Assassin's Creed 3

Very intrigued to see how the gameplay will change(if at all) to accommodate the new setting.

 

edit: Though I am disappointed in the character's look, I wish they took more liberties in translating the outfit to new settings. The hood really looks goofy here.

So I get to play as a Templar-and-Redcoat-killin' Daniel Day Lewis?
 

Sweet.

Actually, I think thats Game Informer's collectors cover, by Alex Ross.

Haven't only played a bit of 1, but have 2, Bro, and Rev sitting at home.  Might skip 1 (feels like a slog) and get to the substantially improved Ezio gameplay.

 

Because I really want to play III.  What a great setting for a videogame.  Scalping some redcoat fools.  But as I imagine the storyline will build from the complex AC mythology, I need to catch up.

 

Great cover and art.

I think I audibly squeed when I saw that concept art.

 

Between this and a release date for Bioshock Infinite, Fall is shaping up to be 2007 all over again. That is to say, one of the best gaming AAA seasons ever.

We've hit "AMERIKUH, FUCK YEAH!!" territory full-stop here, folks. In the very best way possible.

 

Yet, I can also see American soldiers being equally as valid targets as the British -- after all, doesn't George Washington own a piece of the Eden Apple?

 

This game if hugely successful, and would be, no matter where it would take place. Even if it took place in Canada during the great maple-syrup shortage of 1873.

Interesting and finally a bit different. I'm reserving judgement until I hear a tonne more about storyline and gameplay.

As somebody who tried to play through 1 and greatly enjoys the series...you really aren't missing much by skipping it.  It's easy enough to pick up the story by playing the games that are actually fun to play.

 

The best chase I've ever had in these games happened in the first one at the Jerusalem (?) docks. It lasted for twenty minutes, Templars were everywhere, and you died if you fell in the water. I know a lot of people hated that about the first one, but in made that chase (which was kind of random) a crazy mad dash for land, hopping on those posts that were sticking out of the water. Of course, if I had fallen into the water, AC1 would probably have been the worst game ever in my estimation, but I did like that you were a little bit more vulnerable in that one. From AC2 onward it became much more about feeling unstoppable with all the different gadgets, but it would have been nice if they balanced that out with bits where you had to run for your fucking life.

Assassin's Creed is a terrible game in a great setting.

 

"Here you are playing an assassin in the middle of the crusades with your targets being various knights in crazy badass religious orders and Saladin's battle-hardened Mamluks! Now let's make it repetitive and dull!"

 

 

The rest of the series are great games in great settings* on the other hand, so just go with them.

 

 

 

*Downside being a mythology that gets a little more retarded with each go-round.

May Xenu, Allah, Buddha, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Yahweh, and God preserve you. I just can't play through 1. I'll skip it and move straight to Ezio. I've heard from quite a few sources that II is a far superior game.

Because I am all about III.

AC1 is admirable for its ambition, but that ambition is realized so much stronger from II onward.

 

You'll start to feel the pinch of never having played AC1 in Revelations, though. So much wonderful character payoff in that game relies on your memories of the Holy Land and Altair.

Have yet to play Revelations, but have enjoyed each of the previous games, despite their flaws.  The Revolution is an interesting direction to take this.  I imagine it will be a much more spread out, horizontal experience.  Outside of, say, the Old North Church or Independence Hall, I'm having a hard time thinking of tall buildings to scale in the 18th century American northeast.

Plus in the Assassin's Creed Historical Fiction, America is basically created by the Templars as a means to easily control the people, since they're all about guiding humanity instead of the Assassin's belief of freewill.

 

And the only truly Evil antagonist in the series has been the Borgia, the rest always thought they knew what is best for the species.

     Quote:

 

I'm not too worried about the Colonial-era architecture -- the northeastern cities boasted buildings rivaling some European ones, in terms of height and scale.

Also, I'm wondering if we might be jumping oceans for part of the game to do some roof-running in Paris and/or London in this storyline...both cities had some big, vital Revolutionary doin's going on in them during the war.

Edited by Leto II - 3/1/12 at 5:50pm

I DID NOT like Revelations at all.  I felt the staleness of the series wafting off of it.  

 

But this looks TOTALLY BADASS.  Lead dude looks way cooler than poncey old Ezio.  I never liked his costume.

 

I hope you get to roll deep with the Swamp Fox.  That would be rad.

