Assassin's
Creed 3 stinks, I'm sad to say
I
have been a fan of the Assassin's Creed games since the first one. A
open world platformer/stealth game? Hell, yes. By the time AC3 came
out, they had four games to figure things out, too. Which it looked
like they had. AC2 was a huge improvement on AC1. The
post-assassination sophomoric explication was very much cut down, the
personality free Altair was replaced with the extremely likable Ezio
Auditore and the lengthy fight sequences were dramatically shortened
by Ezio's incredible ability to kill a person. Ezio also got a
laundry list of nifty gadgets, a hidden wrist gun, dual hidden
blades, a crossbow, more weapons to choose from, poisoned daggers and
darts, the ability to use ziplines and gadgets to climb faster,
parachutes and eventually bombs and grenades, too. He was like a
Renaissance Batman. Additionally, Ezio got three games and you could
see him transform from a callow, but likable youth, to a serious and
mature man who accepted responsibility and taught others his arts.
Ezio was a great character, fun and likable who matured believably
(in a video game sense) without the tedious monologues of AC1.
In
Assassin's Creed 3, they decided to fuck that up.
First,
the combat regression. In short, the AC3 protagonist, Conner, is not
nearly so well armed as Ezio. First, they removed throwing knives.
In the four previous AC games, the protagonists could throw knives
quickly and accurately. Most foes fell after one knife hit. Conner
can't throw knives. Sure, he starts out with a gun, but it is in all
ways inferior to Ezio's gun – when someone was targeting Ezio with
a gun, Ezio could generally shoot them before getting shot. Conner
draws much slower and is likely to be shot before he can do anything
(well, he can grab people to use as a human shield, and it's cool
when there's someone around for it to work on, but there often
isn't). I have no idea why Ezio's gun is technologically superior to
Conner's, or why knife throwing is out, but it is. Sure, Conner has
a bow but it's no better than Ezio's crossbow and since Conner has
fewer arrows it is in some ways worse.
Additionally,
when on a ledge, Conner has no ranged weapons he can use. Both
Altair and Ezio could knife throw from ledges, which was useful.
In
the AC2 games, they made combat shorter and more interesting than in
AC1. In AC3, they regress by making combat less interesting
(difficult to use ranged weapons in combat, elimination of dodges)
while radically increasing the number of people you have to fight.
In AC2, a guard patrol was between two and four guys, generally. In
AC3, a patrol is a dozen people. It also takes
Conner longer to counter-kill someone than Ezio, which means combats
take longer and you're less likely to get a combo kill going because
you'll be taken out of it by someone stabbing you when you're
engaged.
The
game will also, for no good reason, fairly often put you on the
highest notoriety. The British couriers will sound the alarm even if
you've got no interest in them, so you'll be minding your business
and suddenly you'll be surrounded by literally thirty guys. So,
there are random fights that are either extremely long and tedious or
chases where 2/3rds of everyone around you is a guard, making it hard
to get away.
And
on the guard note, apparently the colonials work with the British in
chasing you. This is baffling but whatever.
So,
there is more combat, it is longer and less interesting, and your
weapons suck compared to Ezio's – they do less damage and take
longer to use. Didn't Ubisoft learn this lesson from The Warrior
Within?
Let's
move on to Conner, himself. First, the simple one. He's boring.
He's incredibly dull. It's like all they could think of for a
Mohawk character was “noble savage”. The liveliness they
introduced with Ezio vanished in AC3 and Conner's stoicism. Conner
does not smile, he, nor does anyone about him has the least sense of
humor.
Second,
there's the racism. He is a noble savage, which is a stereotype.
It's painful to watch. This is mixed up with the atrocious writing,
generally, which I'll talk more about in a bit, but Conner's
stereotypical noble savage motive is to save his village's land from
British expansionism . . .
Which
is also a complete reverse of actual history. The Indians were
overwhelmingly on the British side because the Crown had started
limiting intrusion into Indian lands. An English High Justice had
even opined in a newspaper that he saw no reason why England's white
subjects should be allowed to steal the land of England's red
subjects. In the Revolutionary War, around 13,000 Indians fought for
the British. Around 1200 for the colonials. The knew that the
colonials were no friends of the Indians and, of course, they were
not.
But
Conner is just so painfully boring. Combined with that noble savage
bullshit and the idiocy of proposing the colonials were better for
the Indians than the English, ugh.
The
writing is generally awful. One of the things I learned is that no
one in colonial America is either pleasant or attractive. And the
pedantry that was so awful in Assassin's Creed 1 returns in full
goddamn force. Many “missions” are Conner walking around
protecting some famous historical figure as they ramble on about the
sad plight of rich white men.
I
mean, I'm an American, but I honestly don't know what side I would
have been on during the Revolutionary War. When the war started, it
was not obvious that the US would become a republic and usher in a
new global democratic era. But it's hard for me to have too much
sympathy for the colonials. The whole “taxation without
representation” business wasn't some cruel trick of the English,
but a fact arising from the fact England and the Americas were two
months travel time apart. The trip, in addition to being long, was
dangerous. It is a bad idea to let the weather hold a government
hostage.
Second,
you look at the “tyranny” of the English and it's really . . .
not that tyrannical. It's mostly very modest tax increases on items
on paper and tea. Tea! It'd be like rebelling because the
government taxed Coca-Cola!
Then
there are the reasons few people talk about – particularly
England's growing unease with slavery (the English would outlaw it
altogether in 1820, forty-five years before America got around to it)
and England's limits of colonization westward. Many immigrants came
to America for land, equating Indian lands with free lands. The
English court system was starting to rule in favor of the Indians.
