Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

[Stella Brando]

Blackbeard has been played by Deadwood's Al Swearengen, and both Rome's Titus Pullo and Mark Antony - on British TV, where he is defeated by Terminator Genesys' John Connor.

 

[Trash]

What I really enjoyed in ACII was the feeling that you were working off a list of genuine assholes for a personal reason. There was progress with each kill and each of these hits made both sense and made use of diverse gameplay. After that the series fell into a rut. Black Flag came as a bit of a surprise but unfortunately came when Ubisoft had already 'perfected' their trademark sandbox approach.

The Creed games always felt like they had immense potential but never made it true. Nowadays I don't even bother with them anymore.

 

[Mangoose]

What I really enjoyed in ACIV was the feeling that you were a genuine asshole.

 

[Stella Brando]

I like Edward Kenway. He can feel my genuine asshole anytime.

Red Dead Redemption was inspired by movies, but pretended to be history, while Black Flag was based on history, but pretended to be inspired by movies.

 

[Mangoose]

I like Edward Kenway. He can feel my genuine asshole anytime.

Haytham was pretty cool, too, in a :monocle: and alpha male way.

But Connor is the clear result of multikult.

Edit: No but seriously, AC4 has turned me off any next AC game. I'm not going to play until we are able to climb skyscrapers.

 

[Stella Brando]

I dunno, I think one of the advantages of Assassin's Creed is that it's educational, it'd lose this factor if it was set in modern New York or something. Even if Black Flag doesn't go into the pirates too much, it at least sparked an interest, and led me to reading about the Buccaneers. They were called that because they originally use to barbecue their meat in a kind of smokehouse called a Boucan. Kingston has these tiny huts Kenway can hide in, I wonder if they're meant to be Boucans? I now want to get hold of Charles Johnson's History of the Pyrates.

Red Dead Redemption was designed to let you pretend to be Clint Eastwood, or a character from Sam Peckinpah movies like Pat Garret or a Wild Bunch member. Marsten's former gang is straight out of the Wild Bunch. There's no historical personages in the game, but it still interested me enough for me to research Wyatt Earp, the James brothers, Bill Hickock etc. Assassin's Creed II had me reading about the guy building Il Duomo in Florence (Bruneleschi?). He used to cheat his workers by watering down their wine, as he personally felt it was inadvisable to work hundreds of feet in the air while intoxicated. I also wondered at the drawings of the architect Palladio, although I think ACII is slightly before his time.

I'm not the greatest student of history (or in AC II's case, aesthetics). I think in 6th Form history I got 63% or something like that. So as an educational tool, both in providing some basic information and sparking interest, these games have been invaluable to me. I think I and a lot of other middling academics would lose something if they moved in to the present. Among things average people and simple minds enjoy, they don't really have an equal.

I never played AC III. I felt at the time that the move from fascinating Renaissance Italy to the birth of the United States was both predictable and tiresome. Americans can be like the Chinese, more interested in disappearing up their own assholes than learning new things. I'm from New Zealand, a tiny country that never gets mentioned and no one thinks about, so we can't really afford to be like that. Our world, psychologically, always involves foreigners.

 

[Stella Brando]

Just realised I wrote this on July 4th. Lol.

 

[Astral Rag]

:kwafuckyeah:

 

[Mangoose]

I dunno, I think one of the advantages of Assassin's Creed is that it's educational, it'd lose this factor if it was set in modern New York or something. Even if Black Flag doesn't go into the pirates too much, it at least sparked an interest, and led me to reading about the Buccaneers. They were called that because they originally use to barbecue their meat in a kind of smokehouse called a Boucan. Kingston has these tiny huts Kenway can hide in, I wonder if they're meant to be Boucans? I now want to get hold of Charles Johnson's History of the Pyrates.

Red Dead Redemption was designed to let you pretend to be Clint Eastwood, or a character from Sam Peckinpah movies like Pat Garret or a Wild Bunch member. Marsten's former gang is straight out of the Wild Bunch. There's no historical personages in the game, but it still interested me enough for me to research Wyatt Earp, the James brothers, Bill Hickock etc. Assassin's Creed II had me reading about the guy building Il Duomo in Florence (Bruneleschi?). He used to cheat his workers by watering down their wine, as he personally felt it was inadvisable to work hundreds of feet in the air while intoxicated. I also wondered at the drawings of the architect Palladio, although I think ACII is slightly before his time.

I'm not the greatest student of history (or in AC II's case, aesthetics). I think in 6th Form history I got 63% or something like that. So as an educational tool, both in providing some basic information and sparking interest, these games have been invaluable to me. I think I and a lot of other middling academics would lose something if they moved in to the present. Among things average people and simple minds enjoy, they don't really have an equal.

