The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Yes, in each district in New York. They are now called Gang Headquarters. As for the River Valley and North Atlantic each area there will have either a Gang HQ or a Naval Fort (the ones from black flag).

I watched a video of one and... I'm not impressed. It reminded me more of the plantations from Black Flag than the forts in AC3, and seemed to once again be designed around the use of wildly overpowered tools. Oh well. Unless I see some testimonial that there are at least some that are really good, I think I'll pass on this.

I share the same feelings toward Rogue's Gang Headquarters. They don't feel as tight as AC3's Forts, for sure.
I dislike the enemy placement, and their general layouts. Assassin's Creed III's Forts always felt like they gave the player room to move around. Rogue's HQs make staying on Rooftops almost a necessity (which I understand, it being AC and all, but such black-and-white or "lock-and-key" design takes away from creativity sometimes.)

I'm not sure if you've played Far Cry 4, ever, but I feel as if more so than both recent Assassin's Creed releases, that game would scratch your itch for zones with enemies patrolling around in set patterns a bit more. I specifically refer to Far Cry 4 over Far Cry 3 because Far Cry 4's Outposts are Replayable, which makes it much less of a pain to (uhhh...) replay them.

It's in first-person, so it's not quite as impressive and cool-looking (in MY opinion) as something like Assassin's Creed, but just for a little example, I'll Link to a playlist of myself speedrunning every Outpost in Far Cry 4.

Whole Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL36oulzyfYiPUKwLrC5nsAjngM92KnNc0

First Video Only (Pranijagat School Outpost)

http://youtu.be/1zClip-QIQ8

And on THAT note, I just clicked on your actual, legit YouTube channel for the first time in my life and ooh, do I have some shiny new stuff to watch~ MGS, Souls, Arkham and AC runs/challenges, hell yeah.

I haven't played Far Cry 4, and I've only tried 3 briefly, but I played and enjoyed 2 quite a bit. 3 and 4 look like they'd be a lot of fun, and it looks like you've got 4 covered.

I saw that you subscribed. Thanks for that, I subscribed to you as well. I'd have put up another Ground Zeroes video by now if my graphics card hadn't died on me last week. I'm looking forward to Bloodborne, Arkham Knight and The Phantom Pain with great anticipation, and hoping they'll bring scenarios that I think are worth putting up videos for.

Bloodborne is something that I'm quite excited for as well.
I enjoy games that allow you to play in ways that subtly change the game experience.
Whether that's on the extremity of using the bare minimum, or the contrasting side of abusing every tool the game gives you to its utter maximum potential, or everything in between.

In that respect, Bloodborne looks to provide the same kind of subtle game-changes that Dark Souls did when it came to Challenge Runs. Arkham Knight should have the same Predator Challenges that the former games in the series did, which are always fun to speedrun. And The Phantom Pain, despite its AI (at least in Ground Zeroes) being very simplistic, should have some interesting things to do.

The main concern I have with games that videos can be made for is the idea that more and more games nowadays do not add a more predictable game-play type. Shadow of Mordor is a great example of that. The majority of the game's significant play-space (the Uruks, Captains, Warchiefs, and all of their Statistics) is pretty much randomized. Making specialized videos for SoM is all but impossible because the game cannot really be predicted. This means that, short of some main missions that do not change, you cannot actually ever orchestrate anything in it.

Far Cry 4 and Arkham make it easier because the "challenges" are replayable and will be the same every time, lending themselves to practice and mastery. You spawn at the same place every time, and the enemy positions and routes are the same every time. This means you can genuinely learn and choreograph things to deliver great style to viewers and plain feel good about mastering a gameplay segment yourself.

Even AC3's Forts - the series for which you're most Known - are harder to make videos for because while you can run around them and abandon them before raising the Flag, if you DO raise that Flag, you can never replay that Fort without starting a new Save.

