Why are the modern Assassin's Creed games so soulless compared to 1 and 2? (2024)

mein brother
Doing 100% of the Ezio games, ending with Revelations, doing every side mission before the ending when Ezio finally retires. It's one of the best gaming moments for me.

>kind of enjoy 100%ing open world games
why though? is it the fact that your game says 100% or do you genuinely enjoy the journey? because it's painful to 100% most games because of the usual bloat

This franchise is insanely hard carried by the settings. I don't think anyone even gives a sh*t about the gameplay or the story.

I do care about the story but alternative history was the selling point for me. it had such a huge potential but it's been a while since ubi utilized it properly.

100%ing only really got bad with Odyssey and Valhalla and Mirage is back to the usual fun 100%. Unity was kind of annoying due to all the chests and the Dead Kings co-op items. The games aren't that annoying to 100%, the bloat is only really in some specific collectibles in each game (Flags in 1, Ptolemy Statues in Origins, Alligator Eggs in Liberation, and chests in Unity) otherwise most of the content is pretty good. There's also the fact that by running around collecting stuff you see way more of the world and get to appreciate the art direction and effort they put into fleshing it out because it's astounding just how much work they put into the worlds even if it typically comes off as copy-pasted or samey when running around not paying too much attention.

Mirage for example has been an awesome 100% just because the world design feels a lot like Origins mixed with an older AC game so simply wandering around the Round City or the smaller villages is really cool because they connect so well, have so many ways to parkour and escape or move around the map, have tons of openings, etc.

>the bloat is only really in some specific collectibles in each game
that might be true to older games but what about Origins? the mmo loot, forced leveling, restricted one-shot opportunities made me want to tear my hair out after a while. don't you consider these bloat too?

>Mirage for example has been an awesome 100%
is Mirage really that good? always though the return to roots and whatnot was just a marketing gimmick.

>the mmo loot
Is pointless. Just equip the next strongest weapon you find. There is never a reason to care about it. Once you hit 55 then you'll just get every legendary to 55 from drops except Helix Store items and the very few unique ones like the FFXV crossover stuff you can just level scale.
>forced leveling
All it does is gate you out of certain areas and you level up quite quickly so it's not a big deal. It's restrictive, sure, but it quickly starts to go to the background until it stops mattering altogether. This is mainly only an issue for the first 10ish levels. Unless you want to fight the elephants it's not a big deal really.
>restricted one-shot opportunities
See the previous point. Yes, it gates you out of certain areas but it's not too big a deal, and there comes a point where even low level Hidden Blade levels let you kill stuff 1-2 levels higher than you. At endgame you can even one-shot level 58 ghosts summoned by one of the gods via assassination with just a level 12 HB and it can go up to 14 if I remember right. Just go into Senu when you go to Alexandria or something every few guys, kill a few guys transporting goods, and your melee gloves, ranged gloves, and HB will be in parity or even better a majority of the time. That's assuming you don't have enough from exploring to begin with.

Running out of room.

interesting perspective but I'll keep it in mind. my main issue was the game not respecting my time and not getting rewarded for going through the extra padding. hopefully if I ever give Origins another shot it will be more tolerable with your tips.

>is Mirage really that good?
I can't speak for the main story yet, like I said, I'm still within the second hour of the story pretty much but exploration has been a lot of fun and simply running around is nice. The world feels fleshed out enough, the map is a bit bigger than any of the various Valhalla DLC maps but the actual city portion of Baghdad is quite large, and the wilderness that is there isn't too expansive or pointless as it has points of interest scattered about. Picture related is how far into the game I am after 19 hours.
>always though the return to roots and whatnot was just a marketing gimmick.
Unlike Valhalla social stealth is in again, the areas you can blend into like benches and stuff actually work and make sense, pickpocketing is a core mechanic to hire groups or remove notoriety, notoriety is back, etc.
Parkour is like a mix of the new AC and old AC. You can still kinda grab onto anything but on stuff like mountains or buildings you do need things for your hand to grab onto instead of going BotW like the last three have been. You still can't back eject or jump.

Combat is more like Unity where a lot of enemies are a threat except in this case you can't really overlevel them with equips. You have upgrades like in Valhalla but they only go three tiers, and most of the combat so far has been parry baiting since breaking posture is an instant kill whereas normal attacking gets you parried or takes like 10 hits to kill a single enemy. I know it gets stupider when you get your Animus instant kill Arkham Knight Fear Takedown skill but I don't have that yet.
I only have throwing knives right now but they've got downsides and benefits, and you have to charge them to get full distance so they're not broken at all and come in limited quantities. They also only get resupplied from stores or random chests so you can't spam them since guards don't carry them like old games. I know you get traps and a blowdart later on but that's all I know.

