It should be added that this non-optional defense takes the form of an extremely graphic and bloody quick-time event.
In the context of a 2012 videogame, I don’t think the defense quicktime events count as “extremely graphic and bloody.” It’s mostly Connor pushing an animal.
Was it just me, or…
Mid-game stuff
…was Charles Lee’s transformation from unassuming nice guy in the prologue to crazy-eyed supervillain almost comical? Might as well have made him Dr. Evil.
Finished the game a while ago. Liked it well enough, but it had its flaws, some of which it shared with previous games and some which were unique to this iteration. Like every AC game it had a handful of missions that were tedious, annoying and shouldn’t have made it into the final game. The worst was jankily riding between the three squads to tell them when to fire. In fact, any of the missions where you had to keep soldiers alive sucked.
Holy moly these first 6 hours are hard going. An hour and a half before you see the game’s title? Lordy. The setting and locations are amazing and soaked in playful detail, but I would have given up if I didn’t have it on excellent authority that things are going to pick up.
Yeah, agree with the spoiler. Of all the silly things about the story, the characters were the silliest. Very weak, implausible, and the villains were mostly devoid of motivation except for malice, while the good guys were complete ciphers. The Templar prologue was an especially bad idea, because they have to transform these guys into villains when the tutorial sequences are over, and as you pointed out, it makes no sense at all given how they are portrayed to begin with. One big missing chunk was the extermination of the Assassin chapter that is given in narration; if done in game by the Templar characters, that could have been used to make it clear they are really villains.
As for the missions, you can really see how tight the budget is sometimes. Someone cranks out a draft of a mission that sounds OK, like that silly counterfeiter chase, and it turns out weak. Everyone knows it’s weak including probably the designer who implemented it, but it works, kind of, so it sits around as a low priority bug to fix up later when other more important things are done. But of course, it never winds up as the highest remaining priority even within the mission design group.
Eventually, in the rush at the end when they are stringing all the random incoherent story bits together, someone has to decide whether to a) redo the mission, b) delete it, or c) let it slide.
a) is too expensive in time because there are still higher priority bugs to fix and last minute story patches to glue in.
They are obviously very reluctant to do b) partly because it leaves a bit of a story hole and the story is already probably in tatters due to all the other stuff they couldn’t get to or had to delete, and partly because it reduces total content.
So c) it is. A few bitter tears may be shed here and there, but so it goes.
Charles could have been handled way, way better - He was a very interesting character in the start, and turned 2-dimensional so fast it was sad. They set up a perfect opportunity to show that villians aren’t the onesided evil people they were in stories back when storytelling was young, but they missed it completely.
Its like they gave up somewhere along the way and just wanted to get it over with.
I disagree with Zuwadza and Miramon - and I even think what Ubisoft did was pretty clever. Bear in mind you’re playing from the perspective of two different characters with two completely different outlooks on their own purpose. Consider further what the Animus is and how it works - you’re reliving a chosen person’s memory. We’ve all seen Rashomon and Memento, memory is not an objective record. What they’re doing, I think, is showing you how the same people and events can appear to be completely different based on the baggage you’re carrying. I think it’s pretty cool.
I’ll admit I never thought of it from the unreliable narrator angle, then again most likely neither did the developers.
I think you underestimate the developers. That change is too dramatic to be otherwise.
Well, it’s a thought, but everything about the story and characters and dialogue seems so weak that I find it hard to believe that the radical differences between prologue Templars and main story Templars are meant to show that kind of sophisticated understanding.
So far as I can tell, the sole initial Templar motivation for action in the new world is the recovery of this ancient site. This goal from the prologue appears completely disconnected from the various bits of tyranny and exploitation they are casually dispensing – for fun, as it were – throughout the rest of the story.
Miramon, over and over through the story Haytham and the other templars state outright that their purpose is to bring order - that humanity cannot be trusted with complete freedom, and that their goal is provide guidance. They are convinced they’re the good guys. And with what happens in the late game, between Connor and George Washington, there’s an argument to be made that nobody is completely on the side of the angels. To be honest, you guys sound like you’ve made up your mind that the story sucks and won’t be persuaded otherwise.
Yes, they do say it; so do the ridiculous wooden villains in the earlier games. But what they actually seem to do is bring chaos, and they do it in the stupidest and bloodiest ways, too, and some of them are little more than blood-simple lunatics.
I’m sure that some of the writers at some points want to give a nuanced and interesting view of the conflict of order and liberty*; but wherever that gets in the way of what they might have thought of as fun gameplay, they throw that away, and concentrate on childish villainy; either that or many of the writers just never got the memo.
*Of course the conventional view of the tension between political virtues is between equality and liberty; order as an abstract concept can just be replaced with “fascism” as a political ideal as far as the Templars are concerned, so it makes it very clear which side are the bad guys at all times.
I’ll just add that the actions of the Templars being performed in the “stupidest and bloodiest ways” are seen from the perspective of Connor, who is shown to have a rather direct and simple morality.
And this is neither the time or the place, but an argument can be made for the Templars’ perspective. They do not serve the colonies or the crown; they are trying to keep a powder keg situation maintained. The assassins want freedom at all costs. Sounds good, but that’s a razor’s edge to walk over a gaping abyss. Of course neither side really seems to pay the least heed to the cost in human life, but that seems to be a constant in history.
As an unrelated side note, one of the most interesting things I learned from this game was that the Assassin’s exist without an agenda. They were created with the sole purpose of being a check against the Templars’ agenda. Basically the Assassins are nothing but trolls.
Whatever other issues with the plot/script, the difference in the portrayal of the Templars between Haythem and Connor was, indeed, a purposeful narrative device based on character POV. Shot a quick DM to main AC writer Corey May, and his basic reply:
“Yes. Exaggerated to make a point. Maybe went a bit too far. But Lee was also known for being short-tempered and un-charismatic.”
I’ll admit, I fully expected somebody to come back with evidence that I was crazy. Validation feels … weird.
Interesting. It just came off as comical and overwrought to me at the time, but I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the consequences of the change of perspective from the Haytham to Connor.
Dude, death of the author. Let’s get some Barthes up in here.
There are certainly a lot of conveniently-placed crates and horizontal flagpoles and handy (if otherwise useless) wooden beams sticking out of the side of every buiding!
Also, unreliable narrators! Come on, the kids love that these days, right?
Ugh, I started playing through this on PC yesterday, and I’m in awe of how terrible the story missions are. I’m only a little ways in (sequence 3) but I’ve already come up against several missions with insta-fail conditions for being detected. Why would developers do that these days? It’s a terrible idea now, and it was a terrible idea back in the day. Compounding the issue is the fact that Ass Creed 3’s stealth is pretty poor and unreliable. Oops, I accidentally jumped onto the ledge instead of into the hay, time to go way back to the last poorly placed checkpoint! Oops, that character turned around right before I was going to stab him in the back, time to go way back to the last checkpoint. Hope you’re looking forward to hearing this conversation 10 times, because that’s how many tries it’s gonna take you before you can stumble through this base without getting seen!
So much fun!