There is essentially no Real Life Abstergo portion of the game. I mean, there is - but you won’t even hear about it until like 10 hours into the game and while the players interested in the Real Life happenings can spend a while exploring and reading and stuff, there are only two Real Life interruptions into the proceedings (IIRC ? Maybe a third ?)and you can clear both times and hop back into the Animus within 5 minutes tops. Everything else about the real world is entirely optional (and it’s not like there’s a ton of it either).
Thanks. That sounds promising.
If anyone is interested in the game on PC and doesn’t need to have it on Steam (this is for a Uplay key), it’s 25% off at Gamersgate right now. But you can knock the price down further:[spoiler]
Gamersgate is having a promotion with Razer to use Razer’s “zGold” currency. You get an extra 20% off right now for using zGold. Plus, Razer is having a promotion where you get bonus zGold when buying sets of coins. Essentially, $30 gets you $33 worth of coins and $50 gets you $57 worth of coins. You can also buy $10 with no extra coins.
AC:Origins Deluxe is $53 on sale, but $42 with 20% off. So you buy one $30 pack and one $10 pack for $43 worth of zGold coins.
AC:Origins Gold is $75 on sale but $60 with the extra 20% zGold discount. You’ll have to pay for a full $60 in zGold ($50+$10) but $60 still beats $83 from Steam.
There’s no great way to make it work for the base game since it comes out at $36 and you’d have to buy $40 in zGold anyway. Might as well just get the Deluxe edition for $40[/spoiler]
…using the zGold option gives you a 40-43% discount which is far better than the 17% off Steam is offering.
What do you mean “remove the map shadow?” And my ‘?’ are white or yellow. never black. I’m playing on PS4 if that matters.
Well, I finished the game. I’m underwhelmed. I have some clean up stuff to collect ps4 trophies, but otherwise I’m done. I have yet to win a chariot race tournament. I’ve come close; I’m just not interesting in putting in the time, I guess.
My review now that I’ve logged several hours into the game: (comparing to my original ‘review’)
I still feel this way. Some of the points I needed to get to were never near a quick-travel location.
I don’t feel so bad about this one anymore. However it’s a little confusing when you first start and you have access to a bunch of different weapons types; but no real explanation of what the benefits are to each. One of the nice features of all the weapons you collect is that you can sell/dismantle and get a lot of money/ore…
Still feel the same way; plus want to add that some of the upgrade tree items are useless.
Still very unhappy about the fight mechanics. They sucked. Thanks to some advice in this thread I got a lot better; but the mechanics are muddy at best.
Also need to add on that the hundreds of notes that you can read, but gain no benefit from was a waste of someone’s time to even program into the game. As far as I know they gave no insight on how to find a treasure, or improve on anything. They’re just a waste of time.
Oh My God, the map sucks so bad. Whose dumb idea was it to have a map where you zoom in or out to make things appear and disappear? If I want to easily see if a location is inside of a border, you can’t see both the border and the location at the same time! And how about using icons that you can actually see on the map? I was playing on a 60" tv and sometimes i had to stand directly in front of the tv to see some of the icons. Give me the option to change their color/contrast. And add a feature that always show the icons regardless of zoom, with the option to selectively turn off displaying icons.
…need to add: if my destination is across a body of water; then at least autopilot me to the shore line.
Would have liked to only see blinking crafting supplies THAT I NEED for my currently pinned item.
I’ve recently come to the realization that I like the idea of Assassin’s Creed more than I like actually playing the games.
I’ve bought at least 4 of them, never actually finished any of them, and haven’t even started up at least one of them. It all just gets sort of tedious after a while, and I don’t like that there’s no such thing in the game as a “clean” assassination; there’s always a big fight involved afterwards and I feel like a real assassin should operate more like Hitman.
The fog-of-war - any region you haven’t stepped into is black, rather than shown.
I can’t find a direct link to a picture of what I mean by yellow - the normal icons are black and white, but the locations where you get skill points have a pulsing golden tinge instead.
If you look at the Golden Tomb map picture in this walkthrough you can see what I mean.
