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So I played Assassin’s Creed Origins. Now playing AC3 and there’s more story in the first twenty mins than all of Origins
- Thread starter SolVanderlyn
- Start date
Don't play the next two then, origins had the most focused narrative of the new 3. But I agree I will gladly take a shorter and more focused narrative than all the bloat were getting now. I prefer everything about the old style with the exception of maybe combat. The new combat isn't as "real" but it's more fun
Don't worry, Valhalla has more story than all the past games put together lol
BTW Origins' minimalistic storytelling was really welcome at the time. It's not that it doesn't have /any/, it's that it's told in really short bursts. It fit the game perfectly.
Not true after Valhalla.
BTW Origins' minimalistic storytelling was really welcome at the time. It's not that it doesn't have /any/, it's that it's told in really short bursts. It fit the game perfectly.
Not true after Valhalla.
My least favourite of the series. Couldn't even tell you anything about the story in AC3 aside from the first guy you play is actually the baddie. After 2 & 4 Origins is probably my favourite, though it does flit between that and Syndicate.
Everything out of the animus has fucking sucked in this series since day 1 (and I say this as someone who has been playing since day 1). It is such a blessing that the more modern games limit this time. I think in Odyssey it was like 30 hours into the game before there was any time in the real world or something. Thank god.
(I have basically no recollection of AC3 itself though since that was so long ago)
(I have basically no recollection of AC3 itself though since that was so long ago)
Origins is still my favorite in the series. There is certainly a lot of story in the beginning of AC3 but the 2 hours prologue is pretty boring. I'd argue that the story of AC3 is pretty stale over all. The one thing I really love about the game is that it has some of the best Animus corridor confessions. Still I love every AC game including 3 and I just got the Platinum for it this year :)
Nah, the problem of AC3 story is that is trash and never develops naturally through the whole game, something that Origins and Odyssey do.
And older and some of the after games but still classic AC have also better told storeis than the trash fire that 3 is. Except maybe the story in 1 and the order of the story and historical events in Unity, becuase of the forced multiplayer that makes everything go to shit.
And older and some of the after games but still classic AC have also better told storeis than the trash fire that 3 is. Except maybe the story in 1 and the order of the story and historical events in Unity, becuase of the forced multiplayer that makes everything go to shit.
I really like AC3 and have replayed it like 3 or 4 times but I also say Mass Effect 1 and Far Cry 2 are the best in their respective series' so certainly in the minority I would assume.
While I agree the story has felt less important in the more recent games, I prefer the new style of Assassin's Creed.
Fully agree op, the start of AC3 is truly great.
I liked AC 1 - 3 because they had way more plot, character and purpose. Since 3's big reveal I feel the games have structurally fallen apart and despite some good characters (Bayek and Kassandra) just feel like hollow experiences without the thread tieing them all together.
I liked AC 1 - 3 because they had way more plot, character and purpose. Since 3's big reveal I feel the games have structurally fallen apart and despite some good characters (Bayek and Kassandra) just feel like hollow experiences without the thread tieing them all together.
My only memory of AC3 is being spotted and then swarmed by like an endless hoard of dudes that followed you for miles.
This person nailed it. Patrice & Corey May were the glue that binded the series together. Now the games are soulless.
I'm going through AC Origins right now and the story seems very... sparse.
The game starts off explaining literally nothing, except you kill one of 5 dudes you're looking to kill. And like 5-8 hours later, you've killed all 5, so you're thinking what's next? They don't do a good job of revealing the full scope of the game and it leaves you feeling a bit aimless every time that scope widens. It's discouraging.
The game starts off explaining literally nothing, except you kill one of 5 dudes you're looking to kill. And like 5-8 hours later, you've killed all 5, so you're thinking what's next? They don't do a good job of revealing the full scope of the game and it leaves you feeling a bit aimless every time that scope widens. It's discouraging.
Their kinda like sheriffs or cops, basically they uphold the law and give justice. I can 100% guarantee they explained what it meant and even if they didn't just use some critical thinking lol.
I thought it had a great story.
My favorite part was when I as the protagonist defeated the villain by uninstalling the game after uncovering Ubisoft's plot to pad the game out with a bunch of boring fetch quests, and lock the real quests behind level requirements in an effort to get you to spend actual money to get around the boring fetch quests.
I'll admit, they almost had me at the part where they tried to hide their plot by calling it an "RPG".
My favorite part was when I as the protagonist defeated the villain by uninstalling the game after uncovering Ubisoft's plot to pad the game out with a bunch of boring fetch quests, and lock the real quests behind level requirements in an effort to get you to spend actual money to get around the boring fetch quests.
I'll admit, they almost had me at the part where they tried to hide their plot by calling it an "RPG".
