Assassin's Creed IV Delivers 13 Minutes Of Gameplay Footage

[Earnest Cavalli]

Assassin's Creed IV Delivers 13 Minutes Of Gameplay Footage


Ubisoft has dropped a new trailer for Assassin's Creed IV which offers about 13 minutes of actual gameplay footage from the upcoming, open-world adventure.

Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag is slated to debut on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii U on October 29. That's only a few months off, so as you'd expect Ubisoft is ramping up its advertising campaign. Thus, we present the video at top-right, a 13-minute, 50-second examination of the core gameplay found in the upcoming title.

For the most part, it looks exactly as you'd expect. If you transplanted the characters, themes and activities of Assassin's Creed III to the Caribbean, you wouldn't be too far off from what we see in this footage. As with its predecessor, the most exciting element of the game appears to be its naval combat, and I'm happy to report that it looks even more intense and "realistic" than it did in Assassin's Creed III.

Unfortunately, as this is an Ubisoft-issued trailer, it does little to answer questions of how buggy Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag might be during actual, real-world gameplay. Even those who adored the prior Assassin's Creed game can't deny that it was mechanically flawed in a lot of weird ways, and since this new game is built on much of the same technology it wouldn't be shocking to find that it exhibits the same bugs. We've got our fingers crossed that Ubisoft has paid special attention to the game's polish this time around, but then again that's never been the case for any of the half-dozen Assassin's Creed games. With Black Flag following its predecessor by only a year, we fear that this rushed schedule might actually make things worse.

Hopefully our fears subside come October 29.

Source: YouTube [http://youtu.be/ICemupWG56U]

UPDATE: Ubisoft reached out to us to say that AC4 has not been "rushed" to development in a year. They clarified that it has actually been in development since 2011 with a very large team.

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[sid]

Pleasantly surprising. I was expecting something ultimately linear but that actually seemed very free and open.

 

[Krantos]

Looks awesome, really. Finally looks like we're getting a proper Pirate game. Still not sure AC was the right franchise for it, but there you go.

However, something he said that stuck out to me was "We want to make sure that every minute we're advertising something (something to do) for the player."

No. No you don't. Contrast. Juxtaposition. Give players the chance to find things. Give them the chance to explore. The thrill of exploration is completely undermined if you spoon feed everything to the player. It's a staple of the open world genre that you will make something that many players won't see. You have to accept that. If you can't. If you try to ensure your players are going to see everything, you undermine the entire purpose of an open world.

Railroading or leading a player where you want them to go, turns an open world into a linear experience. One of the big reasons the Elder Scrolls games feel so open and so vast is because they don't lead you. There are a thousand things in those games that most people will never see. I've sunk hundreds if not thousands of hours into skyrim, and I still haven't seen and found all the treasure maps. THAT is an open world. That is giving the player freedom.

Leading the player to everything you want them to see is not. That's handholding. That's turning a open world into ta guided tour. And it makes your world feel very very small.

Least that's how I see it.

 

[Full]

For some reason I chuckled when he said the ship was the "second main character". I bet the ship dies at the end in Edwards arms.

As that guy above said, looks like finally a fun, proper pirate game, but I don't think ASSASSINS Creed was the right franchise for swashbuckling spectacle. It was already about high-climbing spectacle for the most part though, mind, so something more novel and fast paced was only expected.

 

[thisbymaster]

shut up and take my money.

 

[Caffeine_Bombed]

Hmm I'll wait for reviews when it's released. I do hope it's a great game because I love the idea of an open world pirate adventure, but I was very disappointed with AC3 compared to the demos...

 

[Krantos]

snip

Actually I cant really follow you there....going through Skyrim the possibilities are advertised as well (and as numerous), with your compass constantly updating dungeons and interesting locations, and directely leading you to the next quest-objective with a big arrow (dont get me wrong, I love TES) and I would very much doubt that you can walk 1 minute without getting some new location on your compass.
Just finding and Island or a naval battle on the go seems good to me, as long as they dont oversell it.
There definetly are games that dont do that (Gothic II....yeah, playing it lately, so its kinda in my mind), but I found tha change from Morrowind to Oblivion a pleasant one, cause the world seemed much more alive and compact with less padding.

AC IV looks great, but the ground-combat still seems way too easy, so it probably wont be a game for me (although I love the setting and the naval combat)

I think it requires a balance. I definitely agree with you that Morrowind's stuff was often TOO buried (to be honest, I forgot about the compass, i have it disabled. My bad :O).

So perhaps it's less a matter of not advertising, as it is advertising discreetly. For example, the quest marker in TES can be turned off (as can the compass completely) and the game doesn't make any attempt to remind you to go do a certain thing. However, when you do want to get somewhere quickly, of find that mcguffin you're looking for, they aids are there for you to use.

OK. I'll admit it. You convinced me not to judge AC IV's advertising before I see it. I just hope it's not as heavy handed as III's felt at times.

 

[Teoes]

A couple of things pulled me out there.. I'm probably being too picky, it's an early build so things will get ironed out and there will always be things you need to do/sacrifice in the name of fun and gameplay but.. Each time the character dived into water it was weird how he barely broke the surface, went to no real depth, before the descent was arrested. Also the sprinting/fast swim animations were off - he seemed to be doing a lot of work to not move very far/fast. Most of all, the ship movement - it was like a car, the way it so quickly and smoothly accelerated and decelerated from/to a stationary position (like I said sacrifice made for fun and gameplay, I know I know). These are probably minor things but they all seemed rather off to me.

Never played an AC game so what do I know. Other than the above it did indeed look very pretty with a nice big world and will doubtless be fun for those that enjoy the series.

