Interesting. The deeper I get into the game (power level 220+ now, in Northumbria), the more interesting the metaplot becomes. The Order, its relationships with the various “gods” of antiquity, the way Isu genetics pop up in otherwise plain humans, and Eivor’s ultimate role in some bigger drama seem to be getting more attention as I go along. I agree the overarching concern of those outside the Animus is more apparent and they are much more driven this time around. I’m not sure I would say that the message is that what happens in the Animus isn’t important, rather that the possibilities that people in the here and now have outside the Animus were determined by what happened back then. In this sense, what you do shapes what will be.
Or, it would, if you actually had any choice in anything. Which, pretty much, you don’t.
You’re one of those guys who doesn’t like reading boardgame rules, right? :)
I loved the dice game, and I’ll definitely buy the physical version once I can actually play boardgames with people again. But you do have to figure out that it’s all about the god favor tokens! There’s an entry in the codex that gives you the basics, but if @Wendelius nutshell didn’t do it for you, I doubt the codex entry will help much.
The only thing I was a bit unclear on was the timing of the god powers. There were numbers for when they fired off, but I don’t think I understood how those were implemented. I suspect it was an initiative order among different god powers?
There’s a cool twist with the outside world and how it relates to the animus. And vice versa. However, I’m pretty sure you have to do all the shire quest arcs before it happens. They don’t really do anything with the twist, but it does seem like a set up for later games? That Ubisoft will like as not just ignore.
That said, I haven’t wrapped up all the side activities yet. In fact, after completing the storyline, I haven’t even figured out how Eivor dies in New England. That’s one of the earliest plot points they lay out, and I still don’t know if that’s supposed to be some sort of story development.
OK, that gets my interest. I was thinking with the last few games that they were sort of quietly pushing the ‘present day’ stuff into a closet, kind of a nothing-to-see-here move. I always enjoyed it personally, with all its hokum sci-fi and corporate espionage.
Pleased to see they addressed the tearing on Series X as well as providing a quality vs performance toggle. Not sure what quality means though since they reference that as the default for Series S - does the Series X get extra quality/fidelity for its locked 30fps?
Best font ever (seriously, it looks great!) Too bad you can’t do anything but write COMB on a comb, because the second best thing after naming a thing is writing what it is on the thing.
Actually, I do read board game rules. The basics just didn’t do it for me. I don’t get what dice I want to put forward, and I never understand what happens after each side rolls. How dice disappear or whatever makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Well, it partly depends on what dice the other guy is putting forward. It’s almost always better to be in the rounds when the other guy rolls first because that means you can react to what he’s doing.
As for dice disappearing, they don’t! Each players gets up to three rolls. After each roll, a player can keep some, all, or none of the dice, locking them in. After each player has had the opportunity for three rolls, the dice are lined up in the order they’re resolved. But they never disappear. You always get all your dice.
I guess this depends on what you mean by internal political reasons, but the idea that the Norse were not well aware of the situation and conditions in the lands they attacked is definitely not accurate. In culture and values, there was not much difference between an Anglo-Saxon earl and a Norse Jarl - the main differences was that one worshipped Christ while the other (maybe) worshipped Odin, and that while the brutality, raids and plundering of the former were isolated to his neighbors, the Norse Jarl potentially controlled ships which made the entire North sea his neighbors.
So when the Saxon (or Irish or Carolingian) Kingdoms were weak, it was of intense interest to the Norse, who exploited it the exact same way that those people themselves exploited their neighbors in moments of weakness. The Norse were playing politics the same way as everyone else did during the time - they just had a significantly longer reach.
If Anders Lundt Hansen gets his book Sølv, Blod, & Kongemagt (Silver, Blood, and Royalty) translated to English sometime, I would strongly recommend it. He pretty comprehensively demolishes the Viking myth by ignoring the Church propaganda and looking at the Norse expansion in the context of the historical period.
In English literature (ie, British) the Viking period has generally been divided into the “migration” period and the “dynastic” period, if a bit unofficially. So you get settlements in Iceland, Greenland, Ireland, (not Wales?), Scotland, Normandy, Russia and the Baltic early on. Why or what does he have to say about this division?
Because the thing is that the migration period happens during these periods of weakness, but it looks like migrations of families or tribal groups, not deliberate planning, so it’s hard to see if these things are incidental or causative, or how coherent early Viking society was vs. later on.
Have any of you had your johms…jhomsv… your lieutenant recruited by another player? Mine has been recruited 3 times but you only get 100 silver each time, meh.
Anyway every time I see one available to hire I check to see if it’s from any of you on here, but no luck so far. I shall only pledge my pittance of silver to fellow QT3ers!
