Assassin's Creed 3 Catch-All

Montalban wrote:

Which sequence is that, by the way, where you should stop if you want to keep trading/hunting/exploring? I'm at 7 or 8 right now.

Like previous AC games, you are able to continue play after the end of the primary storyline to do sidequests and stuff.

Assassin's N*gga 3

Linked because it is SO NSFW, but it is hilarious, especially the songs!

BadKen wrote:

Assassin's N*gga 3

Linked because it is SO NSFW, but it is hilarious, especially the songs!

Too funny! I wish there was a setting you could toggle to make the whole game like that.

Played a bit more. Now officially in sequence 9 and just ran around the frontier doing a couple of homestead missions.

I'm kinda bummed that I've got all these recipes like double holster and these great pistols... yet I can't craft them. I'm in Sequence 9. 9. Just for emphasis... 9. Like there are only 12 sequences and I haven't been able to craft a single upgrade. Same pistol pouch, arrows, everything. Not a single thing of benefit to Connor can I craft.

That's just BS. Within 30 minutes of playing Far Cry 3 I was already skinning animals and crafting extra pouches, wallets and everything else.

BlackSabre wrote:

Played a bit more. Now officially in sequence 9 and just ran around the frontier doing a couple of homestead missions.

I'm kinda bummed that I've got all these recipes like double holster and these great pistols... yet I can't craft them. I'm in Sequence 9. 9. Just for emphasis... 9. Like there are only 12 sequences and I haven't been able to craft a single upgrade. Same pistol pouch, arrows, everything. Not a single thing of benefit to Connor can I craft.

That's just BS. Within 30 minutes of playing Far Cry 3 I was already skinning animals and crafting extra pouches, wallets and everything else.

But hey, how about that sweet Orrery? Eh? Eh?

The crafting should definitely be more front-loaded so you can enjoy your creations longer.

BadKen wrote:

Assassin's N*gga 3

Linked because it is SO NSFW, but it is hilarious, especially the songs!

I think that just ruined the naval combat parts. I don't think I'm going to be able to stop myself from singing "I'm on a Boat" whenever I play those parts now...

cube wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Assassin's N*gga 3

Linked because it is SO NSFW, but it is hilarious, especially the songs!

I think that just ruined the naval combat parts. I don't think I'm going to be able to stop myself from singing "I'm on a Boat" whenever I play those parts now...

You weren't already signing that before...?

And done.

General impressions:

Spoiler:

For a game about assassinating people there's very little of it. A lot of the gadgets are unfortunately superfluous and were never used. Chase sequences with fail states is outright {ableist slur}. Getting Synced 100% is tedious, they present interesting challenges at times, but also can make you rush instead of taking a more methodical playstyle. More often then not it turns into guessing what the designers wanted you to do, rather than what might seem like a more fun approach. Horses suck in the frontier, stick to the trail.

Ships are awesome. Makes me want a game that fleshed out and all about ships. I loved how stupidly fun tree running was. Firstly, because its so ridiculous when you think about it, how its slower than running on the ground, and for missions you could see the exact path you needed to take to kill some brit in the middle of an army. That said its always fun to rain death arrows, rope darts and air assassinations from above.

All in all, not as fun as Assassin's Creed 2 or Brotherhood. The fighting is a lot better, but the game still bogged down with bizarre time wasters that only the neurotic completionist would love or slog through.

Thinking between playing Hitman or Far Cry.

Multiplayer beginners tips

WingspanTT does a commentary on a new players film. Some very basic stuff but things that often trip me up.

Holy f*ck, Terry and Godfrey are the laziest goddamn lumberers I have every tried to analyze.

Godfrey: "Long day. Looooong day!"
Connor: "Yes, a long day of napping, smoking your pipe and eating apples."

I finished the main quest on my 2nd playthrough, and I have everything I need for the Completionist achievement except the Encyclopedia of the Common Man and winning £500 in the games. I may never get that game one, though... the games just aren't that fun to me. Especially Nine Men's Morris, which, as I discovered when I looked it up, is a solved game that should always end in a draw, like Tic Tac Toe.

The most fun I've had in the game so far was getting the Jäger Bomb achievement, combined with the brawler challenge of disarming 10 Jägers and killing them with their own weapon.

Well I spent a bit of time playing over the weekend and actually enjoyed it a bit more. Finally crafted some upgrades (not that I needed them - 40 bullets? I hardly use 8) and did a bunch more homestead missions. Sequence 9 is quite enjoyable. Have my full set of assassin's and spent a lot of time cleaning up New York.

Probably going to power through the next few sequences just so I can finish it, then go do the other side stuff after.

I'm into Sequence 10 right now, just finished the naval mission.

Looks like I failed one of the "save to guys in the stocks" Liberation missions in Boston, and it dropped from my map. Finally spend some time wandering the north end and stumbled on where it had relocated, so I've finally got a full compliment of 6 recruits.

