The Thread where I air my grievances with the Assassins' Creed series SPOILERS EVERYWHERE

[Dalisclock]

I'm gonna guess it wasn't supposed to be the last one but they probably hit major player fatigue (with maybe diminishing sales) at this point and decided to shake up the formula. Worked for me, I jumped back in at origin, played odyssey and would probably have picked up Valhalla if it came to steam.

Admittedly I had stopped at Black Flag because Unity was so disliked(at launch anyway) and Syndicate was considered fine. It wasn't until Origins came out and Odyssey was announced I got interested again(because I'm a sucker for Ancient history stuff) and played Syndicate so I could move onto Origins and Odyssey.

And then it turns out that Syndicate doesn't really matter(because none of it really connects to any of the others games other then getting to visit Edward Kenway's London Mansion) and I could have just played Origins and Odyssey, since they're much more tightly connected.

 

[Dalisclock]

I actually decided to go ahead and install Unity, so I will be talking about that after all once I finish it(which will likely be in a couple weeks). I'll still do Origins and Odyssey in the meantime though. Suffice it to say, after playing 90 min(up to the Title screen) it's okay but I'm already seeing issues with it that I will expound upon at length. Notably the very inconsistent use of English and French, where the game/animus can't seem to decide which language it's going to use at any given time so it just occasionally throws some french in there for no good reason, sometimes in the middle of a sentence.

 

[Dalisclock]

So after running about as far into the modern era(or near modern era) as the series looks like it's ever gonna go(the opening fake selection screen in Unity notwithstanding) and facing a lot of pushback from the fanbase on the series getting stale(Unity getting raked over the coals didn't help this) and being directionless, Ubisoft decided to take a year off and a step back. In fact, they took about 2000 years worth of steps back, to the Ancient Era, over 1000 years before the first game for a distant prequel that of course, would be called "Origins". Because they're gonna check off the long running game title bingo card one box at a time.

Along with the new setting, Ubisoft also introduced a new protagonist, Layla Hassan, an Egyptian-American New Yorker who works for Abstergo and is testing out a new animus that can basically just plug in a DNA sample instead of needing to use the tissue of someone descendent. This apparently can be any DNA, including a few cells off an object(such as in Odyssey) or jumper cables hooked to a long dead body(shown in origins). Which means the animus can be used on anyone(but maybe not on Sages, which is somehow still a thing despite that plot line being effectively dropped). So you're no longer operating a mobile camera with an Ipad or some dude playing a video game(while being a dude playing a video game), but an actual character....who mostly hangs out in a North African cave plugging into the animus playing the real game of Bayek of Siwa in the 1st century BCE(and occasionally his wife Aya).

I forget exactly why she chooses Bayek to memory dive into but regardless the game gets a rather confusing start for the first 20 minutes or so. There's an opening cutscene of Bayek and Aya greeting the Pharaoh's procession in Siwa, then cuts to Bayek killing a dude in the Bent Pyramid of Giza and looking far more angry and haggard(a couple years later, apparently) then cuts to Bayek being cornered by and having a fight with a big beefy dude who was apparently that dude's bodyguard or something, after which Bayek does some temple exploring to each the outside world and head into Siwa, the opening area of the game(Isolated from most of the rest of the map by desert) where you get your first assassination target. Only after that do you go to Alexandria to really begin the game proper and the title card pops up.

So yeah, I get the first hour or so are basically the prologue/tutorial and that's common for the series, but man it's choppy and confusing for that first bit. Starts in Siwa(on the western edge of the map), shows some dark and choppy action with some masked evil dudes and jumps 1 years to the Bent Pyramid in Giza(on the other side of the map) and then jumps again to a temple outside Siwa some time later(back on the other side of the map) before letting you explore a bit. There had to have been a better way to do this without jumping years and all over the map in cutscenes and such.

