Bombs in Assassin's Creed Revelations

The following is a critique of the bomb system in Assassin's Creed Revelations. If you want the short version, it's "I feel this system is pretty redundant as many bombs and components are outclassed or not necessary thanks to other bombs or parts of the game (the distraction bombs are mostly fine and varied. The other types have 1 too dominant type). The game also doesn't really encourage much usage of the system either".


For the full version, let's begin.

Firstly, a refresher; Assassin's Creed Revelations introduced a new system where you can craft different kinds of bombs with different components (shells, gunpowder and the main ingredient) at various crafting stations scattered throughout the world or bought from select vendors. You can find the components in chests, corpses, merchants etc. You can carry 9 bombs total, divided into 3 categories corresponding to lethal, diversion and distraction types. Bombs can be dropped at your feet or thrown at a target.

Firstly, the positive, I like this way of getting components. It finally gives the Ezio game a reason for exploration. AC2 failed as money became too plentiful. ACBro failed because the trading pieces were too rare and arbitrary and still conflated with money. This system works independently and it's pretty cool.


Now for the bombs themselves

Gunpowder-

Gunpowder determines the size of the explosion The game gives you 3 different types of gunpowder to craft your bombs, Arabic, Indian and British in order of small to big explosions. On paper, this sounds great. You can craft different bombs for different situations. The problem is There are no benefits to using Arabic or Indian gunpowder. British gunpowder is common, packs the biggest punch and there are very few penalties.

Now, you could bring up that a bigger bomb may cause collateral damage, except that Revelations changes how civilian deaths are counted. In AC1-Bro, every death counts as 1 strike. Kill 3 civilians in a small amount of time and it's game over. Rev changes this to instances. So if you kill 3 civilians at once, it only counts as 1 strike. So theoretically, you can throw 2 bombs and get 10 people and still only counts as strike 2 out of 3. And those 2 instances have few penalties. It seems that Rev has this system so people don't get a game over for killing 3+ people at once (which was much harder to do in prior games), except they already had a system to balance using the bigger bombs and then gutted it. As a result, there is never a reason to use smaller gunpowder when the British gunpowder has almost no drawbacks that are significant.


Shells/casing-

The case of the shell acts how the bomb explodes. You have 4 choices, a shell that explodes on impacts, a shell that bounces for a few seconds before exploding and a shell that sticks to a target for a few seconds before exploding and a tripmine shell.



It's important to note that bombs never damage Ezio. So you can drop an impact shell at your feet with a massive explosion that kills everyone around you, but you just get knocked off your feet with no damage. This automatically means there is no risk of damage of using any shells. This means something like the impact shell can be spammed in a fight to instantly take down people with no penalty.

The first problem is that the sticky case is never really useful outside of 1 side quest where you have to use it. There are very few instances in the game where sticking a bomb from far away to a moving target which goes near another target is really that interesting. More often than not, you can just throw any other bomb and get in as close as you need with parkour (Constantinople is a pretty dense urban environment). Bouncy shells can bounce at an angle so trick shots are possible, but they aren't encouraged and seldom as practical when you can almost always climb and aim. Tripmines do have some potential with the new Eagle Sense and other ways of distraction but aren't very efficient (they get a pass). That leaves the impact shell as the most useful all around with no drawbacks and are useful everywhere.



Now let's go onto the bombs themselves

-Lethal

You have 3 types of lethal bombs; Splinter (sends out shrapnel and kills NPCs nearby), Thunder (renders NPCs unconscious) and Datura (poisons NPCs).


The first thing to note is that in Revelations, you can find wells you can hide in. But they are boarded up. You can destroy the boards with a splinter or thunder bomb. This means that if you care about hiding spots, you'll almost always carry one of those 2. So Datura is already less practical to carry around. I dislike it when games give you some tools, but use some mechanic tied to the world, be it a random challenge or the like, which ends up making you choose 1 tool in case you stumble across one of those challenges. Because if you find a well and only have Datura on you, you can't do anything to it and must either move on, or remember where it is, run to a crafting station, craft the appropriate bomb, run back, destroy the boards and then choose whether to stick with the bomb or run back and recraft Datura (which is cool but not efficient).

The second problem is that Thunder Bombs have no utility next to Splinter Bombs because there is no benefit to rendering people unconscious (except for 1 mission in the next game which doesn't even have bombs like this) and like I mentioned earlier, there is no penalty for collateral damage. So there is no reason not to use Splinter, coupled with wells (which admittedly, you can ignore), means 2/3 Lethal bombs are redundant. You have very little reason to use a Thunder Bomb or Datura Bomb over a Splinter Bomb. Now you could make the argument that Datura is more subtle than Splinter. But if you're already hidden or out of sight, you can't really blow your cover with Splinter due to the dumb AI.



-Diversion Bombs

Diversion Bombs work by getting attention off of you. You have 3 types, Smoke Bombs (create a thick cloud of smoke that hides you, and prevents enemies from operating effectively), Blood Bombs (filled with lamb's blood. Covers enemies in blood and makes them think they've been injured, making them easier to fight) and caltrops (covers the ground with spikes which makes it harder for enemies to pursue you).

