Assassin's Creed Syndicate and Why I'm not Excited

-->

A little over two years ago I wrote a blog about being wallet raped by Ubisoft regarding their annual release of Assassin’s Creed. I’m not sure I really explained my thoughts well enough on the subject now that I’ve gone back and read it, but it was interesting that I felt then what I’m feeling now about Ubisoft and their Assassin’s Creed franchise. For those of you who don’t know, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate has been announced with a release date of October 23^rd...Of this year. This means that less than a year since Ubisoft provided us with Assassin’s Creed Unity AND Assassin’s Creed Rogue (both released on the same day) we’ll have yet another game. I’ve completely lost interest in the Assassin’s Creed franchise now and I’m going to explain why, hopefully better than I did two years ago.

First and foremost is the annual release of these franchises. As I’ve stated in my previous blog, it’s tiresome. What’s wrong with giving us a good couple of years to soak in a game? Most Assassin’s Creed games take me thirty or more hours to finish. That’s a lot to soak in and they’re asking me to do this every single year. Imagine if Ubisoft didn’t released an Assassin’s Creed title since Assassin’s Creed III and just now announced Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag for a release date of this year. I’d be shitting golden eggs and this particular post would be about why I’m very hyped about this news.

Instead, I feel nothing for the news about Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. It was something I was expecting given the annual trend and it’s not something I’m excited for. I literally just finished playing Assassin’s Creed Rogue, which is hands down the worst game in the franchise, and have yet to even load up Assassin’s Creed Unity. I’m not even in the mood to play Unity yet. What in the world could possibly make me want to play Syndicate? Imagine eating pizza for dinner every single night. Pizza lovers would say hell yes! But after a week or two you’re either constipated or shitting liquid. The taste of pizza becomes less exciting, you start to grow man boobs, you feel like crap, and you’ll ultimately crave something different. That’s why pizza is a treat that most people wouldn’t consume on a daily basis.

Assassin’s Creed can be exhausting to play through. If you’re a completionist like me, you hate seeing all those extra activities on your map. Those are the side activities placed in the game to make it seem like there is a ton of content. But half the time it’s recycled garbage that we’ve been doing since the first Assassin’s Creed game. Often times it’s the same activity copied and pasted all over the game. Oh, go into that tavern and talk to the bartender, but on your way some thugs start a fight. It just so happens to be the same damn thugs in every location.

The franchise has experimented with different things throughout their titles, but it feels forced. These activities literally add nothing to the story and only exist to fill space. Speaking of useless things to make the game seem fuller than it is, collectibles are everywhere in the Assassin’s Creed franchise.  Collecting flags in the first game was cool and it sparked the interest of the whiny little achievement hunter within me, but it has since gone off the deep end. Animus fragments, feathers, swords, more flags. Ugh. They serve no purpose other than to maybe give you a new weapon or outfit. But by the time you’ve collected everything you’re near the end of the game and don’t have much need for it. At least the glyphs found in Assassin’s Creed II helped unlock a neat little video that added to the lore of this strange universe.

All this stuff adds up and people like me wind up spending more time in a game doing nonsensical crap all while the developer expects me to be excited to do the exact same thing every year. No thanks, Ubisoft.

Have I mentioned how broken the mechanics have become while things that use to be fun have grown stale? The first venture through the early Assassin’s Creed games, climbing up walls, air assassinating people, blending into crowds, using poison and smoke bombs was all very exciting. But as time goes on you start to see that nothing really changes all that much. To sprint and to climb is essentially the same button and it can be very frustrating. Think trying to find all the collectibles is enough hell? Try chasing a damn shanti across some rooftops only to climb a random chimney when you meant to run right the hell by it while the piece of paper disappears before your eyes. It’s like they’re punching me in the balls and laughing at me while I keep thanking them and asking for more.

The need for stealth has grown less and less important as well. You wind up getting into more fights than you may want to and that leads us to the ever popular, whose turn is it to die now, combat system. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s when a group of enemies surround you, but only ONE fights you at any given time. I did notice in Assassin’s Creed Rogue that one person would try to attack me when I was slicing his buddy into fleshy ribbons, but it wasn’t enough to make it challenging or engaging.