Yeah, while all the gameplay systems are super tight and polished in Origins, the story is just...clearly unfinished. Probably the most obviously unfinished AAA game ive played. Everything feels like a bad first draft. Which is a bummer, bc that setting is so good
I still consider AC3 one of my best AC experiences, although I'm still a big fan of the series.
It's like the story (in all 3 new AC games) is written for a much smaller game, like the old ones. It's spread too thin. Of course the main plot takes a backseat in the player's mind if you have to roam around a country for dozens of hours, clearing fort after fort, helping local lords and peasants alike. Also doesn't help that the story isn't even only spread out over the 50 - 80 hour main game, but continues straight into the DLC (at least Origins and Odyssey were guilty of this).
It's like the story (in all 3 new AC games) is written for a much smaller game, like the old ones. It's spread too thin. Of course the main plot takes a backseat in the player's mind if you have to roam around a country for dozens of hours, clearing fort after fort, helping local lords and peasants alike. Also doesn't help that the story isn't even only spread out over the 50 - 80 hour main game, but continues straight into the DLC (at least Origins and Odyssey were guilty of this).
I actually liked AC Origins story the most out of any Ubisoft game (or AC game) in recent memory, probably going back to AC2. It's not good (and the historical tourism is bad, but better than in Odyssey) but I like that it's a pretty thin story, the game is the quietest of the modern AC games which I appreciate. It would be even better if it had less story -- cut the animus stuff, ditch the cringe-y ending, etc.
Yess, Connor is still one of my favorites. Such a badass story he has.
Still bummed they wont return to the older formulas (with improvements).
I finished Origins, Odyssey, and Unity in 2020, in that order. Because of the condensed nature of Unity, the story is upfront while Origins spreads it across the game more, as you said, its the lack of linearity that makes it seem that way. I do love Bayek's story and his purpose. I thought the ending was great also.
They use the stories in the non-Egyptian cities to lay out the role of the Medjay. There's definitely a few missions where they explicitly bring it up.
OP
OP
I thought it was pretty obvious what Medjay were, and if you can't figure it out yourself Layla flat out compares them to sheriffs at one point. What really confused me was the intro, which explains next to nothing, to the point where I was certain my game had glitched or I had skipped a cutscene or two by mistake. Aya's role also seems bizarre. You get her for two or three nearly identical ship battles, the relevance of which is barely explained, and then you play as her during the end sequence for some reason?? It's like they planned a lot more for her, and it all got cut. You can also say that about a lot of the story in general.
I really like Connor in 3. He might not have Ezio's charm or Haytham's darker charisma, but he has a good heart and a warrior spirit, as well as interesting interpersonal relationships with his mentors and enemies. I think a lot of people love witty, charming rogueish types, whereas Connor is relatively straight-laced and subdued, which soured him on people looking for Ezio 2.0. I love his earnestness and drive and find his stoic but good hearted nature charming in its own much different way.
I just really wish they tried harder with the modern games. Some kind of vision would be nice. I have yet to play a few games (Syndicate, Valhalla, pretty much every DLC) but while they do make some sort of attempt to tell a story it really lacks a heart like the Desmond arc did. Switching protagonists is fine, but they seemed to have no idea what to do once Desmond's story was over and it really, really shows. Makes the series feel kinda soulless by comparison to what it used to be.
I really like Connor in 3. He might not have Ezio's charm or Haytham's darker charisma, but he has a good heart and a warrior spirit, as well as interesting interpersonal relationships with his mentors and enemies. I think a lot of people love witty, charming rogueish types, whereas Connor is relatively straight-laced and subdued, which soured him on people looking for Ezio 2.0. I love his earnestness and drive and find his stoic but good hearted nature charming in its own much different way.
I just really wish they tried harder with the modern games. Some kind of vision would be nice. I have yet to play a few games (Syndicate, Valhalla, pretty much every DLC) but while they do make some sort of attempt to tell a story it really lacks a heart like the Desmond arc did. Switching protagonists is fine, but they seemed to have no idea what to do once Desmond's story was over and it really, really shows. Makes the series feel kinda soulless by comparison to what it used to be.
AC Origins is a 70 hour Game with a Story that would support maybe 12 hours of actual Gameplay. The rest is a huge ass chunk of filler.
And the Game starts with this Intro
This is so utterly uneven, randomly skips a year in one minute and you don't even know wtf is happening at the moment, and watchting it now, i get it, but there is no clever explanation thematically why the Game had to start this way, because there well isn't any.
I don't think there was a real vision for the series, beyond maybe it ending for good with 3. 3 was clearly a rushed ending to Desmond's story after the Ezio trilogy dragged the plot out unnecessarily with two expansion packs turned sequels that weren't officially numbered.