The thing to note is that combat in Revelations is very easy. You the player can counter enemy attacks with an instant kill move (with a lenient timing window) and then start a chain kill, letting you kill multiple nearby enemies by just pressing [] at any point during the animation. Keep this mind.


Now with the diversion bombs, smokes are way more useful than everything. They hide you, they stun enemies which gets them off your back temporarily and leaves them open to attack. In comparison, Blood bombs scare enemies but with your countering and chain kill abilities, the benefit gained is negligible. Caltrops do have some benefits as they are specialized for stunning pursuers for a bit (you can use them in combat as they don't affect you) but the smoke bombs works fine for the former and great for the latter.

The one somewhat exception is the Janissary Type Enemies, which can block some of your counters and break your block and dodge some of your attacks. Here, using a diversion bomb is useful but not required so that's something.



-Distraction Bomb:

These bombs work by distracting enemies. You have 4 types; Cherry (makes a loud noise which attracts all guards to investigate), Smoke Decoy Bombs (Creates a smoke which looks like fire, only attracts guards who see the smoke), gold bombs (filled with fake money. An explosion would send this money around, causing nearby civilians to start aggregating and collecting the money which can act as a distraction. Civilians here can also get into fights with guards), Stink bombs (creates an odour which repels NPCs).

Note that Revelations has a mechanic where if the player gets NPCs from the Ottoman faction and the Byzantine faction together, they will end up fighting. So if you throw a cherry bomb and that gets members of these factions to lock eyes, they will start fighting.


Now as for distraction bombs, I think these are much better done compared to the other bombs. While yes, the cherry bomb is the most useful, the others tend to have at least some specialized use which grants them practicality. For example, the Gold Bomb can be used in streets to create a massive diversion and letting you slip without "alerting" guards in a way that a cherry bomb would. Stink and Smoke Decoy do seem a bit too situational but I can see their value during infiltrations to places where the player is in exclusively enemy territory and want to minimize people getting involved.




And there you have it, that's the bomb system of Revelations.

-What we learned.

The main takeaway is that many bombs and components are pretty redundant either because there is no penalties for certain actions (like collateral damage, so that lessens the value of most gunpowder and Thunder bombs), or another bomb is just so much more useful, or the combat/parkour/stealth systems already lessen the value for many options (like blood bombs and bouncy shells) or the mission design is seldom designed in a way to encourage more creative bomb usage (like there are no challenges to kill targets under specific conditions like using a bomb with a tripmine shell aside from the mandatory tutorials). The distraction bombs tend to be the best as many of them don't overlap too much in function (even if some are a bit too specialized).


So what changes would I make to solve most of my issues? Maybe many of my suggestions are impossible in Rev's case due to being an annual franchise or on a deadline but let's ignore that. If I could magically change anything to improve the system; Well firstly, I would change the combat system to something where the player doesn't have an instant win command and needs to work for victory (like Origins' system). Now diversion bombs have instantly more utility because players have a reason to use them more often. I would maybe make Blood bombs and caltrops apply a permanent debuff of some sort while smoke bombs only have value while active to make them seem much more appealing.

As for lethals and gunpowder, I would have to introduce some sort of unconscious and penalty system to make the system work. Maybe if the player kills using more destructive bombs or options, they gain a different kind of notoriety which makes businesses more unwilling to work with you and/or raise prices (the games have a basic already that comes into play when you extremely high profile actions but it only affects alertness in AC2-Bro and whether your bases get attacked in Rev.). It's harder to blend in and maybe even certain missions are temporarily inaccessible.

Also make it so Splinter Bombs can damage you but Thunder can't. Splinter can also do lots of damage to enemies and even outright kill them but also make them unable to be looted and give you a really bad rap. Thunder can do some damage to enemies but can knock out low health guards, give you little bad rap and let you loot them.


This would also make Datura more useful because it can be used to stealth kill groups of guards without raising notoriety.


I would also include more challenges in missions to use a specific bomb, ingredient or whatever.


As for accessing bombs, I have 2 approaches.


Either remove crafting in overworld altogether. You can only craft bombs in bases. Or go further and make bomb vendors and bodies the only place to get bombs (in the game as is, these guys carry a small selection of bombs you can buy). The purpose of this approach is that in the field, you'll have to use whatever's locally available so you may end up having to make the most of a particular combo you're given rather than being able to make the ultimate solution. Players may end up using combos they never would have otherwise. Of course, the bomb challenges I proposed earlier would have to be scaled back or be more easy to compensate.

The second is to keep the current system but let players be able to swap out different bombs in the field have more situations and challenges that require them. For example, I use a Splinter Bomb in a fight and now I have 2 Lethal Bombs left. 20 minutes later I see a group of enemies I want to kill in the street. I can quickly open my menu and swap the 2 splinter bombs to 2 Datura Bombs that I premade or something and use one of those. Now I only have 1 lethal bomb remaining. I can either use that last as a Thunder, Splinter or Datura. This system should allow more frequent and varied usage.