This conversation line, that is, making videos for both predictable and unpredictable games, is something I'd actually like to discuss with ANY videomakers. If you're up for it, feel free to make a new thread specifically for it and link me to it in a Quote

I tend to like games that give you many options in playstyle as well, but that often seems to be because the game has strong fundamental ideas that are surrounded by elements that don't support them but can be cut away if the player chooses to. I really enjoy what I see as the fundamental ideas behind Dark Souls, Assassin's Creed and Metal Gear Solid, so I try to play them in a way that supports those ideas as much as possible. I don't think doing this kind of thing is very uncommon either. That's why communities like this one exist. The Predator Challenges in the Arkham games are actually remarkable in how "pure" they are, without compromising depth, and I think they're a format that countless games could learn from. It seems that Far Cry 4 might have.

I'm not sure exactly what you'd want to make a new thread about, but predictability in games is actually something I've grown to have rather strong feelings about. I tend to dislike pure dice rolls in games, and the way you indirectly link predictability to the idea of mastery mirrors what I think about predictability as a fundamental element of game design philosophy. I won't go deep into that since I'm still not sure what you mean. Could you be more specific?

Far Cry 4 definitely took the format and ran with it - since Far Cry 3 did not have such Replayable Outposts or many replayable Challenge missions that so genuinely used its core gameplay.

A question I'm really interested to know the answer to now that I've read your comment is, in your eyes and thoughts, what ARE the fundamental ideas behind each; Dark Souls, Assassin's Creed, Metal Gear Solid? I imagine it's something tough to put into words, but I feel like we share similar thoughts on them in general.

My specific questions, or discussion anchor-points would involve the interplay between Predictability, Unpredictability, and Choreography or Orchestration of videos.

1) How would we make videos for games that are not as predictable, or less predictable than Far Cry 4's Challenges, AC's Assassinations, etc? Would we focus exclusively on areas that are predictable and able to be mastered because of it? Or would we adapt to make interesting things to watch despite the game's unpredictable nature?

This is also a tough question for me to think about because part of what makes watching things more impressive or interesting is being able to compare it to what you've done or seen previously. That player went through the exact same thing you did - but they did it so much more impressively, they did it flashier, or smoother, more efficiently. Maybe they did it completely differently despite being presented with the exact same scenario.

This is actually what the entirety of TheHiddenBlade's video ideas is built around.

2) Is it possible to make videos of the same "style" (speedruns, stealth runs) with the same level of skill for games that are unpredictable? If so, how would we do it? Is there a way to affect unpredictable game elements that makes them easier to predict?

All of this goes back to the comment I made about Challenges.
Every time you hit play, you will always spawn in the same place, with the same enemy positions, same timings, same patterns.

This allows for mastery of that specific gameplay segment or play-space. That particular challenge room, or that particular mission. It allows you to try different things until you discover the fastest, best way. Once you do that, you can present it to an audience who can enjoy seeing it because they compare what they're seeing on top of what they've played - since the experience for both started out similarly enough to allow for comparison.

That player will also have spawned in the same position, with the same enemies, the same timings and patterns.
Seeing what you did with the same "hand they'd been dealt" is part of the attraction here.

Contrast this to both players' experience of a level or mission being entirely different, randomized and unpredictable.

There's no comparison to be made, and anyone can make a video that can be written off as "you just got lucky spawn/placement/RNG." It wouldn't be as interesting to watch anymore, or ponder on "how did that player figure this out, what was their deliberate thought process?" It wouldn't be as impressive because you simply do not know how easy or hard it was to pull off, there's less to think about because the scenarios were completely different.

Yep, that is tough to put in words, and each one in turn too, that's a task! I can try to keep it brief though.

