i don't know if it was some misplaced sense of charity or morbid curiosity, but for whatever reason, i felt the need to boot this up again. i’d broadly say that from the 7 or so hours i ended up playing of it- frankly, several hours too many- it was largely what i remembered, expected, and then even worse some. modern ubisoft games continue to exemplify scope creep in aaa games at some of their worst. it’s the inevitable result of designing your game to be popular first and foremost.
some of the consequences are immediate, easy pickings for anyone even the slightest bit critical. open-world activities that amount to little more than a disconnected series of carny games, movement feeling less consistent than older titles despite its simplification, animations that range from being merely badly implemented to just bad in and of themselves, some of the worst audio i’ve ever heard in a game between the compression, mixing, bugged sound effects, and just generally poor choices for said sound effects, dead-eyed character models and flat cutscene direction, but none of that’s particularly interesting to talk about. i found myself more amused by the way it bends over backwards to tell the player that our raids in the name of colonialism are completely justified and badass. assured that the people we’re raiding are totally bad guys, we swear, but there are some good guys amongst them that just so happen to want to be saved by us vikings.
i’m not one to go for bat for historical accuracy in the series that turned jack the ripper into the scarecrow, nor will i act like it’s anywhere near the first time this sort of whitewashing has happened in assassin’s creed (or quite a few other ubisoft games for that matter). but it’s a stark difference going from altair’s arc of constant uncertainty and questioning of himself, his order, and perceived enemy to this nonsense. just another consequence of having to design for the widest possible crowd, i suppose: the viking power fantasy must come above all else and not challenge the audience to any significant capacity emotionally or mechanically. but as a final twist of the knife, that power fantasy ends up being scuppered by the games overblown scope serving us half-baked combat amounting to eivor windmilling their arms while the sounds of papier mache play off enemies being hit. really just a game that elicits nothing from me but an eyeroll and sigh of sympathy at the thought of hundreds of skilled and creative people working to make something so clumsy and unimaginative.
some of the consequences are immediate, easy pickings for anyone even the slightest bit critical. open-world activities that amount to little more than a disconnected series of carny games, movement feeling less consistent than older titles despite its simplification, animations that range from being merely badly implemented to just bad in and of themselves, some of the worst audio i’ve ever heard in a game between the compression, mixing, bugged sound effects, and just generally poor choices for said sound effects, dead-eyed character models and flat cutscene direction, but none of that’s particularly interesting to talk about. i found myself more amused by the way it bends over backwards to tell the player that our raids in the name of colonialism are completely justified and badass. assured that the people we’re raiding are totally bad guys, we swear, but there are some good guys amongst them that just so happen to want to be saved by us vikings.
i’m not one to go for bat for historical accuracy in the series that turned jack the ripper into the scarecrow, nor will i act like it’s anywhere near the first time this sort of whitewashing has happened in assassin’s creed (or quite a few other ubisoft games for that matter). but it’s a stark difference going from altair’s arc of constant uncertainty and questioning of himself, his order, and perceived enemy to this nonsense. just another consequence of having to design for the widest possible crowd, i suppose: the viking power fantasy must come above all else and not challenge the audience to any significant capacity emotionally or mechanically. but as a final twist of the knife, that power fantasy ends up being scuppered by the games overblown scope serving us half-baked combat amounting to eivor windmilling their arms while the sounds of papier mache play off enemies being hit. really just a game that elicits nothing from me but an eyeroll and sigh of sympathy at the thought of hundreds of skilled and creative people working to make something so clumsy and unimaginative.