make allies or gather information.

Another thing I want tweaked is eagle vision/sense. In all the games so far it lets you identify enemies and allies and some other stuff. Another thing is it also changes the colors on the screen. The only reason I can see for that is to discourage players from having it activated for long. The question is why? Why not run or sneak around with eagle vision activated constantly? Another reason for this is to have tooltips also activated when using eagle vision/sense. So basically when using eagle vision you're putting it on simple and easy mode.

Not sure if eagle mode can translate as an easy mode...or what you mean by that.

It's pretty well known that the stealth in later games are completely broken. One of the reasons is that it's so easy:

- Whenever you go to a Borgia Area, you instantly know the location of the Borgia Captain
- Guard Meters go up way too slow, and go down instantly when you're blended in a crowd (in real life, the meter would SLOWLY lower as guards are scanning you across the sea of face...without hoods)

In ACB, you could tag treasures, rifts, and feathers. I liked that...A LOT. In ACIII, they added a lens effect where the outer edges of your screen would stretch...almost as if you're looking through the eyes of an eagle. I liked that...A LOT. I wanna expand on that. Ubisoft could have added a glowing way-point that shoots up in the sky, similar to SLY COOPER SERIES. This can only be activated during Eagle Vision, and it encourages players to climb to tall buildings so they can see the way-point they set up on their map. A meter metronome countdown can me displayed on the very top. You can set up to X amount of way-points for different points of interests, whether it'd a famous landmark, Assassin HQ, Brothel, Thieves Guild, or Mercenary Guild. Main missions would automatically have theirs placed as well.

I also think that collectibles should only be GLOWING AND SEEN with Eagle Vision on. I've already talked about collectibles such as Animus fragments/points. Levers and pulleys should only be GLOWING WITH the Eagle Sense on! Seriously, why is everything in the later games padded!In ACB, there was a mission where you had to escort a wounded thief to safety by blending into crowds. But wait! One of the crowds that you can blend was already glowing...as if to guide the players to being incognito!

That's one of the reason why I liked ACI. You didn't had to map that instantly revealed the location of every enemy. You didn't have warning signs when guards were gonna attack. You only had one sigh near your health meter that indicated when guards had eyes on you. Anyway, back to the refinement of Eagle Vision...

I also would want to change how it turns on and off. With the exception of ACR, nearly all of them begin with a WHITE flash and then turns into a BLACK FADE. ACR just transitioned from a black screen that was it. Both cases. you had to hold down the HEAD button for roughly 1.5 second. WAY...TOO...LONG. Turning on/off eagle vision should come at a split second, similar to Batman's Detective Vision. You can call it unrealistic - what turning on/off one's extrasensory skills in an instant, but I don't care! Another problem is the fading. The black seems to cover the entire screen as it fades away. Perhaps that can be changed into FOCAL BLUR. Everything except the character is in a sharp blur, with the red/blue/white/gold sticking out.

Many people that just want to go through the game (especially a second time, third time, etc) time would not like this. Why force us to be errand boys when we just want to get to the end result of an assassination. Sure, Connor did all those liberation things. But if I don't want to 100% sync him, don't make me. In AC1, you weren't required to save citizens or climb viewpoints. Why make it required now?

That's quite a lot of time from my knowledge of it. When the games still used / for , it took about half a second of holding. In ACR and AC3, it takes a click of the left stick. It's actually much faster now. I'm not sure which you were referring to, but still.

Well, I play on my friend's console before I buy the game on PC. It's way too long over there. I don't need to hold it down. It should be instant.

You answered your own question. Tooltips like glowing waypoints realy make it easy. I remember in a demo for AC2 I saw the symbol for an assassins tomb in the air, kind of like how the symbol for a hired group hovers above them. Obviously they didn't implement it in the game, but something like that during eagle mode sounds good (in other words a hovering symbol for shops, side missions, etc).

You do have a good point. However, as I said before, there's no way to replay those without making a new game. And being forced to do those is somewhat better than having them completely optional (some players might not even bother with them since they're not required). But you still make a good point. Perhaps there could be a compromise?

What about, instead of replaying entire memories, you can replay starting at checkpoints?

There would be 3 checkpoints during an assassination memory: 1. Introduction to the mission (a mentor explaining why this person must die cutscene for example, with gameplay-oriented set up for the mission, so it's not a waste of time). 2. After the introduction objectives, where the information-gathering missions start. 3. The assassination.

When you get to Checkpoint 2, doing those side missions matter. Depending on how much information you go out of your way to obtain makes the mission more or less difficult. Let's say the player only did 2 side objectives before the assassination and they gave them an easy way to get to the target with no one seeing him (maybe a key to a back door), and locations of guard routes.

