The Little Touches in Assassin's Creed

[Andronicus]

On Twitter:

@YahtzeeCroshaw
I think I might have accidentally typed 'Fallout 3' in this week's XP when I meant to type 'Gears of War'. Perhaps I should drink less.
23 minutes ago

Ah, phew. I was worried for a moment that Yahtzee had had a stroke and suffered severe brain damage. Yes, it was the little things in Fallout 3 that really made the Capital Wasteland a joy to explore. Sometimes you have to use your imagination a bit, but it's even better that way, in my opinion.

Note-to-Self: Never, ever buy Gears of War.

 

[feather240]

As with others here I have to say that if he thinks Fallout 3 is shallow, then he didn't put any energy into the game whatsoever. It's so easy to miss things like the town full of Cannibals (Andale) or the little part where you can get a drug addict to pass OD so you can rob him. That game is packed full of stuff that you don't catch unless you're paying attention.

That game is packed full of stuff that you don't catch unless you're paying attention.

unless you're paying attention.

I have a problem with that. I couldn't find anything good until after hours of searching and I was getting tired of visiting abandoned buildings that had a few radroaches, so I asked myself why it took so long to find adventure in the wasteland. The answer? It was too big. I asked myself why it was too big. The answer? Fallout 3 is big because it wants to feel big. Ironically by making the map larger they made the game feel smaller. I could have lived with less open space. Would it have killed the desolate feel? Perhaps it would have, but that's the same reason they made almost the entire game world grey and brown. My ideal version of Fallout 3? Having Bethesda squeeze the game into a quarter of the map. That way when I go exploring I find something quickly.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

That the main character has to be as bland and flat as possible to let the audience project easier?

That's never been done before...Starkiller, Bella Swan, Robert Langdon, Dr Watson...

Nasty little trope that it is.

 

[mechanixis]

The problem with Assassin's Creed is that it's that hazy middle ground between silent protagonist and characterized protagonist. You have to pick on or the other. Or make Mass Effect and let the player pick how the protagonist is characterized.

Metal Gear Solid 3 definitely had some nice moments of The Dev Team Thinks of Everything [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything]. Your team members will comment on every piece of equipment, camo, weaponry, and behavior available, if you ask them.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

I can't figure what Yahtzee was meaning when he mentioned Fallout 3. I hate to play the defensive fanboy role here, but really, saying it didn't have those little things that made the world much more definable just wasn't really true. While, yeah, I can't really think of anything that specifically added real backstory to the main quest, but entering any dilapidated building in the downtown DC area gave certainty that you would find plenty of little odd things that gave an entire atmosphere to the wasteland as a whole: emails, graffiti, remnants of mad experiments or acts of betrayal, anything that would add to the experience.

These were all done not for quick, painless gratification, but for the sake of those who would truly search deeper with a desire to decode the world they entered. Only follow the main storyline, and you would find a few here and there. Stay for the rest of the experience, and you have one hell of a treasure set ahead of you.

 

[duchaked]

very nice article, nice to see some insight outside of the norm
hehe baby tigers grow up to...eat you

 

[ike42]

As with others here I have to say that if he thinks Fallout 3 is shallow, then he didn't put any energy into the game whatsoever. It's so easy to miss things like the town full of Cannibals (Andale) or the little part where you can get a drug addict to pass OD so you can rob him. That game is packed full of stuff that you don't catch unless you're paying attention.

That game is packed full of stuff that you don't catch unless you're paying attention.

unless you're paying attention.

I have a problem with that. I couldn't find anything good until after hours of searching and I was getting tired of visiting abandoned buildings that had a few radroaches, so I asked myself why it took so long to find adventure in the wasteland. The answer? It was too big. I asked myself why it was too big. The answer? Fallout 3 is big because it wants to feel big. Ironically by making the map larger they made the game feel smaller. I could have lived with less open space. Would it have killed the desolate feel? Perhaps it would have, but that's the same reason they made almost the entire game world grey and brown. My ideal version of Fallout 3? Having Bethesda squeeze the game into a quarter of the map. That way when I go exploring I find something quickly.

I can understand your point of view, but when I play RPGs I want them to feel big. It can be tedious at times when walking across the entire wasteland, but I want the feeling of exploring a world. If I get an RPG I expect to spend 60+ hours on my first run-through. The problem is that Fallout 3 (and New Vegas for that matter) is an RPG that tries to be a shooter to appeal to a broader audience. Non-RPG fans buy an RPG and then complain about the game's RPG features. It's a classic example of savoring the experience vs. instant gratification.

 

[TheDandyHighwayman]

After reading this I was all like "Hey I want marmite now" (not vegimite becuase I'm English and not Australian) then I remembered how bad it tastes, seconds too late.
On topic however Yahtzee does raise a good point.
It's not so much fun to find small backstory etc. in games, it adds to immersion

 

[gaztaseven]

Maybe i'm giving Ubisoft too much credit, but I think Desmond is meant to be somewhat of a blank canvas. I mean the games aren't really about him - they're about the Templar war, the origins of man and god, and Altair and Ezio, ASSASSINS. Desmond is an assassin who hasn't yet realized his potential - he's just been floating around, waiting for someone to show him the way (subconciously). Hopefully we'll begin to see a transformation from bland Desmond into ass-kicking Desmond. Maybe in AC3 & 4, where you play Lee Harvey Oswald and Agent 47 respectively.

