A Critqiue on Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation's Disguise System.

Hello Everyone, The following is a discussion piece on the disguise/persona/outfit system in the 2012 PS VITA game Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation developed by Ubisoft Montreal, Sofia and Milan and has been remastered for 7 and 8th gen. We will begin with a brief intro to the game, look at how the suits work, their positives and negatives and how I would suggest the suits be improved if this concept was ever tried again. I assume you're already familiar with the Assassin's Creed Franchise but I will still try to make my points understandable to a wider audience

To summarize my points quickly, the Assassin suit is too versatile while the others don't offer enough interesting gameplay or opportunities to take advantage of or stand out.



With that said, let's get started:
Running on AC3's AnvilNext Engine, the game plays as a diet version of The Main Assassin's Creed 3 but with a few extra differences like a different protagonist (Aveline de Grandprie, an Assassin of French and African Decent with a goal to help slaves), setting (late 18th-century Louisiana after the 7 Years War) and the topic for discussion, a disguise system where the player can wear an outfit that changes how they can operate.


While the game was decent overall, I feel its new mechanic wasn't really as great as it could be. It ended up being a gimmick rather than an interesting tool or addition to facilitate new strategies and tactics for play.


To summarize, the player in the game can wear one of 3 outfits from changing points scattered throughout the maps, each with their own pros and cons. The Assassin suits gives the player all their tools and abilities (as well as a "mark and execute" move similar to Splinter Cell Conviction) at the cost of always having at least minimal notoriety (so guards will always be suspicious at least whenever they see the player) and being unable to blend in with any groups or hide with crowds. The Slave outfit restricts the player's gear to hidden or easily disguised common stuff like small knives and gains notoriety quickly when climbing but allows the player to blend in with select groups and crowds. The Final outfit, The Lady, takes away the Player's ability to run and climb, all weapons and tools except for the hidden blades and poison umbrella but as positives, slows notoriety gain and allows the player to charm some guards onto the player's side to fight opponents or to turn a blind eye to your actions.

Let's start with the positives of the current system, it's cool on paper and gives the player 3 minor avenues of progression (especially with side quests).  It would allow players to specialize in a particular approach and prevent players from being so OP and loaded that they can't be challenged like prior AC Games as well as encouraging the player to swap their approach. It can increase replayability as well as encourage players to better plan their approach. It also makes the gameplay line up more with the story because Aveline isn't armed to the teeth or dressed like a slave during aristocratic events and vice versa (A common "Mario breaks bricks with his head but dies when touching a turtle" style complaint about the prior games).

Now let's look at the negatives.

The lady suit does not compliment the game. Firstly, imagine playing GTA and you have a suit that lowers your ability to get a wanted level but you can't use vehicles. The lady can't run or climb so navigating the city is very tedious and uninteresting. In addition, 2 of the 3 maps, don't have anything for the lady to use as they are all parkour based due to being set in a bayou and rainforest (not to mention having few to no changing stations). The combat limitations aren't really limits because the player can counter and chain kill everything with no difficulty and take little damage from attacks. This was always a problem with the pre-Unity Combat. All your weapons are equally OP so taking away one or 3 doesn't lower your effectiveness (consequently this also makes similar sections in past and future games like AC4's diving sections lack the tension and effect they should have). So charming guards for combat is redundant. So all the lady has left is being able to charm guards for stealth, which far less practical than sneaking past or parkouring over, and use her poison umbrella in public, while the other outfits have a blowdart the player can use just as well and in more situations.

The Slave suit fares a bit better for stealth on the streets but isn't really all that useful because opportunities to blend in are few and far between (Unlike prior games with already shallow social stealth mechanics, Liberation makes it so the Slave can only blend in with preassigned groups and crates as opposed to any group of people). Especially in the Bayou where you're better off just wearing the assassin suit. As for fewer weapons, they don't really matter given the combat system. The suit doesn't even work well as a harder difficulty option.

By the way, there is a nice post on the blog of the eponymous Stanislav Costiuc, a game designer who for several years has been employed by Ubisoft (not on Assassin's Creed). I'd recommend reading it- he has several interesting arguments against the idea that social stealth was better in the old games. One of them, for example, is that groups of people function exactly the same way as stalking zones and bushes in the newer ones, being ways of breaking line of sight with enemies. Another is that many of the older games' apparent social stealth systems are instead designed to bypass the social aspect entirely, such as distracting guards with one of the factions. He does acknowledge that there are some examples of true social stealth gameplay, such as throwing coins to disrupt the system (which hides the player by making everyone else act in a socially unacceptable way), but argues too that they still leave much to be desired. 
https://stanislavcostiuc.com/2016/08/28/why-assassins-creed-series-isnt-social-stealth-and-what-to-do-about-that/

I'd love to see ideas from that incorporated into the suits.

The Assassin suit, with its guns, ends up being the best choice with very little reason to pick the other suits. The notoriety penalty is easy enough to deal with and swapping to the slave suit where needed for a bit is possible but doesn't really feel like a major tactical decision. This means the suits feel like a gimmick rather than an element you need to consider and plan around.

Other problems include the structure of the story. Since it's taking AC2's story-based design over AC1 or Unity's mission-based design, the player can't really plan a strategy and act on it. They'll likely take the assassin or occasionally slave outfits as they are multipurpose.



Now, I don't blame the devs for the shortcomings. They just made a new engine and a new style of game and made a spin-off using that on a new handheld system. The fact that Liberation works as well as it does is very likely a huge undertaking. In the grand scheme of things, this was probably the best they could have done with the disguise system given the circumstances. I imagine if Liberation had been a major console title with fewer constraints and more resources the system might have been more fleshed out.

With that said, I still think this idea has potential. if I were to design an Assassin's Creed Game with the persona idea on current tech, how would I do it? It isn't impossible given the performance of modern tech and games like Hitman show it's not out of reach.


Firstly, it's important that such a feature be made first and the game is built around it rather than taking the established formula and putting the mechanic on top. It needs to be the latter to allow the mechanic to interact with all aspects. It shouldn't be a gimmick but a core feature that influences all aspects.

Now, the game's structure would probably need to be closer to AC1 and Unity. Being able to collect info and plan means the player has the info to decide if another suit may be necessary and using the suits themselves to collect info. The map would also need to be a dense urban environment rather than have entire regions dedicated for parkour. This means even the lady suit with its limited movement always has an avenue of attack and the slave outfit constantly has enough civilians around to blend in. This also means the downside of the Assassin outfit, the increased notoriety, now becomes a more present threat.

Combat should be closer to that of Unity's (I'd argue Odyessy's combat is the best overall but Unity's might be better suited for this job). It needs to be tough enough where it's possible to be overwhelmed and worth avoiding but fun enough to engage in if needs be. The end result needs to be something where Slave and Lady taking away weapons and tools needs to be a serious detriment worth considering rather than a mild change.

Stealth needs a major overhaul. The later games have done a good job on the typical Line of Sight Based stealth. But there should be more ways to interact with the world as different personas. Perhaps the slave can start a mini-uprising with other slaves to provide a distraction, bribe others, allow themselves to be captured to access other areas etc. The blog linked above should provide more ideas for that.

The lady suit should allow the player to gain access to hidden areas in the upper class and make some chaos accordingly. Perhaps the player can untie a chandelier, poison drinks and not look suspicious, charm guards into doing many of the deeds and crimes they'd have to do themselves, forge letters and documents and use them to manipulate others and acquire info etc. Basically, Using The Lady Suit should feel similar to playing HITMAN. With this, to adjust my earlier GTA example, imagine if that GTA game has missions where the player frequently infiltrates police hideouts. Now the wanted star removal suit with no vehicles has more utility.

The Assassin suit needs more drawbacks to make the other suits more valuable. For example, the player is always pursued by bounty hunters when in the Assassin suit (Revealtaions had a cool idea where after a public fight the player may end up getting caught by a spy in the crowd who may stab the player if they don't react fast enough. That could be worth expanding on), spending a long amount of time as an Assassin will have civilians recognizing you on sight and reporting you instantly to guards.