[...]
Mirage's story is basically retelling the same sh*t from Valhalla and doesn't do Basim any justice or deepen his characterization. The setting is the king of the game no question. It's their best looking game in the modern engine, in terms of art direction and environmental art and map design. You can climb on a rooftop and always see the dome of the palace and orient yourself by looking at the weather wane and always be able to navigate the map with no HUD which is how I played thorugh the game. The missions are very scripted and even though they took impression from hitman it's not really apparent because the targets don't become killable until you set up the correct flags that activate them, the difficulty is an improvement over Valhalla where you could just cheese the game with arrows or OP abilities, if you don't respect the game's version of the max level mercenaries it sends after you you're gonna have a bad time and reload a lot, which I had to do and it was refreshing.

what the heck? this sounds great! since I have tiny hope for Shadows and even if it turns out fantastic I surely won't pay a dime for it Mirage might be the second modern AC I'm about to play. great settings aside the extra bloat scared me from Odyssey and Valhalla too.

>is Mirage really that good?
I can't speak for the main story yet, like I said, I'm still within the second hour of the story pretty much but exploration has been a lot of fun and simply running around is nice. The world feels fleshed out enough, the map is a bit bigger than any of the various Valhalla DLC maps but the actual city portion of Baghdad is quite large, and the wilderness that is there isn't too expansive or pointless as it has points of interest scattered about. Picture related is how far into the game I am after 19 hours.
>always though the return to roots and whatnot was just a marketing gimmick.
Unlike Valhalla social stealth is in again, the areas you can blend into like benches and stuff actually work and make sense, pickpocketing is a core mechanic to hire groups or remove notoriety, notoriety is back, etc.
Parkour is like a mix of the new AC and old AC. You can still kinda grab onto anything but on stuff like mountains or buildings you do need things for your hand to grab onto instead of going BotW like the last three have been. You still can't back eject or jump.

Combat is more like Unity where a lot of enemies are a threat except in this case you can't really overlevel them with equips. You have upgrades like in Valhalla but they only go three tiers, and most of the combat so far has been parry baiting since breaking posture is an instant kill whereas normal attacking gets you parried or takes like 10 hits to kill a single enemy. I know it gets stupider when you get your Animus instant kill Arkham Knight Fear Takedown skill but I don't have that yet.
I only have throwing knives right now but they've got downsides and benefits, and you have to charge them to get full distance so they're not broken at all and come in limited quantities. They also only get resupplied from stores or random chests so you can't spam them since guards don't carry them like old games. I know you get traps and a blowdart later on but that's all I know.

Any opinion on Witcher 3 and it's expansions, Moose? Trying to decide

>can't decide if I should play Witcher 3 CE or the ACs that I missed
>look up HLTB to get an estimation of the time investment

>W3 GOTY (Completionist)- 189 Hours
>AC3 - 55½ Hours
>Black Flag - 61 Hours
>Rogue - 39 Hours
>Unity - 79 Hours
>Syndicate - 55 Hours

Do these numbers sound accurate for you? Unity's length really surprised me and I expected BF in the mid-40s. I played AC3 on release but stopped halfway due to the messy optimization (and despite of it's flaws, I enjoyed it) so that's not completely new.
I'm not interested in pointless collectathons but otherwise I tend to do everything, hence the completionist numbers. Going by these I'm still looking at an extra 100 hours investment compared to a W3 Complete run, which sounds a little off to be honest.

and your input would be valuable. Thanks in advance if you take your time to reply!

[...]
I also do story and side without rushing, and those games were far shorter than that. Except maybe Black Flag, but I spent a lot of time just sailing the seas.

Appreciate it, maybe I recalculate the whole thing with Main + Extra too. I like to indulge in fun time-wasters, that's why BF's 61 hours made me worry to begin with. I loved managing the Assassin Order in Brotherhood too!

Well I had no issues with 3 at all so yeah going from those comments its a more hardware variable situation, which is often inherent with PC gaming anyway. Troubleshooting for each different hardware config.
Another thing though I am and was not a FPS or mega visuals PC gay, I was just happy to build a new PC after being on a sh*tty laptop for nearly 5 years (doing my studies) so while I say I had no issues I might have been just getting 30FPS, cannot remember.
I always turn vsync on for no screen tear so limits my FPS.
Then yeah as you are saying, its a console port. At the time I was playing the ass creed games on console in order and 3 was the new game releasing, hence why it come with my GPU, only reason I played it on PC.
You are mentioning about the stuttering and the engine being fricked, well I pirated black flag after 3 (irony I know) and I remember in the cities the FPS was a slideshow.
Pretty sure my hardware out performed recommended specs too.

Still they are console games, its only more recently that ubisoft has been focusing on simultaneous releases and uplay sh*t.

Besides, you had a 660 and AC3 was Nvidia-friendly IIRC. The original sin, however, was the lack of multi-core optimization. That was behind the FPS drops and stuttering in Boston and I bet in Black Flag cities too. The next couple of AC games also suffered from heavy performance issues.

I've only played some of Witcher 1 years ago when my PC couldn't run it well so I can't comment.