Going on one of the many eavesdropping or tailing quests has me using less and less of the stealth tools around the environment and a lot of it has to do with them forcing me into combat situations. I’m trying to follow someone by scaling the rooftops, but there are dozens of enemies up there patrolling. I try to maneuver around this by either taking them out or following my target on the ground. But more often than not, those same bastards on the roof, or the many guards on the ground, will simply spot me and force fail the mission or drive me into unneeded combat.

Why exactly is that, now? Just because the area is red on my map means I’m an instant target? What about that lady carrying her laundry? Why does she have more access in this “restricted” area than I do? No one takes pot shots at her from the rooftops because she’s b-lining it through the “red” area. That’s not how things work. It doesn’t make the game harder; it just makes it more annoying. I enjoy being stealthy but the execution of it has simply been thrown out in favor of me slaughtering everyone who poses a threat. I think it would be completely awesome to sneak in, gather info, and get out unnoticed without having to slaughter a small army.

At least naval combat came and made the game fun again, for a little bit at least. But having experienced it in Assassin’s Creed III, IV, and Rogue, it’s gotten rather stale. Especially since Rogue butchered what was fun about it. Although that could be because I literally just got done having the EXACT same experience a year prior.

Then there’s the story. At first it was interesting to see an Assassin named Desmond get kidnapped so his enemy, the Templars, can peer into his past using his DNA. They search for long lost artifacts by finding out what happened to them. Fortunately for them, it just so happens Desmond was related to everyone who’s ever come into contact with an artifact. Oh and finding these things would trigger a weird cut scene that had you asking “what the fuck did I just watch,” and then boom, game over. Still, I really enjoyed the stories of every game up until Desmond dies saving the world.

Well now that Desmond is dead, the development of the modern story has gotten lazy. You don’t play anyone worth caring about. You’re not even given a name, unless being called numbskull a thousand times counts. These sequences have devolved into a big game of, “Hack certain computers and get some exposition about a character you forgot about.” It’s not as fun as it use to be and the story in modern time doesn’t seem to propel the plot any further making it a chore for me to complete.

The stories that are truly fun to experience are those of the Assassins. Altaïr’s tale during the crusades was new and fun. Ezio’s trilogy made this franchise what it is and remains the most interesting story to date. I could write an entire blog about these stories so I’ll just assume you’ve played them. They’re the meat and potatoes of this franchise and a huge reason I still play the games. Unfortunately the Assassin stories have begun to slip. Assassin’s Creed III gave us the worst protagonist yet in Connor and Rogue is a massive skid mark in the underpants of Ubisoft. 

Hell, most all of the games seem to follow the same pattern, the exception being Brotherhood and Revelations.

            -Meet the protagonist

            -Find out how he becomes an assassin

            -Realize there’s a lot to learn when it comes to slaying people

            -Assassin outgrows his childish ways and realizes what his true motivation is

            -Assassin completes his goal, overcomes his enemy, and encounters an artifact 

            -Insert annual, "What the fuck," moment and then end the game

            -Rinse and repeat 19 times (There are literally 19 games)

It wasn’t until I played Rogue that I saw how stale this franchise has truly grown. Assassin’s Creed Rogue released on last gen consoles on the exact same day as Assassin’s Creed Unity, which released on current gen only. I’m annoyed that they release a game every year and yet last year they released TWO! I’m so glad I waited to buy Rogue because it wound up being the most glitched, rehashed version of any of their titles. Much of the game was copy/paste segments of areas from both Assassin’s Creed III and IV. The naval combat was exactly the same, but with the addition of ice and a new type of gun, because adding subtle things to make it “different” should be enough to confuse all of their fans, who are clearly morons. Me included.

Releasing an annual game has clearly caused most of the issues I’ve pointed out. Where is the time to innovate and make the franchise fresh again? Instead of adding decent side activities that add to the overall experience they fill their games with nonsensical crap in order to appear large. Maybe the game mechanics could be worked on and innovated so people can control their character better. Hell, having a few years to work on the game may even bring us more thoughtful stories that truly impact people rather than making them ask, “wtf,” all the time.