As for progression, Unity and Odyessy's RPG systems are worth looking at. Because now that combat is risky and challenging, Liberation's current system of "having all the skills and where buying stuff is worthless" no longer works, if it ever did. I have 2 ideas for skills. The first is a system where each suit has its own specific progression system and you get points and the like by using the suits. Like Splinter Cell Blacklist, if you use the Lady Suit, you get the means to unlock perks and abilities related to what the lady would use. Using the Assassin suit gives you more combat abilities etc. The benefit here is increased replayability, and a better understanding of what and how to upgrade since you're experiencing all the suits' functionality before expanding them. The second a general "you get exp for doing whatever and put them into whatever" like Unity and Ody did. So the player can do missions in the Assassin suit and put the EXP gained into the Slave suit and vice versa. The value here is players can use this to buff suits they aren't immediately using rather than grind them out or have to play with a more limited set at first, especially if they've been neglecting a particular suit. Personally, I'm leaning on the former but I understand the latter may be more flexible and accessible. I wonder if a difficulty option can allow both systems to be options the player can opt into? The player should also be able to buy gear and upgrades and they should also be given out for certain missions. Crafting and their materials could also be strewn around to reward exploration and thoroughness and provide another path for progression. Under this system, it's actually worthwhile to do side content beyond their immediate quality as they can award EXP, materials and gear to make the player stronger in a way they can actually use. Especially if enemies level up and get more powerful. Now, even the trading sub-activity from 3 and Liberation has value as a means of generating money the player can influence. As for cosmetics and visual customization that doesn't effect gameplay, there are 2 approaches, One is like Ody's system where the player can swap to and wear whatever they like regardless of what's actually equipped. I think this is worthwhile because of what everything else can cost, players can focus on spending there rather than dividing their funds on both. Or if we need a sink for player money they could be made purchasable like older AC Games. The player should be able to buy property, Liberation's system already provides a good reason for its existence over its predecessors, they can provide more changing stations and even double as Fast Travel points as well as being a good money sink. I also imagine Quests tied to them like Vice City and they can generate income and resources for trading and crafting.


One idea is that notoriety should also be based on a cooldown or missions so the player has to wait out the penalty instead of being able to instantly undo it by removing a few posters or bribing/killing a few people (AC3 had a version of this idea but for Assassin recruits who were injured). Perhaps a high notoriety may even prevent the player from accessing certain vendors or have to pay higher prices or even prevent access to certain missions. This would encourage swapping to other suits to keep the heat down. In fact, correctly juggling suit usage could be made the focus, with side quests being a way to spend time with low heat suits to allow time to pass for high heat suits. The Racing Game Need for Speed Most Wanted 2005 had a system like this where cars you'd drive would rack up a higher notoriety as you drove and if you wanted to limit and reduce it, you'd have to swap to another car for a while. But unlike NFSMW, I don't think adjusting your suit's cosmetics (like dying the suit a different colour, wearing a different version of the same suit etc) should lower notoriety as that would take away from swapping the suits themselves and makes it easier to rely on a single suit which limits gameplay.


Another more radical idea (or more of a thought experiment) is to make the personas a customizable spectrum. So the player starts out on a blank slate and can add or subtract whatever elements and in the end receive the appropriate position. So if I add heavy armour and weapons, I can't move or run or sneak as well but are great in a fight. Conversely, if I remove all my weapons and wear rags, I can pass off as a beggar and use that to infiltrate places. But that might be too much of a departure from Liberation's set up.


As for Multiplayer, I would suggest it not be included as it would be too tough to manage and balance, not to mention hurt overall exploration if anyone ever takes the Lady Suit. But I do suppose it's possible to do Unity's Co-op missions and make some adaptations to allow multiple players to tackle them with different playstyles.


With that said, here's how I feel a typical Sequence may go down:

The player would start at their HQ and be told a rich aristocrat is having a party and must be eliminated. The player could immediately run and attempt an Assassination, or they could see that a bunch of investigation missions opened up. They could do these which involve various tests of gameplay like eavesdropping, pickpocketing, conversing etc as well as few side activities by swapping through their suits. Once they have enough, they start the assassination and realize they made their Assassin and Slave outfits have too much notoriety. But they know this party's plan. So they swap to the Lady outfit and use that to avoid guard patrols and mingle in the party as a guest then poison the target's cup or something. Then as the target dies, they get the typical Assassin's Creed confession, then the player escapes by pretending to be as shocked as everyone else.

I feel this setup would be cool because it would follow up on all those positives I listed above earlier. I can imagine a replay may involve the player using the target's slaves as cover to get into the party from another angle or using the Assassin suit to play it more typically.

There are some negatives I feel from this approach, the narrative and accessibility

There's a reason why HITMAN's narratives aren't generally regarded as amazing, their very structure doesn't allow for a clean telling and acts that films and most AAA games go for. HITMAN 2 tries with specific sequences and cutscenes but I feel they are too detached at times from what you're doing. That's why Absolution is the way it is. It's the only way the HITMAN games of telling a traditional story. Assassin's Creed 1 and Unity also suffered from this though Unity wasn't even firing on all cylinders to begin with.

With that said, I feel my hypothetical game should embrace that as well as the animus for its attempts at narrative. Liberation as is has a feature where you're playing the game as developed by Abstergo (literally the premise is you the player are playing Assassin's Creed 3 Liberation on your PSVITA developed in collaboration by Abstergo and Ubisoft. And Abstergo has tweaked the game so you see what they want). The player can kill targets hacked in by Erudito to see what Abstergo removed/changed. Unity also had documents the player could read, AC1 had Atlair's character being developed through conversations and Hitman 2 had its thing, and MGSV had Casette tapes the player could listen to as they played that developed the overall plot and characters. I feel the hypothetical game could take notes from all these and make mini side quests, optional reading and material etc to flesh out and compliment the game through some interesting narratives. Hell, a Codec Like prior MGS games that the player could use in the Animus would go a long way. It may not be as inherently engaging for straightforward as AC2-Ody but I feel it would be the best it could be. Besides, I'm kinda tired of Open World games being basically linear games that just happen to be in an Open World.


With regards to accessibility, I know many players may not like the higher difficulty and requirements the game would require. Which is why I feel there should be an easy mode that significantly reduces the penalties and drawbacks of the suits for players who just want to blaze through it.

My Ideas for Elder Scrolls 6

0. The following is a list of features I'd like to see in TES6.
1. 
 
 
 

   A. Radiant Quests

   I would really like Bethesda to overhaul the way radiant quests are done.

   

   Here are a few suggestions

   

   -1 Take notes from Assassin's Creed Origins and Shadow of War

   

   In AC:O there are 2 kinds of Radiant Quests (well technically they are same one reskinned).
 

   You can talk to a particular merchant and he will give you a daily quest to kill some bandits. Doing so awards with a legendary weapon.

   

   

The second is when another player dies in their game, you can find their body in your game and avenge them by killing their killers. You both get XP.





It's also important that OR tells how these are radiant quests, marks them in blue and makes the reward for it pretty good.





In Shadow of War, there are many quests that spring up as a result of the Nemesis System, but there are many different kinds of events and you can influence them in many different ways.



I think TES6 could take that idea. Imagine There are many different kinds of events. Like there is a kidnapping and you are tasked with getting the hostage out from a bandit camp. However, if you are detected, the Hostage is killed. Or a Fighter challenges you to a fight with a unique modifier like you have to fight with only one hand or something. Or you have to hide some evidence prior to an inspection on a citizen's house and you can choose how you want to hide it using Bethesda's physics engine like putting behind a bed. Or you need to pretend to fight someone to impress another person and you are tasked by making it seem as real without killing them and actually losing in the end (I like this one because maybe you can ask the mission giver what they person they are trying to impress knows. So you can use a restoration spell on the fighter and the target might think it's a dangerous spell or something. Or you can hit them with a dagger of healing and it appears as they are powering through the attack).



If there are enough different kinds of events and they switch often and offer interesting rewards, I think the game can get away with more radiant quests to mix up the experience from time to time rather than the same "clear out Bandit camps". Because if these quests are even somewhat replayable, they are helped immensely by the fact they will be repeated.
 


B. Photo Mode
 

I'd really like a mix of Assassin's Creed Origins and Fallout 76's Photo Modes in that, photos other people take can be seen on the overworld map and can show up in loading screens.





C. Combat
 

I'd love TES6's combat to be more involving, maybe even taking cues from Dark Messiah.
 



I think you can choose to enter "combat mode" when you draw your weapon. Here, your controls change so the face buttons and triggers perform combat actions rather than the normal actions when exploring. This would allow players in a fight to do things like kick to stagger enemies, use combos, use different kinds of strikes that do different things, roll and dodge and shuffle, parry etc.



I would like a system where in a fight, enemies you face have simple weakness and strengths so switching your tactics is the best way to win while not being to crazy. For example, you pickpocket city guards so you end up in a fight against 2 normal guards and

one heavy and 1 agile. You can fight the regular guards normally but the optimal way to take down the heavy is to dodge their attacks and kick his sides to stun him so you can attack. The agile is best beaten with parrying. Even hitting different limbs and body parts have different results



The hope being that even though players can brute force through fights, these ideas allow for combat to vary itself more in little ways. And becomes especially interesting when fighting tougher or groups of different enemies





I also think having more varied weapon types like throwing daggers and spears would be great to have.





