Assassins Creed IV

[Mr Light]

After truly loving the Ezio trilogy and being supremely disappointed with III, it's time for IV! I played a couple hours tonight and it's the same ole same ole, for better or for worse.

I am enjoying the setting a lot more than Colonial America, so that's good... but I still miss the ancient towering cities of the Middle East and Europe!

There's only been one small bit in the modern world, and it's not promising. I'm playing a random new character playing an Abstergo "game" of memories? It sounds like this is not going to advance the Juno story which will be a very bad thing if my unwarranted fears prove true!

 

[RoJoHen]

When they killed off Desmond in the last game, I really wondered who would take up the Assassin mantle. I didn't understand how the story would continue without him. Add that to my opinion that AC3 was just generally a disappointment, and I'm having a hard time giving a shit about this new game. I'm not going to buy it for a while, probably (I think my roommate may have pre-ordered it, so I'll just borrow it from him if that's the case).

I really loved the Ezio trilogy. I loved getting to know his character, as well as Desmond's, over the course of those three games. Now that both of them are gone, I don't even know if I want to keep playing. Connor was the most boring main character ever, and the American Revolution story just wasn't all that interesting.

I agree with you about the setting. I LOVED roaming around ancient Europe. A few friends of mine visited Rome this summer, and they posted a bunch of picture on Facebook. Looking at all of their photos, I immediately got the urge to start assassinating Templars!

 

[Rincewiend]

There's only been one small bit in the modern world, and it's not promising. I'm playing a random new character playing an Abstergo "game" of memories? It sounds like this is not going to advance the Juno story which will be a very bad thing if my unwarranted fears prove true!

You are basically playing You
Sample 17 is dna taken from Subject 17/Desmond's dead body...
Desmond's friends are working undercover to get dirt on what Absterga has done with Desmond's body and the other previous subjects and enlist your help for that...
Been playing since Saturday and overal i like it, could've done a bit more with the pirates helping out when on land though...

 

[Mr Light]

Desmond DIED?! I don't remember that!!! I even read the wikipedia synopsis of III before I started playing and it didn't mention that!!! How did Abstergo get his body? What happened to the dad and the two Assassin techs he was with?!

 

[Rincewiend]

Desmond DIED?! I don't remember that!!! I even read the wikipedia synopsis of III before I started playing and it didn't mention that!!!

Yes, he died as a result of touching the pedestal...

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZBlDPrtHk8[/yt]

How did Abstergo get his body? What happened to the dad and the two Assassin techs he was with?!

That will be explained partially the next time you are "forced" out of the Animus into the present day...

 

[Rincewiend]

BTW, if you are sailing, press right on the d-pad(for console) to change the song the crew are singing...

 

[Rincewiend]

Video showing the rewards for all the collectables...
Skip the animus fragments if you don't care for 100%, it gives nothing...
the bottles only give background about The Sage...
The others add more to the gameplay, like the shanties...

http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/mnpkm4/assassin-s-creed-iv--black-flag-plunder-guide

 

[JarodRussell]

As with the previous game, I'm going to wait a year before I get it. I saved about 100 bucks and got the complete game including all bonuses and DLCs at once.

And I think I'm going to get it for the PS4, not the PS3.

I was a bit disappointed with the present day story in AC3, I think they kind of dropped the ball. The grand temple wasn't that grand. And wasn't he told to find Eva in AC Brotherhood before he could enter the temple? Something along those lines. Assassins Creed 2 keeps being the best of the games.

 

[TheGodBen]

I was never a fan of the modern-day sections of the games, but any hope I had that they would at least make sense was lost when they killed off Kristen Bell's character in Brotherhood because she wanted more money. They turned it into a big cliffhanger and had people speculating for over a year, then they revealed that she was a triple agent that had been working for the Templars all along in some crappy DLC for Revelations. With AC3, they had set the stakes so high that there was no way they were going to finish it in a satisfying way, so I wasn't surprised when I discovered that the way to save the world was to have Desmond press a magical button and randomly die.

I know that some people like the sci-fi element of the games, but I'd rather they just dumped it entirely. I play the AC games for the open world free-running in historical locations, not some crappy sci-fi meta story.

 

[JarodRussell]

Did they really kill off the character because Bell wanted more money? They could have just replaced the voice actor.