(Would a Hitman/AC tie-in be cool? I know I love both series of games...)

 

[gaztaseven]

Sorry double post.

 

[HentMas]

I never noticed that... in MGS you can see the damn parachute of Liquid next to where you figth sniper wolf, in MG2 you get to knock out Snake and get his dog tag, and in 3 you could go in first person in certain scene to see the ghost of a guy showing you the code to escape your prission, or just call girls to flirt with them, or calling them and telling them that you noticed that eating glowing mushrooms "recharges" your bateries (and the girl confused goes along with it thinking Snake is being delucional) hell i remember the damn Zero saying he would give you a "Tuxedo" and a gun "shaped like a snake" to make you more like a super spy, him being british it makes sense he wanted you to become like 007, calling you 00-snake at one time, MG4 Mayor

Spoiler

that makes it even more incredible when you find out he is the one that started the whole "Patriots" program and both Big Boss and him fight over it, seing how they were such good friends in the begining

but in MG4 it looses its touch, the spark is gone, its all cross referenced and super mega tied up that damn, it begins to make less and less sense and it looses immersion fairly quick...

 

[Asehujiko]

I would've picked Bioshock more than Half Life. The story and philosophy behind it was cool and all. But Goddamn,(!) Rapture was the most amazing city in Video gaming history and City 17 doesn't hold a candle to it. and the most amzing thing about rapture was how you got a sense of the incredible depth of it's concept and how it cam this close to being the perfect place. and while there were no emails, there were Audio logs. ahh.... the audio logs.

I think that has more to do with 4 years of hindsight then any skill difference on the developer's part.

 

[Vohn_exel]

I agree totally with this. The little things that you have to dig to notice give any game lots of depth and nice touches. The only thing I don't agree on is the baby tiger thing. Even big cats can be cute .

 

[JohnDoey]

I think Desmond actually a pretty cool character.

 

[The Electro Gypsy]

Yahtzee's right about Fallout three. That's why it's my least favourite of the series. It's good, no question, but it lacks the soul of 1 and 2, which were amazing games.

 

[8-Bit Grin]

I agree with Yahtzee when it comes to Fallout.

Finding someone on a mattress was thought provoking the first time, but after a while it just becomes part of the scenery.

I think the closest I've come to really finding something thought provoking was when I found a man lying dead on a mattress.

I went on to wonder if he'd been a wanderer similar to myself, and had run out of food or something and laid down to die.

The game has a lack of little touches outside of dry computer logs and simple random encounters. It hurts the game a little.

 

[House_Vet]

I like the writing on the walls in left 4 dead 1&2 and the interactions between characters.

YES! I love things like the 28 Days Later quote "The end is extremely ****ing nigh!" and someone writing under it "How rude!". Utterly classic.

Also:

"I'm gonna be a one man cheeseburger apocalypse!"

 

[Netrigan]

I think it's a test of a game's immersion to be able to zoom all the way into the smallest detail and find care and backstory even there - this is where games like Fallout 3 fall down, looking spectacular at a distance but shallow up close.

Wait, what? The backstory found within random encounters was the best part of F3.

There's quite a lot of back story hidden in Fallout 3 but I think it gets spread out a bit too much. Take Megaton. While a few computers have information about the inhabitants, apartments are filled with useless clutter instead of personal affects. Moira has a back story and you can find it, but searching through her living quarters reveals precious little about her. One of the few apartments that said something about a character was Dashwood's as it was filled with mementos of his adventures. I would have liked to see that amount of attention paid to all the major NPCs instead of filling their houses with the same type of clutter found in every home.

 

[Pugglet]

I agree with every thing in the article except for the Fallout 3 bit. That game was practically basted in immersion sauce and baked in some fashion that infused it with taste and depth.

If you ever hacked a terminal in a abandoned building, read a note you found in a shack full of human remains or explored a vault full of clones, you'd know that it was full of small details that provided you with optional side stories and left something to the imagination.

Those sorts of small things are brilliant.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I have to disagree with the Fallout 3.

The little things were FLAWLESS in my book regarding F3. For instance, if you decided to check out indoor areas and whatever houses/caves you can find, the scenery and the items are displayed and placed in such manner, you can tell a story from it all without a narrative explaining who/what/why it happened.

Much like finding two skeletons on a queen sized bed, with a single 10MM pistol with them, giving you an indication it might be suicide or they ultimatly decided to starve/die slowly whilst embracing eachother.

This is what makes Fallout 3 so perfect for me. They say a picture says more than 1000 words, if so, Fallout 3 contains millions of pictures just begging to be seen and experienced. The experience was far from shallow, if not, it showed me humanity and invoked real feelings in me.

Agree with everything you said here. From tiny details like finding song lyrics on computers, to two skeletons on top of a car arm in arm, or the tunnel where a motorcyclist met an untimely end trying to do a stunt...

I'm not sure how the hell Yahtzee came up with Fallout 3 as an example there.