The game itself plays pretty well for the most part, and Egypt is a joy to explore in 48-46 BCE (which was at the end of the Ptolemaic and the beginning of the Roman periods respectively). As much as it would have been interesting to have the game at the height of the Egyptian empire(a couple thousand years earlier), I get they wanted something a bit closer to modern day and to have the Romans and Greeks involved. And the period does basically allow them to have Egyptian, Greek and Roman stuff all existing together on the same map and time period plausibly, so you can find Ancient Egyptian ruins, Modern(for the time) Egyptian buildings and temples, Ancient Greek ruins, Modern Greek buildings in certain parts of of the map and Roman presence as well. Of course, the fact they had Greek art assets makes more sense since Odyssey(set in ancient Greece) was in development at around the same time) . There's also some ISU ruins on the map as well, much of it buried deep underground below existent tombs and structures. The exception being a rather large ISU structure on the Southern edge of the map that looks like a massive canyon that's being filled with sand(and no doubt in 2016 is completely filled in) and a big ISU chamber under the Great Pyramid of Giza that you'd think someone would have found by now. Oh, and a chamber under the Sphinx which...I'll get to that later.

The plot itself is uneven. In general, the plot goes something like this. In Siwa, the Templars(Or as they were known at this time, the Order of the Ancients) found an ISU vault under Siwa but they can't get it open, so they try to get Bayek to open it by holding his son hostage and this goes horribly wrong with his son getting killed in the process(and it turns out Bayek was trying to stab one of of the masked proto-Templars and accidently stabbed his son instead. Oopsie). So Bayek and his wife decide to hunt down these masked assholes and this basically makes up like 70% of the game. You're given a list of targets, each in a different region and eventually work up to....It's a fucking Assasins Creed game. You know how this goes by now.

The other 30% of the game has to do with Cleopatra, her power struggle with her brother who rules as Pharaoh and she's not terribly fond of for numerous reasons. Along with this, she allies with Julius Caesar who is currently fighting a civil war with the other co-consuls of the Roman Republic because he basically attempted a Coup(this is vastly simplified and summarized because I'm not writing a history paper here). And she basically gets Bayek and Aya to be her personal hitmen. Or more specifically, Bayek continues to chop down Proto-Templars while Aya goes and commands a warship for a couple years helping Caesar and Cleopatra with the war effort. It's also shown that Bayek and Aya are gathering a group of like minded people to oppose these masked jerks, a group they call "The Hidden Ones"(no points for guessing who these guys end up becoming). Oh, because Aya is buried in the same tomb as Bayek, Layla is able to hook her DNA to the animus as well and integrate that in with Bayek's memories, which more or less just amounts to the game just putting you on a ship for some combat scenarios not unlike the ship combat missions in AC3(but with Triremes) after certain parts of the plot.

And this is where the plot more or less stops working properly, or should I should say the plot and pacing of the plot. So up until a certain point, you can tackle each area at more or else your own pace(though parts of the game have levels for the enemies guiding you up the Nile, so you're more or less expecting to start at Alexandria and work your way south up the river). After you've killed a certain number of Proto-templar big shots, the game skips a couple years and the Roman civil war comes to Egypt with the battle of the Nile and the burning of Alexandria.

And from this point on the game more or less becomes linear for an hour or so where you're funneled from action set piece to boss battle to set piece to boss battle and so on. It feels very artificial and not nearly as fun as you'd think it could be. And when I say Boss battle, I don't mean assassination missions. I mean you get locked in a room with a big enemy and have to fight them head on until one of you is dead. There's no sneaky solution to this, just pseudo-dark souls combat boss battle.

 

[Dalisclock]

Then the game opens back up for a bit, and eventually Bayek finds the guy who originally was responsible for his sons death and kills him. This is the emotional climax of the story and Bayek more or less calls his revenge over. However, Aya, pissed that Egypt is going to become another Province in the Roman Empire and not remain independent as apparently they were promised by Cleopatra, decides to go to Rome to continue the revenge spree. Also, Caeser is the head of the Order of the Ancients. apparently, which you find out pretty late in the game and it's unclear just when this happened or if he was always a member. It's just kinda dropped there in the end game so you have an excuse to go stab Caesar in the forum.

So naturally this leads Aya taking a boat to Rome (it takes her like 2 years to get there for some reason, based on the time skips), fighting another boss battle against another one of the Order dudes, crossing a heavily patrolled plaza in Rome(no, you don't get to see the rest of the city) and Stabbing Caesar in the Senate before going back and telling Cleopatra to kill herself. Because of course that's how the game has to end. Yes, I realize the assassination of Caesar is a big moment in world history, but it feels like it's here for that reason and no other, because damn if it doesn't feel tacked on.