Even Magic could be tweaked like this. I wouldn’t mind if Magic is reduced in what kinds of spells you can have if the spells that are left can do more. For example, In a fight, I can wield a sword in my right hand complete with all the suggestions above. I have lightning selected in my left hand. I can shoot balls normally, but I also have access to a lightning punch and Lighting AOE attacks that have different strengths and benefits and drawbacks. Now mixing and matching different weapons and spells is more interesting.



Another suggestion but maybe the game could cue one of the buttons as a heal button that automatically pulls resources or spells you have marked in your inventory to use for healing. So instead of going into a menu to heal, you can tap left or something and your character will stand still for a sec and regenerate the amount of health.



To balance that, I think maybe have a “you can only heal x much in 10 minutes”.



Unarmed combat could let you use grabs or throw dirt at enemies. I want this to have enough options so playing with at least 1 hand free could become viable. Shields could let you bash enemies at a huge cost to stamina. (It would be cool to fight with one hand free and the other with a sword or spell so you can grab an enemy and slash at them or shoot lightning point blank at their heads).



Speaking of which, I would like if managing stamina during fights was a factor. Like with low stamina you lose access to many of your cooler attacks and have to play defensively in order to restore it quickly. Hell maybe even a Dark Souls system when you can lower all your weapons and shields and be unable to attack or defend before needing to press a button to boost stamina recovery. This would reward players with skill and taking risks.





C. Stealth



I would love if Stealth was made more varied. Maybe like with combat above, when crouching you can choose to enter "stealth mode" where face and trigger buttons are replaced with other commands.



Maybe the game can use this to give the player moves like using walls for cover, dashing past gaps, vaulting and more.




The player can later unlock Stealth magic and perk upgrades like being able to make a decoy or luring enemies away, smoke bombs etc.



Suffice it to say but NPC AI should improve a lot more.



D. Movement



I think TES6 should implement more varied and vertical movement options like climbing, scaling etc. Maybe this could tie with stealth as you can climb a building to enter a window. There could even be boats to quickly move across large bodies of water. I would also like if there were a network of underground caves or sewers that you could navigate to enter buildings and areas



E. Weapon Wheel



I think that in order to make menu navigation less clunky, especially in fights, the player can hotkey several items and access them all in 1 weapon wheel. This would allow players to quickly switch items that they need without needing to navigate through a 1-way menu. Assassin’s Creed, Horizon Zero Dawn, Spider-Man and Deus Ex all show ways of pulling it off.





Also, please redesign the UI for PC and (if it is in the works) VR version. The default Skyrim version does not work well.





F. Trading



I liked how in Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation, you come to own your own shipping company somewhat early in the game. You can buy raw goods from the new world and sell them to other places in the New World and Europe. If managed right, the player would earn lots of cash from it. GTA Chinatown Wars had a version of that but for drugs and you'd have to manually go to buy and sell in places.



I think TES6 could benefit from a quest where you gain access to a shipping company and how well you run it means it grows bigger and can start serving more of Tamriel. It could be this little thing you can occasionally come back to every now and again.



The system could let you manage a small fleet of ships and caravans from a menu. You can choose where to serve and when to deploy. You may also have a bunch of choices that pop up occasionally like supporting group x, or taking money from group y to increase prices to hurt group Z. The system could have consequences where your choices mean one group could get stronger and take over other groups and either charge you extra in taxes, or give you a monopoly in the area or force you to sign a contract etc. It would be interesting to play multiple groups off each other and reap the rewards of it while competing with other shipping companies. Maybe the player may even be given radiant quests to go out and gather supplies or disrupt rival company's operations from time to time.



If we are allowed to get extreme, why not add a story that progresses in this mode (I know, This is already pushing it).




The point being trading could be a nice side thing to let you earn lots of cash throughout the game while getting a bit of a nice minigame to play.



G. More customization.



In addition to lots of cool armours and weapons. I think TES6 would benefit from having shaders you can apply to weapons and armour to make them look a certain colour. I wouldn't even mind if Fallout 4's Base building returned to let you build some houses and 1 or 2 settlements.



H. Minigames



TES6 could have a bunch of replayable minigames. Assassin's Creed, Dragon Quest and GTA have had things like fight club, checkers, A club where in game monsters would be controlled to fight etc. TES6 having some interactivity in taverns would be cool.



I. Factions



Obviously, everyone thinks that TES should have better factions that have actual requirements, don't make you a leader instantly etc. But I think TES6 could go one step further.



Imagine if each faction had a small group that was looking to take control and change the faction.



So in my ideal TES6, the player would say, go to the fighters guild and because they are a newbie, be assigned small tasks for a while like stopping bar fights. After rising through the ranks by doing things and making contacts, the player learns that group B in the guild want to change the guild to become more mercenary-like. The player can choose to help them out directly if they are highly ranked or more covertly like sneaking into opposing members and planting things to get them kicked out.





The hope being that even if the player isn't a leader, they have enough agency that they can affect things in a cool and satisfying way. I know I would love to have a scenario where I choose to blackmail an evil member into basically being a puppet for me while I sit back as a "middle of the pack" and watch them do a 180 and push for things I want. That sounds much better than being a leader in Skyrim or Fallout 4.



I would like a system like this for the fighters, Mage and Thief Guilds. Or maybe even 2 of them as fighters and thieves can be combined or something to keep it manageable.





J. Bigger Battles



Skyrim’s Civil War stuff wasn’t exactly the most fleshed out (Apparently it was originally much bigger at first before being cut. Mods Restored it). But I’d love if TES6 took a few cues from Shadow of War and made its big battles more cool.




I’d love if you could plan with your army where to attack and how to do it. I’d love if you had stages to pass through to conquer a siege, but you could bypass that if you can (like the default plan is to open the game by battering it. If you can use your climb skills to get around to open the walls and open the game from the other side, or take out towers and archers etc the siege acknowledges that and proceeds accordingly. Like I want a siege to be more siege-y).


 

K. Diseases and Forms
 

TES6 would feel much cooler if during the player’s adventures they could contract big number of illnesses. Some with a random chance, others guaranteed through an optional mushroom or something or enemy attack. So the player may get hit by goblins and come down with an illnesses. Some of the illnesses should be joke ones like one where you smell so bad people think you’re a corpse, or when if an enemy hits you hard enough you vomit onto them or something.


 

I’d also love if the forms were expanded. I wouldn’t mind if only Werewolf and Vampirism stuck around as long as they were expanded. Maybe you get actual combos and fighting moves for both (my fighting suggestions could be applied here). I’d also love for there to be more movement options. Like you can run on all fours as a wolf really fast, jump and pounce long distances, climb etc. Vampires can glide etc.


 

L. Voices
 

While it would be amazing if Bethesda could record every line of dialogue with at least 10 different voices per race and gender for your character, I imagine storing that much audio as well as the expense and limitations placed by that would be pretty great. As such, I’m cool if the main character has no voice. However, TES6 should make an extra effort to make all the NPCs sound more varied and distinct. Maybe hire a lot more voice actors.



M. Codex



While I like the idea of reading Books in an TES game, I think it would be better if they were supplemented with a codex or database system like how Bioware, Witcher and Assassin’s Creed do it. So as I’m exploring, if I come across a cool monster, I can open the codex and instantly read about it. Even books and letters the player comes across can be stored here.
 

The positives are -1 An easy access to all the lore and others in the game (which is good because many TES games don’t present a lot of their lore).



-2 A way to let players recap on things they missed or have forgotten









N. Audiobooks




This more of "I think this would be nice" rather than I think this might be important to consider but since there exists a Podcast that reads Skyrim's books and codex to you, it might be nice if TES6's books can be played in audio format. Too often when I get in a book in Skyrim, I just pick it up and at most skim through it. An Audiobook version is something I can listen to while I play the game. And I since I was willing to listen to all the tapes in MGSV when I normally skip the codec in MG games, I think this might get more of the audience into TES6's books.



This might not be practical for Bethesda given the amount of writing in these books to also have to convert to audio. 













And as a final thing, I’d love a cheat or option that flips the world so it becomes the opposite (Like a door on the east side is now on the west). This would make replays feel much different.




Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and War. My thoughts

The following are my thoughts of Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor and its sequel. It assumes you’re familiar with the games. I won't be as formal and as analytical as I was with my AC2 post.

I’ve recently finished Shadow of War, after finishing Red Dead Redemption 2. My short summary of these games is that SOW is really good, its Nemesis System carries it far and makes it worth experiencing. It’s let down by being so limited in its story. And War makes SOM redundant. It feels that Monolith put the Lion’s share of resources into the Nemesis System, for better and worse.



Lets start with the story. In both the best and worst ways, it feels that the lion’s share of development went to the Nemesis System, because it feels the story got the leftovers.

