[Assassin's Creed]: Modern day political intrigue video gaming - NEW GAME AND NEW THREAD

Deadfall · January 5

Imperfect wrote: »

Deadfall wrote: »

Imperfect wrote: »

Late to this, but you also need to make sure you've got the _entire rest_ of the order, including the wandering shitheads. I'd grab a guide for that, though, because I explored the heck out of this game while playing for the first half and I never even ran into a third of the ones I should have.

When you take out the bigger Order bad guys, the Zealots unlock on the map.

Not sure what you're talking about. I had the entire game done and the whole Order cleaned out except the Head Honcho and all the Zealots. The Head Honcho doesn't unlock until you clean out everyone else, including the Zealots, who you have to chase down across the map. They never just showed up like other Order targets, I had to get physically close enough to them to see their icon on the map before I could start tracking them.

Maybe they changed this in a patch? Or perhaps we're just remembering differently? I remember being very frustrated by all the hunting I had to do.

No clue if it was updated but I finished it last week and after I got the "big" guys, minus the head honcho, it revealed the locations of all the wandering Zealots for me.

BionicPenguin · January 5

The only reason I finished this game is because I had that deadline of Cyberpunk's release. I wanted to give up about a week before that, but decided that wouldn't be enough time to finish any of the other games I wanted to play, so I stuck with it. Aside from maybe one or two things, the whole game was a pretty big downgrade from Odyssey, in my opinion.

Edit: Not to say it's a bad game. It's good, but not great.

SatanIsMyMotor · January 5

syndalis wrote: »

SatanIsMyMotor wrote: »

This game is too fucking long and a good example of games being needlessly large.
Like, do you need to have community hub building, fishing, hunting, drinking games, matchy rock puzzles, boring platforming glitch puzzles, raids, horse upgrading, weapon upgrading, Flyting (I like the flyting), target-shooting, Asgardian side stories, etc etc as components of one title about Assassins?

I like this game but there is way too much of it. Go home Assassin's Creed.

They could have had all of those systems, just not so much of each of them, and it would still be fine.

There is a part of me that says this is less of a problem for people who get maybe 1-2 games a year. That you could EASILY stretch this out over 6 months is a feature, not a bug, to those folks.

For me, the game started getting really fucking tedious around the midway point, and I basically powered through to the ending so I could play Cyberpunk. If I didn't have that artificial deadline imposed on it (by me), I might have enjoyed the game more.

Yeah I agree.
As soon as I realized that I was going to have to play out a story in each individual little province I just had to roll my eyes. It's a perfect example of too much of a good thing. The game needed someone to come in and say "Ok. Take everything and dial it down 3 notches.".

Imperfect · January 5

I didn't even mind there being a story in each new place, but they were all largely disconnected, since you gave you free reign between picking a bunch of different places. Honestly, by the time I met back up with some characters later, I'd forgotten about them entirely. I'd have strongly preferred a more linear story with fewer characters that played a bigger part. By the last few provinces, I was just trying to breeze through them, knowing that the characters I was running into didn't really matter, because nobody else had yet.

Carpy · January 5

Imperfect wrote: »

I didn't even mind there being a story in each new place, but they were all largely disconnected, since you gave you free reign between picking a bunch of different places. Honestly, by the time I met back up with some characters later, I'd forgotten about them entirely. I'd have strongly preferred a more linear story with fewer characters that played a bigger part. By the last few provinces, I was just trying to breeze through them, knowing that the characters I was running into didn't really matter, because nobody else had yet.

The order being so open also left some of the actual narrative zones feeling really disjointed depending on the order. In hindsight it seems like your first province should be Ledercestershire, then do the other 3 or 4 provinces available, then do Oxenfordshire. Instead if you're like me and did the 2 Sigurd missions back to back

you go from everything's cool between Eivor and Sigurd right into Sigurd being all culty and conspiratorial and it's incredibly jarring.

SatanIsMyMotor · January 6

Carpy wrote: »

Imperfect wrote: »

I didn't even mind there being a story in each new place, but they were all largely disconnected, since you gave you free reign between picking a bunch of different places. Honestly, by the time I met back up with some characters later, I'd forgotten about them entirely. I'd have strongly preferred a more linear story with fewer characters that played a bigger part. By the last few provinces, I was just trying to breeze through them, knowing that the characters I was running into didn't really matter, because nobody else had yet.