Oh, and Aya uses a totally different moveset and weapons then Bayek, a move set you pretty much haven't gotten a chance to try out because you've barely played as Aya. In Fact, despite apparently taking down a few Proto-Templars on her own, you barely get to see her do anything. Apparently at one point she was supposed to have a much larger role in the story, but some higher ups at Ubisoft basically killed it(for misogyny reasons) and that would do a lot to explain why her story feels so incomplete and choppy. Don't get me wrong, I love Bayek as a character but Aya was done dirty. Basically, much of the endgame feels very rushed and uneven in quality, in stark contrast to much of the rest of the game where you could tackle shit at your own pace, explore and do interesting side missions(and they're actually pretty good for the most part).

I'm not joking just how much fun I had exploring the varied land of Egypt and finding secrets and tombs and quests all over the place. Even as compressed as the map is(the desert in the middle of the map much smaller than it really should be but is just big enough to convey loneliness and isolation without making the map a pain to traverse from the west and east sides), it FEELS really big. It is unfortunate that the game is divided by levels which more or less funnels you down a certain path and tells you in aprox what order you'll see the game. I also appreciate how they took great pains to depict Egyptian culture and religion in this game, and how Bayek is a devout believer of the old religion, so this is all part of life to him in a way that few other games do. Notably a sequence where he has nightmares of fighting a massive mythical serpent in the underworld for the sake of his son's soul getting to go to the afterlife. Apparently this is common for him due to his guilt, but it's a fantastic set piece.

There's a number of other issues that rear their ugly head in Origins aside from this. While the RPG mechanics had been popping up in the series for a while now(notably with Unity), this game and odyssey really cemented the series wanting to be an RPG and not just an action/stealth/platforming. It's particularly bad where you have to find resources to upgrade your hidden blade and armor and such to make them actually keep up with the enemies, as well as leveling up and allocating points on a skill tree and god damn is it frustrating to ambush someone with the hidden blade only to not have it kill them because you were 2-3 levels below them(and thus your blade isn't fucking strong enough to stab them to death or something).

Bayek is a devout follower of the Egyptian religion and apparently believes that grave robbing is wrong. Guess what you end up doing a lot of and Bayek more or less doesn't care? And yet, there are certain things you can only find in tombs and the tombs are quite interesting to explore, feeling very tomb raider-ish at times. Especially if you want to find all the hidden ISU sites which are all buried deep under Egyptian tombs. Of course, the only thing you really get from the ISU sites are to listen to some vague but ominous recordings and some silica. You also need to find a bunch of stone circles dotted across the map(denoted by a crude map in a chamber beneath the sphinx) each based on a constellation. And after you find all of them and a bunch of silica, you get a fancy cosmetic armor that looks like iron man....because why the fuck not?

The recordings contain messages and pictorial messages from one of the ISU, and these are for Layal because Bayek can't see or hear them. When I played them they intrigued me because of the warning that something bad was coming in the future but not what, hunting the MD of the series might be getting back on track. Of course, now we know it was just "Oh, nobody turned off the big solar shield after AC3 and that's also bad". There was something wonderful about finding these clues that might be important down the road, which to me was always one of the cool parts of this series. I was hoping these clues were all going to mean something a couple years down the line as they developed the MD story. And yet again, Ubisoft smashes those hopes by basically not knowing what the fuck they want to do with the story and letting those hints be meaningless. In the words of the Prince from Prince of Persia: Two Thrones "Hope only leads to disappointment". Yes, that game was made by Ubisoft. How unintentionally prophetic.

And since we're on the ISU thing, it does feel like you can't hit a rock in Egypt(Greece has this problem too) without hitting a fucking ISU tomb or something, which begs all sorts of questions about the overall plot with the Templars running around digging this shit up since the beginning of time(And that's apparently the Order of the Ancients primary goal in life, when they aren't being dicks for the lols). Oh, and remember that whole thing about the Order threatening Bayek trying to get into the ancient vault under Siwa that kicked off the plot? Well, they finally get it open late in the game and inside is an Apple that projects a map of the earth. Yep, the whole point of that was to show that this is the apple from the original Assassins' Creed that somehow ends up under the Temple of Solomon a thousand years later because Altair needs to find it there(also the Arc of the Covenant, apparently but that is never mentioned again).