With Regards to SOM, I always felt the premise and set up was really well done. I bought into Talion's struggle and the precence of Celebrimbor. I was sold on this when I saw that cutscene where Talion was shocked at how the slaves were treated while Celebrimbor encouraging him to ignore it and focus on his mission. Seeing this difference between the heroes would have been cool. I recall Prince of Persia The Two Thrones did a similar thing and it was great. The problem here is that SOM doesn’t do much with its story. It feels more like an excuse to dabble in the nemesis system until the final missions. Only Ratbag’s missions broke the monotony. It’s a shame given the premise and Tolkien’s universe. It's telling that it takes until SOW for someone to bring up that how Talion is feeling after dying.

Speaking of which, I know Monolith takes a lot of liberties with the source material. Frankly, I don’t mind. Games are a medium that what works for the gameplay may not often fit 100% with the source material so tweaks need to be made. I'm cool if a game based on something needs to tweak a lot to work. Case in point, Tolkien wasn't fond of brutality, misuse of power, and the way Shelob was used. Yet, SOM couldn't exist without opposing these. 

Besides, I've seen comic books and their adaptations play loose and fast with continuity and put their own spin on things. If SOM wants to be like an alternate timeline to the Hobbit/LOTR like how the Arkham Games were to the comics, I'm fine with that. If anything, I'd argue that's often the best course of action for games like this. They can pick and choose what bits of the world they want and make their own story without being restricted by the Canon. 

Both SOM and SOW are all over the place in this regard but I feel they did make something that feels unique while playing reasonably well with what's established.

Now onto SOW.

For what it's worth, the game attempts to step up in this regard. It has multiple threads all while the main quest of building up an army to take down Sauron keeps you occupied.

Let's talk our main characters. Firstly, Talion and Celebrimbor have lot more lines that explore their reletionships and views. I loved the Gondorian Artifacts because the 2 would talk about it (Celebrimbor's personality and outlook are interesting). I loved dying as they'd talk about it, the one-liners from Talion when he's fighting an overlord or his "I miss Celebrimbor line". The problem is that the format is rarely more than 1 sentence each outside of main missions.  It's a shame given the perspectives and outlooks of these characters. I'd love a way to get these 2 to talk and react more. Like a button from Prince of Persia 08 or the radio from MGSV. As it currently stands, it's a missed opportunity. What's more is this could have been used to great effect to haunt players once Act 3 starts (Worked for RDR2). Keeping it so minimal hurts when characters do interact as it limits the quality of the story. 

Let's move onto Act 1. I feel this is pretty good. It's different from SOM even for returning players by giving our vulnerable duo with a human rather than Orc locale to fight in. The various characters of Idril ,  Baranor, Shelob and Eladrial are introduced,  future threads are forshadowed , the gameplay is shown, the set pieces are interesting. It's pretty good.

Act 2 splits so I'll talk about each thread on its own. Starting with Idril. I haven't looked much at others opinions, but I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being disliked. Not a lot happens on her path aside from rescuing trapped Gondorians and her deciding to stay in Mordor with Baranor who is concerned for. I kinda get what they were going for with her looking to make up for her father's cowardice but it feels bland and uninteresting. So if I could rewrite it to be better, here's what I would do. Firstly, Idril is someone training to be fighter but typically restricted to do so by Castamir. So she's using soldiers loyal to her to help defend specific things in Mines Ithil. She and Talion work together over their common goals. What the game already does can stay. After the city falls, Baranor takes Talion to a Lair where some surviving Gondorians have taken refuge. We learn that Idril has changed as a result. She's burdened with guilt for being used to sacrifice Minas Ithil so she's started an underground movement to help the remaining people in Mordor escape even if it puts her in danger. Talion can be asked to use his powers to recruit Orcs that are more friendly to assist with this effort. Throughout this, we see how battle hardened Idril has gotten and how worried Baranor is. The final mission ends with a more mature Idril sacrificing herself to save people and Talion and encourages him to not get too wrapped up in killing no matter how necessary it is.

I feel my outline is a better fit because it has its own progression and climax that feels built up to, gives her an arc and ties into Talion's main quest which ends up supporting the new future Shelob envisioned instead of being straightforward and just rescuing soldiers.

Carnan's story is fine. The setpieces, fights and Zog's resurrection sequences are chilling and intense. Really well done. My only real complaints are the sudden recklessness from Talion at first despite Celebrimbor's warning, how unconnected it feels from the main quest, and the oddity in the end where it's suggested the immortal spirit sacrificed herself yet is still around.

Bruz's works well in teaching and is interesting. Also shows how destructive and evil our heroes can be.

Now let's move onto Act 3. When I first got to this point  I felt the story hadn't really justified Talion and Celebrimbor becoming evil while the gameplay had through how I'd treated the Orcs. The twist of what Shelob did then worked out I guess. But a part of me would have loved the original timeline. I bought the game expecting that to happen. Regardless it was a cool way to cap off the story and actually took me off my guard. 

The Shadow Wars wasn't really fun due to the grinding. Thankfully a patch did make very short (it's one of those rare times where the gameplay matches perfectly with the story and it suffers as a result. Obviously Talion's final decades would have been repetitive and arduous ). I do like this ending for how fitting, tragic and intense it feels. As well as how it ties into LOTR in an interesting way. Looking back, I don't think there was a better way they could have ended the story while still fitting in. Had Talion and Celebrimbor simply failed, it would have been a repeat of the Bright Lord DLC. Had they been delayed or won, it wouldn't have fit with LOTR. It also leaves a door open for a 3rd game. Consider me intrigued. 

I want to talk about Isildur, Minas Morgul and Hammerhand. Obviously, Ithil Fell millennia before this game. I'm fine with that. The game creates an interesting scenario, set piece and association with the town that it uses. It wouldn't even be remotely as engaging if you just started with Morgal already active and told a quick history lesson. As for Isildur, I know Nazgul aren't replaced in Tolkien's lore and they were active millennia before Isildur (and Hammerhand) even entered the scene. But I'd argue the game makes good use of it. It establishes that Nagul work differently in that they can be killed by a few ways and that's how replacements come in (severing the connection of Nazgul to Sauron worked to kill the Witch King in LOTR). Making Isildur a Nazgul has its benefits. Note that Talion's past has never been a point in the ongoing narrative. So suddenly having to develop a new Nazgul that both Talion and the Audience would be in awe off in the span of a few missions is not ideal or impactful. Using Isildur accomplishes that and also creates tension of Talion (and the audience) seeing such a mythical figure be Sauron's puppet. And as a result, Isildur becomes the catalyst to show Talion the truth of the situation when Celebrimbor brainwashes him. Again, it would be hard to do that or be as invested if it were anyone else. As for Hammerhand, he foreshadows this by being someone that Celebrimbor was around and saw what the rings did.

-Gameplay 

Obviously, the main selling point of these games is the Nemesis System. That system that generates many different Orcs and thrives on unscripted interactions between each other and the player. War's version with more Orcs, interactions etc makes SOM look like a demo.

Speaking of SOM, partway through my playthrough I found I got bored Of the system. I'd seen all the ways it could have played out so even new lines of dialogue or different Orcs just felt like window dressing. It wasn't until the Beast master DLC the game surprised me with new scenarios and it did by scripting some interactions. It's kinda funny the game was able to surprise me by getting rid of the one thing that made it unique. SOW obviously got a lot more mileage but there were cracks in the experience. Many of the procedural missions to summon a particular Orc got repetitive after a while. I'd prefer if these was better integrated into the world rather than being these missions. The sieges got repetitive as well due to the same goals every time. I'd love if they were more open-ended as what's there is pretty solid and open already.

I'm not fond of how you have no control in the fight pits. You could make the case for the online fights to keep it balanced, but in solo play, it is kinda frustrating to spend time building up a recruit, sending him in to become a bodyguard/warchief and he gets killed by a skinny twig of an orc causing you to have to repeat the process.

I find the way stealth and combat is done in these games to be interesting as they feed into the Nemesis System quite well.

Stealth is very lenient in the world outside of forts and captains. Letting you kill and interrogate with ease and work upto forts and captains. Letting it feel like a personal hunt at times as you move through the map to take down an enemy that killed you. But there is no real danger or need to stealth unless you're in a fort which may make stealth kinda shallow but it keeps up the pace of navigating the world.

Combat is interesting because of how the Arkham like combat is used. Now this type of combat system isn't technically new. Spider-Man 2, Prince of Persia Warriour Within, and even Assassin's Creed 1 all used many of the pieces of a free form combat system that allowed for quick counters and crowd control with minimal inputs. But Arkham popularized a particular application of it. The goal here isn't survival. That's a given. It's efficiency/style. It's about taking down crowds quickly and effectively while maintaining a high combo and variety. The challenge comes from maintaining that as enemy groups vary in composition with their own unique resistances, requiring the player to juggle how they move, fight and build up their combos to perform special moves. For example, instead of using the beat down move against an armoured target, a player may opt to beat on normal targets around him to build up the ability to perform an instant takedown and use that on the armoured target. 