I put in about 8 hours this weekend. Most of my time was exploring, Homestead missions, conversations, fort crashing, and crafting. And then when I'd run out of things to do, I would "reluctantly" go and do the next story mission. Anyone else feel this way? I'm having way more fun with the optional things than I am with the main story. And maybe its because the optional items don't have crazy optional sync parameters that give me that stupid "dunk" sound when I miss them.

I will say this, the multi is still as fun as ever. I'd wager even more so with the addition of Wolfpack. It was a bonus XP weekend too, so I got up to level 38, and purchased all of my must-have abilities. Now it's time for some crafting.

I'm not usually an achievement whore, but I'm rather proud of this:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/HZ23wl.png)

I wish I could be bothered but... meh. Maybe after my ME trilogy runthrough on PS3 and Dragonborn and Dishonored are done I will go for a completionist runthrough. Probably not but maybe.

McIrishJihad wrote:

I'm into Sequence 10 right now, just finished the naval mission.

Looks like I failed one of the "save to guys in the stocks" Liberation missions in Boston, and it dropped from my map. Finally spend some time wandering the north end and stumbled on where it had relocated, so I've finally got a full compliment of 6 recruits.

I put in about 8 hours this weekend. Most of my time was exploring, Homestead missions, conversations, fort crashing, and crafting. And then when I'd run out of things to do, I would "reluctantly" go and do the next story mission. Anyone else feel this way? I'm having way more fun with the optional things than I am with the main story. And maybe its because the optional items don't have crazy optional sync parameters that give me that stupid "dunk" sound when I miss them.

I'm pretty sure because the story is pretty garbage. To be honest, when I first got to New York, I lost a whole heap of hours because I was just wrapped up in the world, finding stuff and doing the assassin recruitment missions. It wasn't until I had to go back to the story that I suddenly realised what time it was. That being said, the story is getting a little better now. The middle section seemed pretty crap and boring, but it's rekindled a bit more of my interest in sequence 9.

Finished this today. I didn't have as many crazy bugs as others have mentioned (or on the podcast), but I had 1 hard lock and one stuck in the world reset. The last mission (esp. the chase part) was horrendous, and I made only minimal effort to try to get the various full-sync goals.

As all other AC games, I hated the present-day stuff. I don't think I had to do it at the end, but finding where to put the power sources made me nauseous looking at those bland grey walls and trying to figure out where to go (usually in circles was where I ended up).

Like everyone else, I thought the crafting/equip system was useless. Throughout the game I bought 1 sword upgrade, and that's it. Never really played with the commerce stuff. Did several naval missions.. I thought they were fun and definitely pretty to look at. For some reason, I also liked trying to find the fast travel points in the city.

I did enjoy the homestead and related missions. Even though most were very cheesy, I thought they broke up the monotony. I also liked doing the little liberation missions in the city to get more assassins.

Lastly.. has there been a longer credit roll in the history of video games? I should have timed it, but that must have been at least a 20-minute long credit list with no way to skip. If you're going to do a crawl with credits, maybe don't put one name per line once you get to the 3rd party production / engineering / localization folks. Talk about not respecting my time...

Wow, there is actually some part of a story. It's hidden, but it really is heating up towards the end. Just finished Sequence 10 and the Desmond mission right after. Took em long enough to get to this good part.

I also just wrapped up last night.

I love that I can skip story cinematics, and when I skin an animal, but I can't skip any other cinematics throughout the game. That 45 seconds of Redcoats being marched out of a fort? You gotta watch it all 7 times.

I'm really disappointed in the ending. Not "the worst ending ever" (that special place in my heart is still held by Fable 3), but still bad.

Spoiler:

Juno plans to subjugate humanity, after it is shielded by the finalized "aura" technology that the First Race created. Minerva and Tinia spent the last few thousand years coaxing civilization to sprout after the First Race was wiped out by a giant solar flare, and would rather see the world burn again and start over than seeing Juno take control. As a player, you have no agency, Desmond touches the pedestal, shields the world, and frees Juno.

To me, this is a huge slap in the face. By freeing Juno, you have saved the world, but have also gone against everything the Assassin's Order has been working towards. Sure, humanity is saved, but only to be the controlled subjects of Juno.

Looking back, I've spent 5 games playing in the shoes of Desmond's ancestors, over the span of 6 years and hundreds of hours, only to give in to what feels like a core tenant of the Templars - a majority of humanity needs to be controlled and does not deserve free choice and free will.

In response to Irish for his discussion of the ending...

Spoiler:

While a majority of the Assassin's actions and such have been to preserve the free will of humans... facing an ELE, a few things get thrown on the backburner to fix later. I actually view the choice to be consistent with the Assassins and their goal of protecting humanity from greater evils. They may not know exactly what the evil of Juno is, but it is likely to be better than a sudden mass destruction of the people and planet as a whole; while Juno is an evil they can fight and oppose... there is of course the problem of Juno knowing who they are, what they can do, etc... but there's not much that can be done about that.

