OH, now see dammit! You bring up a good point. AC3 was one of the better ACs for base building. My vision of that fun aspect is blurred by my hatred of the story mission. Also, AC3 introduced the new boat engine I think? And that led to AC4, which made piracy “da bomb” So, there is that as well.
Instead of continuing my adventures as Haytham Kenway in Boston, since I was coming back to the game after such a long time, I decided to start over.
(Funny sidenote: Randomly starting a 6 year old Assassin’s Creed game probably meant I would be the only one on the forum, doing so, right? Nope. The first message I saw when I started the game was that @WhollySchmidt was also playing the game).
I’d forgotten just how good the intro to AC3 is. John De Lancie has such a compelling delivery, that even as he’s spouting off about an Apple of Eden and the end of the world, and assassins and templars, you can’t help but be drawn in and get excited. Damn. More games should have John De Lancie as the narrator, damn it.
His voice is in Origins. :)
Hah! My newest roommate has been gaming, playing whatever I happen to have installed on my Xbox and PS4. The Xbox is mostly for Rock Band, but I did have AC3 installed from another stalled effort to finish the game about a year ago.
Seeing him play it has me motivated to finally complete it (and move on to Black Flag), I’m at about 80% now.
I was also surprised when I got the notification that you were playing last night.
I still believe this is one of the best of the AC series, though it is lacking in real cool, tall things to climb.
You gents better be 100%ing the homestead. Best part of the game imho.
So far, I have to admit that Haytham Kenway is the best of the AC protagonists. Altair was decent, I never really liked Ezio. Haytham has a gravitas. I like him better than Old Ezio from Revelations so far.
Are there plans to remaster this game for current consoles? I feel like it’s due.
I do own it on Steam… I wonder if I can Steam Link this game and play it with controller.
Haytham is like playing colonial-era 007. I still remember the WTF moment of discovering his tre allegiance, along with the achievement that popped up that said, “how do you like them apples?”
Of course, that’s why I wasn’t done 10 hours ago.
I’m enjoying it. I haven’t played every AC game, but the ones I’ve played, I’ve played in order. So this is still the most advanced AC game I’ve tried!
What I “miss” in AC3 is playing entries when they were still current gen and looked “good”. This is not a pretty game in retrospect. It’s still technically impressive for the X360, but it’s so artistically bland—all washed out in bland browns and greens.
My roommate has a lot more time to play than I do, so he’s already mostly completed Black Flag. When I’d walk through the living room I’d just stop and appreciate how vibrant and colorful that game looks by comparison.
Selfishly, I haven’t told him that I also bought Unity, Syndicate, and Origins during recent sales, because I want to catch up and play them for myself first!
I haven’t played the game since release, so my memories of how it looked would probably be in for a shock if I popped it back in. I thought about maybe picking up The Tyranny of George Washington dlc, but honestly I’d probably never get around to actually playing it so I’ll probably just let it lie.
I do still prefer the smaller, more self-contained sailing segments in AC3 over the open(ish) world of Black Flag and Rogue. It’s taken me some time to come around to this way of thinking, but open world isn’t always better. You need a way bigger ocean than those games were able to provide - it’s like if you created a Star Trek game but only let you cruise around inside our solar system - may as well just have a menu that pops you straight to hot points. Still, mine is by far the minority opinion, I get that. I just like to rant every so often.
I agree with this. But should we be blaming Ubisoft for this, or the real life people who built Boston and made it looks so artistically bland? ;P
I blame the animus.
I played this for a few hours this weekend. I’m really enjoying it. It’s surprising that no one talks about this portion of the game, considering it’s quite substantial. All you ever hear about with AC3 is that you get to play as some kid. Hardly anyone talks about this Haytham Kenway portion of the game. So I keep expecting it to come to an end, where I’ll stop playing Haytham any minute now, but no, it just keeps going.
I’m also taking a few breaks from the main story just to explore Boston a little. I love the little historical notes from the guy in the future. They are so fun to read, so well written and always worth your time. And I love how if it wasn’t for those notes, none of these buildings would be particularly noteworthy. In AC: Brotherhood, most of the historical buildings and places with notes attached to them were eye-catching. In Boston, most of these buildings just completely blend in and are just like any other church, or any other two story brick building in the city, which I find hilarious for some reason.
By the way, it’s so refreshing to play an AC game where for once I’m not in that awful Assassin’s hoodie that blended in perfectly in the first game, but never quite looked inconspicuous since then. I love that I’m dressed to 9s here as an English Gentleman, complete with a tri-corner hat.
Well you’ll be back to a hoodie soon enough. The coats still look appropriate enough, but the hood is still there, screaming “this dude is up to something!”
The all white outfit kind of stands out too. Plus the fact that you’re carrying more weapons on your person than a space marine.
There are plenty of reasonably colored variations you can buy. Which then get replaced with the standard white in every cutscene, but hey, it’s a start!
There must be some in-game mechanic that I don’t understand yet. At the Boston Neck, Haytham is supposed to free three sets of prisoners without getting detected. One of the prisoners is on a ship, and right in front of those prisoners is a guard who doesn’t move, and is just constantly looking at the prisoners. And another guard who is moving back and forth near him
Now, I’m dressed up as one of them, so I can walk around, but do nothing suspicious. If I try to kill the guard walking back and forth, the other guard who is facing the prisoners hears it and turns around, and I desynchronize since I got spotted. If I kill the the guard facing the prisoners, the guard who is patrolling notices and I desynchronize.
Maybe for the guard on patrol, he needs to be at the maximum distance away and the other guard won’t turn around? I wish it was more clear within the game what I’m doing wrong, and what I need to do.
I forget, can you still whistle in AC3? Could you lure the guard out of earshot or line of sight from the other guards and then kill them?