A limitation of this kind of combat system is its reliance on the presence of fodder enemies during regular fights to function. It can't really work during one on one duels.

For example, consider the first Titan in Arkham Asylum. You fight him in a regular fight one on one. And you can easily strike and jump over his attacks so he can't even touch you. That's the downside. You're too versatile against 1 opponent. That's why many boss fights in the series throw regular thugs at you. It's the only way to add a reasonable challenge to the fight. Otherwise, you'd dodge every charging Titan and Ivy plants with ease. The only times Arkham has had truly great boss fights are by changing the context  (Deathstroke by incorporating the QTE counter based fighting ) or by ignoring the combat system altogether  (Mr. Freeze).

Here's where you can see games inspired by Arkham stumble. The Amazing Spider-Man games, for example, kept the counter and movement systems but didn't have the enemies or scenarios able to vary to allow maintaining a combo to be a challenge.

Here's where we loop this around to SOW. It's cool that they made this work for survival simply because it wasn't the best fit.

Let me explain, you'll find Orcs with immunities to you being able to fight them straight up. So you'll end up attacking grunts to try and build up the ability to perform special moves like executions, explosions etc to damage them. Even if this doesn't work out and you end up dying, it's ok because the Nemesis System kicks in and continues. It depends a fair bit on players dying and the inadequate for fights like this Arkham combat ends up assisting this without feeling too bad. The system also encourages more dirty tactics as well so the commitment to combos isn't required. SOM ends up subverting this later on due to how OP Talion gets so only the flaws remain without the positives. SOW is closer to getting the balance right.

A combat system like AC Odyessy's might be a better fit mechanically (because of how you can deal with multiple enemies) but it may allow players to bypass parts of the Nemesis System by not dying as much.

- Misc

In this section, I usually talk about things that are tangentially related to the games, or don't fit in as well etc. You are free to skip over this as this is more of a bonus that a main part of my article. 

I wish to discuss 2 things here, microtransactions and an Orcs as Slavery article.

About Microtransactions, SOW lets you buy Uruks through Lootcrates. This feature was removed later in an update. You can still get Uruk lootcrates but those are now only in-game. Their mere inclusion got a lot of negative controversy.

Personally, I do not care that much. If a game wants to include this stuff, Let them as long as I am not forced into it or am really pushed into it. If someone else wants to spend money to buy all the Uruks right away, I don't mind. It does feel like they are paying to pay less of the game but that's their choice. If I'm cool with people spending their money on expensive cars, knick-knacks, fashion clothing or any expensive luxury, then I can't complain about people wanting to spend money in a single player game.

As for the other thing, Vice who wrote an article in 2017 titled 

"Orc Slavery Made Me Quit ‘Middle-earth: Shadow of War’"

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjve9q/middle-earth-shadow-of-war-orc-slavery-lord-of-the-rings

I have seen various Reddit posts and Forums overreact and go all terrible by the mere mention of this article with vitriol comparable to comment sections of those anti-SJW types on Youtube. And I want to set the record straight because upon reading it, it was hardly apocalyptic. I encourage everyone reading this to actually read this and not just go off the title.

The article actually praises SOW a lot. Quote: "Shadow of War has gone to pains to make the player care about the orcs. The advertising tagline is "Nothing Will Be Forgotten," live action commercials depict orcs lovingly caring for players years after they've stopped playing, and holding grudges for decades."

And raises interesting comparisons to games like X-Com and how one would get attached to soldiers or in this case, Uruks. These are cool things to discuss. This is a game where people can recruit sentient beings with blood brothers they care for and you can torture their minds into insanity worse than death. Now, I love this game, but to see people dismiss this article and be so unwilling to even lower any hostility is absurd. Like, the same forums and Subreddits that talk about how they regretted killing Uruks they got attached to can't see a side where people really regret that. 

Also, Tolkien himself grappled with the nature of Orcs and their morality, so at the very least, don't immediately dismiss stuff like some angry manchild.

The case for Audio Logs and conversations

I remember back on the internet from 2011 to 2014 that audio logs (and to a lesser extent conversations) were made fun of a lot in forum posts, memes and webcomics. South Park Stick of Truth even had an entire sequence poking fun at the idea. After recently playing The Elder Scrolls Blades while listening to The Elder Scrolls Lore Podcast, I started thinking about this and the nature of audio logs and conversations in games.

Firstly, audio logs and conversations may be one of the few if only ways for the player to gain information while still being able to relatively play the game normally. Like cutscenes, textboxes and the like require you to slow down and not play in order to take in the information presented. But you can still listen to say, MGSV's cassette tapes while still sneaking around and playing the game. Allowing for story, plot and character development to happen while the player is simultaneously playing the game and improving Mother Base (it also helped me to recall what was going when I couldn't play the game for a month). I recall I find it not as interesting to read say, the Books in Skyrim by comparison or listen to the codec in prior Metal Gear Games.

It also allows characters in isolated environments to still express more of their character. Take the Arkham Series. Batman isn't Spider-Man where he is really chatty to himself but his conversations with Oracle and Alfred show off the intentions, motives, desperation etc of all parties involved. Bioshock uses it to explore more of the story even when nothing intense is going on. Borderlands and Warframe use it to keep the co-op stuff continue to feel seamless and not be interrupted. God of War 2018 has Kratos and Mimir's stories to keep the admittedly pretty boring travel segments more interesting. GTA has radio conversations that recount what you did, give you stock advice or just have a laugh. Need for Speed uses calls to tell it's story while you're still on the road.

Secondly, audio lets the game open a window into a past life while still allowing the player to imagine the rest. I remember the audio tape in Fallout 3 about the family that saw the bombs drop and still feels haunting, or Clementine's Family's message in The Walking Dead Season 1 The Game. I feel it's harder but still possible for just scraps of text to convey the same meaning.

Thirdly, I feel if more games had implemented versions of it, it would enrich the experience. Take The Assassin's Creed Games for example. Most of the time, the modern day is pretty separated from the past except for the odd story segment, when your crew occasionally chimes in, or the nice bit of commentary in the database. If the games had a real time codec like conversation system where Desmond/Layla/Numbskull/Player/PS Vita Entertainment System could talk with their support crew/Erudito about what's currently happening, how they feel and even how they circumvent the animus/Helix/game, it would go a long way towards making the modern day feel more integrated and making me feel more invested like how Metal Gear and Arkham did (as an aside, the novelizations do something similar but for the past protagonists as we can see their thoughts so it's much easier to relate to their struggle and what's going on). I'd also find it easier and be more willing to listen to Skyrim and Witcher's books.

But it's not all good though and this can be difficult or even inappropriate to use at times.

Firstly, it can break the immersion to have people leaving their recordings everywhere (To this I say, it's not much more than reading journals and emails that are lying around everywhere).

Secondly, it can interrupt other things, especially in more linear environments. Bioshock Infinite had audio logs in the same spot where Elizabeth would start talking.

Thirdly, you risk rubbing players who don't prefer this system the wrong way. Especially when important info may not be immediately present but in an audio log somwhere (perhaps transcripts of the log can be added to the database when you listen to them. I think GTA and a few other franchises do something like that)

Fourthly, Audio files can increase the file size and budget of the game, especially if you've hired big name voice actors. The former may not be much of a problem on modern consoles and PCs but is a concern for Switch and mobile where a game above 1.5 GB is considered massive (I recall ports of games like Dragon Quest 8 removed voices and it's still over 2GB). The budget is likely a problem for those big Console and PC games.

A Critique of AC4: Black Flag's sailing system and how to improve it.

Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is pretty much the best pirate game out there (arguably Rogue is better from a gameplay perspective). It gives you that pirate vibe in its story, and its gameplay lets you do all the pirate things. You have a sailing system that lets you explore an open sea, you can leave your ship at any point to go out to the sea or on lands, fight other ships and board and capture them and more.

But I feel that, despite all these praises, the sailing side of the game is too mechanically and gameplay-wise shallow. The result is that the sailing gets stale long before the game ends, especially if you decide to do lots of side content.

Sailing takes less effort than parkour and most of the seas look the same. It's not like a survival game where the lull between encounters can be used for tension or breathing. There are no random encounters or events or stories you can stumble across that mix up the sailing. You can't leave the ship on autopilot while you walk across the deck and engage in events on the ship. Combat and interactions between ships is the same every time with very few variations. As a result, the whole ship aspect feels undercooked. I didn't feel this in AC3 because in that game, the navel aspects were their own missions and focused on just the important set pieces to make up for the lack of depth. They were quick and cool enough and used sparingly enough that they stayed fresh throughout the experience. With AC4, it feels Ubisoft just took the navel stuff in AC3, plopped them down into an open world ocean and called it a day without really taking the time to fully flesh out that feature enough so it can stand in an open world environment (just to be clear, I don't mean Ubi literally did that. Obviously they added things like scoping, guns, boarding, being able to leave your ship, legendary ships etc that. But that isn't enough,). When Ubisoft released the iOS game; Assassin's Creed Pirates. while they still kept it open world, they made more mission based like AC3 was and that kept it fresher to me longer than AC4's version. Future games like Origins made it even more reaction based with counter-attacks you can do by bracing at the right time.