The order being so open also left some of the actual narrative zones feeling really disjointed depending on the order. In hindsight it seems like your first province should be Ledercestershire, then do the other 3 or 4 provinces available, then do Oxenfordshire. Instead if you're like me and did the 2 Sigurd missions back to back
you go from everything's cool between Eivor and Sigurd right into Sigurd being all culty and conspiratorial and it's incredibly jarring.

Same thing happened to me but I'd almost argue that every character's progression is similar - even Eivor's.
Like you start the game as a proud Norse warrior that is incredibly devout to Sigurd but then later on you're all "I am Eivor the Wolfkissed, Scourge of Mercia, etc etc".
Even some of the provincial stories are incredibly similar - namely "There's gonna be an Althing and we need to pick a new Jarl" and "Coming of age story for a young man who is being thrust into a position of leadership".

Finally, I'm 60 hours into the game and I still don't understand the actual tie in to Assassin's Creed. Like, I'm going around acting all spooky like Hytham and the assassin's but I still know nothing, as a character, about the Order or what they do or why I have all these assassin skills.

Nosf · January 6

SatanIsMyMotor wrote: »

Carpy wrote: »

Imperfect wrote: »

I didn't even mind there being a story in each new place, but they were all largely disconnected, since you gave you free reign between picking a bunch of different places. Honestly, by the time I met back up with some characters later, I'd forgotten about them entirely. I'd have strongly preferred a more linear story with fewer characters that played a bigger part. By the last few provinces, I was just trying to breeze through them, knowing that the characters I was running into didn't really matter, because nobody else had yet.

The order being so open also left some of the actual narrative zones feeling really disjointed depending on the order. In hindsight it seems like your first province should be Ledercestershire, then do the other 3 or 4 provinces available, then do Oxenfordshire. Instead if you're like me and did the 2 Sigurd missions back to back
you go from everything's cool between Eivor and Sigurd right into Sigurd being all culty and conspiratorial and it's incredibly jarring.

Same thing happened to me but I'd almost argue that every character's progression is similar - even Eivor's.
Like you start the game as a proud Norse warrior that is incredibly devout to Sigurd but then later on you're all "I am Eivor the Wolfkissed, Scourge of Mercia, etc etc".
Even some of the provincial stories are incredibly similar - namely "There's gonna be an Althing and we need to pick a new Jarl" and "Coming of age story for a young man who is being thrust into a position of leadership".

Finally, I'm 60 hours into the game and I still don't understand the actual tie in to Assassin's Creed. Like, I'm going around acting all spooky like Hytham and the assassin's but I still know nothing, as a character, about the Order or what they do or why I have all these assassin skills.

There are the two Assassins there with you and their bureau in your village; but you getting the hidden blade seems entirely odd given...they just met you. I guess it sort of becomes clear near the end why they do that. It feels far less epic and involved than Odyssey which was a real high point. Sailing around on tiny little rivers isn't quite as exciting as the open seas. The more I think about, the more I feel like the game is watered down; raiding is...aenemic, your crew just rush the target and you do most of the heavy lifting. Asgard felt like a chore and was far less engaging than the three DLC destinations in the previous game. There's no fantastic creatures that I've seen so far which was an incredible treat in Odyssey.

SatanIsMyMotor · January 6

I should also add that my game has become permanently glitched where a number of textures/objects just don't seem to visually load into the world. So now I have tents that flash in and out of existence, roofs on houses that are see through, and invisible ropes that I can still walk on (as long as I can guess where they are) making it look like I'm flying through the sky.

Also, one time my character's face literally SWAPPED with Odin's in one of the post-assassination vignettes. I'm actually still not sure if that was a glitch or some sort of weird narrative device.

DemonStacey · January 6

I am a big fan of really long games. I never like the suggestion of something being shorter just because it was "too long". That is and always will be an individual preference not a flaw with game.

That said, not just any game is magically better by being longer. You need to make a game that works with all that length(heh) and has systems that compliment it.

If your systems start to cease functioning as intended as you reach the further lengths of a game then either those systems needed to be re-worked or the game was too long for the systems.