The player would have vital information, but the exact location of the target, if they're guarded well or not, are there any traps to watch out for, etc, would be lacking. This would make those missions matter.

I think if you skip straight to the replay of the assassination, you're only given the information you obtained the last time you did the side missions, rather than automatically giving us every answer just because we're in replay mode. That would make players choose to either settle for what they have or become a real detective to be as prepared as possible.

Here's another flaw I see in the AC games: how the basic game mechanics are introduced towards the player. In...

ACI: there's a lengthy and rather condescending tutorial based inside the Animus, PLUS the 1st few levels of the memory block.
ACII: The 1st sequence is all about parkour - Ezio (the player) getting use to the parkouring, crowd mechanics, collectables, and new mission structure. The 2nd is all about dipping your toes as being an Assassin (social stealth, assassinations, and a BIT of combat). 3rd sequence is all about new combat mechanics, weapons, tactics, and exploration. THEN the game finally opens up. Sheesh.
ACB-ACR: Pretty much identical to each other. 1st sequence is more of a tutorial of both navigation, action, stealth. True exploration doesn't come until the 2nd sequence, and even then the entire city doesn't open until you're HALFWAY through the entire game.
ACIII: The worse of all. After a short tutorial of the new parkour, the 1st sequence is almost of entirely light combat (fist, disarm, and counter-kills) and picking up clues. 2nd sequence is exploration, stealth (what little there is to begin with), and more complex combat. 3rd sequence is a bit more stealth and exploration. 4th is MORE tutorials revolving around hunting, tree-running, rock-climbing, and new combat tactics. 5th is establishing a new economic system, naval combat, and small new weapons.

So here's my suggestion: ONE tutorial surrounding around all the 3 pillars of game-play: combat, social-stealth, and free-running. Make it a linear sequence with Uncharted-esque set-pieces if you have to, but make sure you condense everything into 1 level. Spreading it out across several levels just pads the game unnecessarily. It's rather insulting to us as players if you think about it.

Aren't the cities opened up as soon as you're in them in the spin-offs? If not immediately, it can't be halfway.

In AC:B the entire city is opened up in sequence 7. There are 9 sequences in the whole game.

That's right, guys. Rome doesn't even open up till you're 3/4 of the game. This is bad game design in of itself, as it PREVENTS you from exploring and immersing yourself in the world. In the 1st AC game, as soon as you selected your target and go to that city, you immediately unlock it and could fast travel it anytime and anywhere.

They fixed that in AC3 though. As soon as a city is unlocked, it is ALL unlocked.

Seq 2 - ALL of Boston unlocked
Seq 3 (maybe 2, didn't check) - ALL of Frontier (but Valley Forge) unlocked
Seq 5 - ALL of Homestead unlocked
Seq 9 - ALL of New York unlocked (even if it was a little late)
By my estimation, >50% of the map unlocked after two complete sequences.

Better than any other game did at unlocking cities and letting you explore and get to know them from the beginning.

Opening up the map might have been slightly better, but the 1st few sequences are still padded nevertheless with lengthy tutorials and hand-holding.

Ubisoft (and the entire gaming industry) forced themselves into the tutorial missions when they got rid of paper manuals in the cases of games.

Ubisoft is left with 3 options:
1 - One long-ass tutorial at the beginning of the game to introduce all the concepts of the game (see: AC1).
2 - Incorporate the tutorials into the story of the game (AC2/B/R/3).
3 - No tutorials at all and let new people flounder.

Personally, I'd rather get the tutorials in game as part of the story as you need them than get them all at the beginning which you won't use for 15-20 hours of gameplay time. (ie, it doesn't make sense to introduce the mechanics of naval warfare pregame. Likewise for the economy system).

Even in AC1, you got unskippable tutorials in game every time you got a weapons or abilities upgrade... and they HAD the paper manual to help you out.

Hell, they left out a few major tutorials/introductions in AC3.
1 - Use of smoke and tripwire bombs. Had I not played the previous games, I would have never noticed them there or used them. (Hell, I still don't use them often anyway, but still).
2 - Assassin recruit missions. It took me until Seq 9-10 before I realized I could send my recruits on missions through the colonies to level up.

Long story short: they have to introduce all the new things to the old-timers and EVERYthing to the newbies somehow. I'd rather they do it while providing background story than all at the beginning where I'd have to spend upwards of 45 minutes to learn it all before even getting dropped into the game.

AC1 tutorial is definitely over the top. You can barely get it under 60 minutes if you do it as quick as possible.

