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[Shadyside]

I've stopped playing AC around the third game. Are they still doing the animus and future stuff? The overarching narrative of the Desmond story was to find a way to stop the world ending on 2012. What is the overarching story this time around?

 

[CriticalGaming]

This board's aversion to Ubisoft games is well known, still a small sub-section of users (Me and @CriticialGaming) were apparently considering picking this game up. I remain a solid Ubisoft Game fan and as such it was an easy decision to pick AC:V up on release. So here's the official thread and I'll get going with my thoughts below, with the caveat that I'm only about 8 hours in and that is obviously nowhere near enough to say anything final on the story. I'll just assume familiarity with the latest AC games as to not have to make a super long post.

Good Stuff
The inventory system this time around is the best of the Nu-Assassin's Creed games. Gone is the dozen fare of trash weapons you pick up and recycle/sell and changing weapons every 5 minutes because you keep outleveling your gear. This time around the stats of equipment are fixed and equipment is much more sparse but unique. After 8 hours I've got exactly one full armor set, the one you get at the start, and one piece of one other set and two from a third. In terms of weapons I've got maybe 10, all of them one of a kind (except the hand axe, where you get a unique improved version early on). The idea is that you use the equipment that suits your playstyle and then improve its rarity so that you can upgrade the stats of individual gear pieces. To that you get blanket stat improvements in your skill tree (like +4 melee damage or +2 stealth damage). No more pointless loot and every time you see a gear piece icon on the map you want to get it to see what kind of weapon it is.

The map is gorgeous and not as cluttered. I remember booting up AC: Unity back in 2014 and almost panicking when I saw Paris covered in a gazillion and one icons. AC:Od inspired a similar level of dread when I realized just how big the map was and how many icons each area had. AC:V has fewer icons and most of them don't feel like stupid busy work a la "Burn the Silos" or "Clear the camp". The icons are also farther apart which gives both the player and the map some time to breath so that you can appreciate just how beautiful the world it. The environmental world building is also up there with Witcher 3 in that you get a sense for what's going on just by traversing the game world and seeing empty fields or busy fishing camps.

The revised side quest system is pretty great, save for occasionally buggy execution. Instead of gathering up thousands of "get 10 bear bollocks" quests, each side quest (or mystery as they are dubbed) is a short story that you can come across. They rarely take longer then five minutes, are not marked in your journal and are quite varied in what you are meant to do. Some are puzzles, like the monk who claims you can't rile him up and get him violent (so naturally you destroy his stuff and torch his home), others are moral dilemmas (a young girl who tries to keep the last leave on an autumn tree since her father promised to be home before the leaves had fallen, you get to talk to her and can decide how much of a prick you want to be) and others are just hilarious set pieces (a man who wants you to bring a wild animal to him so he can fight it). This makes them flow much more naturally and since they aren't asking you to run all around the map but instead remain within a few hundred meters of the starting point, they are generally worth your while.

Mixed stuff
Female!Eivor (or the actual Eivor, seeing as how it is a woman's name) has a mostly good voice actor, but you can tell she had some trouble finding Eivor's actual voice. Occasionally she sounds as if she's making a caricature of a gruff viking woman, others she sounds like she ate a handful of gravel and washed it down with a barrel of whiskey before smoking a pack of cigarettes and it does not sound natural at all. I am not sure if the male voice actor has the same problem, but from what I gather from others he does a much better job at keeping his performance consistent.

The story is off to a good start, but there have been a few times, especially in the prologue, when the game tries so hard to show you that the's are hardened, gruff vikings that it becomes almost satire off itself. There's a bit too much posturing and childish bone headedness that is probably meant to show determination but makes you wonder why Eivor and Sigurd weren't spanked more as kids. That hasn't been a problem since the setting changed to England though.

Less reliance on Birdy. In fact, the raven is kinda useless except in a few fringe scenarios like when you want to get a good top down view of the area or are struggling to locate a key. The bird no longer detects everything nor does it automark every enemy and objective in sight. It is refreshing for an AC game to trust the player and I honestly thought Odyssey overdid the whole Eagles sees everything angle. Occasionally though it can be infuriating to struggle to find something in a location and realizing that your raven is pointless.