Oh, I get it. I thought (was hoping) you were referring to some cool feature where I could change the contrast to black and white. 
I admit part of my problem might be my age; unless I’m really close to the television, I can’t see the icons on the map screen.
I would have to totally disagree with you on this one. Especially with this last one. Once you upgrade your wrist spikes (whatever they’re called) I have cleared entire villages all on stealth. Crouch anywhere there are bushes; if you turn shimmery silver for a second it means that the soldiers can’t see you. Then just whistle and the’ll walk over to inspect the noise then you can stealth kill them. I’ve have stealth killed 4 or 5 soldiers, one after the other, in this way. Another tactic is to stand up and let them see you for a real quick second, then duck again. When then come in your area, run around a tent and get them from behind, or jump up on the tent and do the drop down assassination. It’s pretty fun.
Last but not least are the sleeping darts. They’re invaluable when the soldiers are grouped together.
(Reactivating a memory sequence from the Animus…)
There’s a lot of discussion about fighting and weapons in this thread, but how are the climbing/running segments? Are there interesting buildings to climb or explore?
Also, are there many finicky missions where you have to eavesdrop without getting caught (say) or race an enemy, and if you fail you have to go all the way back to the start of the mission?
Just played through this game and finished it about a month ago.
You know how some people were disappointed with Black Flag because they felt all of that climbing of buildings and running across rooftops from the earlier games was what Assassin’s Creed was all about? It’s like that. There are some fairly tall temples, and some towers and rock faces you climb, but not as much of that stuff as in some of the other games.
No, stealth in this game is much better. You basically choose how you want to approach each mission–if you want to rush in headfirst, sword swinging, you can; if you want to do all stealth, you can do that too. I don’t recall any eavesdropping missions or any insta-fail missions; if they were there, they were so easy and non-frustrating that they didn’t even stick in my memory. There are no races except chariot races in a coliseum which are entirely optional.
Black Flag wasn’t too bad; it had enough ship’s masts and forts and so forth to keep my interest.
But Syndicate disappointed me. You have a bunch of interesting (real-life) buildings to climb up…but you don’t need to because Alexander Graham Bell invented the Bat-grappling-hook.
I disagree, sort of - I thing there are just as many rooftops to run across as in the Ezio games, it’s just that the map is so damn huge that they’re spread out across a number of different cities, with more open space between them. I’m one of the people you mentioned, and I was perfectly satisfied with the climbing and jumping. Plus, you get to climb pyramids! And even better, you can explore inside them!
(Been going back and forth all day over whether I should write this. Decided that I didn’t want it to fade away unsaid. Sigh. Here goes. I’m going to be using this series of videos as my point of reference)
Well, another one finds the circular disc slot.
Here’s the problem. I don’t need lots of soaring skyscrapers. I don’t need a story that makes perfect logical sense. I don’t need the modern-day subplot to be sufficiently distanced from the main game so that I don’t get too big a reminder that the game isn’t real or whatever the hell that was. I don’t need a sandbox that’s sufficiently massive yet also sufficiently densely populated. I don’t need to be sacking ships every second of every minute of every hour for every single part of the game. I don’t need “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” or “striking from the shadows” or any of the other tedious mantras. I don’t need hacked-off ring fingers or bird-skull symbols or Mentors or hooded cloaks or hidden blades or ritual leaps of faith. I need a fighting system which I can figure out and win fights with.
Assassins fight. Period. In many cases they have absolutely no choice. It was like this from the very first game, dammit. That’s how Ubisoft designed it, and that’s why combat has to always be a viable option. And the revamped fighting system in Origins…I hated it.
Let’s start with enemy levels, which go from 1-40. These determine both how hard the enemy hits and how much damage he can take. The massive range means that you have to pick your fights very carefully. If you’re faced with a story mission or other vital task where the foes are too devastating, that means a lot of tedious levelling up…assuming that there are any sidequests available, also assuming that they’re not overlevelled, and further assuming that you’re not already in the middle of something important when you run into the fortress that’s defended by the sons of Zeus. Syndicate had levels, of course, but only 10, and the individual regions were divided by level so there was little risk of getting caught underpowered or underequipped.