Agreed. And how many people might turn a game off if they don't get dropped into it for over an hour after they started? At least in AC3 you do 5 minutes of running on white shapes, then kill a bitch. Immediately. Sure, it's scripted and completely linear... but it's background to the game, graphics of the game, you have SOME control. And you can interact with people in the opera house (or at least listen to their conversations).

Sidebar: My favorite conversation to listen to in the game takes place in the Opera House (in the English version of the game, not sure if the pun works in other languages). You overhear someone talking about cooking and using imported American sheep. Apparently she has some issues with getting it to work right/not explode in her oven.
"I just don't get these American sheep, it's just awful." - implying the experience is bad
but maybe, just maybe, she actually says:
"I just don't get these American sheep, it's just offal." - implying offal is very easy to prepare and the American sheep are no good for it.

Wait - they don't use paper manuals anymore? Damn, am I late.

I think you guys are missing the point. I'd rather have the core basic essentials compressed into one seamless memory. A memory where you have some form of exploration (perhaps infiltrating a party, or a crowded fortress). Perhaps it'll start of with social stealth, then climbing up a wall, and stealthily assassinating guards. Exploring the fortress is optional and would yield cheats. When you located your target, you're prompted to kill him. After killing him, run your ass off, and become anonymous.

The 2nd sequence should introduce ALL of the cities. Stop restricting the players! Allow us to branch off and explore and accidently wander to a new city!
The later sequences that would introduce newer weapons should have a small caption on the screen, similar to ACIII.

There was someone, a reputable game journalist who stated that most of modern game design's success lies in crafting a good, solid tutorial. I forgot who it was but it might've been either Yahtzee or Extra Credits. Actually, it was Extra Credits. I'm almost completely sure. Gonna look for it now.

EDIT: I think this might be it.

Sounds like that's what the AC games do. And to be fair, the tutorial sequences in AC3 are 1-5. And from 6-12 you're done. Sure, the tutorials take some time, but that's less than 20% of the time I spent on the game. running around and doing shit.

The AC games try to do it as well as they can but would do well to watch (or rewatch) that video and try a little harder. Honestly, the best tutorials I've ever played for games were;
1) God of War 1 (PS2)
2) Shadows of the Damned (PS3, 360)
And lastly (this is the best one)
3) Super Mario Bros (NES)

"What the hell, DAZ? Super Mario Bros didn't have a tutorial!" Uh, actually yes.
Check this out.

http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=465

No need. It already is.

Screenshots up ahead!

Spoiler: Highlight to view

Why remove the Economy system? I realy love it. Don't you want Shops to renovate? Don't you want money to buy ammunition, weapons and armor?

It's not a business simulator, it's an historical adventure game.

Business has been kinda important throughout history, and I like the idea of interacting with shopkeepers to buy things for your missions. The way it was in AC3 made more sense, all you were managing was your own personal trade, which was a big part of the new world, of course, especially for someone who owned land, led a small community, and owned a ship.

For the Hassassin, it would make more sense if you were given an allowance based on the money the village of masyaf earned, and since AC1 takes place in a few weeks, renovation would make little sense.

So you could have the allowance rise with every rank Altair grows, allocated by one of Al Mualim's underlings. (he would be the npc you could talk to to see how much you made)

You could also pick it up from the bureau. As for what you could buy, you could limit it to a consumable such as knives, or implement some other ancillary system.

Of course, I just came into this so you may not be discussing implementing this for an a1 remake.

http://www.destructoid.com/assassin-s-creed-will-be-annual-until-players...

I don't wanna live on this planet anymore.

Agreed (not about the not wanting to live on the planet anymore, but about the ridiculousness of it all). Just look at the top comments.

Keep telling that to yourself, Ubi, and you might actually believe it. There's no way they can expect people who've been into the series since AC1 not to be burnt out by now.

Don't they read the comments on every article about their games? Every other one says "Oh another AC? It's becoming CoD. Not interested anymore."

^This. But once again, Ubi just cares about what the larger audience says. And to think they served a cause far more noble than mere profit.

From a business point of view, why should this matter at all?

As long as you get more people coming in than leaving, you're turning better profits.

Who cares, from a business standpoint, if you are losing the die-hards to appease the masses?

How else can you explain fucking pirates in a "stealth" game?

They see the CoD comments, but they also see the exponential increase in sales with every game they release. GTA gets comments about people being bored with it and it doesn't exactly release frequently. As franchises grow more popular, the amount of people who vocally dislike them grow too. Just the way it works. But most gamers don't say anything in public internet forums.