Oh, and there's also a weird as fuck crosssover in one mission where you need to open a sealed tomb with a sundial outside that you find by following a meteor. When you open it and go inside, you find Ardyn from Final Fantasy 15, who says a few words and then drops a big fantasy type sword and fucking vanishes never to be seen again. It's a really WTF moment and feels really out of place even in this game. Almost as weird is that you can go out into the deep desert and fight a giant digital representation of a random Egyptian god(Sekhmet, Anubis and Sobek). It's an animus glitch apparently and It's there because it's a video game. Bayek doesn't acknowledge it happens at all.

The game also throws in some boss battles just for the sake of it. In the main quest there's a boss battle where you fight a war elephant around the same time you are chased by a war elephant and firing at it while in a chariot with Caesar during an action sequence for reasons, which is fine. Less so is the fact you can find pens with War Elephants in them that you can fight as boss battles because....video games I guess. I can only assume they're there for people who really wanted some bonus bosses to fight so they just put some elephant battles in the game, not that they're particularly interesting. As far as I can tell they basically play the same as the one you have to do in the main campaign but presumably harder. Aside from adding content for the sake of adding content, there's not much point to it.

I would be remiss if I didn't discuss the DLC of the game. The Hidden Ones, the first of the two, is okay, but nothing amazing. It's mostly a new area where Bayek goes to help out some Hidden Ones in the Sinai and does some new missions and such. OTOH, the Curse of the Pharaohs DLC is quite the experience. Bayek goes to Thebes because of supernatural happenings and when he arrives. he finds out long dead Pharaohs have been appearing and terrorizing the population. Thebes is also close to the Valley of the Kings and the DLC involves you tracking down the Pharaohs when they appear(and they do every so often) and fighting them in a boss battle, before following them to what's essentially the afterlife. Not just the afterlife, 4 different versions of the afterlife, one for each Pharaoh and each on it's own separate map.

While it's weird as fuck and never really explained(and nobody, not even Layla, even remarks on this), the Afterlife bits are the best parts of the DLC by far, especially since not only is each one a decent size, each one is notably different then the others. While they're all implied to be somehow connected to, guess what, an ISU magical ball, the objects Bayek brings back with him out of the afterlife don't disappear once he leaves, they're tangible physical objects and that implies they're somehow real.

If I have to complain about anything it's that the battles in the real world(not the afterlife) have to be completed within a time limit or else the undead pharaoh disappears and then you have to wait until he shows up again to restart the battle. To sum up, Origins is arguably the best of the newer games but has it's flaws.

 

[meiam]

I definitely like the soft reboot they did with origin but it has quite a few problem. I really don't enjoy the constant loot rotation that you have to do, it means reward feel meaningless since you know you'll replace the super awesome sword you just got with some random trash in 2-3 hours and it just constantly force you to do inventory management for no real reason. I was actually really looking forward to hitting max level (50) in odyssey because it would mean that the deluge of new item would stop and it would become more about picking and choosing which piece I like more, only to find out that actually they raised level cap to the point where I'd almost never hit it, I quit the game at that point.

Map having the interesting part already marked is also annoying, I'm playing genshin impact now, which also has a massive world full of nooks to explore and simple puzzle to solve and almost nothing is marked on the map and it's way more rewarding to find stuff. I think making the map a bit smaller but with more stuff in it and not mark any of it would make exploration feel much better.

Combat was meh, it's another of the soul-like game that doesn't realize that the stamina bar is one of the main pillar of the system and removing it makes everything far worse.

Story was okay but... couldn't help but feel like they kinda wasted the roman side, why not have a game set in ancient rome rather than have it be second fiddle to egypt at a point in time where egypt was definitely less significant on the world stage. Even introducing it felt like it wasn't really contributing anything to the story, either go all in and drop the dead kid part or just drop it.