 

There were some dense cities, yes, and I'm certainly looking forward to scaling some Colonial era structures, but we didn't have anything that could rival, say, the cathedral in Acre, or the Dome of the Rock, or the Coliseum, or the Hagia Sophia.  I'm just thinking we might be in for a more rural experience this time around.  Honestly, I'm fine with that, and I can't wait to see more.

There goes my hopes that pt. III would have a Bollywood setting

 

This is the regular cover that most people will be seeing on the new Game Informer. That looks like Washington behind the Assassin. I think there are going to be some great set pieces in this game.

I like the idea that they'll go bigger with environment scope, including more wilderness. Hope to see freerunning through natural obstacles take the place of the cityscapes of previous games where appropriate. With the shots of the protag hunting a deer and so on, I wonder if they won't include some survival-sim stuff in this too, which would be rad. And please, some tomahawk-dagger duel-wielding ala The Patriot and The Last of the Mohicans... PLEASE Ubisoft!

 

Still kinda wish they'd give us the present-set game where Desmond is the frontal protagonist sooner rather than later.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=465195

 

Lots of info, sounds like some Read Dead has rubbed off on them, which gives me boners.

Yup. Unless my memory of various Templar/Masons/Illuminati conspiracy kookery is seriously mistaken, the Assassins should be actively fighting against America.

 

 

Screenshots!

Holy hell....

That's looking really cool. I'm one of those people who were turned off by AC1 and didn't touch any of the sequels. However, I did grab AC2 during the Steam Christmas sale, and is currently part of my (Hideously large) 'To Start Playing' list. What I'm seeing of AC3 is giving me the itch to finally dive in. 

Okay. Those are definitely a few more details... and I am definitely now insanely excited.

 

Whats the release on this? Years end?

You won't be disappointed, man. I loathed the first, but (after reading glowing comments on these message boards) gave the second a chance and was blown away. It's easily in my Top 10 games of all time. My anticipation for this is at a fever pitch. 

God, Revelations pretty much made me hate the series and now #3 is one of my most anticipated games of 2012. Makes me think there was a ton of purchase to the rumours that the main Assassin's Creed team were working on #3 almost immediately after they wrapped on #2 and Brotherhood/Revelations were largely shipped out to lesser teams.

 

 

More screenshots/concept art (from multiple links):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I mean seriously, this is looking like the LAST OF THE MOHICANS game I've wanted since the Promentory scene blew my mind nearly twenty years ago. I also get the feeling that #3 will probably as much a jumping on point as #2 was. Both Brotherhood and Revelations added very little to the overall story and you could easily pick up the stupid sci-fi plot having only played 1 and 2. I got two thirds of the way through Revelations before I gave up, and youtubing the ending revealed that I hadn't missed much (aside from spelling out exactly what happened during the first solar flare). It just made me realise how much Brotherhood and Revelations had been wheel spinning whilst the majority of the team worked on this in the background.

Which is frustrating because Ezio is still one of my favourite characters in videogames. I honestly feel that the series would have been better off having BROTHERHOOD and REVELATIONS act as side stories as sort. With a strict focus on Ezio and the sci-fi narrative largely saved for #3. As it is it feels like the BRO and REV were both lumbered by having to provide some continuation to a plot that couldn't really move forward.

Also, Spike -- all of these "devastated American landscape" wartime images are making me feel weirdly, ragingly, irrationally-homicidal towards the British right now, for some reason....can't quite figure out why....

I think one of the more fascinating things about the game is going to be when it gets released and how people react to the content. Because to be honest all of the 'FUCK YEAH, GONNA KILL SOME REDCOATS' stuff is already getting a little disconcerting. As such I wonder if the game is a little more layered and nuanced in terms of its antagonists, and the details so far suggest that the protagonist is going to be working against people on both sides of the conflict, that people might be a little put off by it.

 

As someone who loves Britain, and yet recognises why the rest of the world doesn't feel that way, I'm both eagerly awaiting the game and kind of dreading the surge of dude-bro Brit-Bashing in gaming forums.

 

ETA: I also feel silly for only just realising that the head of his Tomahawk is shaped like the Assassin's symbol.

The British = the "new" Germans of video-gaming!

 

But seriously, yeah -- evidently Connor will be on both sides of the conflict in this one (that NeoGAF article mentioned that not all Americans would be portrayed as virtuous "good" guys, nor all English as "evil" oppressors, etc.).

 

If they can bring some meaty moral ambiguity to it all, terrific. That era was simply overflowing with "grey" on all sides, and is ripe for examination.

If I get a mission from Thomas Jefferson while he's humping the shit out of Sally Hemmings, I will be very happy.