For Dark Souls, the game can be said to be comprised of 2 main elements: adventure and combat. I'm thinking mainly about combat when I talk about the "core" of the game, even though it is never completely separate from other elements of course. However, in my challenge runs it's where most of the interest is, and the parameters I set pare away at options in combat I view as superfluous or overpowered. I wear no armor, use no shield, stay at low level and do not upgrade my weapons because this intensifies the need to know enemy layouts and options and to know and execute my own options. The basic risk-reward balance of the game is heavily intensified. I don't use offensive magic because being powerful at range goes against the design of pretty much every enemy in the game. It's a game focused on close combat with melee weapons, where every individual move matters.

Assassin's Creed is very strange, and I could go on and on about it. But to be brief, I think that its digital style of 3D navigation and highly flexible wallcrawling (or just "navigation" for convenience's sake) are what define it, and the contexts in which they can be used give it its strength. The strongest (most demanding) context for navigation is stealth, and that navigation-stealth intersection is what I see as the real core of the game. I feel like I have to single out social stealth here, since it's a big element of AC's concept of stealth and a major defining element of the series. It's never made sense outside of multiplayer where you can actually, legitimately blend without some extra bit of abstraction, and the way it forces you to move slowly conflicts with the real core of navigation. It's an interesting idea, but it may just be fundamentally boring. The Hitman games are the only ones I know of to have a similar concept, but I haven't played any of them so I don't know if they find a way to make it work. I could keep going, but as a basic summary: my personal ideal for Assassin's Creed is a deep 3D ninja simulator. Games that fit that description exist, Tenchu and Shinobido, but from what I've seen they can't match the depth that AC's navigation has at its best, and AC still has potential far beyond what it has achieved towards this ideal in my opinion.

Metal Gear Solid is even stranger, because it changes in ways that can be subtle, drastic and sometimes both with each entry. Saying that I enjoy the fundamental ideas behind "Metal Gear Solid" isn't really an accurate statement because of this, so I'm sorry. Even trying to answer this for Ground Zeroes specifically would be a huge task, and it probably wouldn't produce a very coherent answer. I wrote a big critique of the game a bit after it came out, and that should help if you're really that curious. It's here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16850050/MGSV%20GZ%20Thoughts%20and%...

Ultimately, you asked me a question that was pretty much impossible, so I apologize if you're not completely satisfied with the answers. I tried at least, right?

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I can completely relate to the questions you're asking about predictability in games, and I think they come down to this: determinism in game design is a necessary element for mastery. I believe this, but there's also a huge possibility space between where a game is too non-deterministic relative to the player to be satisfying and where a game is completely deterministic relative to the player.

For your first question, you only have to look at any of the biggest game channels on Youtube to find videos on games played in a way where mastery isn't the sole focus. You say "would we adapt," but most players come at it from the opposite direction: a "loose" style of play is their default, and we're the strange ones. We could adapt certainly, but this question is ironically alien to most people. The majority thrives in the huge in-between possibility space I described before, where mastery is part of the appeal, but unpredictability is more than acceptable. You even have tons of very successful channels based primarily on personality, where a game that has very little potential for mastery is entertaining to watch because of the person playing it. It seems this question is about your own personal preference in terms of videos, and for that I'd say there's no need to change if you don't want to. Are you asking this because you anticipate that the AC games will become more non-deterministic in the future? I still don't quite understand your perspective, but I'm trying my best to answer.

Your second question is made of two questions. The first one is easy: no. A great example of this is Ground Zeroes, which does have subtle non-deterministic elements that take away from the ability to master it and my personal satisfaction. My choice to continue trying to master it is a testament to how strongly I feel about it on the whole, which even I think is partially irrational. It's weird. The second question can only be answered on a case-by-case basis. It's hard to find an example of a mechanic like this, one that is only partially deterministic relative to the player (unpredictable, but affected by player action), because it would require looking deeply at a game's code. I suspect that, for example, enemy behaviors in Dark Souls are like this, with their choice of attack at any given moment impacted by the player's state (distance, vulnerability), but also by an internal pure dice roll that the player has no control over, at least in some cases. This is because making enemies totally predictable by giving them only one move at the distance they're normally engaged at would make them boring, so a dice roll is introduced and moves are given animation tells that players can read to counterbalance the randomness.

