Assassins Creed 2
- Thread starter Swenglish
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I think the Scifi Future thing is just an exscuse so they can cohesivly string together "assasins" from multiple era's- Feudal Japan, etc.
Why they needed this story contrievance I have no idea. Maybe it's building up to a final game where you play the futuristic assasin whose been experimented on.
Why they needed this story contrievance I have no idea. Maybe it's building up to a final game where you play the futuristic assasin whose been experimented on.
I agree with j-val but people, relax chuck in a new spear-type weapon and a mechanic in which every completed level you unlock a new power to use in the future setting to help you escape skyscraper you are trapped in. Then, sort out the story with a plot in which derek must go back to the first crusade (AC is set in the 3rd)to destroy the artifact before it is even spotted by the templars in past or future. One idea may be to give the player the choice to either become powerful enough to take on a powerful boss OR pursue the mad templar scientist in the future once you unlock all of your assassin abilities, yeah, it would be only one choice but chosing to play diffrently for the last couple of levels to get a different plot-line which will make for some nice interactive story telling.
I'm shocked that it took until the third page for someone to cite Mirror's Edge as a free-running game in a future setting. Personally I'm pretty psyched for the game (largely because of Assassin's Creed), but really think I would work better in third-person. Anyway, onto discussing the actual thread topic:
Here's what I thought was wrong with Assassin's Creed:
- Combat was repetitive and altogether unnecessary. Altaïr is an assassin. Assassins, in my mind, do not engage in open combat. I mean, the first tenet of the Creed is "Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent." What exactly are the guards guilty of? Why is it OK for Altaïr to kill them? Doing so in self defense makes sense, randomly killing them doesn't. Hell, they're just doing their jobs.
Why does Altaïr even have a longsword, anyway? As I've already stated, assassins should not regularly engage in open combat. Sure, have a short blade to get yourself out of sticky situations, but it should be possible to go through the entire game without ever crossing blades with anyone, so long as you're careful.
Conclusion: at the very least, fix fighting, but even better would be to remove it (by which I mean make it avoidable). The best solution, of course, would be to do both; make combat smooth and intuitive, but entirely avoidable. This would probably be good for business too; Ubisoft could run a "play it your way" campaign.
- The harassers. Dear Lord, the harassers. I understand you're trying to give us an "authentic experience" here, Ubisoft, but I cannot see how this made it out of beta. The beggar women are annoying enough, but then you add in the fact that getting shoved by one of those lepers (or whatever they are) can break your carefully maintained cover for no apparent reason, and (to quote our good friend Mr. Croshaw) "now the ocean of shittiness has closed over our heads with no rescue boat in sight."
Conclusion: This gameplay element should never have even been thought up. Get rid of it.
- The crossbow. As you all probably know, Altaïr can be seen wielding a crossbow in the opening cinematic. I really wanted the crossbow. Crossbows are cool. Unfortunately, all I got were throwing knives, which, while admittedly cool, didn't intrigue me as much as a crossbow would have. Why exactly do you have two CQB weapons that can do all of the same things, but you can throw knives while holding only one of them? It would make a bit more sense to have a dedicated ranged weapon and a dedicated CQB weapon, or, as I said earlier, to just remove the sword entirely.
Conclusion: Give us an arsenal out of which we can choose weapons at the beginning of missions. Or, as someone else mentioned earlier, have new weapons and upgrades work on a black market system (maybe add a slight RPG element).
- Investigations. Pickpocketing and eavesdropping were far too simple. The way "interrogation" went can be at best described as "retarded"; who the hell would even give someone they're interrogating a chance to fight back? Slam him against a wall and hold a blade to his throat.
Other than the actual assassinations themselves, the informer missions were my favorite part of the game. The fact that you had to remain stealthed while completing them added an element of challenge that I thought the game should've possessed the entire time (see my first point on combat). The flag-collecting missions were especially fun because they highlighted the most fun gameplay element: free-running. I also liked how each informer had a different personality.
Conclusion: Somebody mentioned B&E investigations, which I think sounds like an awesome idea. Another thing Ubisoft could do is put in more informer-style investigations, though I think they should play out a little more like this:
Altaïr: I hear you have some information on [assassination target].
Some shifty guy: Yeah, but it'll cost ya.
Altaïr: What do you need me to do?
And then he'd ask you to steal something, or to kill someone who was out to get him, something like that.
- Finally, my biggest problem with the game was the assassinations that were impossible to accomplish using stealth. Hell, if you do it right, the death shouldn't even be noticed until you're back in the bureau. Because you are an assassin: a silent creature of stealth and shadows. Now, some people were saying that all of the assassinations were like this, that you couldn't accomplish any of them with stealth, but really that was only true for some of them. If you actually planned out your route beforehand using the info that you gathered, most of them could be truly assassinated, not simply killed. Some of the assassinations, however, were truly impossible to accomplish stealthily, and I was quite frustrated by this. Any old person can kill someone provided they counter enough times. A true assassin, though, kills someone without anyone knowing until the assassin is long gone. Let's take another look at the Creed, specifically, the second tenet: "Do not draw attention before you strike." As I understand it, every single person who played the game broke that tenet at least . . . let's see, four times for sure; there's no way to avoid getting noticed during the assassination of Majd Addin, during either assassination of Robert de Sable, or during the assassination of Al Mualim. What would actually be awesome is a difficulty mode in which you CANNOT get noticed on your way from the bureau to the target, otherwise you fail. I would actually love that.
Conclusion: I really want more of an emphasis on stealth.
And now some predictions about what will actually happen:
CONFIRMED: <a href=http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=199332>Altaïr will indeed be returning as the hero of Assassin's Creed II, and he'll be able to swim this time.