It kinda reminded me of Need for Speed Rivals. Like, once the initial high of the cool world wore off, I realized there was nothing new in the world to see. After the first few hours, I saw pretty much everything the game and its map had in store. BF has that same feeling to me. After being 25 hours in, I found I was hunting the same, I was fighting ships the same, I was navigating the same, I was doing the same as I was back when I was say 6 hours in. What really changed was my co-ordinates on the map and the stats telling me my ship was this good. There were very few twists, surprises and shakeups to the formula throughout the entire playthrough given the length of the game.

If it weren't for the Foot sections and the story, I feel AC4 would be the worst in the series as soon as the pirate novelty started wearing off. Because that novelty was designed for quick missions, not as the basis for an entire open world game.

On the other hand, it is kinda serene and cool and I still found it enjoyable to kick back and put on a podcast and just take it all in. I suspect many people that love BF were really into that aspect. Personally, I felt I needed more than just that to ever consider replaying the game, especially now that I've played Rogue to 100% completion and had my fill of this type of gameplay.

So if Ubisoft or any other company ever wants to make a new pirate game and use BF as an inspiration, I have a few requests or advice that I want to see;

-1- Make land-based gameplay important and a consistent part. Black Flag had the usual AC gameplay on land. This kept the game fresh for much longer. Sea of Thieves and AC: Pirates didn't have much luck there. Have an interesting story in there to keep people engaged.

-2- Give me a reason to explore using sailing.
As it is in BF, sailing doesn't really feel like exploring. The islands you find have no story or side missions on them (collectibles don't count). You don't find random shipwrecked sailors that you can interact with as people rather than as a number on your crew meter. You can't interact with your crew. You can't hear of a rumoured area and have to use your on board tools to travel into a foggy area to find it with your crew about to stage a mutiny.

Basically, imagine Red Dead 2, but you can only ride around a desert only map on horseback. There are no towns, houses or friendly NPCs with cool stories and you get the ocean stuff in AC4.

-3- More varied options in combat.

One of the first things I did when I was playing AC4 was to try and hijack a ship by swimming up to it. I was killed automatically by invisible means.

This highlights a problem with Ship combat in AC4. You have to fight using your ship. And you can only fight the same way. You steer around, you fire cannons, maybe use some of your other weapons. repeat the process until the ship is damaged, then choose to board it or sink it there. Boarding consists of the same "get in and kill x people and remove their flag" every time. You can change how you board the ship as you can swing in, use the guns, swim etc. But these options are limited and before long, you'd have done everything loads of time over.

So change up how fights are done. I know realism can limit what you can do but I play AAA Blockbuster video games for fun. If I want realism, I'll go play a simulator instead. Rogue improved a bit with puckle guns, icebergs you can shoot and you can be boarded. AC: Pirates had minigames that required different inputs.

I'd like things to be a step further. How about during ship combat, enemies can launch projectiles you have to intercept like in AC Pirates. You do this while managing your supplies and getting your crew to counterattack. The different responses can keep defence more fun than occasionally pressing square when you're in the line of fire of enemy cannons.

Have your crew also play a part. Maybe you have to manage your crew as they make repairs, put out fires, get supplies and fight back. Maybe you can choose to send some of your crew on a boat to attack the enemy ship to take pressure of your ship but limit what you can do as you have fewer hands on deck. Hell, let me send spies on board a ship beforehand and a percent chance of a random event happening like a mutiny, betrayal, a fight, a fire etc.

Maybe let me hand the ship over to my crew while I jump across and attempt to fight with my raiding party.

Let the environment play a bigger role. Expand Rogue's iceberg mechanic. Maybe, make it so I can shoot the sides of cliffs to trigger a rockslide to a greater effect. Maybe I can feign a surrender to lure in ships. Maybe I can leave an abandoned ship for a portion of my crew to use as a bait (I once stumbled across a burning ship that had some loot on it. Didn't really have much).

-4- Keep the game shorter than average.

Like, maybe make the world smaller, or have fewer missions needed to complete the game. This limits the fatigue that comes from having to do all these things with such a 1 trick pony kind of gameplay. Don't have lots of collectibles everywhere on your map shown. Make the rewards cool and interesting.

Critique and Analysis of The Ezio Trilogy- Part 2 - AC Brotherhood

Disclaimer: This piece assumes you've played Brotherhood, 2, Rev and most of the future titles. It also assumes you've read my prior work on AC2 as there are some topics I don't discuss here but did back there that also apply here like the health system and UI.
https://mieckfram.blogspot.com/2018/11/critique-and-analysis-of-ezio-trilogy.html

I still make an attempt to explain things throughout the piece for those who haven't played in a while or are unfamiliar. But I may still gloss over certain details and get straight to analysis.

So let's begin:

After beating AC2 and booting up Brotherhood, I felt this was going to be better. Right from the beginning, the models and characters were more visually detailed. Desmond and Friends were going somewhere, Ezio had something to grapple with. It was all looking well. AC Brotherhood was shaping up to be AC2 done right......



Sadly, once we got to Rome and the game started rolling, the cracks started to show. AC Brotherhood, while having better gameplay than 2, has a story with not much in it. Honestly, this whole game could have been scaled down to a DLC and have the same impact.


Let's start with the story


-The Story-

The Story in Brotherhood has 3 main problems, Desmond and crew barely do anything for 90% of it despite the premise, Ezio doesn't grow or have any interesting development and the villains have no threat or presence or place.

Firstly, Desmond does nothing of value or on his own agency for 90% of the game. He helps out to get into Monteriggioni in the beginning, sees visions and hints of the future. But then helps set up the animus and go out restoring power. I ask you, how do these develop Desmond? He isn't challenged physically or emotionally by these tasks. We learn nothing new about him. When he is about to go into the animus, he makes a racist remark to Altair's statue, which I guess is something (it is dropped immediately so it never even informs on his character)? And during the next 80% of the game, the game might as well be set in a warehouse like 2's because the game does nothing with the premise or Desmond (at this point, why set the modern day in a refurbished Montergionni if you aren’t going to use it? That’s a lot of time, manpower and resources dedicated that could have been used elsewhere. If it’s just for fanservice, then that is just insulting. Did the devs think that pandering a small town is somehow so special on its own that it excludes anything? How can people defend that? Even the Abstergo offices in Rogue and 4 are better utilized with secrets, rewards for exploration and actually being relevant to the setting and story.) Desmond can't explore and discover many relevant or interesting hidden secrets (most of his friend's emails are guarded and their eventual secrets aren't interesting or tell you much about them). You can't go out and do missions and Desmond where he grows into a hero role, or learns character stuff etc. In other words, Desmond's time in Brotherhood is mostly a waste. The game finally makes use of Desmond at the end when he uses Eagle Vision to discover the Apple's password, and gets into the temple and becomes Juno's pawn and is visibly affected by having to stab Lucy.

So finally the AC Games give Desmond an important moment where he acts like a normal person instead of just "following around" he contributes both in his actions, personality and knowledge and has agency in his actions. We only had to wait, oh I don't know all of AC2 and Brotherhood to finally get it! Even the stakes rise but are not fully followed through. In all honesty, we could have basically condensed everything he did in Brotherhood and given it to AC2 and Rev because it isn't substantial or used enough to warrant its own game. You can skip Brotherhood and miss nothing of value even that doesn't happen because Rev recaps the important stuff (and as expected, completely glosses over Montergionni because of how superficial it was). When a recap one game later only needs to summarize your whole role in the game despite being a main character and doesn't even need a paragraph for most of it, you don't have a lot of substantial material.

Now normally, if your protagonist is silent or whatever, it falls to the supporting cast to pick up the slack. And again, AC2 and Bro fall here.

Shaun, Lucy and Rebecca are 1 note in these games. You rarely learn much about them other than what you already knew when you first met them. They have the same snappy conversations.

This is highlighted in Bro where you can discover through emails that the crew is starting to crack under the pressure. Yet you can’t ever follow up on it as Desmond and see sides to your crew that they keep hidden. You do have only 1 conversation with a stressed out Lucy where Desmond comforts her and that's it.

In addition, Bro also does nothing in Montergionni.

