Assassin's Creed 3

[TheMightyEthan]

 

Apparently someone is driving a tractor around a couple hundred years earlier than they should be.

[Waldorf and Statler]

It's not a tractor stupid. Those are bigfoot tracks. He was clearly shuffling to his cave behind the waterfall.

[Mister Jack]

[Hot Heart]

No one told me that some of the music is amazing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyQBXKUu2QM

 

Also, having experienced the naval combat and seen the gorgeous

(which I was hoping would've stayed a 'platforming puzzle' level instead of a chase), I would love to see a pirate or Carribean-set game by them.

 

EDIT: Ha, just discovered that your guy on the ship is Mr. Gibbs from the Pirates of the Carribean films. And Desmond's father is Q (the Star Trek one).

Edited December 2, 2012 by Hot Heart

[TheMightyEthan]

Q's voice jumped out at me instantly, but didn't realize that was Mr. Gibbs on the ship.

 

Why I came in here:

 

 

Super stoked.

[Waldorf and Statler]

I already returned my ACIII. Shame seemed like fun

[Hot Heart]

Cracked myself up last night. Used the 'Lure' ability on a patrolling group of guards, but my assassin wound up running backwards and forwards like a Beep Test. So I kept interjecting, picking off the straggler while the others weren't looking, until no guard remained.

 

Also, anyone noticed that when your recruits are injured (since they no longer die) and you walk over to them writhing on the floor, there is the option 'Close eyes'? Then they'll say something to the effect of "I'm fine, really".

[SomTervo]

Finished the story. Problematic. The last act of the game was clearly crammed in. So many plot holes and stupid connections and just... broken bits of storytelling.

 

Still overall story is decent, if it doesn't really resolve.

 

 

Love the 'pivot' post game thing, though. Genius. And it's uploaded to the cloud. So presumably, somehow, now there's going to be a reaction against Juno by humanity. But how the heck are we gonna stop her?

 

Also, why the heck were the precursors all like "we can't save ourselves it can't happen", then Juno's just like "hey guys, cool, I'll throw up a bit electromagnetic field, we're all fine". Why couldn't they have just done that in the first place? Kwa the fuck?

 

 

Better game than story.

 

@Mister Jack: I actually found the side missions infinitely more fun than the story missions, which get worse as it goes on imho. I love almanac pages, liberating the cities, etc. etc. Just because the gameworld is absolutely incredible. The Black Creek region is just fucking stunning in the summertime daytime. And the Fort in there is brilliant. Some of the side mission things are still just shit though. And the underground corridor stuff? Totally superfluous. They could have removed all of that and added more stuff/ improved the actual goddamn gameworld/ missions. Waste of effort. Tragic.

 

And can someone (W&S) please explain to me how the hell I get ship transport for trading? Do I just do more ship missions? Or what? That system is so badly explained. I've finished everything and still don't get how to do goods trading, getting more homesteader specialist people, or whatever they're called. Don't get none of it. Flawed.

Edited December 17, 2012 by kenshi_ryden

[Hot Heart]

For naval convoys you need your carpenter guy at a certain level, and have found a 'recipe' for making naval convoys. When you go into 'Crafting' you need to go to the large Recipe bubble, select that and scroll down to (I think) Special Items, where there are new weapons and upgrades, then scroll right to find Naval Convoy. You need a certain kind of Lumber, which can be bought from your Stockpile. Once that's ready, you go along to Trading and can scroll down to Naval Convoy (assuming you have a Land Convoy already). Then, you have to load it up with each single item (can't say 8 x bear pelts, for example) and location.

 

On top of that, it's a good idea to have cleared routes for your ships (which is why certain naval missions say things like 'Reward: Risk - 25%' or whatever) otherwise they have a default 80% risk, and I don't think you can do anything if they're attacked.

 

Overall, it's a really muddled and superfluous system...and the only reason I've engaged in any of it is to buy ship upgrades.

Edited December 17, 2012 by Hot Heart

[SomTervo]

The fuck...

 

Yeah that's insane. A lot more effort than it's worth: the only thing it is really worth for is, indeed, ship upgrades, which is what I want to do it for. Only way to make that amount of money.

 

P.S. How the hell do I 'level up' artisan or carpenter guys or whatever? I've not looked at that at all. There doesn't seem to be any way of doing it.

Edited December 17, 2012 by kenshi_ryden

[Hot Heart]

Those are achieved by completing Homestead missions, which involve a variety of (even more) little tasks. I found them amusing little diversions, but most of what transpires actually bears no relevance to your artisans' skills.

 

Kill some guards who were after your blacksmith? He levels up!

 

On another topic, I have to say, I do like how incredibly off-point, and perhaps deliberately misleading, the marketing was. Though I've only just started Sequence 10, so things are yet to bear out, the historical representation is a lot more balanced than a surface look would suggest.

 

p.s. the modern Desmond stuff suffers because it tries to do away with HUD elements (since they are non-diegetic), yet still includes the guard awareness indicators...since it would be completely unplayable without them. Either Ubisoft needed to find a plausible way to justify Desmond getting some of these perks (put it down to an Eagle vision filter or something) or stop being such sticklers over the issue.