And yea, the choosing what regions to go to really felt out of place in this game. First of all because of the level ranges. There is clearly an intended order. But also if you have multiple HUGE regions at the same level then players will always be overleveled for multiple of them. There's just no way around that. And then in general you could start picking whatever order because you got so overleveled that it just doesn't matter. But that shouldn't be the reason for picking an order.

And of course the story and impact reasons listed above. They would have been much better off designing around a set order both froma gameplay perspective and a story perspective. Nothing was truly gained by allowing the choice here but a lot was lost.

Snicketysnick · January 6

The main thing that was gained is that nobody* complained about being "forced" to buy XP doublers in the store because of level gating areas. A better approach might have been to have loose rubberbanding to player level in general but have the story progression be a rigid order, so you could freely explore the map but the story could be a lot tighter.

*ok not nobody, but significantly fewer than Odyssey

DemonStacey · January 6

Snicketysnick wrote: »

The main thing that was gained is that nobody* complained about being "forced" to buy XP doublers in the store because of level gating areas. A better approach might have been to have loose rubberbanding to player level in general but have the story progression be a rigid order, so you could freely explore the map but the story could be a lot tighter.

*ok not nobody, but significantly fewer than Odyssey

Yea as someone who generally dislikes scaling enemies this game could have used scaling RANGES. Which is something i support much more of. Along with levels not coming quite so fast.

That way you still allow people to just run the mainline story without issue like they want but also not make doing side content feel like it was almost not intended with how far out of range it puts you. And then still allows for people to feel like they are growing in strength above the starting zones and the ability to grind out of range if you really want to. Covers many more playstyles that way.

Drez · January 7

I tried picking up Valhalla again today. Now that they fixed the bugs that were irritating me the most. But...I kinda still don’t like it.

I guess I more or less missed the Yule Festival content. I’m still at the very beginning but if I push through, how long until I can get to the Yule content? Like is it something I can get to in the next few hours of play?

Thirith · January 7

I have a question about Odyssey: I'm currently trying to get to the end of the main storyline doing only a handful of sidequests, so I can then take a bit of a break from the game and avoid burning out on it. I've just finished "To Kill or Not To Kill" and am now getting busy in the Arkadia region. How much of the main story is left at this point, more or less? Depending on how far I still have to go, I might prioritise the story missions even more than I already am, because while some of the sidequests are pretty cool, I know that I'm always at risk of stuffing myself too much with that Assassin's Creed content and then growing sick and tired of it before reaching the end.

Fencingsax · January 7

You probably have a couple of hours of main story to go.

Thirith · January 7

Cheers. That means that the end (or at least *an* end) is in sight and I can easily get there without having to outright rush. I think that finishing the main story should be a good point at which to take a break from Greece, and the game is welcoming enough so that I should be able to slip back into it a month or two later.

Rhesus Positive · January 7

Overlevelling hasn't helped me with the animal and seiðr users so far - took me five goes to take down that East Anglian dog thing

Ended up swapping to shield and hammer and parry-hammering it into submission

I also swapped the QTE prompts from mash to hold when I started the game, but that didn't affect how long I would get mauled for - seems like it's just a "fuck you, taking an entire health bar, hope you have rations" situation

Snicketysnick · January 7

That big doberman is probably the hardest fight in the game imo, the witches are fine as long as you have the health to not be 1 shot but that dog is horrible even at 400.

And yeah "hold for QTEs" didn't do anything for me either unless things like kicking doors in is supposed to be a button mash

Rhesus Positive · January 7

Other minor quibbles:
- The large fish have gross alien eyes when Eivor is showing them off
- The boat songs keep getting interrupted by areas that they could land and raid
- The kid I give fish to needs to shut the fuck up when I'm running down the list of ones he needs
- I was promised boobs by the options menu and so far it's just been witch boobs, even with the nudist quest
- My controller sometimes acts weird and I don't think it's the new PS5 controller as I've gone back and tested the triggers and vibration on Astro's Playroom

However, in the interest of balance, things I'm enjoying:
- Petting the cats
- The weapons all feel distinct and useful in different situations
- Flyting is silly and fun, like Monkey Island insult swordfighting
- Looks gorgeous
- Shaun!
- Side missions being more variable than just "go to a place and kill the people"
- Having a game set in places I've lived, although Cambridgeshire is a bit hillier than I remember

syndalis · January 7

Rhesus Positive wrote: »