Bad stuff
Every AC game since ACII has been very keen on letting the player customize stuff. In the early game you can use your meager basic selection of tattoos and hairstyles to change your Eivor around, but once you leave Norway that customization gets locked off for a long time. You need to build up your settlement to re-access the tattoo artist/barber, which wouldn't be a problem if upgrading your settlement is contingent on raiding monasteries for supplies. Early game, the selection of monasteries you can raid is pretty meager and you got more important stuff to upgrade then your ability to customize your character (such as plot critical buildings, the smith and the shop). Want to customize your longship? Build the dock upgrade. Want to customize and upgrade your horse and raven? Build the stable. You're going to be a good way into the mid-game before you've opened up for all the customization options, which seems like a gross oversight.

You know what is really great when you release a new game? Making sure that players can start it. Currently there's a gamebreaking bug on PC when you can get hit by an infinite white loading screen after the intro cinematic. It isn't terribly hard to work around (involving v-sync and starting straight from the exe file), but for the early adopters it wasted several good hours before they figured that out.

The accents. This is all subjective, but as a Swede I'm not hearing "cool norse"-accent. I am hearing "hilarious Norwegian accent" and just want to start cracking Norwegian jokes (What's the best way to sink a Norwegian submarine? Swim down and knock on the hatch, the Captain will open and ask who's there. What's the best way to sink a Norwegian submarine twice? Swim down again and knock on the hatch, the Captain will open and say "I am not falling for that again"). For people who don't see Norway as the butt end of jokes and a rogue breakaway state, I doubt this is a problem.

So there it is. Eight hours of playing condensed into one post. As always smask that like and subscribe and leave your comments below!

I also picked this up yesterday but I was only able to play for about 3 hours.

And if I am honest. I kind of hate this game. I think the voice acting sucks. Both male and female player characters have terrible acting imo. I think the combat is made dramatically worse by the usage of a stamina meter. This is AC not Dark Souls, I don't need no meter to wail on endless waves of generic dudes.

I also don't like the way they use markers on the new map, but I may just need to get used to it.

Honestly this is a game I might just zip through with cheats on to not deal with the hassle.

Odyssey really really grabbed me and I enjoyed all 50 hours I put into the game. But I am really really unimpressed with this one. Especially because it is much less polished. Most conversations have jerky animations that remain me of Mass Effect Andromedia where conversation animations felt random and characters would even jerk suddenly in and out of poses.

I am not enjoying the game so far, but I want to give it some more time and see if my opinion changes once the game really gets going.

 

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[Dalisclock]

They are still running with the story they started in the first AC, though they've significantly scaled back the present day stuff. AC:V is much like Origins and Odyssey in that you get a few short present day sections and the occasional technobabble to justify time skips, weirdness in the game etc, but mostly the game is about Eivor and the vikings. The present day story is about the assassin's trying to stop the growing magnetic field on earth after the solar flare that occurred at the end of AC3 (was it?). The key to that is some intercepted voice message that had embedded coordinates to Eivor's grave. Honestly, I don't care much about it. Layla Hassan is very inoffensive as far as protagonists go.

So am I correct in assuming the modern day storyline hasn't progressed much from Odyssey? Because for the past two games there's been constant "Another Apocalypse is coming" talk without much clarification of WHAT, only that Layla needed the staff and the ability to use it to do....something.

Ubisoft seems to have fallen back into their groove of "Modern Day storyline progression? Fuck you"

 

[meiam]

Paradoxically I think I'd play more assassin creed game if they were less of them. All of this sounds good, but I just got Odyssey and haven't touched it yet so I'm gonna wait on this one. But it's good to know that they're still pretty good, at this point assasin creed are like McDonald, to paraphrase Bourdain, nothing special but sometime you just want the good ol reliable.

 

[BrawlMan]

I've stopped playing AC around the third game. Are they still doing the animus and future stuff? The overarching narrative of the Desmond story was to find a way to stop the world ending on 2012. What is the overarching story this time around?

