Hellz Yeah to the last two posts. The good stuff does start right away and it looks, well, next gen on a good video card. Very happy I waited! :) Also very happy not to be traveling for Thanksgiving so I can feast on this fat juicy turkey of a game.
Yeah I somehow managed to resist playing this on the PS3 after my g/f got a copy and bought it on Steam the other day and really enjoying it so far. It’s not the best console port I’ve ever seen, but I think they got most of the important elements working: better graphics (with at least some settings), customizable keys, etc.
My biggest take away though is: “Holy shit someone please make a pirate sim with the naval battles from this immediately!”.
Yeah bizarrely this is now my favorite naval combat game.
Yes; on the other hand it is kind of sad that dedicated wooden ships games are so much worse than this minigame. It would be interesting to find out how many staff hours went into it. Of course this minigame is almost ludicrously unrealistic; but everyone else’s attempts at the same thing are even worse, and at least the boats look fairly nice even if they too are not exactly realistic.
So those console players that are ahead any sequence recommendation for when I should start seriously sand boxing? I am in 8 and can’t seem to fully liberate Boston, I’d really like some more assassins before I eat up all the missions on one dude.
Keep in mind the viewpoints don’t reveal the full city. I was able to liberate 2/3 of Boston before sequence 8 (and didn’t try for the third, it may be possible) but you have to look for the missions in the unclear areas.
We are told that the first six hours or so are a slog but I like Hatham and wish that he weren’t going away at some point. For me, he’s as endearing a character as the young, brash Ezio. That aside, I’m really impressed with what I’m seeing so far… from the opera house to the ship sequence to the detail they’ve put into Boston.
I don’t imagine it’s spoiling anything to tell you that even when the character perspective shifts, you have not seen the last of Haytham.
Whew, thanks! And that’s one spoiler I don’t mind having revealed, as I’ve not really been looking forward to Connor. Perhaps they will sell me on him, though.
They had a different studio do the naval sections (Ubisoft Singapore) so I would imagine the answer is “a lot” :)
So I’m just starting out on the PC version, still on Sequence 2. I periodically get notifications that there are new emails, but when I exit the Animus to check them there aren’t any? Are these just false notifications or should I be worried that I’m missing them?
Yeah. I don’t think I can reveal just how much manhours went into the naval section, just a lot. But thanks, we’re glad people are enjoying the naval parts. We’re really quite proud of it.
Couldn’t they borrow some of those hours for more optimization in the pc version? There are some clear bottlenecks related to cpu in the game, and the framerate isn’t scaling that well with multicores. ;)
The naval battles are really the standout amongst the new systems added. They’re a hell of a lot of fun, and while not “realistic”, they are intensely atmospheric and satisfying. I LOVE the sounds of catching a small fleet in a broadside.
The homestead on the other hand…I’m really amazed by how boring and pointless that system is. The resources spent on that would have been better directed towards getting some assassination back in the game. The homestead is just busywork, and even if you choose to deal with it you’re gated by the story to unlock elements.
Hunting is pretty good. Its weak point is that there’s no real reason to investigate, set and bait traps, and so on. Just run around stabbing animals with your hidden blade; it’s a hell of a lot faster. Air assassinating critters is hilarious.
Tree running is cool, but it doesn’t make up for the loss of real roof running. Also, there’s too much sameness in the trees, and far less freedom of mobility than the cities of the earlier games.
Speaking of roof running, the game really doesn’t seem to want people on what roofs there are. There are way too many guards, and the response is way over the top with climbing guards and riflemen all up your ass once you’re detected.
That’s not really the way studios work, so no. We couldn’t have borrowed hours for PC optimization or bug fixing on other sections unrelated to our scope. We would love to though, ideally, but if you left me to fix graphics bugs, I’d probably introduce more.
Hah hah, I know. I was only joking (and well, complaining). I know the pc version was done by another people, another company even.
It’s really quite strange. Theoretically, I agreed with all the arguments ZeroPunctuation and RPS made against bloat and loss of direction. But sitting on that ship, playing Fanorona against a random sailor, listening to the crew singing shanties in the background, was such a touching and romantic moment, it made me forget all the arguments why it shouldn’t exist.
Alec Meer’s Wot I Think. Sounds like it has exactly the same plusses and minuses as the console versions, but is prettier. At least they haven’t botched the port for once.
So is it really worth investing time and money into the whole crafting/convoy thing?
Admittedly I’m only in sequence 6 so maybe it opens up more later and is worth it, but why would I send a handful of items (one per slot, really?) to market in a convoy that needs to be guarded for a pittance when I could just spend 20 minutes hunting and collect a few thousand in pelts and sell them all at once?
Once you can make higher quality goods does it start to be worth it?
DRM mostly gone? Consolititis very minimal? Nice, I finally get to play Assassin’s Creed game.