I got a chuckle at how he glossed over the whaling aspect. "Controversy off the starboard bow, Cap'n!" "HARD TO PORT!!"

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Things I like:
The seemless ground/naval combat
The freeaiming
The naval combat

Things I don't like:
Upgrades are still "more ammo, more health" type of boring
If the game's as easy as the others, there will be no need for money/upgrades
Forced Stealth Sections
The lack of tall things to climb and jump off of
I saw "animus" in a collectable screen, are you really going to try and salvage the "Desmond" plot?


Personally I would have preferred them making this a new IP rather then shoehorning Assassin's Creed into it. More then likely we'll either get a Pirate-Themed Assassin Freerunning Game or a Assassin Freerunning-Themed Pirate Game, but not a blend of the two.

 

[sid]

Forced Stealth Sections

I didn't feel like it was forced. You could've run in guns blazing and let those two crewmen die if you weren't interested in them

I think

I hope

 

[Korten12]

For some reason I chuckled when he said the ship was the "second main character". I bet the ship dies at the end in Edwards arms.

To be fair, if done very well it's possible to make a ship being destroyed a very sad thing. Hell the anime One Piece proved that.

 

[JasonBurnout16]

I'm still worried that I'm going to end up swimming between point A and point B more than anything.

It's one of my main gripes with open world games - If given the opportunity, I will run in a straight line towards my objective. Unless they can find a nifty way for the ship to always be where I want it to be, I imagine I'll spend half of my time in the bloody water.

On the other hand climbing that Mayan Ruin was pretty cool. All the mechanics seemed to work fine, there wasn't anything I disliked.

 

[synobal]

The little things bother me. Sailing, is wayyy to easy. I get they need to speed it up because hey we got stuff to do but Sailing isn't driving, the naval combat is equally bad in my opinion.

Also the spy glass shows you what the ships are carrying? That seems way to easy. They should have that either be a surprise or if you want to know you should be allowed to like steal that sort of information from the port the ships sailed from. Then you could use the spy glass to see the ships name and thus know what sort of cargo it's carrying from the stolen manifest.

The Mayan ruin bothers me as well. A huge ship pulls up to the island and drops anchor (which it apparently doesn't do it just stops and sits there) and no one on the island even notices the big ship so you can sneaks about. What ever happened to like sneaking in under the cover of night, and using a row boat to make shore while your ship is parked around a bend in the island and out of sight.

It looks fun but there doesn't seem to be any depth, it looks easy to play but not difficult to master. There is no depth for people who like to be good at a game.

The sailing in Sid Meier's Pirates looks more complex than this game.

 

[maninahat]

My concern is cut and paste gameplay. Why on earth would I want to redo the same activity, and watch the same bloody 5 second victory clip? Oh right, because that's what you have to do to get the upgrades and equipment. It's that kind of thing that makes open world games a slog. This kind of artificially lengthening busy work kills the appeal of these games.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Okay okay okay. I'm STILL determined not to give this game the benefit of the doubt. I'll buy it, if and when I hear that it's worth buying from sources I trust. I thought AC3 was a sure-fired incredible game... until I brought it. As well as that, I'm pissed at yearly sequel milking and the continued bastardization of the traditional core experience of Assassin's Creed that made me fall in love with the franchise in the first place.

All that said... I could not help but be really very impressed with what I just saw.

 

[NightHawk21]

I don't remember where I read it but I think it sums up the game nicely: "Assassin's Creed IV will be the worst assassin's creed game in the series, but it will be the best pirate game of all time."

As for the gameplay demo, it looks really good. I really wanted him to dive for a little bit so we could see if you can explore reefs and the like, but so far I'll take it.

 

[bug_of_war]

However, something he said that stuck out to me was "We want to make sure that every minute we're advertising something (something to do) for the player."

No. No you don't. Contrast. Juxtaposition. Give players the chance to find things. Give them the chance to explore. The thrill of exploration is completely undermined if you spoon feed everything to the player. It's a staple of the open world genre that you will make something that many players won't see. You have to accept that. If you can't. If you try to ensure your players are going to see everything, you undermine the entire purpose of an open world.

Railroading or leading a player where you want them to go, turns an open world into a linear experience. One of the big reasons the Elder Scrolls games feel so open and so vast is because they don't lead you. There are a thousand things in those games that most people will never see. I've sunk hundreds if not thousands of hours into skyrim, and I still haven't seen and found all the treasure maps. THAT is an open world. That is giving the player freedom.

Leading the player to everything you want them to see is not. That's handholding. That's turning a open world into ta guided tour. And it makes your world feel very very small.

Least that's how I see it.

I don't think that's quite what he meant, I think what he was saying that in the distance you would be able to see islands, battles, etc. that would entice the player into seeing what they are. Granted, the game is yet to come out, and we can only see so much from this trailer, so you could be entirely correct that they are going to be hand holding. I'm (not quietly in anyway) totally sure that this will be a really good game, and so far Ubisoft has yet to disappoint me.

 

[Wintermute_v1legacy]

Well, I hope the crew going crazy when the main character boards the ship won't be happening every time you're on the ship. Otherwise that will get annoying very fast.

*Jumps into the sea to punch a shark*
*Returns to the boat*
*YEAHHHHHHHHHHH HOLY SHIT CAPTAIN FUCK YEAH!!!*

I have to admit it, though, that the game looks good. I'm a fan of the Ass Creed games, especially I and II. But it's been getting worse since Brotherhood, and with AC III being the worst so far, I was ready to move on to different things. I hope this time around the finished product is actually good (right, AC III?).