Having three years to do that will not only give fans something different within the world of something we’re familiar with, but we’ll also have had a long enough break to actually WANT to play it. Look at Fallout 4, we haven’t seen a title in years for this game and now people are frothing at the mouth for this new game like a cake deprived fat kid. Think it over Ubisoft. Until then I’ll spend my time playing The Witcher 3, a game you should totally take some notes from regarding side activities…just saying.

The Gaming Industry as I See it.

-->

I’ve played quite a few games growing up, but I don’t feel that it became a hobby for me until I discovered Halo in 2001. I’ve blogged about it. Gaming was a lot different fourteen years ago than it is today and I can’t quite put my finger why that is. The Internet has provided an outlet for everyone’s opinion (much like this blog) and it’s a lot more popular now than it has ever been. This is evidenced by the scores of gamers consistently yelling at each other and developers about almost anything. Gaming news has grown exponentially, but my realization of this could simply be because I didn’t read much of the gaming news available fourteen years ago. The biggest thing I’ve noticed, however, is the quality of games being made as well as corporate greed rearing its ugly head.

Once upon a time I would purchase every game that I was interested in. This was a time before Gamefly was a thing and before I had bills. I grew accustom to purchasing games before I had any idea how good or bad they might be. This risk was like an expensive version of eating a piece of assorted chocolate not knowing what the taste might do to your body. Certain companies earned my trust because they didn’t release the game version of whatever that chocolate is with the pink crap inside. Game franchises have also made blind purchases easier for me because I’m familiar with their brands and clearly enjoy them. Halo, Mario, Sonic, and Uncharted are just a few examples of that. 

Yet franchises mark the beginning of how different things are now compared to when I started gaming. Every title released in a franchise has the potential to be nothing more than a rough copy and paste of the previous title, only with better graphics. Think of Call of Duty as an example. I don’t care what anyone says, the core experience of that game has been practically the same since Modern Warfare came out and yet people still buy it regardless. They’re selling us the same product and it’s successful because of the title on the box. This reminds me of a quote from Tommy Boy, not word for word, “I could take a crap in a box and slap a guarantee on it if that’s what you want, but all you’re getting there is a guaranteed piece of shit.” That’s exactly how I feel about Call of Duty, each year it’s a piece of shit with the name brand slapped on the box for the comfort of those who don’t want to risk sixty bucks on something that may or may not suck.

Call of Duty epitomizes what can happen to franchises that release games annually. The experience is nearly identical with a fresh coat of polish to make it look nicer. Then they add a difference here and there to make people think they’re getting something totally new and worth another sixty bucks. But it’s a facade. What’s really happening is the quality of these games decrease with every new title. Not every franchise is like this, though, so don’t let me being jaded towards Call of Duty deter you from liking it.

Once the quality goes down in our games it feels like we’re paying a lot more and getting a lot less. Let’s look at Sim City 2013. Its colossal failure at launch was ugly and only proved to the world that corporate greed was at play. First and foremost they wanted us to stay connected to the Internet in order to play it, a primarily single player game. The thought alone of that is annoying enough, but when they did that they must have overlooked the fact that their servers weren’t ready. So they crashed and the game was garbage for however long it was because EA thought they were successfully battling pirates.  Even when it was playable it was a half assed version of what we’ve grown to expect out of a Sim City game. I dumped sixty bucks on this “masterpiece” without thinking because I loved previous city building games and yet it bit me in the ass.

Fast forward to 2014, the year of disappointment in my book. First we have Watch Dogs from a company I trusted to put out good games, Ubisoft. They’ve made some of my favorite franchises, Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell, and Far Cry. So when Watch Dogs was rolling its hype train deep into my brain I got really excited. I could write an entire article on why Watch Dogs sucked and how Ubisoft half assed the game. The subpar graphics, mediocre story, and generic gameplay all rolled into one was disheartening. Why can I shoot random people if I want yet I’m unable to punch them in the face? Why the hell can’t I jump! What is going on?