This was unacceptable.
About
the worst thing the English actually did was housing troops in
private dwellings without getting the consent of the owners. The
English and French were doing a fair bit of fighting in the Americas
and the colonies wanted protection, but barracks were in short
supply. So the English quartered troops in private houses, forcing
their way in.
Mind
you, they paid for the soldiers being quartered. And heavy knows I'd
hate it if I was told that four guys were going to move into my house
and I would be responsible for feeding them, no matter how much I was
paid. It would really piss me off. There are also canards of the
English troops behaving badly to their landlords, but there are no
specifics. I'm sure that more than one soldier seduced more than one
wife or daughter, and that would also fuel my rage, but I don't think
that revolution is the answer, there, more like . . . build some damn
barracks.
The
real reason the Revolution happened is a growing sense among
Americans that they weren't English. Many of them had been there a
while and the American experience was so little like the English
experience that the divide between the two places grew large,
particularly during the period of Salutatory Neglect. The English
had unintentionally allowed the colonists to grow more attached to
local government than the English government, so after the French and
Indian War when the English came in and treated the Americans like
subjects, when the English started to pay attention to the colonials,
again, it heightened the feeling that the Americans weren't the
English. But that reason is pretty hard to sum up in a game about
running through trees and knifing people.
In
the game, this manifests, like I said, with Conner being nattered at
by various figures, pontificating in the most tasteless ways
imaginable about the causes of revolution. Case in point, Conner is
walking around Boston with Sam Adams, and Sam is mentioning the
unjust nature of British soldiers being quartered in private homes.
Conner says, basically, “Well, you keep slaves.” Then the game
has the fucked up audacity to equate quartering troops with owning
human beings. There is a scene with some British soldiers behaving
badly to the people quartering them and Sam Adams smugly says that it
proves his point about the quartering soldiers is worse than slavery.
I
mean, I almost stopped playing right there that shit is so fucked up.
Slaves were flogged, raped, humiliated, mutilated. They were owned.
No, they did not quarter troops. They didn't have homes, after all.
The idea that the struggles of a land owner being inconvenienced is
the same as the savagery of chattel slavery is racist and detestable.
I understand where it comes from – there has to be a justification
for rebellion and the real reasons aren't, like I said, that good or
defensible. But it's horrible to suggest that anything is as bad as
slavery this side of genocide.
Plus
there's the whole Indian thing. The idea that the colonials would be
better for the Indians is farcical and obviously untrue. Sure, some
Mohicans fought for the colonials, but as mercenaries. Not exactly
high-minded motives, there.
For
additional racism, Conner's mentor is black. So, we have an Indian
and a black guy who are involved with the Revolutionary War? Like
the Revolutionary War improved conditions for black people in
America? It's boggling, just boggling.
The
game is also not about Conner. As far as I got, the main missions
were about people like Paul Revere or Sam Adams, with Conner being
their ethnic sidekick as they accomplished various historical acts.
While I understand how things got there, I don't know why someone
didn't notice. If they wanted the game to be about Sam Adams, they
should have made him a goddamn Assassin. (Which would have been
wicked, come to think about it. It would have provided motivation
sorely lacking in Conner.) But the supporting cast, who are actually
the stars, go on at great and tedious length about everything.
None of the characters are interesting or even personable.
Other
gameplay issues . . . the game has a lot of tedious bits relative to
other games. So in AC2, the Assassin's become capitalists. Ezio
goes around buying land and businesses to get the money he needs to
do what he needs to do (including buying art). But the way it's
handled in that game is . . . Ezio goes up to a shop, buys it and
every so often money is deposited in his account. Every so often he
had to go get it. That's it.
Conner,
on the other hand, has to actively take a hand in transactions. He
has to manage the estate's affairs – personally selecting what is
made and where it is sold, and to whom. If you don't go into their
menu intensive trading interface, you don't make any money.
Well,
you can by hunting. The glories of hunting. You spread bait near a
snare. Animal goes into snare. You skin the animal. Exciting!
Also,
something that vexes me a little bit, is the wolves. Wolves will
attack you pretty much on site. That perpetrates the canard that
wolves are man-eaters when, in North America, there are zero
unprovoked wolf attacks. Zero, as in “none”. Gray wolves are
endangered, for crying out loud!
You
also go around performing a beaver holocaust. There's good money in
beaver pelts and they're more or less helpless. But, c'mon!
Assassin's Creed III: the Extinction!
Funniest
moment for me – the man-eating black bear. I . . . laughed aloud
when I heard that one. Black bears are famously cowardly.
So
the game has a lot of tedious gameplay. Some of it, like the
trading, is reasonably important to the game. You need to buy things
to succeed in the game so you have to use their silly trading
interface to make money, rather than trade being something that just
arises from your estate's growth. Hunting is amusing for about ten
minutes but then it's a drag.
There
are some improvements over the AC2 games. Well, one improvement.
The freerunning – which is the core of the game – is greatly
improved. And, yet, they seem to want to use it less, there are far
fewer jumping puzzles than in previous games, at least as far as I
got (and since I was about halfway done when I gave up, it would be a
long stretch otherwise).
Mostly
what AC3 did was make me want to play AC2, Brotherhood and
Revelations, again. Which is okay since those games are
great.
I know what you mean. The shooting is slow and I find the chase missions near impossible. I kept being chased by every guard in the area and having to kill them all or hide. Got repetitive
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