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Kotaku: AC Syndicate will feature both male/female protags (brother & sister)

Vitor711

Member
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I hope they've improved on the combat, it was really meh in Unity imo.

The worst part of Unity. Actually, the worst combat of any AC game, including the first.

Removing counters and not replacing them with anything just turned it all into a chore. At least the combat looked cool, even if it was hugely simplistic before. Now it's just drawn out and boring as hell. No redeeming features. Even less animation variety than Black Flag too.

God I hated Unity so much. But the setting was so good. Damn you Ubi.
 

Phamit

Member
Hope if the guy has 75% of the Story, I hope he has this time the interesting story part.

Unitys Storytelling was pretty boring, because Arno wasn't the right protagonist. I believe the story with Elyse as protagonist would have been the better choice.
 
The worst part of Unity. Actually, the worst combat of any AC game, including the first.

Removing counters and not replacing them with anything just turned it all into a chore. At least the combat looked cool, even if it was hugely simplistic before. Now it's just drawn out and boring as hell. No redeeming features. Even less animation variety than Black Flag too.

God I hated Unity so much. But the setting was so good. Damn you Ubi.

Yeah, I hope that the brass knuckles they are showing is a hint at a return to hand to hand combat option.
 
D

Deleted member 20415

Unconfirmed Member
I'm going to be everything I own that you play her for... maybe 5 missions... like 2 hours or less.

Just feels like something that's going to happen.


Mark it!
 

Ramenman

Member
So this sounds like an Arkham Batman/Catwoman situation basically. Nice.

Also, the amount, and breadth and depth of leaks to Kotaku for this game is simply ridiculous. Even for Ubisoft, and even for Assassin's Creed.

It's like Ubisoft's marketing department is clueless and thinks of them as a retailer or something, sending them all due material etc.

Or maybe someone added jason schreier to the "Assassin's Creed Top Secret" corporate mailing list as a joke once, and then he forgot and left Ubi, and no one never noticed.

I mean it can't seriously be someone from the dev team, pouring his blood and tears and overtime nights into this game for the best part of this year, who leaks all those things in advance so it has to be the classic dumbfuck marketing guy who has no idea what it means (see : the guy who showed a trailer for ACU on his iPad to a random guy on a plane). Or someone just very pissed, but even then he wouldn't have stayed this long on the inside.
 

Certinty

Member
Bought Unity at launch and have only played it for 2 hours, what a mess it was.

Saying that everything about this game interests me so much, the setting and now the characters. Despite the mess that was Unity it looks like Ubisoft have got another sale from me.
 

woen

Member
Also, the amount, and breadth and depth of leaks to Kotaku for this game is simply ridiculous. Even for Ubisoft, and even for Assassin's Creed.

It's like Ubisoft's marketing department is clueless and thinks of them as a retailer or something, sending them all due material etc.

Or maybe someone added jason schreier to the "Assassin's Creed Top Secret" corporate mailing list as a joke once, and then he forgot and left Ubi, and no one never noticed.

I mean it can't seriously be someone from the dev team, pouring his blood and tears and overtime nights into this game for the best part of this year, who leaks all those things in advance so it has to be the classic dumbfuck marketing guy who has no idea what it means (see : the guy who showed a trailer for ACU on his iPad to a random guy on a plane). Or someone just very pissed, but even then he wouldn't have stayed this long on the inside.

Ubisoft has no interest at releasing ugly screenshots from a prototype and confirming an insistant rumor, breaking their marketing schedule before it began (AC Unity last year) or seeing the next AC revealed 3 weeks after the previous one launched and 6 months before the beginning of the annual media schedule— especially if this is to change the name for the reveal, confusing lots of people. It broke both times the teasing they liked to do. Keeping the same media for the reveal is, as you said, a bad idea. So there's little chance that it is made at purpose by the marketing.

We would like to see insiders like that talking about the development process, interferences of marketing in the creative process, how much they crunch or how bad is the management.

Confirming this

lol
 
The worst part of Unity. Actually, the worst combat of any AC game, including the first.

Removing counters and not replacing them with anything just turned it all into a chore. At least the combat looked cool, even if it was hugely simplistic before. Now it's just drawn out and boring as hell. No redeeming features. Even less animation variety than Bilack Flag too.

God I hated Unity so much. But the setting was so good. Damn you Ubi.

What?

Unity does have counters. You press a button when their healthbar flashes yellow
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Meh @ 75/25. It's the 9th mainline AssCreed game and they're barely dipping their toes in the water? I guess it's still "progress" but I'm not impressed.

If they always planned this I support it. If this was shoehorned in following the Unity debacle, I'm not for it. Follow your artistic vision people, not someone else's.
So you boycott every game where a male protagonist was selected for marketing reasons, then? xD

lol @ this notion that ridiculously focus group tested annualized Ubisoft games have some sort of purity to their "artistic vision". Give me a break.

Only if taking for actual artistic reasons and not merely pandering.
Again: why is a female protag more inherently "pandering" and less "artistic" than a male one? Or do you ask the same question whenever a game with a male protag is announced for a game?

I love female protagonists and am glad to see one in a major game, but the whole bullying process of this aspect of this industry has me very worried.

Games are art. What is contained within a work of art should be determined by the artist/s.

Games producers have already been prevented from a lot of artistic freedom by accountants and shareholders. Now the general public is chiming in with social media attacks.