 

[Dalisclock]

Story was okay but... couldn't help but feel like they kinda wasted the roman side, why not have a game set in ancient rome rather than have it be second fiddle to egypt at a point in time where egypt was definitely less significant on the world stage. Even introducing it felt like it wasn't really contributing anything to the story, either go all in and drop the dead kid part or just drop it.

I'm gonna admit I was really disappointed to hear that the game after Odyssey wasn't a game about Imperial Rome. Yeah, it would have been tooling around in the ancient Mediterranean again but instead....lets do Vikings in England because....you know, Vikings are cool. And yeah, the Roman aspect of Origins is severely underdeveloped.

 

[Hades]

I really adored the idea of going with Ptolemaic Egypt instead of ancient Egypt. I recall being somewhat disappointed about ancient Egypt for a setting and suddenly not being so any longer when I realized it would involve the Greeks and Romans too. Egypt being in the hands of uncaring colonialists and the Romans being eager to replace those colonialists has always been a really interest situation.

Though the setting loses some points due to their interpretation of Caesar. The game and me have some....philosophical differences regarding the man. It would be great if he legitimately founded the Templars rather than just being a giant tool.

I liked the order of the Ancients. They felt quite personable and you got some time to know them. This in contrast of Odyssey where the Order was primarily a gameplay mechanic and the vast majority were just random npc's in the overworld that you had to kill.

I'm gonna admit I was really disappointed to hear that the game after Odyessy wasn't a game about Imperial Rome. Yeah, it would have been tooling around in the ancient meditrrean again but instead....lets do Vikings in England because....you know, Vikings are cool. And yeah, the Roman aspect of Origins is severely underdeveloped.

Yeah. The thing about Ptolemaic Egypt, ancient Greek or Rome is that they're actually incredibly rare as video game settings. The novel setting gives the rather bog standard Assassins Creed games a freshness they wouldn't otherwise have. What hooks me about Odyssey is that its pretty much the only game set in ancient Greece. Its certainly not the utterly mundane open world formula and gameplay that hooks me about that game. So if the next Assassins Creed decides to drop its novel setting in exchange for an utterly conventional one, while still keeping the adequate at best gameplay of the previous games then the end result is a really bland game that doesn't interest me.

 

[Hawki]

Yeah. The thing about Ptolemaic Egypt, ancient Greek or Rome is that they're actually incredibly rare as video game settings. The novel setting gives the rather bog standard Assassins Creed games a freshness they wouldn't otherwise have. What hooks me about Odyssey is that its pretty much the only game set in ancient Greece. Its certainly not the utterly mundane open world formula and gameplay that hooks me about that game. So if the next Assassins Creed decides to drop its novel setting in exchange for an utterly conventional one, while still keeping the adequate at best gameplay of the previous games then the end result is a really bland game that doesn't interest me.

Except if we're arguing about which settings are more common, Egypt, Greece, and Rome are very common for historical fiction in games - at least in the strategy genre. Look at any game series that focuses on the ancient world, or civilization in general, and you'll almost certainly see this civilizations pop up. In contrast, how many games out there deal with Vikings, for instance, or the French Revolution, or the Italian Renaissance period?

If anything, as far as setting goes, stuff like Origins and Odyssey are more generic.

 

[Dalisclock]

Except if we're arguing about which settings are more common, Egypt, Greece, and Rome are very common for historical fiction in games - at least in the strategy genre. Look at any game series that focuses on the ancient world, or civilization in general, and you'll almost certainly see this civilizations pop up. In contrast, how many games out there deal with Vikings, for instance, or the French Revolution, or the Italian Renaissance period?

If anything, as far as setting goes, stuff like Origins and Odyssey are more generic.

In Strategy and city builder games, sure. Not to much in Open world and adventure type games. And lately Vikings have been QUITE popular in gaming.

Origins and Odyssey are unique in that you get to bumble around and explore the place on foot/horseback and not just lead an army through it and that's what makes them stand out. Kind of like how RDR 1 and 2 are noteworthy because there's no other open world "Wild West" games, aside from their obvious attention to detail.

Not to mention the ability to engage in ancient ship combat on a single ship level(as inaccurate as that may be in practice).

