Assassin's Creeds

Assassin's Creed 3 Remastered (including Liberation Remastered) is now available. It's also free to anyone who has the season pass for Odyssey.

It looks like a pretty solid amount of work went into this. Real neat but- it ain't Black Flag.

I really liked AC3 actually. More than Black Flag. But I’m not sure I want to play it again!

Is it true that the Templar stuff in AC3 and AC:Rouge make the Templars more Lawful Neutral and not so obviously evil like some of the targets you killed prior to that?

The original game portrayed them as pretty lawful neutral, from my memory. It was ACII that really cast them into full moustache-twirling Evil.

Yes, the games have definitely gone in that direction lately.

In Rogue you even

Spoiler - click to showplay as a Templar for most of the game

and the DLC for Assassin's Creed Odyssey (while it predates the creation of the Templars) definitely pitches your adversaries in exactly that way.

Went back to Odyssey after giving up as part of my Big Game Fatigue. I've found three things have made the experience more enjoyable:

1) I've turned subtitles on, and am reading the dialogue then skipping the audio. This makes once dull conversations fly by.
2) I'm ignoring side quests. Life's too short. If I see a fort that I fancy taking on, I'll go for it, but no more fast travelling across the map to start a side quest.
3) I swapped light attack to X (on Xbox, Square on PS4). It's a tiny thing but I'm finding the combat more enjoyable. That Xbox RB is a crap button.

All of which, I'm sure, would appall the devs, but it's given the game a new lease of life for me.

3) I swapped light attack to X (on Xbox, Square on PS4). It's a tiny thing but I'm finding the combat more enjoyable. That Xbox RB is a crap button.

Using the alternative control scheme - which switches attacks to the face buttons rather than the shoulder buttons - should be compulsory for anyone playing either Origins or Odyssey.

2) I'm ignoring side quests. Life's too short. If I see a fort that I fancy taking on, I'll go for it, but no more fast travelling across the map to start a side quest.

This is becoming more and more the norm for me, I skipped most of the sidequests in God of War, didn't even bother hunting a single Valkyrie and I don't think it hampered my enjoyment at all, the few I did do were actually kinda shitty as well. I also think Red Dead 2 is ay more enjoyable if you stick to main story missions.

Amazing how no game since Witcher 3 has made side quests worth doing for me, just because of the writing and not even taking rewards into account.

3) I swapped light attack to X (on Xbox, Square on PS4). It's a tiny thing but I'm finding the combat more enjoyable. That Xbox RB is a crap button.

Using the alternative control scheme - which switches attacks to the face buttons rather than the shoulder buttons - should be compulsory for anyone playing either Origins or Odyssey.

Don't want to belabour the point with this, but I can't believe how much difference it's made.

Before, I'd stealth everywhere and any time I got caught I would be completely exasperated, because then I had to enter a lengthy fight with uncomfortable controls. Just one button switched and suddenly I'm seeking fights out, not hiding from them.

It's changed the whole flow of the game for me. Whoever decided on the default controls is a plonker.

Mod fwiends, can we delete 'Odyssey' from the title?

I'm loving Valhalla; speaking as a non-fan, it's probably my favourite AC game*. Each area feels like a TV mini-series, and I've become genuinely attached to some of the characters. The stealth is satisfying, the combat is crunchy and hilarious, the bow is suitably overpowered. (All bows in stealth games should be overpowered.)

And it all zips along at such a pace. Your horse is fast. Traversal is fast. Fast-travel is… fast. You're never more than 10 seconds away from a satisfying bit of gameplay.

*Valhalla > the other 2 new ones > Black Flag > don't care

(All bows in stealth games should be overpowered.)

Shadow of Mordor was, for my money, the gold standard in this. Some of the bullshit you could do with the bow (including teleportation) was fantastic.

Dropped back into Valhalla over the last couple of evenings. Nothing much appears to have changed since I last played it, it's as glitchy as ever though it's got some sort of new River Raid mode which I need to check out.