Rev addresses this by showing Rebecca being torn and Shaun being antagonistic about the ordeal. 3 has scenes where Desmond and William come to blows and where Des and Shaun discuss different sides to the American Revolution. That’s amazing because you see characters interact in ways that aren’t snappy comebacks.

Let's move onto the villains. Ceasre is not a well-written main villain.

Firstly, despite a really strong intro where he establishes his motive, shows his threat level and paints himself as a dick, the game drops all the momentum the very next sequence.

Ceasre is absent for most of the game as he's on a campaign. And his people (who are your targets) don't seem to be the most aware. This means that killing his men doesn't feel like you're taking down a warlord. You're just killing targets until the story progresses. Ceasre doesn't even realize his men are dead until he comes back near the end of the game. AC Syndicate had solution for this. The main villain, Starrick, was shown at the end of every sequence reacting to the deaths and preparing a response. It kept his influence present despite his distance and kept him threatening. That doesn't happen in Brotherhood so it doesn't feel like the Borgia are a constant threat the heroes need to watch out for.

Which is another thing, despite being in the heart of enemy territory, Ezio and friends seldom have to worry about the Borgia presence until specific mission sometimes say so. It makes it hard to take the Borgia as credible villains.

Secondly, what thematic or narrative angle is Ceasre supposed to represent? Al Mualim showed Altair what being the top Templar was like. Hatyam was the opposite of Connor. Achilles acted as a foil to Shay. None of that applies to Ceasre. There isn't any moral or emotional obstacle he has over Ezio that he needs to over come. He's just an evil ruler. Imagine an alternate AC Brotherhood where Ceasre presented an alternate means of rule. He was taking power by force and it was working. Where Ezio's troops made by trusting the people were legitimately struggling. Ezio using the particular strengths of his way was able to beat Ceasre. Ceasre, by looking like some twisted version of what Ezio could have become had he gone down the wrong path, That would be more cohesive than what we got.

Most of the other targets are not developed past their initial stage. What you see is what you get. Goes doubly for the multiplayer characters you kill. 

Finally, we get to Ezio and his flaws.

Look at Brotherhood in proper detail. What does Ezio really learn or grow to in the game? Sure, he loses Monrergionni, but after that..... nothing.



He almost effortlessly rescues Christina from the Castello. He solves Volpe’s and Bartholomew’s problems without really struggling or making a difficult choice. He hardly ever confronts or is ever threatened by Ceasere or his forces. His assassin Brotherhood is seldom in danger.
He doesn’t even properly lead his own faction. Machiavelli does all the real running and Ezio just pops in, makes a decision and everything works out.
 Their only disagreement is whether to trust the people, which Ezio immediately goes off on and it works out instantly. There is no back and forth or Ezio going out his way behind Nicolo's back to make his plan work.


In short, Ezio is practically a Mary Sue in Brotherhood. He makes no mistakes. His enemies never get the upper hand on him. His friends instantly trust him and his judgments are always correct. The closest thing to a disagreement between factions he has is when he forbids Claudia from fighting, and then at the end of the game she kills some soldiers so he instantly recruits her. How is that a conflict or ways for him to grow? You could swap Ezio from the beginning of the game with the start and the result would be the same. The character of Machiavelli seals the deal here. He starts Brotherhood angry at Ezio because he let Rodrigo live. Pretty in character with the real life version of the

character. He then storms off to Rome. Later when Ezio joins up, he seems to forget his initial anger, and instantly gives Ezio a position of power, takes orders from him, treats him with respect and more. This guy wrote the Fucking Prince in real life. He should be the last person to ever give Ezio any power. And the icing on the cake, the game implies it’s Ezio who Nicole “The best leaders are those who are feared rather than loved by the people” Maciavelli wrote his books on. Like, you can’t get more Mary Sue than actual historical characters changing their core beliefs on a dime because you’re just so gosh darn “likeable”.



In contrast, Revelations actually develops Ezio. We see how he’s more cautious in his older age, we see how he actually leads some of the recruits in cutscenes with actual guidance. We see there is reasonable consequences to his actions (the inexperience recruit he brings kills the wrong person. He kills the wrong person on faulty info and his a little upset and mature about it. The base gets ransacked and Ezio takes proper care to strike back. Even his final choice of “I’ve seen enough” is a result of internalizing Altair’s memories. Actual character development).



Assassin’s Creed 3 and Rogue also did it much better with how the protagonist interacts with his targets. They aren’t just people to kill. They are people who’ve played a huge role in the protagonists' life. Even challenging them necessitates emotional and change and hard choices from all parties. In contrast, Brotherhood hardly dwells on that.
 

I'm going to compare the Ezio trilogy now to Big Boss’s Metal Gear Games 3, Peace Walker (no surprise here as Kojima and the AC team were good friends and shared mechanics, Easter eggs and ideas).



In Metal Gear Solid 3, Snake starts out as an inexperienced and naive soldier and ends up more mature but also hurt inside. He sets out to realize the world his mentor wants.
 


In Peace Walker, Snake starts his own military group. They grow as he undertakes contracts. The story of the game has him managing the implications of having a nuclear-equipped PMC, and how the evolution of threats against them makes him truly commit to being Big Boss. He makes mistakes, he hurts people, and is forced to come against His old feelings of The Boss which makes him commit to his (interpretation) of his ideology.



Even the Dark Knight Trilogy nails this and Batman doesn’t even change much as a character.



The Dark Knight begins with a Batman who’s set up. He has his methods, morals, and approaches. He even has his “criminals are predictable”. And the Joker shows up as someone who turns Batman’s strengths into weaknesses. His strength and resources? He can’t really hurt or bully Joker into submission. His morals? His refusal to kill and reveal his identity is exploited by Joker.



Bruce even says “I’ve found the one thing Batman can’t do”.



There is nothing even remotely close to these 2 approaches In Brotherhood. When the antagonist and his forces are so distances and unaware of the protagonist, they cease to even provide a feeling of tension.



Brotherhood as it currently is, would be lacklustre as an actual DLC story. It has no business being the main story of a full sequel. This is a story more concerned with making its main character look cool rather than actually tell or explore a story.




The sad part is that it could have been improved immensely and really justify the merits of a trilogy.



If Ezio had something to emotionally grapple with throughout the game (Ceasre attacked the Villa. Ezio could be torn between his need for revenge and needing to prove Nicolo wrong by become a real leader. Or he could be made extra defensive to prevent any more loss of life and his arc is to learn to trust people and grow. The next step from AC2.), consistent and believable conflicts, mistakes and characters rather than 1 dimensional cutouts there to make Ezio look cool (like, make it so Volpe and Nicolo don’t trust Ezio and he needs to work around his superiors. Make it so his struggles mirror that of Claudia so when he promotes her, it feels like it was something he learned.) and make it so the villains are actually present (Make it so that the Borgia forces start to adapt to the Assassins. Make it Ceasre is aware and we see him planning counter-responses. I can’t take a villain seriously when he doesn’t even know his own forces and closet allies are being hit until he finds out through some idiots. Ceasre should be someone who represents a twisted version of who Ezio would have become if his character development went down the wrong path.).” 


-Let's move onto Gameplay.

As per my post on AC2, The gameplay is pretty much the same so you can refer back to it where needed. I'll be talking about what's different.

--Combat

Combat is still the same as last time. There are a few minor tweaks and 1 big addition.

Firstly, you have a few animations particularly with the sword as can you use the hidden gun alongside the sword.

Now, the big new addition is the chain kill system. When you perform an execution or a counter-attack, pressing square while pointing to a target while make Ezio perform an instant takedown on that enemy. You can use this to take down groups of enemies one at a time.


This doesn't fix my gripes with the combat system in AC2, namely that it was tedious and too easy and simplistic. Bro attempts to sidestep this by allowing you to speed through combat by chain killing. In essence, it destroys the already laughable difficulty by turning you into an unstoppable 1 man army by letting you tear through groups of enemies with no challenge. The game does have elite Borgia troops that present some resistance to this but aren't strong enough to really counteract this. Not that any enemy could. At this point, the combat system has all of its functions tied to countering or setting up for an execution so you can't have any depth or variance or challenge. This really becomes an issue during boss fights like the one with Cesare where you can't counter but you can just use your strikes to get through him with no real difficulty, only tedium.

Sadly, we would have this system until Origins finally makes an interesting combat system where you have distinct choices and approaches.


--Stealth.

Largely the same. But level design and mission design is now more flexible making these missions more enjoyable.

Your big new tool is the crossbow, which only ends up making parts of your arsenal redundant. It has good range and damage, can be used from most places and is silent. So it makes using throwing knives useless as they have small range and damage, and the hidden gun a liability as it is loud. 

I guess I understand why the team cut the crossbow from AC1 if it would have ended up being like this.

Social Stealth is the same "line of sight but with a social stealth" theme as AC2. No real changes here. Except it is harder to use in the Eastern and Southern parts of the map due to the more rural nature of the map.

