The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

What they called the BASE Jump in the Unity gameplay demonstration, which was a Parkour Down action, was so incredible, and rarely ever shows up in either Unity or Syndicate. So much of the Parkour Down system teased a kind of style and flair. In the games that shipped, triggering these awesome moments is at worst random and at best extremely situational. The final system is functional, but that's all it is. The breathtaking sensation of flowing through a city that was implied or teased just didn't seem to be there.

I didn't mind AC1 not having a crossbow, would have probably made things far to easy. The one in Brotherhood is definitely a little OP.

What I would have liked in AC1 though, is one or two assassinations in the Kingdom area. Have 1 of them be in a somewhat guarded fort/castle (so that parkour is still available). And the other one could be a patrolling caravan or something, so that you can wait/prepare for the perfect ambush spot or situation.

Another thing I would like AC to use is to be able to see the consequences of your assassination approaches. By this I mean for example, If I kill both targets 1 and 2 in a non-stealthy/direct combat approach I want to see that reflected by the time I reach target 3. He could have extra guards//defenses/watch towers set up when I'm not stealthy, or if I am stealthy he would be a lot more suspicious/keep bodyguards close to him etc. This would also increase replayability.

+1 to all of those ideas, Altair Auditore. Dishonored does a pretty good job of making the player feel like their actions actually did something to the world and the politics of their enemies, AC could be awesome if it succeeded in doing something similar. Assassinations in Kingdom are both great ideas, even just those two would be perfect.

I thoroughly agree. The 'consequences-from-your-actions' mechanic is one of the things I'd love to see AC adapt from Dishonored.

I've said this before, so I won't rehash it in full to start an argument, but I would hate that. To summarize: some people say it would increase replayability, and maybe to them it would. To me, I'd want to do everything perfect the first time and would spend 30 minutes to play a 3 minute sequence just right. And I would only get frustrated. The ONLY way I can be on board with an "actions affect future gameplay" mechanic in a game is if it were also coupled to a "no do overs/quick saves/mission restarts until you beat the game in full" mechanic. If my actions truly matter, make them matter the first time. Let the player toggle mission restarts in an NG+ if you want to try different things later. For me, the ability to restart missions where (I'm told) my choices have consequences is only frustrating and not rewarding or fun at all.

More to the topic at hand...

NG+ with full gear (toggleable).
NG+ with toggleable difficulty.

The canoe rowing made it into Liberation if you're interested in that.

Your argument makes sense, McStab. It gives the player a feeling of "Oh crap, I really did that. I'll have to live with it now until the end of the game."

And I played Liberation, but I feel like the canoe there was pretty much the same as the gondola in the Ezio games. I thought it was really difficult to control at times. I don't know what I expected them to do with canoes in AC3 that didn't make it into Liberation, but I still don't think the Liberation canoes were everything that I wanted. Either I'm hard to please, or I just don't like swamps.

100% up for NG+

most of the games talked about how the city would change over the years as the story progressed, but that never really manifested in meaningful ways. something that's kind of related to that is the idea of different looks for each season, which was split into two categories in AC3 and then never really revisited.

tying each mission to a specific historical state a location was in, and combining that with the time of year = an exponential increase in how accurate to history the game can feel

How about...

- A more pronounced story / mission sequence in the present day against TWCB.
- A game based on the Adam/Eve story you see in the ACII glyph video.

To flip the question a little bit -- my favorite things that they no longer have:
- believable antagonists (specifically not using the word villain here) / worthwhile narratives
- Black Flag style treasure maps
- freerunning obstacle course thief races

Man, I miss the Black Flag treasures maps. Those were collectables done right. They were placed sparingly, they made the player engage with the environment, and the reward for them was always a genuine power upgrade for the Jackdaw. Free-running races on foot are a bizarre absence, indeed! Makes me wonder if the games are somehow Self-Aware that their current parkour system has great ideas but maybe wouldn't control as tightly as they'd want it to for Races. I mean, Flag Collecting in The Tournament co-op mission was so horrifically painful due to the sheer amount of jank in the parkour system that it was super recommend people do that mission with at least one other player. Then again, I feel like the fiddliness of parkour can still be designed for with mission designs that just keep that fact in mind. I'd love to see Races again, especially if they were replayable.

ok for both the modern and animus story, I think what we really need is to delve more deeply into the philosophies of assassins and templars. We've had enough of explaining why they are similar but slightly different, it's getting to the point where we need to examine more comprehensively why they can't seem to co-exist.

It's impossible for them to fully unite against juno and make peace in the history without rebooting the series, their unending war has been too well established. but juno as a shared threat could be a good way to delve into this. I haven't minded the de-emphasis of the modern day but I think they need to embrace it more fully, and give a strong thematic connection between past and present, building a believable explanation of the trajectory of these two groups, how they have persisted, how they operate, and just generally why they make sense in this world.

people who dislike the animus concept aren't ever going to be appeased by its slow minimizing. They need to bite the bullet and find out how to make it work as a cohesive and coherent split narrative.

I still think AC3 was the closest, though it's clear it was heavily revised from whatever was originally planned and suffers for it.

The ability to wear your Hood like an Assassin in the main game throughout Assassination missions and cutscenes I would think were no brainers. Next to using a Cane while walking. Talking about Syndicate of course, in both cases. Severely disappointed.

1. A handheld telescope to see further distances (or even a zoomable eagle vision). Edward et al had scopes on their ships to inspect the land, so why not bring it to land with you? (Right Calvar?)

2. The use of some sort of (manual) grappling hook or crampons of some sort for cliff climbing. The "Batman" hook in Syndicate was fun, but there was no consequence to using it. It was too immediate. The whip in Liberation was good for traversing large gaps. The rope dart in AC3 et al could be used as something other than a weapon. (I brought this up at a time).

3. A satisfactory continuation of Desmond's story in the present day.

EDIT: I didn't even realize I had posted here already when I wrote this post. But I guess the first two on this new list are more of the inconsequential window dressing things.

Gameplay that feels smooth and satisfying/crunchy all the way through.

Genuinely systemic game-worlds that feel alive and like real places, with high interactivity/"bounce-back"/reaction to player actions.