Well, if a straight fight is out of the question, what alternatives are there? Most of the games, of course, have a stealth mechanic which allows you to do your dirty work sight unseen. Some implemented it better than others (if you really wanted to be an invisible stalker in the shadows leaving silent death in your wake, I actually think 3 was the best, although of course that wasn’t always an option), but at least some of the time you got to actually live by that part of the creed. Another option was attacking from a distance from a spot where the enemy couldn’t see you. This was one of the things that made Shay so incredibly deadly in Rogue, and I had a blast doing this as Evie in Syndicate. Hell, about a third of the missions would’ve been absolutely impossible if I couldn’t. And of course, a well-placed smoke bomb can be used to create cover and/or incapacitate a foe prior to taking him down.
So what does Origins have? A bow. A really weak bow. Oh, I’m sorry, actually several really weak bows. Evie could do more damage throwing goddam sewing needles. And you’d better make every shot count, because the quantity you can have or afford at any one time would barely be adequate as a sumo tournament prize. But maybe that’s just as well since once the enemy spots you and charges very angrily in your direction, you won’t have time to empty your microscopic quiver.
So you’re going to be doing plenty of rumbling. There are many, many tools for the job; which is the right one? Well, the main consideration is what each type’s strengths and weaknesses are, which for this game means what crippling flaw you’re going to have to compensate for. Remember how the earlier games and to an extent Syndicate had two or three types of weapon, but the important thing was that you anticipated your opponents’ moves and used the right tactic for the right foe? In Origins, equipping the short, fast weapon means that every spear wielder is going to punch you full of holes before you can even close in, using the slow but powerful bludgeon means that every sword wielder is going to leave you in a dozen pieces by the time your weapon is halfway toward making contact with something. Every weapon type requires different tactics and maintenance of a different weapon list. Not to mention different experience levels for each weapon type. Did I mention that it’s probably going to take quite a while before you could get anything good, and even then drops are completely random? Remember how you could just buy the Sword of Altair in 2? Lord forbid the game give us any kind of reward commensurate with the time and effort we put in.
But okay, a weapon’s only as deadly as its wielder. So let me get into the combat system itself.
Ugh. Dear lord. Okay, there’s an attack button, a “lock-on” command that I’ve yet to see work properly once, ever, in a single video, a shield block, and a backstep. There are some fancy attacks as well, but I never got far enough to get any of them. Okay, the thing is, attacking straight-on is pretty much hopeless; he’ll just put his shield up. (It is occasionally possible to catch him while he’s rushing you, but there aren’t many opportunities for this and your timing has to be perfect.) Blocking and counterstriking doesn’t work because the force of the blow knocks you back and out of range; same with sidestepping. Basically, what you have to do is…run. Run around and around and around until you flank him, or misdirect him, or, I dunno, make him dizzy, get the first hit, and always follow up right away because that’s the last chance you’ll get for a while. And make sure you really get that timing down, because there are tee-ball players who swing faster than Bayek. Seriously, we’re talking borderline Arno territory. To sum up: No reliable way to create an opening, no reliable way to know when you need to put your guard up, no reliable targeting. Every one-on-one fight I’ve ever seen for this game (including most definitely my own) has been a haphazard, screwy, awkward, sloppy, plodding, flailing mess. Compare that to Jacob and Evie’s whirling fists and flashing blades or Connor’s pulverizing chain counters. They’d be insulted to share an occupation with Bayek.
And that’s against a single opponent. Taking on multiple foes is tantamount to suicide. The best you can do is (yes) run like hell to try to keep everyone on the same side so you don’t get double-teamed. This is downright embarrassing. The FIRST Assassin we see, Altair, did practically nothing but multiple engagements. His iron nerve and complete command of the situation no matter how many furious guards opposed him was what made him so cool…and, more to the point, what make completing the first game possible. The combat system for Syndicate was designed over not focusing on one enemy at a time. Furthermore, if you fought smart, it didn’t matter how many there were, heck, it didn’t matter how many of them had guns; they couldn’t lay a finger on you.