It's a very easy game to drop back into - you never really have more than one quest on the go at a time, the controls are very straightforward and you basically run towards the next target on your map chopping people down as you go. The story's neatly divided into "arcs" of a few hours apiece so it's quite possible to play this as a kind of episodic thing in between other games.

I still think it's the weakest Ass Creed for years, though. Moving what was previously optional content into the main storyline has had two effects - first of all the game is inordinately long (well over a hundred hours for most people apparently, just for the main story, and that seems about right given how much I've played and how much is left to do), and secondly the whole vibe of the game has changed. Previous Ass Creed games felt like they offered you a bunch of things to do, of which the main story was only one. This one makes you feel like you should be progressing the story, and everything else is a distraction from that.

Also, combat's a bit boring, and stealth is largely pointless: you can't really sneak around for prolonged periods any more, as soon as you fire a single arrow everyone bears down on your position. Fair enough I guess, I'm a great big Viking laded down with axes and hammers and they can probably smell me coming, but it does make it a bit more button-mashy than I would like.

Character animations are poor, and it has the worst voice acting I've heard for years - regional accents are all over the place, there's no attempt to even differentiate Danes from Saxons, every cast member pronounces names completely differently and all the kids are American for some reason.

BUT it is nice undemanding entertainment and as I say it's easy to drop back into for a couple of evenings at a time. Once I've finished terrorising Oxfordshire I will probably put it on the back burner for a bit again but I know it'll be there waiting for me when I fancy some head-chopping action again.

Been back to Valhalla again as I mentioned in one of the other threads. I can see myself doing this on-and-off for years, it's not like I'm making much actual progress but it's kind of fun in a bug-ridden kind of way.

None of the game's problems have been resolved in any way since launch but I am quite enjoying the Wrath of the Druids expansion, which sends Eivor to Ireland. It's really just more of the same and 90% of the level is foggy swamp, but it's reduced in scale a bit and it's much more manageable as a result. I'm actually taking time to try and get some of the collectibles rather than just getting overwhelmed by icons and following the main story. There's also a fun little side-activity involving building up trade posts which kind of gives context to some of the stuff you're doing.

I am getting a little fed up with some of the puzzles though which always seem to involve finding a complicated way to get into a small hut by shooting a lock through a window or going through a secret passage. I am a heavily-armoured Viking with two axes, a hammer and fire arrows: I'm fairly sure I could find a way into this wooden hut, with its thatched roof, if I really wanted to.

Also the game STILL doesn't work properly with Quick Resume. Now instead of deleting or corrupting your saves, as it did previously, it pops up a message saying "An error has occured which means you cannot save, please restart the game". I mean come on guys, this game's been out for nearly a year now. Fix your critical bug. Or at least turn off Quick Resume.

The latest patch for Assassin's Creed Valhalla includes a fix for "horses photobombing dialogue scenes".

My all-time favourite patch note is from Boiling Point, a dodgy PC game from a decade ago:

Fixed - dogs do not cast shadows

My all-time favourite patch note is from Boiling Point, a dodgy PC game from a decade ago:

Fixed - dogs do not cast shadows

I remember that - didn't the same game have something about "arrows can no longer cause buildings to explode"?

Crusader Kings is always reliable:

Dwarf Fortress had something like "new babies are no longer born equipped with knives".

Assassin's Creed Valhalla is finally "complete" after two years. The final chapter was released this week, tying into the next game in the series. Time to put my hood on and head back into the game - I've still got the Ragnarok expansion to do, plus some sort of weird (but apparently quite extensive) roguelike mode they added a while back, plus some more challenge tombs, then I think I need to upgrade my settlement further before I can even access the final final ending. Ridiculously huge game overall, and probably the best example I can think of (alongside Hitman) of post-launch support.

Ah, let's resurrect the Assassin's Creed thread, shall we?