HIGHLY LIKELY: <a href=http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=175552>The "Bleeding Effect" will continue and Desmond will gain more of Altaïr's powers as the trilogy progresses. (Scroll down to "Why only the one power?")
Here's what I thought was wrong with Assassin's Creed:
- Combat was repetitive and altogether unnecessary. Altaïr is an assassin. Assassins, in my mind, do not engage in open combat. I mean, the first tenet of the Creed is "Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent." What exactly are the guards guilty of? Why is it OK for Altaïr to kill them? Doing so in self defense makes sense, randomly killing them doesn't. Hell, they're just doing their jobs.
Why does Altaïr even have a longsword, anyway? As I've already stated, assassins should not regularly engage in open combat. Sure, have a short blade to get yourself out of sticky situations, but it should be possible to go through the entire game without ever crossing blades with anyone, so long as you're careful.
Conclusion: at the very least, fix fighting, but even better would be to remove it (by which I mean make it avoidable). The best solution, of course, would be to do both; make combat smooth and intuitive, but entirely avoidable. This would probably be good for business too; Ubisoft could run a "play it your way" campaign.
- The harassers. Dear Lord, the harassers. I understand you're trying to give us an "authentic experience" here, Ubisoft, but I cannot see how this made it out of beta. The beggar women are annoying enough, but then you add in the fact that getting shoved by one of those lepers (or whatever they are) can break your carefully maintained cover for no apparent reason, and (to quote our good friend Mr. Croshaw) "now the ocean of shittiness has closed over our heads with no rescue boat in sight."
Conclusion: This gameplay element should never have even been thought up. Get rid of it.
- The crossbow. As you all probably know, Altaïr can be seen wielding a crossbow in the opening cinematic. I really wanted the crossbow. Crossbows are cool. Unfortunately, all I got were throwing knives, which, while admittedly cool, didn't intrigue me as much as a crossbow would have. Why exactly do you have two CQB weapons that can do all of the same things, but you can throw knives while holding only one of them? It would make a bit more sense to have a dedicated ranged weapon and a dedicated CQB weapon, or, as I said earlier, to just remove the sword entirely.
Conclusion: Give us an arsenal out of which we can choose weapons at the beginning of missions. Or, as someone else mentioned earlier, have new weapons and upgrades work on a black market system (maybe add a slight RPG element).
- Investigations. Pickpocketing and eavesdropping were far too simple. The way "interrogation" went can be at best described as "retarded"; who the hell would even give someone they're interrogating a chance to fight back? Slam him against a wall and hold a blade to his throat.
Other than the actual assassinations themselves, the informer missions were my favorite part of the game. The fact that you had to remain stealthed while completing them added an element of challenge that I thought the game should've possessed the entire time (see my first point on combat). The flag-collecting missions were especially fun because they highlighted the most fun gameplay element: free-running. I also liked how each informer had a different personality.
Conclusion: Somebody mentioned B&E investigations, which I think sounds like an awesome idea. Another thing Ubisoft could do is put in more informer-style investigations, though I think they should play out a little more like this:
Altaïr: I hear you have some information on [assassination target].
Some shifty guy: Yeah, but it'll cost ya.
Altaïr: What do you need me to do?
And then he'd ask you to steal something, or to kill someone who was out to get him, something like that.
- Finally, my biggest problem with the game was the assassinations that were impossible to accomplish using stealth. Hell, if you do it right, the death shouldn't even be noticed until you're back in the bureau. Because you are an assassin: a silent creature of stealth and shadows. Now, some people were saying that all of the assassinations were like this, that you couldn't accomplish any of them with stealth, but really that was only true for some of them. If you actually planned out your route beforehand using the info that you gathered, most of them could be truly assassinated, not simply killed. Some of the assassinations, however, were truly impossible to accomplish stealthily, and I was quite frustrated by this. Any old person can kill someone provided they counter enough times. A true assassin, though, kills someone without anyone knowing until the assassin is long gone. Let's take another look at the Creed, specifically, the second tenet: "Do not draw attention before you strike." As I understand it, every single person who played the game broke that tenet at least . . . let's see, four times for sure; there's no way to avoid getting noticed during the assassination of Majd Addin, during either assassination of Robert de Sable, or during the assassination of Al Mualim. What would actually be awesome is a difficulty mode in which you CANNOT get noticed on your way from the bureau to the target, otherwise you fail. I would actually love that.
Conclusion: I really want more of an emphasis on stealth.
And now some predictions about what will actually happen:
CONFIRMED: <a href=http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=199332>Altaïr will indeed be returning as the hero of Assassin's Creed II, and he'll be able to swim this time.
HIGHLY LIKELY: <a href=http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=175552>The "Bleeding Effect" will continue and Desmond will gain more of Altaïr's powers as the trilogy progresses. (Scroll down to "Why only the one power?")
Dang, now this is a grave-dig. However, seeing as AC2 has been released, it's a nice opportunity to reflect on the OP and see if his wishes were fulfilled.
Well Mister OP, it seems that you're in luck: you get to play in the Italian province of Tuscany in the 15th century, which means cities like Venice and Florence, and don't forget about the górgeous countryside. You'll lóve the fact that they've picked the 15th century, it's a fantastic time period especially in Italy, birthplace of the Renaissance, with important figures as Leonardo Da Vinci and Galilei.
Well Mister OP, it seems that you're in luck: you get to play in the Italian province of Tuscany in the 15th century, which means cities like Venice and Florence, and don't forget about the górgeous countryside. You'll lóve the fact that they've picked the 15th century, it's a fantastic time period especially in Italy, birthplace of the Renaissance, with important figures as Leonardo Da Vinci and Galilei.