Other minor quibbles:
- The large fish have gross alien eyes when Eivor is showing them off
- The boat songs keep getting interrupted by areas that they could land and raid
- The kid I give fish to needs to shut the fuck up when I'm running down the list of ones he needs
- I was promised boobs by the options menu and so far it's just been witch boobs, even with the nudist quest
- My controller sometimes acts weird and I don't think it's the new PS5 controller as I've gone back and tested the triggers and vibration on Astro's Playroom

However, in the interest of balance, things I'm enjoying:
- Petting the cats
- The weapons all feel distinct and useful in different situations
- Flyting is silly and fun, like Monkey Island insult swordfighting
- Looks gorgeous
- Shaun!
- Side missions being more variable than just "go to a place and kill the people"
- Having a game set in places I've lived, although Cambridgeshire is a bit hillier than I remember

There is exactly one normal, human boobs scene in the entire game.

I have no idea what that toggle was even for.

Rhesus Positive · January 7

I'd ask what the no boobs toggle changes about it, but let's be honest, who amongst us would have chosen that option?

DemonStacey · January 7

Rhesus Positive wrote: »

Overlevelling hasn't helped me with the animal and seiðr users so far - took me five goes to take down that East Anglian dog thing

Ended up swapping to shield and hammer and parry-hammering it into submission

I also swapped the QTE prompts from mash to hold when I started the game, but that didn't affect how long I would get mauled for - seems like it's just a "fuck you, taking an entire health bar, hope you have rations" situation

They made all of the strong enemies scale to your power level. That should have been an option not forced unless it was within set ranges.

Which is actually really silly in this game(not that you can't still break your character) but because you can legit get to a point where increasing your power level doesn't actually do anything for you.

Like if you are a pure melee character after you get all the melee skills all you have left are a bunch of slots that give you ranged damage/bonuses to bows/stealth/assassination damage. So you can basically add a bunch of power to the world bosses without actually growing your power at all which seems... not great?

Rhesus Positive · January 7

Damn it, that would explain it - so one option would be to remove all my skill points, shove them all back into melee, then try again? If I don't assign all the points, will it leave my power level lower?

It's the same problem as in Odyssey where at some point you're going to be in melee, so speccing purely for assassination or ranged will fuck you up

DemonStacey · January 7

Rhesus Positive wrote: »

Damn it, that would explain it - so one option would be to remove all my skill points, shove them all back into melee, then try again? If I don't assign all the points, will it leave my power level lower?

It's the same problem as in Odyssey where at some point you're going to be in melee, so speccing purely for assassination or ranged will fuck you up

In theory it should be scaled to your current power level so I imagine that would work. Certainly worth a shot!

Basically they saw people complaining about getting over powered and then patched in this "fix" which is just the laziest and most ill thought out way to do it..

Nosf · January 11

Coworker is sort of down on this one after loving Odyssey. Her complaints largely mirror my own and many others. However, my wife and I went for a walk with her this weekend resulting in this exchange:

Her: My Eivor is so hot!
Me: Did you hide his shirt so you can admire his rippling physique wherever you go?
Her: YOU CAN DO THAT?!

Later, get a message: "Omg! Shirtless 🤪🤪"

Darkewolfe · January 11

DemonStacey wrote: »

Rhesus Positive wrote: »

Damn it, that would explain it - so one option would be to remove all my skill points, shove them all back into melee, then try again? If I don't assign all the points, will it leave my power level lower?

It's the same problem as in Odyssey where at some point you're going to be in melee, so speccing purely for assassination or ranged will fuck you up

In theory it should be scaled to your current power level so I imagine that would work. Certainly worth a shot!

Basically they saw people complaining about getting over powered and then patched in this "fix" which is just the laziest and most ill thought out way to do it..

Someone mentioned a bunch of pages back that not spending points is a way to fine tune power level, I believe.

SatanIsMyMotor · January 11

If any of you heard a disembodied "MOTHER FUCKER" screamed this weekend that was just me

getting to what I thought was the end of the game only to have Randvi be all "Why not go to America and effectively start the game over?"

Having now played through that part I realize it wasn't quite that bad. Still though, that threw me for a bit of a loop.