Ubisoft implemented and tweaked fighting systems based around anticipation, reactions, strengths against weaknesses, weaponry, tactics, and plain old cool factor, and then in Origins changed to a system based on being difficult and frustrating. If this is the future of video games, I want no part of it.
P.S.: Septimius can die in a fire forever.
Dude, you’ve been dumping the same deluge of verbal diarrhea in every Assassin’s Creed thread since this board began. Why do you keep playing these games if you hate them so much?
Did you really play through the entire game without noticing there is a shield breaker/heavy attack? Did not occur to you to Google “how to deal with enemies with shields” if you were having such trouble with it?
Also, I don’t know what your complaint about bows is. It was easy to get headshots with a predator bow. With upgrades you can get your predator arrow quiver size up to 11, and there are always copious arrow resupply points in every base. I’d usually take out at least half the base that way before resorting to hidden-blade assassinations, let alone melee combat.
Don’t listen to him, folks; it’s a good game.
I don’t know if this makes it better or worse but DKW indicated that these complaints were based on watching YouTube playthrough videos, not on actual gameplay.
So on the one hand, DKW doesn’t “keep playing these games”. On the other hand that diatribe apparently came without any direct playing experience (and likely is born from a great deal of prejudice against the latest entries in the series).
Arcite - This is the SDMB. We don’t brook obnoxious attitudes here. Cut it out or it’s going to lead to warnings, and ultimately a ban.
That concise enough for you?
Atamasama - And here it is. One ironclad truth, and everyone who has the tiniest disagreement is “prejudiced” and needs to get shouted down. Is there a rule that every board that has anything to do with video games has to eventually degenerate into that, or are we only talking the big AAA franchises?
My thoughts about the combat system are based on my experiences with the combat system. The thing is, you can’t progress in the game unless you actually win fights, or at least, y’know, not get killed. Thing was, up until Origins, no matter how tough the opposition got, no matter how easy it was to die, there was never a point where I felt hopelessly stuck. The worst it got was Unity, and that one had many other big issues. Bottom line is, if I want to see something and I can’t hack it, I really don’t have any choice other than watching someone else, do I?
I chose RadBrad because that’s what came up first and he seems knowledgable enough, and he was skillful and determined enough to get through to the end. (And while he can get excited at times, he doesn’t habitually scream into the mike. I hate that.) Was there something he did wrong that you noticed? What? Where? If he had bad fighting technique, do you know a video that shows the proper technique? I’m judging based on the best information I have, so if you have anything better, I’d be very happy to give it a look.
You know what? I am prejudiced. Against lashing out for no good reason. Against the complete inability to take the tiniest criticism. Against getting incredibly defensive over a damn video game. Against arrogant, condescending, dismissive attitudes on a board that’s supposed to be above that garbage. And if that’s what it takes to have a discussion about Assassin’s Creed, fine, I’m out. Would’ve appreciated a little warning beforehand.
[Moderating]
DKW, the only “arrogant, condescending, dismissive attitude” I’m seeing here is coming from you. If that were the worst I was seeing from you, then this would just be a moderator note. Combined, however, with
will make this a Warning for personal insults. If this game inspires such levels of vitriol from you, then don’t discuss it.
I’m guessing you’re thinking of the wrong Septimius inspiring that vitriol. The similarly named SDMB poster never even contributed to this thread.
[Moderating]
Indeed. I didn’t know of the game character, and so mistakenly thought that that line was directed at the poster. There is no rule against insulting fictional characters, and so the Warning is rescinded.
DKW’s overall attitude is still a bit over-the-top, and post #36 is junior modding, but neither of those is worth a Warning, either.
While we’re at it, Arcite’s post 34 is an attack on the post, not on the poster, so is also not worth a Warning, but “verbal diarrhea” is perhaps stronger than is needed. Let’s dial that back, too.
I found combat to be fairly easy, and I’m hardly a master of videogame combat. My preferred weapon was the spear, and my tactic was basically, keep your shield up at all times, jab, sidestep, jab, sidestep, keep on moving until the other guys are dead. I dunno - maybe it’s easier on PCs than on consoles?