It was certainly kind of a weird ending that wasn't entirely pleasant (again, as with ME3, the main word that comes to mind is that it was so abrupt.), but I think I see where they were going with it, and if nothing else, they've set themselves up for a new Assassin's Creed storyline where we oppose Juno.

In response to both of you.. I'm glad you guys are explaining it to me

I've always felt the AC games to really be independent games where I run around in historical settings killing people and running on buildings. Minerva, Juno, Abstergo.. after playing 4 of the 5 games, I still have no clue what any of that stuff is or means.

Carlbear95 wrote:

In response to both of you.. I'm glad you guys are explaining it to me

I've always felt the AC games to really be independent games where I run around in historical settings killing people and running on buildings. Minerva, Juno, Abstergo.. after playing 4 of the 5 games, I still have no clue what any of that stuff is or means.

So all those god names (Minerva, Tinia, Juno) are members of The First Race.

Abstergo is the modern-day corporate front for the Templars.

The formula for most of the AC games has been that the first 95% is cool historical killing stuff, and the last 5% is the meta-story that connects the previous game and the next game. The Main Story summary over at wikipedia is actually quite good.

Interesting article about the tech behind the naval battle scenes in AC3:

http://fxguide.com/featured/assassin...

Nice, finally a little talk of the story over how disappointed folks have been.

First off, I'd say from my experience, that this installment has been about the story in the present the most out of the entire series. Connor's arc was a fun backdrop for playing AC in, but I kinda didn't really care too much as the urgency of finding the artifact in the past for the situation in the present was much more compelling to me. Maybe it's bad writing, I dunno, I just tuned out during the Connor sequences way more than the Desmond ones, so I was always a bit "wait, why am I killing this guy again?" Also keep in mind that every AC game has had an abrupt ending with some sort of epilogue.

I'm in Demosthenes' camp on the ending interpretation, but I'd add: that they did an excellent job of really blurring the lines between the perceived dichotomy of the Assassins and Templars. They've taken the standard Good vs. Evil trope and really upped the Gray Area factor.

Spoiler:

Starting out playing as Haytham builds the start of a sense of trust with his character, doing the same types of missions as previous games, the only difference is which faction you're doing it for. Then the whole chapter where he and Connor are working together, not only do their goals overlap, Haytham's dialog with him about the respective creeds of each group is so great about blurring the line between them even more. They want the same basic outcome - survival of the human race - but they just want to achieve it by different means. There was also a lot of dialog from Connor/Desmond about teaming up with the Templars throughout the game, so that by the time that ending comes, there's been a lot of doubt planted in Desmond's mind.

Also, I kinda got the impression that while Juno would imprison mankind somehow, it never seemed that she would spare the Templars either. Like, I don't think she was talking to the Templars like Minerva was to the Assassins, as a kind of 'spirit guide' or what have you. So basically it was either save all of humanity right then and there, or hope that enough people would be spared to start over from scratch. Not a great choice.

I quietly wonder if they originally had a choice for the player to make, but after the ME3 fiasco, they took that out and replaced it with that slide show that was so similar to the Extended Cut endings. Might explain why it's so rough around the edges.

I'm with you Nel re: Haytham.

Spoiler:

This was the first AC game where I felt "maybe the Templars aren't that bad after all...". Basically, all the Sequence-ending baddies up until Haytham had me questioning which way I would really be leaning.

But then coming to Haytham, and his DISDAIN for "freedom", referring to humanity as "sheep" - I had no trouble pressing X on that quicktime event.

Charles in the end felt like a patsy and fall guy. Chasing and killing him just felt like tying off loose ends.

McIrishJihad wrote:

I'm with you Nel re: Haytham.

Spoiler:

This was the first AC game where I felt "maybe the Templars aren't that bad after all...". Basically, all the Sequence-ending baddies up until Haytham had me questioning which way I would really be leaning.

But then coming to Haytham, and his DISDAIN for "freedom", referring to humanity as "sheep" - I had no trouble pressing X on that quicktime event.

Charles in the end felt like a patsy and fall guy. Chasing and killing him just felt like tying off loose ends.

Spoiler:

Whereas to me, Charles was really what had me against the Templars this time. He went from a kind of bumbling but loyal assistant to crazy mofo when you switch from Haytham to Conner. It was a little terrifying how much he changed in attitude and appearance. Makes me wonder how much Haytham's views were skewing his perception of Charles.

Hilarious nature game play video:

http://www.gamespot.com/assassins-cr...

Well I finished it. Rather fitting that I finish it on 12-12-12

Interesting. Not sure how I feel about it. It's late, I'll sleep and then gather thoughts later. My general feeling is that it was ok. Not a great game but it wasn't crap either.