I'm enjoying the series as much as I used to now that the dev cycle seems to have been ironed out, and allows for big leaps forward.

And anyways, this is nothing new. We've had many articles saying the exact same, and at this point I really don't see a logical reason why this wouldn't be the case.

I definitely see how people who are tired of Assassin's Creed wouldn't like this but... I don't know, for me, Bioshock Infinite has had a long break but I'm already tired of Bioshock after only playing 2. I think the content of the game is what people care about more than the frequency of releases. And AC games haven't been getting smaller content-wise, only different in terms of how that content works and what it is, and often in how much of it there is. Some people don't like the way the game is now, and a not-insignificant number really really do. Ubisoft wants to please those who like their games, and win over those who don't.

I don't think there's been a single AC game that I've played that hasn't had an obvious change or addition that seemed tailored to address complaints people had about previous games. Ubisoft listens to all comments, that much is obvious. But as a company, the best of both worlds option is to continue making yearly games, but try to make them better and address complaints people had with previous games.

As for the idea of simply abandoning what makes logical business sense and taking a break despite increase in sales of a product which has been slated as yearly simply to appease a vocal subset of fans, with no indication that sales will drop off soon... I really don't think that's the kind of decision you could reasonably expect from any company. If it were simply one guy who were in charge of all of this, yeah, but a company is a vast interlocking web of people when it's at the kind of level of one which produces multiple games like Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell. Why would such people make a decision that will surely lead to losses in growth which could have been preventable, especially in an industry where once-huge names like THQ are dying? It would be impossible unless you screened every single person who had any power and made sure that they were prepared to sacrifice profits for ideological reasons, and that's not something you'll find outside of Abstergo.

Sorry if this is just a retread of things I've already said. I, like everyone, tend to repeat myself in forum situations. But to be fair, this discussion has come up before.

EDIT: That being said, Ubisoft's strategy with the series could definitely change for other reasons, for example if they wanted to allocate more resources to a different series or creating a new one.

ooh, about something said earlier: I believe that Rome in Brotherhood did not open up all the way because unlike other AC games, it was the sole free-roam location, though quite a bit bigger than previous AC environments.

It was very deliberate design, as players would explore one section at a time, rather than getting lost in the whole map, since, again, it was bigger than previous AC seamless environments.

So basically, each section was treated like a new city in AC1 was. It's the same design philosophy applied to a seamless space.

^And that was the one of the biggest problems I had with ACB. Since Rome was pratically 3x bigger than Florence, many players were eagered to explore Rome to the fullest. Many decided to often search for new Lairs, synchronize new View Points, burn Borgia Towers, and renovate new shops. Problem? We couldn't do many of them due being not available until we've completed more memories. Players couldn't get THAT lost - they had a map!

Maybe Ubisoft didn't want the player to have the Armor of Brutus + Dagger by the 4th memory. Maybe they didn't want the economy fixed before we even got through half the game. Maybe it was some kind of balancing issue.

That's definitely true, and I think that it worked a lot better in constantinople where you were given a distinct little island to run around in before being allowed to go to the other zones.

However the whole "you need to progress to unlock this zone" thing is kinda a hold-over from the very beginning of AC games, I believe.

AC3 didn't have it, I don't think. I recall being able to go wherever i wanted as haytham as soon as I got into boston and the frontier.

As far as I know, once you're dropped into an open-world map in AC3, you have access to all of it. I'll have to test this when I play through it again.

The Frontier doesn't open until Sequence 3 (but it mostly all opens at once).
The Homestead doesn't open until Sequence 5 (but it all opens at once).
New York doesn't open until Sequence 8 (but you can't explore until Sequence 9).
Valley Forge (in the Frontier) doesn't open until Sequence 9.

EDIT: Misread what you said. With the exception of Valley Forge in the frontier, you are correct.

Yes, I think I recall that being one of the things that made the game feel new again to me, though I didn't actually consciously notice it. It's always a nice change of pace when I just naturally accept a change in a series without noticing it.

Memory walls are back in Tyranny of King Washington, making The Frontier, Boston, and presumably New York quite a bit smaller, though not really tiny. They however don't really unlock, so they function more like the typical zone boundary walls.

I think the effect for AC3 walls is pretty cool, that buzzing sounds really dangerous and makes hanging around the boundary feel unwelcoming and tense. I wonder if that was a design goal?

You know, ACIII may be one of the worst AC games to have come out in the console...but it does have the best Animus! The triangular fragments look really cool!

Ahaha, I'll simply say that I do indeed love the AC3 animus and leave it at that.