 

[Hawki]

In Strategy and city builder games, sure. Not to much in Open world and adventure type games. And lately Vikings have been QUITE popular in gaming.

Well, yeah, but there hasn't been much open world/adventure games in almost any AC setting, period. And if there's been a swing in Viking-games recently, I've missed it.

The difference that comes to my mind is that stuff like Greece, Rome, and Egypt cast a shadow over fiction and real-life in the way the Vikings don't. Norse mythology, I'll grant you, has kind of come into vogue relatively recently, but the Vikings themselves? Well, they had a TV show, but apart from that?

And I'm not even saying that's wrong, since I'd wager that the Greece/Rome/Egypt 'trio' has had a far greater impact on culture (at least Eurasian) than the Vikings, but, yeah. These aren't obscure civilizations we're dealing with.

 

[Mister Mumbler]

And I thought my treatise of the Lego Movies was long winded (joking, this is great. I could read this for days, and will probably need to. Keep it up)

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Well, yeah, but there hasn't been much open world/adventure games in almost any AC setting, period. And if there's been a swing in Viking-games recently, I've missed it.

Maybe the Viking faction in For Honor was popular enough to get Ubusoft thinking of a Norse setting for AssCreed. Though honestly, I'd say it's the gigantic success of God of War that makes it feel like Vikings are big again.

Still, God of War, Hellblade, For Honor, Valhalla, and now Valheim are 5 more Norse related games than there are any Egyptian or Roman games in the last few years (outside of strategy games, though even then I'd say there weren't that many lately).

 

[Hades]

Except if we're arguing about which settings are more common, Egypt, Greece, and Rome are very common for historical fiction in games - at least in the strategy genre. Look at any game series that focuses on the ancient world, or civilization in general, and you'll almost certainly see this civilizations pop up. In contrast, how many games out there deal with Vikings, for instance, or the French Revolution, or the Italian Renaissance period?

If anything, as far as setting goes, stuff like Origins and Odyssey are more generic.

Only really for the RTS genre. You don't really see much rpg's like Kingdome Come but set in ancient Rome and fantasy rpg's are mostly based on medieval Britain or France rather than anything of antiquity. Even the Imperials in Skyrim are only Roman in the sense the legion wears Roman uniforms while the Empire is strictly medieval in all other senses.

But vikings are far more mundane. Just about every setting has a culture that's either viking or nordic in nature. Skelige, skyrim, the Vikings in Valhalla etc.

 

[Dalisclock]

Maybe the Viking faction in For Honor was popular enough to get Ubusoft thinking of a Norse setting for AssCreed. Though honestly, I'd say it's the gigantic success of God of War that makes it feel like Vikings are big again.

Still, God of War, Hellblade, For Honor, Valhalla, and now Valheim are 5 more Norse related games than there are any Egyptian or Roman games in the last few years (outside of strategy games, though even then I'd say there weren't that many lately).

There's also Jotun(by the same video that made Spirit Farer), Bad North, Northgard, Banner Saga and Expeditions: Viking.

Greece and Egypt(and to a lesser extent Rome) haven't been getting nearly as much love lately. Aside from the God of War series before the 2018 game(and those are fine, though more heavily on the mythological fantasy side then anything else), you have Apotheon, Okhlos and Immortals Fenyx Rising. I struggle to think of many games set in Egypt at all other that aren't RTS/City Buildings outsider of AC:Origins.

And I'm not even saying that's wrong, since I'd wager that the Greece/Rome/Egypt 'trio' has had a far greater impact on culture (at least Eurasian) than the Vikings, but, yeah. These aren't obscure civilizations we're dealing with.

Now that you mention it, I would like to see Sumeria/Assyria/Babylonia get more representation as well. I think like one city building set in Babylonia came out a little while ago but I can't think of anything else that really even so much as mentions the area. ABZU, a couple levels in Serious Sam:2nd Encounter and Indy and the Infernal machine. Oh, and apparently the New Dark Pictures games is set in Sumerian Ruins(which is the only reason I even noticed it) are the only games I can think of that anyoen has heard of.

