The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

I never said that those aspects of the game being good/bad or satisfying/not satisfying had anything to do with it being what gives the games their purpose. They are a framing device, and are subject to the needs of what they are framing, as is the case with all framing devices by definition. As for being solely focused on, there have been a whole lot of AC games and in none of them has that happened, so it's hard for me to believe that surprises anyone that this point. However I don't think something needs to be in the forefront to be interesting or tell its own story well.

Back to Victory, I wonder if the grappling hook came about partially as a response to how fast the player character needs to climb to not make getting up a building feel tedious. Unity didn't really have an excuse and just made Arno jump higher and climb faster than any previous assassin, but incorporating the grappling hook could ground the animations while maintaining the speed. Like Revelations tried to do with the hookblade. (not succeeding because the function of the hookblade is pretty heightened/unreal)

That's what I thought as well. One of the first things I noticed when playing Unity was that getting to roof level took significantly longer than it used to in the previous games. This makes sense, because of the 1:1 scale. Having a tool that would keep up climbing speed without having us leap up tall buildings in a single bound a la Shadow of Mordor would be nice.

I meant that I already felt like Unity sped up climbing to the point where it felt super-heroish. It doesn't really take that long to get up buildings if you hold both high profile and legs, which triggers those silly giant leap animations. I'm just in general not a fan of the "hold this extra button to go faster" thing because it makes it needlessly uncomfortable to climb for a long period of time and it inevitably confuses people who climb with high profile only and wonder why they can't get past big gaps. Less confusing if they made high profile trigger a standard fast climb and low profile the slow one.

I think I mentioned a while ago that I'm getting a little irked with the super "cyberspace" look of the HUD in AC, as the frame story increasingly implies that abstergo is selling this as a commercial product for people who like historical stuff. It would be nice if it felt like the HUD was designed to evoke any sense of the time and place the game is set in, as it would only make sense that Abstergo Entertainment's artists would theme UI appropriately. AC4 was close to this, but it still felt just a little too "matrix". It would be easy to mistake the digitized waves and bubbles in the loading screen for generic sci fi stuff.

I said before that I really liked the look of the map in those Victory concept screens, where it seemed like they were representing a fairly accurate top down view of the city, with correct colors and even time of day. Unity's extremely basic and minimalist view seems like the exact wrong way to go. People can understand the concept of viewing a memory through technology without seeing techno-things everywhere. It's not as if Inception had crazy sci-fi grid lines everwhere to show that it was representing something inside someone's head. Instead it showed that through the world sometimes behaving in unsettling ways. If loading into an AC game dropped you into a world where every person was frozen in time and you weren't, and then they slowly began to sync up with you, that would be a far more impactful and interesting reflection of the premise than fading in with a ton of scan lines and cyberstuff. Keeping the experience grounded and themed appropriately, but having just a few moments that are subtly unsettling and/or unique.

Watch_Dogs can have its Tron stuff.

Hmm... I like this, but I do have one ulterior motive (;D)

That's actually a cool idea. I'd welcome seeing a HUD that is closer to the look and feel of the era. Hell, even better would be to have little to no HUD. It can't be terribly hard to do, there are various methods open to them. One of my biggest reasons for the welcoming of this change (there's always a catch, hmm?) is that it would make those glitchy, Matrix-y moments all the more impactful whenever they do happen. They should be rare, but when they do happen, I really would like Ubisoft to do it seriously, to go in hard. I'd ache for moments of gameplay where the game broke down/glitches occurred, probably due to outside Attacks on the system (by Assassins, Erudito, or Juno's Instruments as referenced in Black Flag, Rogue and Unity) but for the most part it should be as you describe and prescribe.

Especially since we're moving deeper into the PS4/XOne generation - the immersion they could craft with their "oh haha, this is just a videogame guys, haha, we're totally not monitoring your neural activity or anything~" with a minimalist or more era-relevant HUD would be incredible.

Here's hoping that the words they said were true; about Unity being a massive learning experience for Victory and onward.

Yeah, reducing unnecessary HUD is good. But it's also important to not fall into the trap of thinking any and all HUD is bad. Since it's a video game and not something you're actually living, you're always going to be lacking some of the sense of your surroundings and physical well-being that an actual person in a world has. HUDs that cleanly and clearly display relevant information are awesome.

Regarding moments when lots of overt Animus weirdness happens, I don't think that needs to happen within the main story path. I think I brought this up before, the idea of the modern and TWCB aspects being optional content, and some of you didn't think too highly of the idea. But really, I think the best way for all of those parts of AC to thrive is for them to be given their own space. If they're clearly marked for what they are, those who want them will seek them out, and those who don't will enjoy their chosen experience more.

When the animus concept is used as a change of pace in the main story that inevitably leads them to something like the Rifts in Unity, where they don't have anything connecting them and they're a very simple premise that doesn't build to anything. "Here's what Paris looked like in a different era, run through it a bit." Same with TWCB stuff. "Here's this sword, maybe it's magic or something, who cares. It's how we're going to make a bossfight.".

I think there's a sense among fans that the modern and TWCB stuff is strengthened by being thrown into the main story at points, but in practice it seems to dilute it. Why not have smaller-scale stuff with more interesting gameplay that's not required to complete the main story, but is more free to go in-depth with AC's universe and explore questions that might be too weighty to sandwich in between another story?