 

[TheGodBen]

That's what I had heard, but I can't find any evidence for it now that I look, just speculation. It seems like she was signed up to do 3 games, which were originally supposed to be AC1, AC2, and AC3, but then Ubisoft decided to make it an annual franchise and released Brotherhood, which fulfilled her contract. Either she wanted more money to do more games and Ubisoft dropped her, or she chose not to do more and Ubisoft wrote her out.

As for why they didn't recast the voice, I think Lucy's face may have been based on Kristen's so they might not have had the rights to use it in future games.

 

[Mr Light]

I'm only a few hours into the game, but I have zero interest in the sailing segments. Am I the only one like this? It feels like Zelda Windwaker all over again. Actually, I think I enjoyed the sailing in Windwaker more...

 

[RoJoHen]

I'm only a few hours into the game, but I have zero interest in the sailing segments. Am I the only one like this? It feels like Zelda Windwaker all over again. Actually, I think I enjoyed the sailing in Windwaker more...

I don't mind the sailing so much, but I was never as impressed with it as some people seemed to be in the last game.

I will say that I am enjoying this one a lot more than AC3. The previous game had so much exposition that really slowed things down, and it didn't help that I genuinely didn't care about Connor. He just came across as a whiney brat, and it's hard to feel sympathetic for a character like that.

I'm a few hours into Black Flag, and I still don't know much about this new Edward guy. He's obviously the grandfather or great-grandfather of Connor, so I'm kind of interested to learn how he is going to fit into the greater story.

 

[Mr Light]

Oh this is definitely better than AC3, I really did not get into that game. I just rushed through it to complete the story without doing any side quests. Who wants to run around in a forest instead of the ancient cities of the Middle East?

 

[Rincewiend]

Oh this is definitely better than AC3, I really did not get into that game. I just rushed through it to complete the story without doing any side quests. Who wants to run around in a forest instead of the ancient cities of the Middle East?

I yhought that was fun...
And in this game you will still have tree-runing...
Best gameplay addition to the game series from AC3...
Nice timeperiod for an AC game but the story was indeed not that good...

AC4:
I conquered all the easy and medium forts and i got the diving bell yesterdy...
Might go try and find some of the elite upgrade maps and do some other side-missions before continuing with the story...

 

[TheGodBen]

Who wants to run around in a forest instead of the ancient cities of the Middle East?

I yhought that was fun...
And in this game you will still have tree-runing...
Best gameplay addition to the game series from AC3...

Yeah, I liked the Frontier in AC3, but I'm a sucker for rural areas in games for some reason. It was the cities that I was disappointed in; 18th century Boston and New York just couldn't compete with Renaissance Venice or Constantinople.

 

[Lonemagpie]

What I wonder is how is it as an AC game - does it fit with the franchise well, or is it just (as I suspect) a potentially great pirate game that will suffer from having some been forced into an existing series, and from having those bits bolted on...

 

[Rincewiend]

What I wonder is how is it as an AC game - does it fit with the franchise well, or is it just (as I suspect) a potentially great pirate game that will suffer from having some been forced into an existing series, and from having those bits bolted on...

It's AC3 with a free-roaming/sailing world...
It works pretty good...
Though the only really piratey thing you do is attack Spanish and English ships and sea-forts...
The on-land part of the gameplay is very much the same as that from the last couple of games...

 

[Mr Light]

I've been playing it 5-10 hours and thus far it has extremely little to do with the Assassins and Templars and the modern day story could very easily have nothing at all to do with the AC storyline.

Now that my ship is a little more upgraded the sailing is a little less annoying.

 

[RoJoHen]

I've been playing it 5-10 hours and thus far it has extremely little to do with the Assassins and Templars and the modern day story could very easily have nothing at all to do with the AC storyline.

That's something that I'm really wondering about myself. Edward Kenway is obviously a relative of Desmond, which is why we're getting his memories. But I'm trying to figure out how this is possible.

Altair led to Ezio, who were distant relatives of Desmond. But according to this new story, Edward just happened upon an Assassin and stole his clothes. I find it extremely coincidental that Edward would share lineage with Desmond's line of Assassins.

AC3 had almost too much exposition explaining Connor and his family history. This game has almost no exposition, and I'm wondering when Edward's story is going to fit into the greater Assassin's Creed plot.