 

[thestor]

I actually decided to go ahead and install Unity, so I will be talking about that after all once I finish it

Why not post weekly what you have experienced so far so that we can revel in your pain and agony see how you experience the game as you play it?

 

[Dalisclock]

Why not post weekly what you have experienced so far so that we can revel in your pain and agony see how you experience the game as you play it?

I'm tempted actually, since it's gonna be a while till I finish Unity(especially since Blasphemous is starting to really dig it's claws into me). I am going to finish my write up of Odyssey first before I start on the Unity one.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Holy cow, I stopped reading after AC2 since that was the last one I played, but you've written A LOT of words here! I just did a word count and you've written roughly 20k words on the Assassin's Creed series.

 

[meiam]

It's the assassin creed version of the FF12 write up from the old forum (https://forums.escapistmagazine.com...ravelog-of-ivalice-by-a-raving-madman.129323/)

Strangely enough, AC story across 20 different game is more coherent than FF12...

 

[Dalisclock]

Holy cow, I stopped reading after AC2 since that was the last one I played, but you've written A LOT of words here! I just did a word count and you've written roughly 20k words on the Assassin's Creed series.

@Xprimentyl might have been joking when he suggested in the Hot Takes thread that I talk about Assasins Creed, but little did he suspect I was just crazy enough to do it. The fact AC has a lot to talk about is one of the reasons(and the fact there's a ton of these damn things) this has gone on so long. Granted, a lot of those are things the series either did wrong or failed to follow through on, but there's a ton of room for discussion about the series.

I think I did something similar with the Metal Gear series a couple years back, though the difference here is that the last AC game I played before booting up Unity for the first time a week ago was Odyssey back in 2019 so here I'm pretty much hitting the parts that stuck out to me and that I actually remember(I did have to do some wiki checks for this). I do remember writing down my thoughts about Odyssey at the time as I went through it in another Longass thread but as I'm working on my feelings about Odyssey now I'm not gonna bother to link it. I may not even exist considering that was on the V1 forums.

 

[Dalisclock]

Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

With Origins and Ptolemaic Egypt out of the way, there's nowhere left to go but BACKWARDS, again. This time taking another 4 century jump and across the sea to Ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian War. Why? Because it's AWESOME(and they could share Greek Art Assets with Origins which was no doubt in development at much he same time).

In Universe though, it's justified that Layla has joined the Assassins(because the Templars turned on her during Origins and she gets recruited at the end) and now she's looking for the Staff of Hermes, another magical ISU thing(but not the Staff of Alexander or the Papal Staff, which are also powerful ISU relics. I checked the Wiki to ensure they're different magical doohickys). Oh, but this time they don't have a 2000 year old body to jack into(Phrasing, I know), they have an ancient spear fragment that has some 2500 year old DNA samples on it and they somehow knew those would be useful so they scraped some off, plugged them into the animus and found out they DNA was too old and Fragmented to be useful on it's own. Not to worry, just feed into Herodotus's Histories and that'll fill in the missing gaps and neatly explain away any historical issues with a slightly more detailed handwave of THE ANIMUS DID IT! then previous installments of the series. Strangely enough, the DNA they get off the Spear, rather then being one of the MANY MANY MANY People killed with the Spear over years and decades, is the one person they need it to be, though strangely since there's male and female DNA, you just pick which one you want and the animus does it's jiggery pokery to build the simulation from there(and cast the one you didn't pick as the villian). If you pick the female, you play as Kassandra and if you pick the male, you play as Alexios. I picked Kassandra because I liked her VA and model better.

This is a weird and interesting choice. It basically allows ubisoft to give you a choice of two protagonists(and have the one you didn't pick) be the main villain of the story because.....LOOK OVER THERE, but also because of the Fragmented DNA thing, allow you to have conversation options for the first time in the series and then adjust the timeline to account for it. And while it's dumb, it's not really any dumber then like half of the other shit this series has pulled, such as being able to pull ancestor DNA for both of the Frye Twins when Evie apparently never had kids and if she had then one of their kids would have had to....ewwwwwww. Or the fact that the games allow you to see things that the characters in the games are not privy to because they weren't there(Syndicate was particularly bad about this but apparently Unity did much the same thing).