[SomTervo]

The historical representation is incredible. It's actually why I enjoy the side missions more than the main missions (except for the very historical ones) because basically it means you get: moments of pure historical fiction which is really engaging, but then for the most part it just feels like you're experiencing that era as it actually was. Or as close as we can get atm. Just standing around in the cities is a pretty remarkable experience.

 

I'mma show my gf this game at some point, she loves history an' that, and she hasn't looked at a videogame in years- it'll blow her mind. Plus she's fascinated by the Middle East- may show her AC1.

 

Cheers for the heads up. I've already done a lot of the Homesteader missions, I quite enjoyed them. Didn't seem to have much of a bearing on anything though, it didn't even give much heads up that they had level'ed.

[TheMightyEthan]

I already had my ship fully upgraded before I did a single naval convoy. I think I sent like 3 of them total.

[Waldorf and Statler]

Seeing how I only used the assassins blade I never wasted money so I was able to build the naval convoys without any hassle and already had a couple of upgrades to my ship.

 

If you ever get back into the game and get naval convoys, best and easiest thing to do is to send pelts of expensive animals. Can't remember how many pelts you can send but if you can there's one area in the forest just full of bears (near the bottom west if I recall correctly). Kill as many bears as possible, then send bear pelts via naval convoys. I made around 13000 dollars per naval convoy with bear pelts. Later on once your hunting lady is fully upgraded you can get bear pelts from her I think. And if not bear pelts it'll be like the second to highest most expensive pelt. Thats' when stuff starts making more sense economically. You buy pelts from her on the cheap, then sell them at a much higher price.

 

 

On the topic of the ending can somebody tell me what is it that people absolutely HATE about the ending? I found it not nearly as disappointing as others would claim, not to mention ME3 earlier this year kind of ruined it for me. Maybe it has to do with not caring about the AC story as much as I did about ME. Who knows.

Edited December 17, 2012 by Waldorf And Statler

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, idk, my only real problem with the ending was that it was rather anticlimactic, but that's about it.

[Waldorf and Statler]

See at this point I was used to AC always ending on some sort of 'what the fuck' moment. Either a cliffhanger or anti-climactic "there will be another game" so I don't know what people were expecting with this one.

[TheMightyEthan]

People were expecting it to be a real "end" to the trilogy because that's what the devs were saying it would be.

[SomTervo]

Yeah, it had all sorts of weird issues. Mine was mostly with the storytelling, it was just flawed. Could have been explained so much better. They were obviously running out of time/ money.

 

 

It's not explained what Juno is actually going to do, then when she does it, it's anticlimactic, and doesn't make any sense why the precursor/ God race didn't just do this in the first place. Unless I'm missing something political or something, didn't play Revelations so don't actually know the difference/ history between Juno and Minerva.

 

It didn't really go into humanity's development or how any of that happened after the precursors. Didn't tie much of the great historical stuff to the sci-fi story. There's, like, nothing allegorical about AC's story. And allegory is the more artistic way of encoding depth and meaning into any story.

 

Desmond's ending was pretty decent as a sacrificial/ martyr plot resolution thing, but was SO underwritten and acted. His dad's just like "don't do it son!" Desmond's like "nah bro" then his dad's just like "ok cool" and runs off happy as larry with the rest of them (who say nothing. At all). Then desmond turns to stone or some shit. Kwa? There was no cinematic or character development in it. Just a rubbish bit of plot reportage, which is what AC always has been tbh. They aren't great storytellers. Too ambitious I think really. If they'd gone for a more minimalist narrative over the whole series, it would have been far more powerful and have worked in a much more intelligent way.

 

It also didn't really resolve the actual plot. It was just 'so Juno saves the world, now she's gonna enslave it. THE END!' The cloud/ pivot thing as an endgame was great though, that does hint to some potentially interesting things in future.

 

 

It was still definitely one of the best AC endings. AC1's ending is, imho, one of the worst endings in game/ storytelling history. What a fuckin' joke.

[Waldorf and Statler]

yeah. At this point I kind of expected the endings to be giant cockteases and underwhelming.

[SomTervo]

Ditto. Tbh I'm mostly enjoying AC3 now that I've finished the story. Enjoying it for the emergent world/ freedom more than the narrative. Just free roaming the incredible gameworld, partaking of the insane amount of side-content they added, is so good. There's so much to do, it's like the whole story mode doubled over, but you take it at your own sweet pace.

 

 

Not to mention having the Animus Hacks set to permanent daytime, permanent summer, permanent nice weather while roaming the Frontier. Stunning as shit, especially in the more overgrown areas. Black Creek or whatever. Fuck that place is an achievement. Shadow of the Colossus/ MGS3-style beauty and natural design.

 

Whenever I go to a city I pop them back to defaults. Are any of the other Animus Hacks much use? They're a great idea generally.

 

 

It feels like if they had cut down on the narrative quite a bit, i.e. decided to tell the entire series, from AC1 onwards, from only within the Animus, with the extra-Animus stuff being just voiceover/ occasional cutscene, the series would have fared far better. AC3's gameplay mechanics are incredible, but stretched so thinly over the narrative that they feel empty a lot of the time. If the story wasn't so overly ambitious and thus bloated, it would have been a far greater game.