The current system is fine but it's simultaneously too free to make you make decisions and too restrictive to swap instantly.

Of course, you'd need the AI and stealth systems to be far more advanced and sandbox-y to take full advantage of all these elements, especially the distraction bombs.





This is more of a tangent /aside but playing the Ezio games, I've noticed this design pattern pretty frequently. Instead of sequels adding new features and then revising aspects of the established design to make them fit like most other sequels, the games just add new features on top. It makes the proverbial puddle of gameplay wider without making it that much deeper.

As an example, AC2 introduced so many new weapon types and moves to do while disarmed, but counter-attacking is still the main way to fight, and all the new weapon strike the same, block the same, counter the same and combo the same. It also means that you can carry starting weapons or be unarmed and still fight as well as the endgame gear. So all the new weapons and moves don't really add much. It would take until Origins in 2017 for different weapons to finally have different animations and uses. It's a similar case for health/armour.

ACBro introduced chain kills, but all they did is making counterattacking more OP than ever. It introduced a crossbow but that ended up pretty much-making knives and guns mostly obsolete during stealth due to how insanely practical it was. It introduced being able to renovate Rome and recruit assassins, but the former hardly gets you anything and the latter is also surprisingly optional save for 1 mission and really underbaked. It would take until Revelations and 3 to finally add more character to the latter.


I suspect this more due to the annual nature of the franchise and the relatively short development times for these games. Annual franchises are much less prone to sudden changes between installments. It's possible that Rev's team would have wanted to better balance the bombs if they could but were more limited in what they could change. We know this because later games like AC3 started introducing sweeping changes which became mostly standard and had stuff placed on top for the next several games, and then again with Unity/Syndicate and now with Origins/Odyessy.

4: Deadlock: The debate without progress

Post 4: Deadlock



Matthew Robert "Mat" Patrick (more commonly referred to as "Matpat") is an American internet personality, actor, writer, and producer. He is best known as the creator and narrator of the YouTube web series Game Theory, where he comments on topics such as the logic, scientific accuracy, and lore of various video games and the gaming industry. He is also known for creating the spinoff Film Theory, centring around cinema and internet filmography.

My specific points today will be regarding one of the spin-off shows done on Game Theory is known as "Deadlock". Deadlock is a debate show where 2 people take completely opposed sides and argue their points on a stage. Points made will "damage the opponent's health bar" for the first few episodes. The episodes have covered topics such as The SNES vs Genesis, Best Pokémon starter, Is Dark Souls good etc.

Now there are other aspects of Game theory people have criticized, but I want to focus specifically on Deadlock.

Now Deadlock's biggest strength and limitation is its format. I would describe the show as "The Debate Version of a rap battle". This is because the show focuses on rapidly firing simple points in quick succession and requires snappy comebacks and exaggerated points. This is exemplified by the "health bars" in the earlier debates, Matpat and his colleagues saying boldly if a game "sucks" despite liking the game in other shows (Dark Souls comes to mind), and even Matpat saying "it's all about being mean" in character on the debate regarding games journalism.

My point is that Deadlock is about this big debate back and forth. If you've gone to actual debates, you'll realize that more traditional debates tend to be more "centralized". Here's what I mean:

Deadlock has these over the top presentation and performances that are fine and actually pretty fun when discussing more "trivial" topics like the SNES vs Genesis and Pokemon starters (at least in theory) because the style can reflect the over the top rivalries and the points have that back and forth quality to them. However, when discussing more "practical" and relevant topics like TF2 vs Overwatch, and the quality of DS and Crash, the format's flaws start showing up. Namely, the over the top black vs white style naturally disregards many nuances and common ground or even just mundane points.

Here's what I mean, contrast MisterCaption's video on TF2 vs Overwatch with Deadlock's. You'll see that Caption takes a long time setting up individual points, playing long through scenarios and providing theory behind his points. In other words, even if you've never played these games, you can follow along with Caption and see how he arrived at his points. By comparison, Deadlock, if we continue with the rapper analogy, to do same would have one rapper spend 10 minutes setting up the context before dropping the burn which takes 3 minutes to explain. Dark Souls has most of Jared's complaints be about how frustrating the game is rather than things like the game's apathetic nature, redundancies in combat or any other criticism beyond what can apply on the surface.


So yeah, Deadlock wouldn't flow as smooth then.

So at best, Deadlock would be a snappy "x has this" in video form. Now like I said earlier, this is fine for the trivial stuff but doesn't really flow for the more practical stuff.


So how would I change Deadlock if I were in charge of it?

I have 2 solutions:

The first is to double down the first part. Take cues from "Epic Rap Battles of History" and remain over the top but change the subject matter to reflect and even compliment that approach. The second is to tone down that and become more serious. They made strides towards this with the Crash video.