September rolled around and we got Destiny a game developed by my beloved Bungie. The creators of Halo! Destiny was going to be so awesome and then it tanked. It’s very fun to play, but it’s an unfulfilling experience. It lacks a story, period. The story that is present makes you feel like a bunch of it was cut out for whatever god-forsaken reason. After completing the game you find yourself replaying the same missions over and over and over and over and over again in order to level up, earn new gear, level up that gear. It’s a grindfest and it’s my absolute worst nightmare in a game. I felt very betrayed here because I held Bungie up high on an undeserved pedestal because…Halo. They’ve lost that trust.

Finally, and this one is a real doozy for me, Halo The Master Chief Collection. This IS my game. Four games wrapped into one with every single multiplayer intact. Holy shit balls I was ready to relive my Halo 1 and Halo 2 experiences with my friends and it was going to be all I ever needed until I died. That was until the game released and didn’t work for close to FOUR MONTHS. That is completely unacceptable and yet I threw my money at them because not only was it coming from a company I trusted, but also because I’ve played all four of those games on the previous two generations of Xbox and they worked just fine. Again, I can write forever on this subject and have even posted on article on it already.

Ubisoft finished up my year with three games that not only burned the bridge of trust I’ve had with them, but helped me lose faith altogether. Assassin’s Creed Unity had its massive hiccups as well as The Crew. Far Car 4 is a fantastic experience if you wanted to relive the exact same experience you had in Far Cry 3. Well, minus the good story in Far Cry 3 and in the mountains instead of an island.

So what we have here is a list of games that came out in the past two years that have been broken upon release, had a lack of content, or simply sucked. I know it’s happened in the past and perhaps having social media and gaming news constantly at my finger tips pushes these items up on the list of what is and isn’t important, but part of me finds it truly odd that all of this happened in the past year and I haven’t even mentioned the flop that was Drive Club. The thing that truly baffles me about this, though, is that more and more big companies are spending loads of money on their games and yet here we are getting less in return. Destiny cost half a billion dollars to make and the amount of content within its universe is abysmally small. You’d think with larger production costs that we’d at least see better quality in our games. I don’t need a game that is busting at the seams with content if more than half of that content is simple fluff, but I do expect a certain standard of quality. Hell I expect the game I purchased to actually work *cough* Halo *cough*.

Console games haven’t always had the luxury of patching their titles as games on PC have. It wasn’t until the last generation that this became a thing and we would see all sorts of titles forcing day one patches. That’s because it gives them a bit of extra time to finish the game. But what’s the rush? Why not pretend like it’s ten years ago when you had to make sure your game was as perfect as it could be because you wouldn’t get a chance to fix it? It’s because gaming is a billion dollar industry and the faster you push games out the door the faster a brother gets paaaaaaid. I believe that since gaming has grown into a huge money making business that corporate greed has begun to settle and tearing away the quality that use to come in a game and replacing it with useless content (fluff) that’s safe.

It reared its ugly face, for me anyway, with companies like EA forcing people to buy online passes if people who bought used copies wanted to play their game online. It seems weird to me. Someone bought that new copy of the game so it isn’t like there are two different people somehow playing the same copy simultaneously from different locations. That one purchase still shows up as one person online.  Well obviously used games are killing development studios, right? I don’t think so. It’s when distributors like Gamestop try selling you a used copy for five bucks cheaper than a brand new copy only a week after the game came out that I think hurts the industry, but I digress.

Downloadable content (DLC) has become a big issue over the past decade. I remember a time it was a labor of love where the developers of our favorite games gave us the chance to play more content. PC gamers are familiar with this stuff in the form of expansion packs to their favorite games. Unlike expansion packs, which came with a lot more content, presumably, DLC was hashed out in smaller doses. Here are five maps for Halo 2 at the low price of ten bucks.  Sweet deal, and we bought it because we wanted to and the developers made it because they wanted to. Sure they could easily make some extra scratch, but that isn’t the only reason they did it. As time progressed the cost of DLC rose. Five bucks for this, ten bucks, and now fifteen dollars. While some of it is well worth the money, it soon began to look like a desperate grab for some extra cash. Finally it seemed that every game was doing it.