>can't decide if I should play Witcher 3 CE or the ACs that I missed
>look up HLTB to get an estimation of the time investment

>W3 GOTY (Completionist)- 189 Hours
>AC3 - 55½ Hours
>Black Flag - 61 Hours
>Rogue - 39 Hours
>Unity - 79 Hours
>Syndicate - 55 Hours

Do these numbers sound accurate for you? Unity's length really surprised me and I expected BF in the mid-40s. I played AC3 on release but stopped halfway due to the messy optimization (and despite of it's flaws, I enjoyed it) so that's not completely new.
I'm not interested in pointless collectathons but otherwise I tend to do everything, hence the completionist numbers. Going by these I'm still looking at an extra 100 hours investment compared to a W3 Complete run, which sounds a little off to be honest.

TW3 if you can get into it is really solid. The main story is serviceable but the side content is at times better than the main narrative content, the only problem is that it basically demands at least a 100hrs to get through and it's not really something you play while playing other games, it's also obviously very much a narrative game. You CAN collect all the gear sets that buff your various skill trees but you can also just ignore them, the game asks very little of you, it's like Valhalla was at launch and Ubi very clearly modeled the nu-creeds on Witcher 3, and they tried to copy their style of side quests but none of them come even close to how they're implemented in TW3.

>mfw most people probably missed the best track in AC:B because of glitchy notoriety in the final mission

>is Mirage really that good?
I can't speak for the main story yet, like I said, I'm still within the second hour of the story pretty much but exploration has been a lot of fun and simply running around is nice. The world feels fleshed out enough, the map is a bit bigger than any of the various Valhalla DLC maps but the actual city portion of Baghdad is quite large, and the wilderness that is there isn't too expansive or pointless as it has points of interest scattered about. Picture related is how far into the game I am after 19 hours.
>always though the return to roots and whatnot was just a marketing gimmick.
Unlike Valhalla social stealth is in again, the areas you can blend into like benches and stuff actually work and make sense, pickpocketing is a core mechanic to hire groups or remove notoriety, notoriety is back, etc.
Parkour is like a mix of the new AC and old AC. You can still kinda grab onto anything but on stuff like mountains or buildings you do need things for your hand to grab onto instead of going BotW like the last three have been. You still can't back eject or jump.

Combat is more like Unity where a lot of enemies are a threat except in this case you can't really overlevel them with equips. You have upgrades like in Valhalla but they only go three tiers, and most of the combat so far has been parry baiting since breaking posture is an instant kill whereas normal attacking gets you parried or takes like 10 hits to kill a single enemy. I know it gets stupider when you get your Animus instant kill Arkham Knight Fear Takedown skill but I don't have that yet.
I only have throwing knives right now but they've got downsides and benefits, and you have to charge them to get full distance so they're not broken at all and come in limited quantities. They also only get resupplied from stores or random chests so you can't spam them since guards don't carry them like old games. I know you get traps and a blowdart later on but that's all I know.

Mirage's story is basically retelling the same sh*t from Valhalla and doesn't do Basim any justice or deepen his characterization. The setting is the king of the game no question. It's their best looking game in the modern engine, in terms of art direction and environmental art and map design. You can climb on a rooftop and always see the dome of the palace and orient yourself by looking at the weather wane and always be able to navigate the map with no HUD which is how I played thorugh the game. The missions are very scripted and even though they took impression from hitman it's not really apparent because the targets don't become killable until you set up the correct flags that activate them, the difficulty is an improvement over Valhalla where you could just cheese the game with arrows or OP abilities, if you don't respect the game's version of the max level mercenaries it sends after you you're gonna have a bad time and reload a lot, which I had to do and it was refreshing.

Don't forget the ability to dissolve bodies with the throwing knife, so even if you dissolve someone literally looking at another person that other person will look at the dissolved body, investigate for like two seconds going "Who could have done this?", then stop investigating because there's no body and go back to their patrol. Charged throws also instant kill anyone without a helmet from bow distances.

Stealth in general feels more busted here than in Valhalla or older games. I have no idea what they did but I'm pretty sure webm related wasn't possible in older games as the first person who saw you drag the body in immediately went crazy and it wouldn't let you pull in people investigating the area.

at least origins and odyssey were fun to explore, and had characters that made sense

>Odyssey.
>Characters who made sense.
So did you like the part where Deimos refuses to go with you if you weren't telling them they were being used in literally every discussion and will completely do a 180 from "They were using me" to "I will kill you mother and relative" despite all game saying they hated the Cult just because you missed one time convincing them?
What about The Eagle Bearer saying they don't believe in the Greek gods, but actually they do, but actually they don't, but actually they do, but actually they don't, but in reality they do even though they have 100% proof it's fake and they never existed?
How about TEB going from "I hate Sparta" to literally living in the city even if all their family is dead and they have no reason to?
How about Barnabas being treated like a man off his pills even though TEB knows everything he is saying is correct and can even prove it to back him up?
How about bringing in all the people TEB met at the party in Athens they met once into a conspiracy to kill Kleon and overthrow the Athenian government?
How about treating Herodotos as their best friend on the level of Barnabas even though he did literally nothing all game and had next to no lines once he joins the Adrestia?