Origins and beyond is almost a soft reboot, even though it isn't at all, and for the better imo. It jettisons the albatross that became the overarching story from 3 until Origins. Black Flag and the others really floundered around with the present day stuff.
Origins and beyond is almost a soft reboot, even though it isn't at all, and for the better imo. It jettisons the albatross that became the overarching story from 3 until Origins. Black Flag and the others really floundered around with the present day stuff.
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I've played them all up to Origins, and honestly, AC3 is my favourite. I did come late to playing it mind, at least 2 years after it was released, so I don't know if there were bugs worked out by then. Story wise it is in my opnion the best, and I really, really love the setting.
The storytelling in Origins was terrible. Just a bunch of meandering until the end where you form the Assassins I guess. The central conflict felt lacking in drive.
Just finished playing 3. I'd agree with those calling it the worst (1 can be forgiven for being the first entry in the series and getting a lot right).
The story is a real mixed bag. The first thing that is really weird about it is how many introductions it has
- 1. Desmond rolls up at First One/Precursor/Forerunner (damn what are they called?) site and climbs around a bit.
2. Runs test simulation in the animus where you climb over some abstract blocks.
3. Do another climbing mission in an opera house with dad character.
4. Now dad character is travelling on a ship (but we're not getting the ship tutorial yet)
5. Now we're doing missions as dad for a while, but he can't do any of the tree parkour which is the bold new feature - we also get the subquest of Franklin's encyclopedia pages floating around which we won't get to for another 20 year.
6. Now Connor is finally born and we have to play hide and seek with our friends
7. Now something super tragic is happening to motivate our character.
8. Now we're finally getting to put on an assassin's uniform to 'start' the Assassin's Creed game.
Once you've done that the 'open world' structure is also really weird.
1. Boston is small and only has two areas to liberate after you've done the mandatory story liberation - You can collect pages, but these are not fun to chase as most you can pick up in the first second you see them.
2. You don't get to New York until way afterwards and it feel like the story is wrapping up (more on that later) and you (or at least I) have lost the urge to liberate all the zones.
3. You can go to the frontier to hunt but this is fairly boring.
4. You can do homestead missions which are super chill and don't match with the 'quick the world is ending if we don't find the artifact at the end of this quest'
5. You can go out and sail. Some of the sailing missions are actually set-piece action sequences for finding Captain Kidd's treasure which are the most exciting bits of the game but are actually hidden behind finding a whole bunch of generic collectables. The sailing itself is fine, but just feels like a Beta for Black Flag.
6. There's a recruiting assassin's menu-based game - just like in that game Brotherhood, where you were ya'know building a brotherhood, but then Connor seems to spend more of his time playing bowls with lumberjacks than building an actual brotherhood so it feels redundant.
7. Especially as there is also a 'send conveys' to trade goods menu-based game which you have to go back to the homestead to access.
Then it gets really confusing about what the game expects you to do first. I mainlined the missions for a while - since the first 4-5 sequences are the above prelude, I got into that habit. A few sequences later I realized that the reason I was having a hard time in combat was because I still hadn't looked through the shops for a better weapon yet. Found most of those needed to be unlocked from chests around the city, so I did that until I had a second tier weapon, but didn't have money to buy any more. Decided to give the story a break for a while to do some open-world content, but then game told me I'd unlocked that, so I gave it a go, only to get locked into a 'escape from prison' sequence. Having left prision, it then decided it was winter which made exploring the frontier much more difficult. Didn't do the Kidd missions until after I completed the story, so couldn't use the power-up to help with the actual game. Overall, feel like I did everything in the 'wrong order' but a good open-world game shouldn't have a 'wrong order'
There are some good points. I like how it is a bit more nuanced that Brits bad, George Washington good, and stressed the Native Americans and slaves were getting screwed either way. It definitely made a departure from the Ezio games where Constantinople felt a lot like Rome. The Haytham character worked well and I like the idea of doing multiple generations in the same game. The naval missions are mostly fun and something different. I actually liked the future missions as the idea of having the past and present in the same story actually makes it more interesting and this was probably the best done of the Desmond games.
Probably the thing I like most about the game is imagining the voice actor for Haytham down the pub with his mates the night before the audition.
Actor: Got a big role coming up tomorrow.
Mate: Oh really what it for.
Actor: British gentleman assassin. Problem is I'm just not sure how to approach this role.
Mate: Hmm tricks [sips beer]...You know, you don't do a half bad Roger Moore impression
The story is a real mixed bag. The first thing that is really weird about it is how many introductions it has
- 1. Desmond rolls up at First One/Precursor/Forerunner (damn what are they called?) site and climbs around a bit.
