I don’t care for it as I want to just get sucked into whatever time period the game is in. It feels like a commercial break to me. It’s really not a big deal, but it adds zero value to the games for me.
Seriously, what’s wrong with you? My sincere apologies for having an opinion that you don’t share.
I accept your apology!
Fuck you.
No candy for you!
(Ok, maybe just a teensy piece.)
I’d be all for interweaving narratives but as far as I remember, the modern day stuff was dull. There was less adventuring and suspense and more office buildings. Separately, the first civilisation stuff was only semi-coherent when it showed up as well.
I think we’ve definitely hit on how crazy a task it is to be the creative director or story supervisor for this franchise. I don’t think there’s a way to please all the fans.
I will say this: one of my favorite scenes in ALL AC games happens in one of the modern settings. I think it’s AC 3, where you have to do the skyscraper climb. That was hilariously awesome nonsense, and absolutely triggered by fear of heights in major (mostly fun) ways.
I think by that point I’d started skipping the content. Not sure if brought on by modern sections or AC3 in that case :)
It isn’t skippable in AC3. It’s a story mission though. It might happen later in the game though. I can’t say for sure, and I’m waiting for the 2019 remaster to jump in and play again.
I would be REALLY interested to see stats on how many people spend more than the ABSOLUTE minimum of time in the modern day sequences. I feel like the devs know damn well the number is low because it seems like with each new game they make the modern day sequences more and more optional.
As others have pointed out, the writing quality of the modern day sequences is awful. It was in the early games and it hasn’t gotten much better even in recent games where they are clearly focusing on having a decent story a lot more.
Wow, this game has a pretty strong opening sequence/first hour. I’m hooked already. Can’t wait to play more!
For the record, Kassandra player here.
100% this
The animus is a nice gimmick on paper, but in reality it just destroys immersion. “DESYNCHRONIZED” Who wants to see that upon death? And the horrible modern looking UI they keep showing in player’s face.
Really wish they would just drop it and made honest historical games that actually take place in their historical period.
I mean it does serve several gameplay purposes with some form of justification.
Solves the Grand Theft Auto problem where the protagonist is a mass murdering psychopath in game, but emotionally complicated in narrative
Gives justification to constraints on the open world area
Allows for creation of ‘gamey’ missions or objectives
I genuinely loved the animus glitches of AC brotherhood, and the cryptological puzzles contained. They were fun traversal puzzles, as well as multilayered optional logic ones
It can create in game rewards for climbing to the top of various structures.
So it has served a purpose in game. And it does solve a few problems endemic to true open world games. Because while some people would like Grand Theft Athens, I would not.
What else solves it? Better writing, or at least giving player the option in how to behave.
Plenty open world games handle this well. Even if you do not necessarily build unpassable rivers and mountains around the map, you can simply have the character turn around and have him say something like “I still have something to do here”
That’s not a positive at all though
Fair enough, this one comes down to taste and I admit I liked a bit of that too in the early games, although I would exchange it in a heartbeat for a game without the animus nonsense
All you need is a 2 foot high fence. Nobody can jump or climb those!
My performance issues disappeared over night. Was there a patch? Didn’t see Uplay download anything. Have a steady 60 FPS with Ultra settings except AA and a few others High.
I don’t think the AC series would be nearly as popular w/o the current day framing device. Without that, it’s just a series of historical vignettes that have nothing to do with one another, and while people may still play them, I don’t think their popularity would be nearly what it is today. The modern day narrative gives a reason for the historical stuff to even exist. The Ezio trilogy may have done OK, since those stories all blended into one another, but even those wouldn’t have done as well.
And for the record, the game I liked the least (Unity) had the barest of minimum modern-day story (although it had plenty of other issues as well, so it wasn’t the reason, just a reason it was my least favorite).
Those of you complaining about the modern day stuff in Odyssey: I’m 9 hours in. I haven’t returned to the modern day stuff since I selected my character and Exploration style adventure right at the beginning of the game.
Where are y’all being inundated by this?
True. That’s why no-one buys The Witcher or Elder Scrolls games.