Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

I've never appreciated the stupid uniform. Same shit for assassins in Elder Scrolls. "Hey! That guy is wearing the assassin uniform, it's obviously him!" How retarded is that? Stop that shit.

Naval battles were the best part of AC3 by far for me. I'm super glad that they're making a more open world game based around them and having the ship be half your character progression.

The last couple games, I've been getting a little worried that they've been having trouble keeping the game fresh, while at the same time not suffering from feature bloat, since each each game just keep dumping more shit onto the previous game's content, and it didn't always fit together well.

With this game, if Ubisoft has the eyes to see what they've done, they might've actually found a solution to this. The main character's both an assassin and a pirate, which provides two obvious spheres for the gameplay to fall into; so we get the assassin sphere for the traditional ac gameplay, and the pirate sphere to provide something fresh to the series.

If they're smart, they'll do the same thing for every new protagonist in the series: make them both an assassin and a ________, creating a new secondary gameplay sphere for each character. If a particular secondary sphere prove particularly awesome, then simply make an ac:b/ac:r-styled sequel for the relevant character, rather than carrying it over to a new character.

Pretty sure at least generally speaking that's their feeling Randin - even AC3 had that to a limited extent with the Homestead building, Indian activities (hunting/etc), trading, etc. - with some slight feelers out there with the light naval battles that AC3 had to see how well received they were. They've already quoted in the past that AC3's naval battles were a "beta test" of how people would enjoy their incorporation.

I've got a feeling they feel the same about the trading system from AC3 as well, since that's going to play into AC4 from a recent video I watched (they mentioned collecting rum to trade during piracy for example) - taking the primitive version in AC3 and turning it into something closer to Privateer it sounds.

Now that said, I'm not so sure how many different "secondary spheres" there are out there that would actually be interesting to do well however - pirate/assassin is cool, assassin/indian was alright, assassin/playboy was awesome but without rehashing there's only so many that fit with an assassin as a combo without being distracting from each other or a boring completely secondary thing. Like assassin/soldier I think would be dull as shit personally, assassin/accountant etc, assassin/gangleader seems like it would clash or feel forced, yadayada.

AC3 could've fit well with what I'm talking about, but the game...lacked focus, I suppose would be the best way to put it. If I had my way with AC3, then aside from the core assassin gameplay, I would've started paring away much of the secondary stuff, and really focused in on the hunter/survivalist side of things.

So, the homestead and economy things get cut back, with hunting becoming Connor's primary source of income. Some stuff that was in as a holdover from previous games also gets the axe (the brawlers club being the first thing that comes mind; am I the only one who didn't really read Connor as a 'fight club' kinda guy?). I'd probably also dump the whole tunnel system thing, and handle fast travel some other way. And as much as I liked it, I'd cut the privateer missions, because let's be honest, it really made zero narrative sense in the game.

In their place, the hunters and frontiersmen clubs get expanded, hunting becomes your primary source of income throughout the game, and I think I'd try to come up with some decent survivalist game mechanics for the frontier, needing to keep yourself fed and well equipped to travel the game world.

Man this would be such a sweet concept for a game if it wasn't in the AC series. I enjoyed a couple of their games but the whole story of "ANCIENT ALIENS AND THE ILLUMINATI" is such dog shit.

The ship should be like 70% of your progression. Also why am I the fucking driver/helmsman/whatever? That's bitch work. I'm in the captain's cabin fucking governor's daughters. That bugged me in AC3 as well. Make someone else drive, I need my hands free to be god damn awesome.

Went through the video and then playable (multiplayer) demo of this at Pax. Game seemed pretty cool, they were going all in w/ the naval battles. Go swim underwater, naval battles and then pimping out your ship, and also harpooning stuff and leveling that up so you can harpoon bigger and bigger things. I was just along since my sister wanted to go, but I think if you like Assassin's creed this seemed to focus on what people liked about the naval battles and expand on that. There didn't seem to be anything new or revolutionary.

The multiplayer, however, was fucking awful. Fuck that shit. I wanted to walk away after like 3 minutes and mostly just stuck around to be polite.

Edit> played the regular game for a while. Seems pretty cool. Naval battles are definitely pretty sweet and seem to be a big focus to absolutely no one's surprise.

Unique online serial number needed for portions of single-player gameplay (i.e. buy the game used and miss out on content)

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/a...r-content.aspx

Ubisoft is the new EA, but their games don't suck.

Debating picking this up now, or waiting until I can snag a next gen system. Can't decide. I could just get the PC version I guess, but my rig is 2 years old this Christmas.

And if you read the article, you can't do the fleet-related stuff in single player at all if you aren't connected to the internet (Insert XB1-esque "always online" rage here)

That's harsh, but Ubi has done this kind of thing many times before and they keep having commercial success. Until their customers stop buying in it won't stop. I'm probably in. I'm waiting to see how the naval action pans out in reviews.

That's pretty obnoxious. Not going to stop me from buying the CE though.

Heylel_sl said:

Debating picking this up now, or waiting until I can snag a next gen system. Can't decide. I could just get the PC version I guess, but my rig is 2 years old this Christmas.

Click to expand...

It's probably still better then the either xbone/ps4 hehe.

Odd either I workatounded by accident or it doesn't care if you're connected because I ran my first route last night without it caring that my cat had apparently turned off the router.

Got the 'disconned from PSN' message a min or so earlier and didn't want to mess with the cabinet to fix it forgetting it was relevant until catching up.

Odd. Will see later if it was a one time thing or I can repeat it or it was misconstrued.

Noone playing this yet? I just got too Nassau, and so far so good. Charismatic protagonist. More emphasis on stealth (Especially if you focus on the bonus objectives). And the free roaming with the JackDaw to plunder shit from other ships and islands are all positives imo.