I never played AC III. I felt at the time that the move from fascinating Renaissance Italy to the birth of the United States was both predictable and tiresome. Americans can be like the Chinese, more interested in disappearing up their own assholes than learning new things. I'm from New Zealand, a tiny country that never gets mentioned and no one thinks about, so we can't really afford to be like that. Our world, psychologically, always involves foreigners.

Good points completely.

BTW I played Assassin's Creed 2 before I traveled to Italy and I definitely recognized shit on the spot. Stop in Firenze and I'm running to check out the Duomo.

I even tried to find secret entrances but that never worked. Of course if I did find them I can't tell you, so....



On history... memorizing historical facts is a smaller part than critically thinking about historical sources (the validity due to: biases/first-hand or second-hand/private or public diary or letter or speech, etc). And then you can actually produce your own ideas and

Of course you do need to a shitload of memorization. But that's just necessary and unfortunate building blocks for an entirely different way of thinking. Paying your dues, I guess. (Which is why I could never pursue Medicine)



I got so really lucky to have a teacher that taught me this about working on history (whether critiquing or creating ideas). But this "critical-thinking" skill (of keeping biases in mind) has carried over to almost every part of my life... what book to trust, what forum to visit, who would be the best vet for my dog, etc.

I'm from New Zealand, a tiny country that never gets mentioned and no one thinks about, so we can't really afford to be like that. Our world, psychologically, always involves foreigners.

Bull shit. New Zealenders all over Europe. And all are foreigners, each one with their own extreme sports company in Interlaken. Or they own bars, who they share with the Ozzies/

 

[Dexter]

I'm on a bit of a binge of UbiShit games, since I wanna get rid of Uplay after and be done with it. Since they gave me AssCreed 3, 4 and Unity for Free at some point, I thought I might as well try them after I only played AC1 (it got boring and repetitive, but I managed to finish it because it felt fresh at the time), AC2 (I liked this the best and it had an interesting story and characters) and burning out on the Franchise with Brotherhood that got repetitive and tedious again, especially with the races, time challenges and stuff.

Played through AC3, and while it isn't quite AC2 it was fairly enjoyable. The best part was at the beginning where you get to play as Haytham Kenway. I think they really missed a beat when they didn't decide to make him the main character since he successfully managed to hook me on the game. He was very charismatic and likeable (even as a "villain", although it could have worked even with the story they told if after Desmond discovers he's a Templar they just continue his story building up his empire and meddling in the Revolution to find out what happened to the amulet and you get to play his son from a fling years ago and kill him for revenge or something as a "twist" at the end) and instead went for the Diversity hire trained by the Magic Grumpy Black Guy with a mansion. If they started with that I might've dropped it right there. I vaguely remember pondering giving it a try back in the day, since American Revolution sounded interesting but not doing so after finding out you play an Injun guy. Naval missions and combat were also a welcome and "fresh" seeming addition to the series, although apparently at the expense of challenging platforming bits. The setting and overall development of the plot from the beginning of the revolution to its end was fairly interesting, even learned some new stuff from the Notes and stuff. Definitely also agree with Stalin_Brando that the games rouse interest in the time periods they are about to go and read some more about it and watch some related material. I ended up watching Sons Of Liberty and John Adams afterwards.

Started with Black Flag and am about halfway through, and while people seem to be praising it I'm not quite impressed so far, especially in comparison with the previous game. What the fuck did they do to the UI? In AC3 it was clear and unobtrusive, in 4 they seemed to have gone with "it's good if we make it as flashy and colorful as possible" with a huge giant yellow "!" pointing out the next main quest on the map wherever you are, giant Tooltip boxes appearing constantly and buttons flashing in different colors at most times. The character's faces also look weirder than in previous game and while AC3 was more subtle in level design, some locations in this game seem all over the place so far. Also "point at enemies with Eagle View for 2 seconds and they continue to GLOW RED THROUGH WALLS half a mile away", WTF? And how did Edward, a random crew member on a ship at the beginning learn to kill an Assassin, steal his clothes and become an expert assassin taking out entire groups and villages of Assassins a few weeks into his timeline by himself, when the people in the previous games required years of training from childhood for that? From what I've experienced of the Naval combat, it also seems worse than its counterpart in 3. By the second dozen time you get near a ship to hit it with a broadside, go to the swivel gun and then board them to watch the same Cutscene cause you need that iron and wood to upgrade your ship it has gotten really boring, while the Naval combat in AC3 felt refreshing and played better with more weight behind it, even though there was a lot less of it (maybe better since it didn't overstay its welcome). Also much better designed missions around it.

The open jungle environments just don't seem that suitable for platforming around as densely packed cities, even if they put some jump-able trees there. Getting off to swim to small islands, then swim back and climb back up the ship also makes the Collectathon portion of the game a lot more tedious.

I kinda like the part about owning a ship and sailing around and the shanties, but it had a shitty Intro, the main mission in the first few chapters was a bit boring and generic and it just ain't really hooking me like 2 or 3 did. Seemed rather obvious that this was developed by an entirely different team than AC2/3.