SiliconStew · January 11

SatanIsMyMotor wrote: »

If any of you heard a disembodied "MOTHER FUCKER" screamed this weekend that was just me
getting to what I thought was the end of the game only to have Randvi be all "Why not go to America and effectively start the game over?"

Having now played through that part I realize it wasn't quite that bad. Still though, that threw me for a bit of a loop.

I was more annoyed they didn't let you keep the gear.

Imperfect · January 12

It's like every game designer saw that good bit in Breath of the Wild where you start over and it's magical and fun and really encapsulates the best parts of the game and lets you re-experience having to be sneaky and scrappy, and thought "Hey, I can shoe-horn that into my game, despite the fact that the early levels of my game are a misery compared to the later ones, and nobody would ever restart just to experience the "fun" of not having several critical combat abilities! I bet it will go really well for me!"

Aistan · January 12

I would argue that bit wasn't fun in BotW either.

SatanIsMyMotor · January 12

SiliconStew wrote: »

SatanIsMyMotor wrote: »

If any of you heard a disembodied "MOTHER FUCKER" screamed this weekend that was just me
getting to what I thought was the end of the game only to have Randvi be all "Why not go to America and effectively start the game over?"

Having now played through that part I realize it wasn't quite that bad. Still though, that threw me for a bit of a loop.

I was more annoyed they didn't let you keep the gear.

I didn't even get the gear. I was so fed up I ran straight to the dude and fist-fought him to death.

urahonky · January 12

...I actually liked that part myself lol. Hated a lot of things but there was something about that part that I enjoyed, even if it was super short.

SatanIsMyMotor · January 12

I liked it too but at this point it's kind of like being given a free pizza while I'm in the middle of a turkey dinner.

urahonky · January 12

Hahah the most apt metaphor I've ever read.

Trajan45 · January 12

Now that I have a new PC, it's time to give these games a try. First up ins AC:Origins. Are there any mods or trainers I should look at? I've heard it can be a bit grind-ier than the newer ones. Any tips for someone whose never played an AC game before.

Dehumanized · January 12

i didn't find origins to be super grindy, odyssey is the one that is a bit much

anyways, enjoy it, bayek is a great character

Preacher · January 13

urahonky wrote: »

...I actually liked that part myself lol. Hated a lot of things but there was something about that part that I enjoyed, even if it was super short.

Yeah and you got to retain your skills so while your gear wasn't there your op skills were.

Sirialis · January 13

Fishing sucks, Bow hunting fish is infinitely better, just annoying when fish disappears often. (I know the tide can also sweep them away but thats not what I'm referring to, especially happens in shallow waters)

Cant find big flatfish or big mackerels, heard they were bugged and dont exist in the game yet?

DemonStacey · January 13

Dehumanized wrote: »

i didn't find origins to be super grindy, odyssey is the one that is a bit much

anyways, enjoy it, bayek is a great character

Origins was definitely grindy.

I wasn't super feeling the optional stuff so I tried to just play through the story and... yea the game is like LOL nope go play some more weak ass side missions before you can proceed.

DemonStacey · January 13

Sirialis wrote: »

Fishing sucks, Bow hunting fish is infinitely better, just annoying when fish disappears often. (I know the tide can also sweep them away but thats not what I'm referring to, especially happens in shallow waters)

Cant find big flatfish or big mackerels, heard they were bugged and dont exist in the game yet?

The biggest problems with the fishing are:

1) making the different size fish be exact for turn ins. Nothing like being an an area with the right fish catching 10 medium ones and 5 big ones but no small ones so they are all useless. And now there are no fish left in the area at all. Very poorly thought out design. They should have just had the sizes be different values for turn ins.

2) the locations. The fish are at very specific locations. But the guide gives you very general locations. For something that is already time consuming and with the issue above this feels TERRIBLE. It says rivers in(area) but it's actually just 2 specific places on 2 specific rivers so unless you look it up online you just spend a bunch of time fishing in the wrong place just guess and checking.

I was actually super excited for fishing before I saw how it was implemented.

Rhesus Positive · January 13

Also, let me unlock a fucking fishing net

I'll give back all my stealth points temporarily, even, just give me an AOE

And while I'm griping, why can't I use my Abilities on non-aggressive animals? I want to multi-shot an entire collective noun of hares, not maybe shoot one and then Benny Hill around Lincolnscire trying to spear them individually

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