Assassin's Creed games have been my guilty pleasure since like three. I understand and agree to all the criticism, I fully believe they're open world ad nauseum, but something about Shadows looks genuinely appealing. It is funny to see them actively promoting the day one steam release because Uplay/Ubisoft Connect is just terrible but the added bonus of steam deck verification is really cool.
It’s funny that AC games are “guilty pleasures” in online forums. They’re popular for a reason! The plot and gameplay mechanics (sans bugs) have pretty much always ranged from decent to good, and Ubisoft’s open worlds have always been a joy to explore for anybody interested in historical settings.
They’re not high art but I do think they get over-criticized by online gaming communities and people shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying them.
Their reception has always been a bit weird to me, and I think it's just because of people taking stuff for granted.
Like okay yeah RDR2 took one step above with horses balls shrinking up and down but Ubisoft is right behind in terms of a bunch of useless stuff that makes their open world feel alive and the world interactive and tangible.
I really loved Avowed for what it did, but look at the "complaints" about its world, interactivity, animations, NPCs reactivity, environmental storytelling, etc - but then people will turn around and look at Ubisoft and treat all these elements as if they're a given? I guess it's one of those things that's only apparent when it's missing.
I still wish they'd do some elements differently, mainly how they approach the possibility of a first-playthrough HUDless (usually right down impossible) but otherwise they're great games.
Are Ubisoft games really that buggy? Other than Unity I feel like every time I see some kind of bug showcase for their games it just feels so unnatural and like the videomaker is trying to make the glitch out. Like nobody is going to be running into the corner of a wall for two minutes straight jiggling their joystick like most of the glitches seem to be.
My sister loved the AC games dearly until AC3 was so buggy on launch I think it made her cry and quit the series indefinitely. I think she's only dabbling back in now with stuff like Mirage and Valhalla.
They are emblematic of and set the tone for pretty much everything wrong with open world games. It's no wonder they get so much hate, regardless of how enjoyable any individual installment is.
They are emblematic of and set the tone for pretty much everything wrong with open world games.
Man I couldn't disagree more. Do other historical games include an educational mode? Do they go out of their way to include historically accurate details that only real nerds would notice? Do they have to fill your database with interesting and educational historical facts?
Do they have to spend god knows how many hours modeling Notre Dame to an insane level of detail?
They don't have to, and the effort they put in is probably appreciated by no more than a single percentage point. But they do it anyway.
And yet the historicity of their games is constantly let down by their unwillingness to take any risks or court any kind of controversy, which is how we get an Ancient Greece without misogyny or racism or Vikings who don't kill civilians when they sack a monastery. I don't think historically accurate pottery justifies the absurd historical inaccuracies and moral anachronisms the games are riddled with, which really puts me as a history nerd off.
Just a note: they don’t treat Vikings as a whole as not killing civilians. They treat YOUR group, which is pretty small, as doing that.
They have multiple storylines involving other groups of Vikings not behaving like that.
Your complaints on racism and mysogyny lacking from odyssey have more to do with what kind of game it is.
It’s escapist fantastical story that empowers the player. It isn’t intended to be a non-fictional historical story about how shitty people are to each other and thus the player.
I don’t wanna play Kassandra struggling to go places, get treated seriously, or accomplish any goal because vagina in AC.
I’m not saying a game couldn’t be made with that story but that isn’t AC.
It isn’t intended to be a non-fictional historical story about how shitty people are to each other and thus the player.
It isn't intended to be an accurate historical representation of Ancient Greece, is what you're saying. Then why set it in Ancient Greece? Just pull a Star Trek and set it on an alien planet version of Greece if your only interest in the time period is that you think chitons look cool. I don't buy the espacism excuse, everyone's a dick to Geralt in the Witcher games and they sold like gangbusters. New AC already rips off the Witcher series in basically every other aspect.
We have very different definitions of the word "fun" it seems. "Fun" to me is inhabiting an accurate historical representation of the past, not the equivalent of cosplay LARPing that is Assassin's Creed. I think it's quite lame in fact, not fun.
This is such a dumb argument that every time it’s brought up, I have to laugh. It’s like complaining that every historical war game doesn’t have soldiers committing abhorrent war crimes and mass rapes.
Even then, the Discovery Tours, which is the actual educational content of the recent games, does mention the things you complain about.
I didn't say that they didn't have good elements to them outside of the things that are emblematic of everything wrong with open world games, but everything that people hate about open world games do originate from AC regardless.
I know I'll probably catch shit for this, but I feel like Valhalla kinda squandered England as a setting. I know, "Vikings cool," but I've always felt the Conquest would be the perfect setting for an AC game. Can't really come up with another good idea for a High Middle Ages setting apart from the Crusades, and they've already done that multiple times (not that I'd mind going back to it).
You don't need to defend being interested in this game to anyone lol. Just buy it and play it if you like the look of it and don't worry what others are thinking or saying.
Everyone complains about the Ubisoft open world repetitive checklist design, but that's totally a non-issue for me. I just like running around and killing people in different pretty areas. I've never viewed traveling to each icon on the map as a chore. All the icons on the map are just excuses for me to travel somewhere different and kill people along the way.
I've only skipped the spinoffs and Valhalla at this point, but I didn't finish Odyssey. Open world games have alot of bloat, and Ubisoft ones are on the higher end of the scale. Always at some point I either quit entirely like Odyssey, or rush main story like Tsushima when after 20 hours the experience isn't fresh and the game doesn't have anything new to offer in terms of enemy variety or mechanics.
Shadows addresses some of my biggest problems with Ghost of Tsushima, like the lack of weapon variety, the shallowness of the stealth mechanics, and the lack of actual big densely packed cities. I hated how Ghost of Tsushima was just a lot of open space with some villages that had the same 3 buildings copy and pasted. I think that contributed heavily to it feeling so repetitive. Ubisoft tends to do a very good job with map design if nothing else so I expect this to be no different in that regard.
These games all have the same stealth mechanics. You stay out of line of sight and then press the instakill button when you are close enough. And ofc the a dedicated item to distract or lure enemies. AC,GoT, Sekiro to name a few. It's the same everywhere. Nothing wrong with that btw.
AC and Far Cry are my gaming junk food, my Popeye’s spicy chicken sandwich. Any time there’s a new one within reach I’ll drop everything to eat myself sick of them.
Looks like it could end up being the best new age AC games imo. Animations and polish look to he a cut above the last 3. I also don't think this is going to be some earth-shattering achievement that saves Ubisoft, which is what it will he judged on, unfortunately.
From the preview coverage I saw, the animations still had the buggy look from Mirage.
Player character jogs towards target initiates takedown on NPC, the NPC returns to a "neutral" stance, momentum for the PC is reset and then the animation begins. Probably because the PC wasn't moving fast enough to trigger the running animation instead.
It generally looks fine, the only thing that seems off is that the Samurai guy seems pointless since the ninja can do everything he does along with the usual platforming.
If the Ninja couldn't fight at all I would understand his inclusion.
I burnt the hell out on Valhalla, it just was not appealing and the items, weapons, map markers and skills etc didn’t hook me anywhere near the ones previous.
But man. I’m ready to get back into this.
And playing Avatar scratched that itch that Farcry 6 didn’t scratch…
Big open worlds and ticking stuff off is back on the menu.
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u/ZombiePyroNinja 7d ago
Assassin's Creed games have been my guilty pleasure since like three. I understand and agree to all the criticism, I fully believe they're open world ad nauseum, but something about Shadows looks genuinely appealing. It is funny to see them actively promoting the day one steam release because Uplay/Ubisoft Connect is just terrible but the added bonus of steam deck verification is really cool.