It's odd. This is an "Open World" game, but its main progression is so often built around the idea that you're not exploring it. The reason it isn't just a sequence of Assassination missions is to simulate exploration through the process of going to the next objective. Past games have trained longtime gamers to go where they point us, and these games are seemingly biased in favor of people who've internalized that. But I don't know if that's the smartest thing to do anymore, as people have gotten games like Minecraft that are all about exploration.

Maybe AC needs to start training people to explore if they want variety, and stop seeing the Main Path as the "Real" experience. Not by something overt like requiring you to grind on side missions to be high enough level to complete the next Assassination, but maybe by going back to the first AC's mission structure to some extent.

The problem with AC1 was not that this kind structure was inherently flawed, but that it was applied to such limited content. People disliked choosing between AC1 investigations because they all repeated the same tricks over and over again. It's not that they wanted to be doing big flashy things all the time, but that they tired of being asked to participate in the same small things in the same kinds of ways. In fact, I think that every mission being the same standardized length and kind of complexity can be tiring for people. What makes this structure good is it's a method of allowing the player to take the building blocks you give them and create their own narratives. The order in which you do something, even the things you don't do. It can say something implicit about you and your character.

If you never go on tailing missions, that characterizes your Assassin's favoring of the direct approach. If one of the potential investigations is to attend a briefing on your target that's a way of having a place for scripted story moments, allowing the player to avoid those moments if they wish, and of allowing the player to contextualize that desire through their perception of the character's confidence.

Obviously there's a worry about creating content that players won't ever see, but I think that if you keep each mission focused on being good at what it does, at the scale that it justifies, player will appreciate it more than if they had been forced to play through all of these different things, some of which they might have not liked as much as others. The "possibility space" is one of the most appealing things about games. Having choices that are real choices, being able to not do something because you don't want to and it feels like you should be able to do it another way. Being able to avoid combat if you're good enough, take out every guard if you're good enough, or play somewhere in between. Applying that to how you progress through the game and what kind of experience you have could be an amazing combination, and reinforce the sense of freedom that the physical structure of the series' settings applies.

And I've talked before about how side-quests in the traditional sense aren't a great use of resources, and instead systems for less structured play could take their place.

Open world design still has the shadow of linear design hanging over it, and it seems people haven't really let it become its own thing. Would be nice if these different types of games could embrace those differences more wholeheartedly, even if some of the older crowd might find it a bit hard to adjust.

Agree.

Agree. There seems to have been an error in understanding on my part, previously. I was under the impression you thought that Modern Day and TWCB should be cut from the games entirely, and reduced even more from the amount that it currently has. Naturally I would disagree with that misunderstood thought. If what you're actually saying is, leave it out of the Main Path but put it into Side Content, however actually put LOTS/DECENT/NOT CHEAP amounts of it into Side Content? Then I have to give a 100% Resounding Hell Yes. I 100% all these games, and I completely would be okay with that.

Agree. I have noticed that in recent times. The lack of persistent Modern Day protagonist is the root cause.
In Desmond's Saga, interruptions between Animus and Real World meant something, however little. Now, they mean much less.

Agree, However... I don't share that "sense," and I don't think others do either. I (and likely they) only meant all this time to say that it should NOT be cut from the game proper. It should be there, it should 100% have a significant presence in it. If that's in the Side Content, and that Side Content is done well and packaged with an appropriate amount of reward TWCB/M.Day Lore-wise, So Be It.

Agree. Another resounding Hell Yes. I'd love a more fluid and explorable world. However; This should not go back to the era of AC1 and 2 where Flags and Feathers are completely unfindable except by absolutely dedicated players. Not even I have the dedication necessary to do that anymore - and I'm known for being balls-out crazy when it comes to Full Syncing these games. I would 100% love more exploration in AC, and less "point-to-point" as it were. In AC3, this was at its worst - funny because in AC3 the HUD-less exploration around Frontier while not in Story Memories was the most satisfying part.

Agree. 100% resoundingly Hell Yes-ingly agree. See also; "I 100% everything." Having more Reward for that is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. I would welcome any revisiting of AC1's gameplay, to be honest.

Right on the money. Agree.

Very true. Agree.

Agree. I was about to extrapolate on this above, but here you've done it for me.

About Possibility Space and about what's "behind the curtain," I sincerely feel that. When I play games, I always want to "get my money's worth," as it were. So I always try to play everything the game has to offer, mostly because that's how I get to "play more total Game." This is something Dishonored and the old Thief series excel at. Shadow of Mordor has small degrees of this with its Intel and Nemesis System. (It's your choice to Interrogate and learn information, it's your choice to exploit weaknesses, go in blind, or even exploit a Hatred if you feel like a tough challenge.)

Agree. The Main Path and Side Content feel far too similar at the moment. Unless you're the kind of player who already has the instinct of "I'll do every Side Quest BEFORE even TOUCHING the Main Quest" (me) then you'll likely just never have a reason to play Side Content once you're ON the Main Path. Simply because, since there's no variation, no significant-feeling difference, why bother if you'll just get the same experience on the Main Path, but with Story attached?

This is a great, great, great point. I feel this, more than anything, will be what defines next-generation gaming's biggest positive changes - if it works out as we want it to.

I really liked this post, Calvar. One of your best, I think.