Then DLC grew into a model I really have distaste for. Season passes. At first I thought this idea was brilliant, I could pay ahead of time and simply get all the DLC. Whoo! But I’ve soon realized that paying early for content makes it so the developer could release a steaming pile of shit (guaranteed) because I’ve already given them my non-refundable money. What am I to do then? They can give the three DLC packs as promised, but there isn’t a guarantee on how much content there will be nor the quality of that content. We’re basically just throwing our money into their pockets and hoping that they provide a worthwhile experience. We’re showing them good faith by paying for something that isn’t here yet and it’s disgusting. It’s gotten to the point where season passes are being sold before the fucking game is even out! Batman Arkham Knight is currently selling fans a forty-dollar season pass for their unreleased title. Disgusting.

All of this stuff is designed to milk the games we’re buying for as much money as these developers and publishers can get out of them. While at the same time we aren’t seeing anything new. Sure we get a few new IPs here and there but how often do they sell well? The Last of Us did great, but that title fits under the trust we have for Naughty Dog, which has provided very successful games in the past. But what about games like Kingdoms of Amalur, developed by 38 Studios? That game wasn’t all so terrible and yet the studio went bankrupt. Why is that? Well this whole business model is terrified of that very thing happening. These companies spend millions of dollars developing a game and they don’t know how well it will sell. They don’t know because gamers themselves are scared. Every time we spend sixty bucks we are risking our hard earned money on something that, for most people, is expensive.

So what this boils down to is gamers purchasing things that they are comfortable with. Call of Duty 14, Halo 10, Tomb Raider 12, whatever. That’s why franchises like Assassin’s Creed are releasing games every damn year because it’s usually a safe bet for gamers. So these companies doing that wind up making loads of cash while selling you the same damn thing over and over again and never truly providing something fresh and new. On top of that they sell you DLC to keep you playing that game so you won’t take it back to Gamestop after three days to get something else. It’s DLC that has been in production before the actual game has even released. Hell, this DLC may have been stuff that was taken from the original game and then sold to you for additional money.

Sidebar: The attention span of gamers these days is ridiculous. Gamers rarely finish their games and often times when they buy a brand new title, it’s being traded in for something new a week later. What in the holy hell people? Am I the only person who likes to see most of his games all the way through to completion?

So all of this stuff to milk games on top of many games being rehashed or unimagined versions of what they should be has really lowered the quality of games where as ten years ago we were getting twice the content and quality. It’s because they don’t care as much about their games anymore as they use to. Developing a game use to be a labor of love while now it seems to be a massive cash grab. Who cares if the game sucks as long as we make a profit from it and we can do that by hyping up the game and making look like something it isn’t. Who cares if the game is broken, it’s got Halo in the title and we can just fix it in four months and forget about in favor of the next game we’re going to release. There is no integrity I tell you.

But there is light during these dark times. Indie games are the way of the future and after the last AAA studio has fallen to their own greed (will never happen), Indie games will be right there trucking along. The production cost is a lot lower and this allows them the creative freedom to try new and exciting things. Since the production cost is lower they can sell their games for cheaper meaning more gamers may be willing to take a risk. I recently had the pleasure to spend 12 hours playing through Ori and the Blind Forest and I can tell you that I got more from that 12 hour experience than I ever did with the forty plus hours I put into Destiny. 20 dollars worth of game valued my time more than a 60-dollar game did. I know there are probably crappier indie games out there on the market, but that’s because they can afford to be shitty. They’re at least trying new things rather than rehashing the same experiences we’ve been “enjoying” over and over in other popular titles.

I’m now realizing that this whole article is nothing but a giant rant, but I’ll try to sum things up here and end it. I’ve lost my trust in the companies that make games for me to play. I feel that they lack any real effort in the games they release so that they can produce them faster and milk the fans for additional money on DLC. As a result we’ve seen crappier quality in our games than we used to. I feel that indie development is the way of the future. Regardless, I’ve made it so I won’t pre-order games anymore, no matter how much I like being able to pre-download them and play them at ten the night before release. What’s the point of me showing good faith to a company that may not even deliver a functioning game? I only buy DLC when it’s on sale and if it’s for a game that I really enjoyed.