But overall, Stealth is more enjoyable this time around.



Interestingly, where I feel the gameplay of AC Bro is at it's best is during the VR missions. Here, since you're on a timer and need to navigate fast, the simplistic parkour (with vaulting being able to add some depth), the simple stealth and the fast combat end up working well during hectic assassination missions.

Now that is all the pieces together but even in isolation, the pieces can be enjoyable.

The Parkour challenges are enjoyable since you can vault to move faster or cut through some areas.

The Chain Kill challenges are interesting since you can only use executions to kill everyone rather than also be able to use counters to cover for targeting an enemy that isn't attacking. This ended up making these sections pretty tense. But ultimately, these suffered because there aren't any tells for knowing when which enemy is going to strike aside from a flashing indicator on an enemy. That isn't helpful when you have to go for an enemy and their indicator didn't go yet so you have to make a guess on who's going to attack. So RNG hurts this challenge.


But still, I enjoyed these challenges and would really like a future AC game to include them with the better gameplay of the recent games with the vaulting of this game.





--Rebuilding Rome

In AC2, you can rebuild Monteriggioni. It was limited (and doesn't really help progression that much) but it was kinda cool seeing your town progress. Bro spreads that out to the entire city of Rome. You can renovate businesses, fast travel points, buildings and landmarks (after you destroy the nearby Borgia tower) allowing businesses to exist so you can buy items from them and collect a small bit of revenue from all investments. You can also buy buildings which can house a faction like courtesans, thieves and mercenaries.


On the positive end, it does fix AC2's unbalanced economy by ensuring you always have something to buy until you 100% the game. Rebuilding Rome lets you earn more income which can be used to buy more things and many paintings and buildings are pretty expensive.


On the negative end, there isn't much reason to make many investments. Aside from Fast Travel Points and the odd business or building, the only benefit you get is extra cash (you can renovate the collesium and side from a cool camera view, it's not like it changes much or you can do more things with it). And just like in AC2, much of the progression doesn't benefit much from cash due to how powerful you already are. Medicine is plentiful, you hardly take damage and can tear through enemies with starting weapons. So that limits the usefulness of doctors and blacksmiths to the odd poison or ammo refill or the odd purchase like a crossbow. Tailors with the pouch upgrade stop being useful once you get most pouches so you won't visit them much unless you like changing your colours. Painters just sell paintings you can view in your base and all that does is increase the revenue coming in slightly. So all these don't really add that much to the game.


Interestingly there is 1 cool idea the game has with this that ends up being really disappointing. There is a chest in a reservoir you can't reach unless you renovate all of the aqueducts which fills it with water you can use to reach it. It's disappointing because this is the only instance of renovating having an effect on the world and the payoff is so weak.

Imagine if renovations unlocked side quests in areas, or got people to start supporting you over the Borgia or whatever. The current system is just not fun to bother with.



--The Assassin Faction.

As per the title, you can manage your own Brotherhood group. You can recruit people with a grudge against the Borgia into your ranks and level them up to make them better.

You can level them up by using them alongside you or sending them on dispatch missions all over Europe like the Combat Ops in Metal Gear Peace Walker. Recruits will earn XP until they hit level 10 whereupon they become master assassins and have the best armour and offence they can.


As for using them, the dispatch missions work by finding a station and selecting where you want to send them and how many with a chance of success. More difficult missions have more rewards. However, XP is divided when multiple assassins join so choosing how many to send is something to consider. In addition, you can have a max of 12 assassins in your faction and can only have 6 in the field. Any assassin sent out on dispatch will be unavailable to help you in the field.

As for how they can help you in the field, there are 3 main uses. You can summon them to help you assassinate a single target, summon them during a fight to back you up or, if you have 6 assassins ready, release a volley of arrows that kills all enemies nearby. The first 2 uses only take up a single charge (or 2 assassins each) so you can use 3 in succession if you want to call in 6 assassins to fight. The last one uses all your charges and you have wait for them to recharge.

Assassins can die in the field from losing all their health or on dispatch missions so it's wise to watch out for them.


So what are my thoughts on all this? It's alright.

It doesn't make narrative sense how you can have multiple master assassins in less than a month of in-game time meaning they outrank Ezio. Even the Animus excuse is stretching it. In addition, they have a really small role in the actual story since only 1 mission actually requires you to use your assassins. The Actual Brotherhood in the story is the other factions.

The assassins themselves aren't really that interesting. Being procedurally generated limits their character. Revelations fixed this by giving missions to Level 10 recruits you promoted to leaders that tested them on a particular aspect and let their character shine as well as select side quests for certain recruits. Which was pretty interesting. AC3 went another way and made all recruits established characters you can interact with and have proper missions on with the change that "death" simply meant out of action for a while.

Their uses are fine. It's cool to see them in action and some of their abilities let you end certain fights early. However, they don't add that much. Like I said in the economy section, the benefits you gain from them on missions are pretty small. So you can neglect this aspect and miss little, which is a shame given the title of the game.

Also, Rev and 3 had much better flavour texts for the dispatch missions and more things to consider as you had to "take over towns", requiring you to whittle down resistances and maintain assassin influence. Brotherhood doesn't do much with this.

AC3 changed how the assassins worked by blending the other factions into the assassins. So you can summon a group of assassins to distract, for cover or for combat. I personally prefer this as it gives me more options for stealth from the outset.



-The Map.


Rome as a map isn't that interesting or fun map to explore in an early AC game. The northern and Western parts are great because they have a lot of cool and different architecture and atmosphere and more of your parkour works here. However, the southern and eastern parts aren't that interesting because unlike AC3 onwards, parkour in non-urban environments is limited.

Many parts of these areas can't be accessed through direct parkour and require navigating around to find a ruined column or whatever that you can use to climb up and around because there are a lot of cliffs and hills you can't climb normally. It's not interesting or fun and brings exploration and movement to a crawl. There are pockets of towns or areas where stealth and parkour have places to shine but these are limited.



--Side content.

A massive improvement over AC2. In addition to tombs, puzzles and the like, we have Da Vinci's missions, which are great fun and really shake things up. A few more assassination missions that take the new and improved level design into account. And a rare side quest that involves a character. You also have Borgia towers, heavily guarded areas where you must kill the captain and then destroy the tower to free the area (unlike Revelations, guards will make no attempt to retake the area). It's enjoyable if a little repetitive

By 2010 standards, it's alright. By 2019 standards it's passable at best. So stick to just the good stuff if you plan on playing it. No reason to do everything.



--Multiplayer

I haven't played much of Brotherhood's multiplayer. But what little I played, I really liked. I loved that the mode had managed to do social stealth properly here by making the focus be identifying discrepancies in behaviour (gamepad players had a bit of an advantage of keyboard players due to the analogue control) and you had abilities that toy with that. Hunting other players while pretending to be an NPC was great.

 My only real criticism was that you don't start out with abilities (later AC games did) which made matches against more experienced players more one-sided. In any case, I'd love to see a standalone version of this one day that really pushes this to the limit. A shame even Brotherhood and Rev's version was removed in the remaster.


-DLC

Nothing special. But we do learn that Da Vinci is gay (which was hinted in his AC2's bio). Making this, I believe the 2nd gay character in the franchise and first who's not evil. 


-Misc

Most of my complaints from my last piece carry over like the UI, health, weapons etc. But there is also a bug on the PS4 version where the trophy for parachuting off the Castello does not pop and requires a reinstall. Also, don't get the Mac OS version.

I also had a bug where Ezio's clothes weren't properly removed during his sex scene with Caterina so it was kinda funny seeing his clothes be all triangular and constantly clipping during the act.

I'm not a fan of the way the opening has Ezio seducing girls because it seems more like the game is trying to make him likable but it comes across as something 15-year-olds make you think is cool.


-Conclusion.


Brotherhood is a game that probably doesn't need to exist for any non-business reason. And it likely would have been DLC had it been released today. The story is lacklustre and doesn't have the meat to support it. The gameplay is an improvement but it takes until Revelations for most of the improvements to find their footing. If this game never existed, not much would have changed aside no multiplayer and about 10+ million in sales for Ubisoft. Maybe this game was necessary to develop the ideas and engine that resulted in better sequels so maybe I am being too harsh on this game. But in a vacuum, this game is just that, filler at most.

The sad thing here is that, this is a pretty cool concept. I have outlined ways the story could have been better. And if the gameplay was as good as Revelations, this would have been probably one of the best AC games for a long time. As it stands, the game is pretty average at best.

If you want to play it, I recommend blasting through the main story and doing the odd side quests. Don't worry too much about the factions or other stuff.




As for me, I don't think I'll do part 3 of this for a while. My next posts will be Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor and War and the PSP Need for Speed Titles.