I've been playing Assassin's Creed: Mirage, which was intended as a bit of a stopgap between larger releases in much the way that Like a Dragon: Gaiden was for another long-running and prolific series of reasonably samey games.

It's kind of… odd? It's weird to be playing a game in this series that's so stripped back, after years of entries with more and more systems layered onto them. It's set in a single city, Baghdad, with a bit of countryside surrounding it, and the focus is very much on rooftop parkour and actual assassinations rather than the sprawling RPG systems of the last few entries. In fact with its big setpiece kills and stealth systems it's most reminiscent of the original Assassin's Creed game from way back in 2007, and that's probably the best way to think of it - rather than doing a straight remake, they've simply done a new game in that exact style.

In a lot of ways it's a bit too simple. I miss some of the distractions you used to get in the other games like rooftop races and sending your fellow assassins out on missions, as the main story is usually the least interesting bit. And the combat in particular, which used to be quite interesting (AC2 was almost a fencing simulator, with all sorts of feints and dodges) is now just boring Batman combat like every other game, where you parry when an enemy flashes yellow and roll when they flash red. It's tedious. Running away from enemies, meanwhile, leads to ludicrous Benny Hill chases where more and more guards spill out of alleyways and all charge after you in a long line. I swear this stuff used to be better.

But I like the smaller scale, and the nice simple skill tree, and the depiction of Baghdad itself, and it's nice to be playing a simpler version of something I like without it being a 150-hour epic with a load of RPG levelling nonsense slapped on. I'm jumping between rooftops and hiding in bushes and stabbing fools in the neck like it's 2007 and having a decent time. I paid £17.99 for it and it's probably worth that, if not much more.

OMG yes thank you for reminding me, I was waiting for a sale but I didn't expect 90% off Odyssey lmaoooooooo

Anyway yeah, Odyssey is 5 punds

Odyssey's still the best one. Five quid is a ridiculous bargain.

I lost interest in Origins about halfway through (I think?) and didn't bother with the even-bigger Odyssey or Valhalla as a result; the "RPG all the things!" approach didn't really work for me in AC.

I've got Mirage, and played a bunch of it, but it hasn't really gotten its hooks into me. Assassin's Creed initially worked as a series because they picked pretty iconic and interesting time periods to play around in, and featured characters pretty much everyone already knew: the Third Crusade and Richard the Third; the Renaissance, Machiavelli and da Vinci; the American Revolution and that whole shower of bastards*; the golden age of piracy, revolutionary France, gang-run Victorian London.

Mirage's setting is a recreation of a version of Baghdad that no longer exists, so it loses out on the historical tourism aspect, and I don't know who anyone is or how they relate to each other. Honestly, the only thing keeping me going half the time is hoping Shoreh Aghdashloo turns up again.

*WHERE IS CHARLES LEE!?

Wait what the fuck, I spent a little extra for the ultimate edition of Odyssey and I got ACIII remastered too

Mirage's setting is a recreation of a version of Baghdad that no longer exists, so it loses out on the historical tourism aspect

I do like the return of the codex entries though, I tend to rinse each new area of the city for the historical point of interest markers then sit and read through the codex entries in one go. The RPGs split all this stuff out to a separate historical tour mode which was a bit long-winded so I'm very happy to see this approach back again.

This game overall feels a bit cartoony though, much like Valhalla. I dread to think what they're going to do with Shadows next year. I don't think there are two more overused themes in videogames than Vikings and Samurai.

Wait what the fuck, I spent a little extra for the ultimate edition of Odyssey and I got ACIII remastered too

Did you get all the DLC too? If you're at all interested in the over-arching plot of the Assassin's Creed games, the second set of Odyssey DLC does more to move that forward than the last half a dozen games combined.

The best thing about ACIII remastered is that you get to play Liberation, which I really liked (on Vita).

The best thing about ACIII remastered is that you get to play Liberation

fuck it, yeah, just give me more free games in my free games, Ubisoft