Seriously. Trust will take you a long way. You may be able to fool the idiots out there or the rich people who don’t care, but I’m hoping with all of my heart that gamers unite and force corporate greed out of the picture. Make games because you love games; don’t make games because you want a fat check. Have some integrity and earn that fat check the way you’re supposed to. Great quality products WILL make money. Okay, the end. Mad props if you read this whole thing. Rant over.

My Return

When I was younger I had gotten engaged to a woman I didn’t love. It was a lustful relationship that ended with constant fighting. I remember sitting at my thinking spot in Cheyenne and texting her that it was over. I can’t remember why it was over, but I was so mad about something that I was going to make her suffer. At the time I didn’t really mean it and thought she would beg me to stay, but she agreed that it was over and that hurt me the most. I made a rash decision that I almost immediately regretted. Thinking back on this now I can tell you that her and I were never meant to be, and that’s okay. But the situation itself, where I hastily did something I knew I really didn’t want to, came into my head as I emptied the recycling bin on my computer. What had once been in that bin was a folder with at least two-dozen blogs I’ve written and never posted online because I thought they sucked. It feels like I erased a part of myself because what was in those blogs were thoughts and emotions I had felt about certain subjects ranging from why Far Cry 4 is amazing and crappy at the same time to what life has been like as a single dad.

I still have all those thoughts and feelings for those subjects, but never again will I be able to write them with such a fresh palate of emotions. A friend of mine has been telling me to just write and post what I wrote without revision or editing, which to me sounds insane. If I did that my blog would be full of diarrhea in the form of words. No, I must still edit my work, but the realization that other people may like my writing even though I don’t hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve been living the past year and a half of my life in a self-loathing environment where I have been a victim to someone else. My wife left me for another man. She’d never admit that it was for another man though, but instead would go on to explain why I’m such a skid mark to society that she couldn’t take it anymore. I bought into that whole-heartedly and let those feelings control me. Maybe she’s right about me. Maybe I do suck at life and don’t deserve things that I work for. But the reality is that she is wrong about me. I don't suck at life and I do deserve the things I work hard for. Before this happened I was always eager to write and share my opinion with the world. I was always very excited to write a new story so I could post it online for people to read. That ambition has been silent for so long. In truth it’s never been silent, it’s been buried deep within me and it screams to get out. The sound, however, has been muffled by the much louder sound of me feeling sorry for myself.

I say no more to that. People have been telling me to pick my balls up out of the dirt and move on. Don’t let this one person and event drag you down. Clearly I ignored that and in doing so I’ve destroyed a beautiful landscape I had filled with words, and for what? A writer who doesn’t write really isn’t a writer, is he? I mean, who cares that I just graduated with a writing degree? If I’m not actually writing, that degree just becomes a piece of paper that is as useful as the roll I have sitting next to my toilet. If you don’t practice your craft and get better at it then you’ll never become anything. What if Stephen King gave up? We wouldn’t know his genius and the world wouldn’t be rich with his amazing stories. I’m not comparing myself to him, of course, but he is a prime example that hard work and dedication can pay off. Anything in this life worth having is worth working hard for and it will never come easy.

That’s why my blog is back, that is why I am writing this now. No doubt in my mind I’ll hate every word of this as I go through to revise it, but the world will see it anyway. I know I have a talent for this and that is why I pursued it in the first place, but I need to get over this self-loathing and realize that not everything I write is garbage. So with all of that being said, I have decided that I will be writing for at least one hour a day. Practice makes perfect, right? Practicing my craft WILL make me better and that is what I’m hoping for. It’s my goal to post at least one blog per week, get the script for my graphic novel finished, start writing a game, and even a novel. My mind is full of all sorts of crazy shit. I’m a dreamer who concocts insane stories in his head and it’s time those stories see the light of day.