Determinism in games is a fascinating subject that gets to the very heart of game design. I theorize that people that value mastery above all else will tend to value it highly. I'm more towards that end of the scale, so I value it a lot (for example, I rarely play traditional RPGs, which are dice roll heavy, and when I do I tend to enjoy them a lot at first then have a massive burnout when non-deterministic elements pile up past my particular level of tolerance), but I certainly don't think my viewpoint is the only valid one. Games don't have to be extremely "pure" to be enjoyable. To go any further with this would be to delve into existentialism, so I'll stop here. I hope I answered your questions satisfactorily.

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions, InTehVaria!
You're right, I did actually pose questions that were effectively impossible, and I'm very satisfied with the answers you gave.

About YouTube personalities being more important to the viewers of those channels than the actual games they play (Minecraft etc.) that's a crazy strong point that I can easily understand.

About Assassin's Creed and the intersection between its Navigation and Stealth, I agree with that. That's probably where I get most of my fun when it comes to these games. There's something borderline intoxicating about the feeling of freedom an Assassin has in comparison to average people who can't climb a building, and have less mastery over their environment.

I do believe that eventually, over time, Assassin's Creed will become less deterministic and more dynamic. I do think that when it comes to the word dynamic, it's closely-related to the word unpredictable. The talks that Calvar and I have been having seem to point to this being the direction AC might have to go in, to make its world really feel alive.

It seems unpredictability is the key to making something seem like it's dynamic, living and breathing. Real-life is one of the most unpredictable things ever. I don't think anyone can genuinely say they have 100% pure "mastery" over real life. Lots of game worlds that want to portray themselves as being both alive and interactive try to simulate this kind of unpredictable world-state.

For most of them, it's easy to see through the illusion at some point or another. Assassin's Creed contains many NPCs, but at best they interact with each other more than they interact with the player, and the only meaningful way to interact with them is through violence or disruption of their virtual lives.

Dark Souls achieves the feeling of a somewhat living world by adding Permanence. If you kill that shopkeeper, thinking "oh my attacks will just clip through him because it's just a game haha" he will die, and he will never come back for the remainder of that save file.

From what I've seen in preview gameplay footage, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain will likely try to simulate a living world in one way by giving players more methods if interaction with it. You can grab NPCs, you can move them, knock them out, kill them, you can Fulton them back to base and use them to build your army, you can interrogate them, and you can watch them for periods of time, until they rest or fall asleep.

Even this, if done without more depth will eventually feel like an illusion to the player, but it certainly feels more dynamic.

Combining this with something like Assassin's Creed's future brings up some interesting ideas about Dynamism and Permanence, two things that AC to date has seldom, if ever, had.

Dynamism and Permanence will make it so that on-the-spot adaptation is more important than trained mastery.
However, the reason why I'd still be excited to play an Assassin's Creed game that's much more dynamic than any of the previous ones is that there is one element of the game that will (or should) always remain predictable.

Building Layouts.

If you can memorize building layouts, and not only that but actively be encouraged to memorize efficient paths from one to the other, then regardless of the level of randomization and dynamism that occurs around those structures, you should still be able to fluidly improvise using your parkour abilities.

It looks like my guess that you see AC becoming much more non-deterministic in the future was right. However, I don't think I have a good enough sense of your goals with randomization to reply to much of what you've said. Sorry, but I'm going to ask you again to be more specific.

The one very specific idea in relation to randomization you posit, or at least imply, is guard patrols. Unity already had randomized patrols in its co-op missions, and I think it was weaker for it. My issues with this are down to fundamental game design, again bordering on the existential, so I won't get into the nitty gritty specifics, but in general I think designers should be very wary of randomization of core game elements. It's definitely a tough subject.