Don't forget about Lazy Susan. She and Jefferson had some descendants, too.

I'm the only guy that loves the first Assassins Creed, faults and all? Really?

 

 

...oh and, nice to see you around again Spikey. I actually agree with your hope for moral ambiguity, the Assassins being purely sided with the revolutionaries wouldn't just get a bit ra-ra but wouldn't fit in the grey proxy conspiracy war that Ubisoft have set up between the Templars and Assassins anyway.

 

 

I like AC1. Defended it earlier in this thread, even.

 

As to the story... it would be cool if both the Templars and the Assassins were sort of playing both sides against the middle here. Of course, I also wish that they could get Jason Isaacs to reprise his Tavington role from "The Patriot". All in all a bad movie with some great scenes, but that's a legendary bad guy performance right there. Kind of makes me wish that Snyder got him to play Zod in Man of Steel.

Like AC1 for the most part, too, but the improvements made to the series with AC2 were pretty damn massive, not the least of which were the in the realm of character-development. Still, enjoy popping it in every now and again for some Templar-stabbin', free-runnin' action (the latter element actually better in AC1 than any of the sequels, IMO).

 

Also, Jason Isaacs' Patriot character was a fictionalized composite of a couple of different historical figures, though I'd be frankly shocked if we don't see a "Col. Tarleton" show up somewhere in the next game.

Rambling personal experience.

 

I really love 80% of Assassin's Creed 1. But I honestly just wanted to get out into the world and do my thing and so I found the constant trips back to the present day and the meandering conversations with Al Mualim to be blocks to my enjoyment. I can see what they're going for, but Assassin's Creed 1 feels way too eager to force its plot down your throat and combined with the rather limited game mechanics means that it often feels like any pleasure derived from the game is almost accidental.

 

Which is a shame as the setting is fantastic and the villains are great. As much as I love the Ezio games the villains never felt as immediate or as threatening as the Templars from the original. Assassin's Creed 1 really feels like a game where the assassins are on the precipice of destruction, whilst the Ezio games make the Templars a far less impressive threat. By Revelations they're practically scrabbling for resources. I also think there's a purity to the gameplay of Assassin's Creed 1, your limited move set and tool set kind of forcing you to take less risks. There are moments in the game which are just amazing, riding across the Holy Land at sun rise, climing the cathedral in Acre, engaging a host of about 30 crusaders about Damascus, which are some of my all time favourite gaming moments and none of them have anything to do with the claustrophobically structured main game.

 

Then again as much as I like Assassin's Creed 1, I love Assassin's Creed 2 for taking on the criticisms that people had for the original and actually addressing them. It's a real rarity to see developers actually respond to critical and fan reaction and do something about the criticisms. As such even though Brotherhood and Revelations refined the formula, I still view #2 as the series crowning achievement.

I really hope this will be the first in what may later become known as 'The Red Dead Effect'; that is, the paradigm shifting change that I always hoped Red Dead Redemption and its massive blockbuster success would have in opening the minds of the gaming industry to encompass a greater variety of settings and genres for games in general, specifically more historical settings outside of just WW2. Fair play to Ubisoft for doing much the same thing with the AC games, this seems like a wonderfully natural progression for them in this universe, and it really brings some wonderful possibilities into play.

 

Those screenshots look simply incredible.

Spike, I was just funning with the scalp redcoats comments. Don't get me wrong...I am a red-blooded American and I love the history of the United States. But I also have a very deep affection for the British. The Revolution was hardly a good vs evil war, regardless of Emmerich's 12 year old film. Frankly, the British troops at Concord may have been some of the bravest SOB's in either of our histories.

That said, time to Magua some fools. IGN is saying a trailer will hit tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Ubisoft have actually put some pretty subversive and non-mainstream ideas into the universe they've created for these games, and they're a bunch Quebeqoirs anyway, so I get the feeling the more jingoistic end of the american cultural spectrum may get a little shock when i'ts made perfectly clear that the Templar-Assassin war will not be proxied by the British and the Revolutionaries.

Quite the teaser, loving the free-running over the branches, and some cool looking melee moves

Can't watch at work

 

Something to look forward to at home.  Is the trailer a luscious CG mini-movie, a la Blur Studios, or is it primarily gameplay?

Very pretty trailer, although it not being scored to some awesome Euro-Dance tune seems a little weird, which seems to be really playing up the "America, FUCK YEAH" ness of the thing. Which is odd because to my knowledge ASSASSIN'S CREED is one of the franchises which sells just as much worldwide as it does in the states.