2. Runs test simulation in the animus where you climb over some abstract blocks.
3. Do another climbing mission in an opera house with dad character.
4. Now dad character is travelling on a ship (but we're not getting the ship tutorial yet)
5. Now we're doing missions as dad for a while, but he can't do any of the tree parkour which is the bold new feature - we also get the subquest of Franklin's encyclopedia pages floating around which we won't get to for another 20 year.
6. Now Connor is finally born and we have to play hide and seek with our friends
7. Now something super tragic is happening to motivate our character.
8. Now we're finally getting to put on an assassin's uniform to 'start' the Assassin's Creed game.
Once you've done that the 'open world' structure is also really weird.
1. Boston is small and only has two areas to liberate after you've done the mandatory story liberation - You can collect pages, but these are not fun to chase as most you can pick up in the first second you see them.
2. You don't get to New York until way afterwards and it feel like the story is wrapping up (more on that later) and you (or at least I) have lost the urge to liberate all the zones.
3. You can go to the frontier to hunt but this is fairly boring.
4. You can do homestead missions which are super chill and don't match with the 'quick the world is ending if we don't find the artifact at the end of this quest'
5. You can go out and sail. Some of the sailing missions are actually set-piece action sequences for finding Captain Kidd's treasure which are the most exciting bits of the game but are actually hidden behind finding a whole bunch of generic collectables. The sailing itself is fine, but just feels like a Beta for Black Flag.
6. There's a recruiting assassin's menu-based game - just like in that game Brotherhood, where you were ya'know building a brotherhood, but then Connor seems to spend more of his time playing bowls with lumberjacks than building an actual brotherhood so it feels redundant.
7. Especially as there is also a 'send conveys' to trade goods menu-based game which you have to go back to the homestead to access.
Then it gets really confusing about what the game expects you to do first. I mainlined the missions for a while - since the first 4-5 sequences are the above prelude, I got into that habit. A few sequences later I realized that the reason I was having a hard time in combat was because I still hadn't looked through the shops for a better weapon yet. Found most of those needed to be unlocked from chests around the city, so I did that until I had a second tier weapon, but didn't have money to buy any more. Decided to give the story a break for a while to do some open-world content, but then game told me I'd unlocked that, so I gave it a go, only to get locked into a 'escape from prison' sequence. Having left prision, it then decided it was winter which made exploring the frontier much more difficult. Didn't do the Kidd missions until after I completed the story, so couldn't use the power-up to help with the actual game. Overall, feel like I did everything in the 'wrong order' but a good open-world game shouldn't have a 'wrong order'
There are some good points. I like how it is a bit more nuanced that Brits bad, George Washington good, and stressed the Native Americans and slaves were getting screwed either way. It definitely made a departure from the Ezio games where Constantinople felt a lot like Rome. The Haytham character worked well and I like the idea of doing multiple generations in the same game. The naval missions are mostly fun and something different. I actually liked the future missions as the idea of having the past and present in the same story actually makes it more interesting and this was probably the best done of the Desmond games.
Probably the thing I like most about the game is imagining the voice actor for Haytham down the pub with his mates the night before the audition.
Actor: Got a big role coming up tomorrow.
Mate: Oh really what it for.
Actor: British gentleman assassin. Problem is I'm just not sure how to approach this role.
Mate: Hmm tricks [sips beer]...You know, you don't do a half bad Roger Moore impression
It's the best it's ever been.
Also this.
How people get lost in this baffles me. Is this people's first approach to media res or...? It was clear as day what was going on.
I've never once found the modern-day story interesting, so the further they get away from it the better. I dropped AC3 pretty quick because the game starts of with too much story and doesn't let you do anything interesting.
In medias res normally is there to serve some sort of purpose, most often something like "How did the protagonist land in this crazy situation? Watch and find out!"
In the case of AC Origins this question gets answered like 1 hour later and it's inclusion doesn't enhance the narrative in no way shape or form. It's just there for no reason at all.
Also having a scene in which after 1 minute you get a black screen that says 1 year later is just sloppy. Why even have that scene prior to the time skip in the first place?
I like how the community is strongly divided on 3. I have played all games from the start all the way through Origins and 3 is my favorite one followed closely by Syndicate. At the time when I played 3, it was a real breath of fresh air as it marked a change of pace and mechanics after the Ezio saga. I enjoyed the setting immensely, I adored the naval part (it was one of the first game I played with 3D googles on my PS3 and it was a thing of beauty).
I should probably give Origins a second chance after like 20 hours on it but I feel the same way. I felt the series lost its charm and got away too much from the Assassin's story that grabbed me in other games. I also feel that the map is too big which seems to be a concern in the latter games reading opinions on Odyssey and Valhalla.