I have not touched AC since II and Brotherhood. Got too convoluted, boring, and stupid. I already played the AC game not made by UbiSuck.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

From gameplay I've seen, my two biggest concerns (not really since I don't plan on playing this game even if it's good) is that the combat looks ass and there barely seems to be any free running. I've heard from many reviewwrs that the combat isn't as good, and the game world seems so flat. Any comments on that?

 

[Shadyside]

Ubisoft should just reboot the franchise without the present day stuff. The concept was interesting, but they really don't know what they are doing with it.

 

[Dalisclock]

Ubisoft should just reboot the franchise without the present day stuff. The concept was interesting, but they really don't know what they are doing with it.

Because the Animus gives them an excuse to get away with all sorts of weird shit in this series and the present day allows them to showcase/explain what the animus is. I'm not even joking when I say the sheer amount of times they've fallen back on "The Animus did it/it's a glitch in the animus/we programmed the animus that way" is truly amazing. Odyssey attempts to get away with a lot of it's weird shit by saying "We're using 2500 year old degraded DNA so we plugged herodotus in to fill the gaps" because herodotus was well known for having giant statues and mythological creatures all over it.

There were a few games where they dropped like 99% of the present day stuff and just had the animus in there as the UI. Those titles are not among the most popular ones(Liberation, Unity and Syndicate).

 

[Avnger]

Tip for anyone interested in playing the game but not sure on paying full price for it:

Ubisoft+ subscription service will give you access to the "Ultimate" edition of the game for 30 days for $15. You also get access to the premier editions of most of Ubisoft's catalog (including Watch Dogs Legion).

 

[Gergar12]

I am partial to Ubisoft's games I like Far Cry 5 for example. But can't finish Origins or Oddessy.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[Kwak]

I have not touched AC since II and Brotherhood. Got too convoluted, boring, and stupid. I already played the AC game not made by UbiSuck.

What game was that? One of the platforming ones?

 

[Catfood220]

Everything I seen of this game makes it look boring as fuck. The best Ass Creed was Black Flag, I've not played one since then, though I keep threatening to borrow the London one from my friend. I may have to follow through at some point.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

There's definitely free running and the free running "challenges" from earlier games (AC2 or 3 if I recall right) are back, in that you gather more tattoo designs by following a floating piece of paper through a free running track.

As for the combat, I find it better then the floatiness of Odyssey and Origins but it is a bit janky. I've seen lots of complains about it but I think it is perfectly serviceable and probably the high point of the series.

Eh, the biggest reason I like to play AC games is for the free running. If the world isn't truly designed for you to be climbing everything and parkouring all over the place, what's the point? If free running challenges are the only real times you get to free run, then that's pretty pathetic.

Also, really, the combat is the high point of the series??? I mean its an incredibly low bar, but at least the previous AC games' combat was satisfying and well animated. What I've seen so far of Valhalla's looks straight up amateur. What exactly makes you like it better than the previous ones?

 

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[BrawlMan]

What game was that? One of the platforming ones?

No. Brotherhood was the game that came out before III, and they haven't even started on one of the 2.5D platforming ones yet at that time.

 

[Hades]

The setting is kind of a big turn off for me. Going from really unique settings that video games often refuse to touch such as ancient(not mythological) Greece or Ptolemaic Egypt to the same vikings and medieval England setting that most video games use is just such a downgrade.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Valhalla's combat plays better then it looks.

Fair enough. Many friends have praised the combat of the new AC games, which I just can't see. Guess I'll just need to experience it one day.

The setting is kind of a big turn off for me. Going from really unique settings that video games often refuse to touch such as ancient(not mythological) Greece or Ptolemaic Egypt to the same vikings and medieval England setting that most video games use is just such a downgrade.

It is a pretty odd choice for an ASSASSIN's Creed game. Not only are you not very assassin-y as a viking, I don't think pillaging and slavery are very compatible with the Creed. It is a very pretty game though, which has lots to do with the setting. I wonder if those who love the historical bits in the games are having less fun or not. I know many people were impressed at just how accurate Odyssey was.