The best part of Ellie, Tess and even Marlene in TLOU, is that they were natural to the story and didn't feel like attempts to check a boxes. This is what the industry needs. Strong, heroic female characters written by people who understand these characters and love creating them.

On the one hand I welcome the introduction of more female characters and am excited it's finally happening, on the otherhand I just wish the reason we were seeing more of then wasn't because companies were getting attacked on Twitter.
That's a mighty ironic example you got there, considering Neil Druckmann has cited a feminist critic (Anita Sarkeesian) as an influence for his writing of The Last of Us. Now obviously not a "twitter attack", but still an external critic.
 
Great I guess – bet they'll still be poorly written protagonists that aren't in the least bit interesting negating any sense of progressiveness this may have had.

I just don't trust Ubisoft with this franchise anymore – it's going to become more and more of a tick-box type of game as time goes on.
 

Corpekata

Banned
God these artistic vision people. I hope they don't improve on the combat or frame rate because clearly that would be questioning the divine wisdom of The Developer.
 
Got no problem they have choice so I'm for it. It isn't like they are gender swapping a character which I see most people having a problem with whenever that type of topic comes up. I am gonna be cynical however and guarantee that some people will complain either way on the direction of the character. Anyways here is me holding out for character creation with voice dialogue in the future.
 
Meh @ 75/25. It's the 9th mainline AssCreed game and they're barely dipping their toes in the water? I guess it's still "progress" but I'm not impressed.


So you boycott every game where a male protagonist was selected for marketing reasons, then? xD

lol @ this notion that ridiculously focus group tested annualized Ubisoft games have some sort of purity to their "artistic vision". Give me a break.


Again: why is a female protag more inherently "pandering" and less "artistic" than a male one? Or do you ask the same question whenever a game with a male protag is announced for a game?


That's a mighty ironic example you got there, considering Neil Druckmann has cited a feminist critic (Anita Sarkeesian) as an influence for his writing of The Last of Us. Now obviously not a "twitter attack", but still an external critic.
We all know that anything that deviates from the usual straight white male is always the result of pandering. After all only straight white males play video games, minorities and women, LGBT do not play them at all, I mean ever.

I mean Ubisoft is a company where they are driven entirely by artistic vision. Their business model is based around being the most artistic driven company, they are so driven they make Michelangelo look like a greedy corporate sellout.
 
The worst part of Unity. Actually, the worst combat of any AC game, including the first.

Removing counters and not replacing them with anything just turned it all into a chore. At least the combat looked cool, even if it was hugely simplistic before. Now it's just drawn out and boring as hell. No redeeming features. Even less animation variety than Black Flag too.

God I hated Unity so much. But the setting was so good. Damn you Ubi.

Oh the irony of this post, you're not even capable of noticing that there is a counter system in the game.

I guess it's easier to say fuck Ubi then actually play the game.
 
Meh @ 75/25. It's the 9th mainline AssCreed game and they're barely dipping their toes in the water? I guess it's still "progress" but I'm not impressed.


So you boycott every game where a male protagonist was selected for marketing reasons, then? xD

lol @ this notion that ridiculously focus group tested annualized Ubisoft games have some sort of purity to their "artistic vision". Give me a break.


Again: why is a female protag more inherently "pandering" and less "artistic" than a male one? Or do you ask the same question whenever a game with a male protag is announced for a game?


That's a mighty ironic example you got there, considering Neil Druckmann has cited a feminist critic (Anita Sarkeesian) as an influence for his writing of The Last of Us. Now obviously not a "twitter attack", but still an external critic.

As I said in my previous post only time I call out pandering is gender swapping. I don't see adding an entirely knew character who is female as pandering. On the inverse side I do think it is unfair to criticize developers for making a character straight white male. Now if they made a character straight white male that was originally more diverse because of fear of backlash then I would have a problem.
 

Newlove

Member
I forgot about the reveal tomorrow. Really enjoyed Unity. Another game on that Anvil engine, and more polished. I can't wait.
 

Stat!

Member
I don't know how a yearly game made by 5000 people can really have a pure artistic vision.

I think as a city/world, Paris in Unity was on par with GTAV in terms of open world. The architecture was incredible. The amount of people on screen was pretty nuts too.

I'll pick up Syndicate (Victory was a way better name) because Im sure Victorian England will be done justly. But I hope they go with some co-op cause it was a ton of fun in Unity. That being said, I kinda want to play as a female protagonist but Unity's story was already pretty subpar especially the awful ending.
 

Frumix

Suffering From Success
I think as a city/world, Paris in Unity was on par with GTAV in terms of open world. The architecture was incredible. The amount of people on screen was pretty nuts too.

What wasn't nice was that it was done at a detriment to the gameplay which worked without all those huge crowds in previous installments as the game struggles to run on consoles and even medium-specced PCs. Oh well.
 

Stat!

Member
What wasn't nice was that it was done at a detriment to the gameplay which worked without all those huge crowds in previous installments as the game struggles to run on consoles and even medium-specced PCs. Oh well.

I feel like I might have been playing a different game then. I only had one case of slow down, and one case of a bugged out world (where an NPC fell partially through stairs when killed). For me, it ran great. And the giant crowds really impacted how I approached the situation. You don't run through the crowds or feel like the streets are empty taking away from the atmosphere. Unity may not run perfect and it might have sucked on the PC (I only played on the PS4) but I loved my time in Unity. There are way worse faults with that game involving story, unlocks, and collectibles.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Make switching like GTAV.
Bring back the awesome takedown animations from ACIII but put more skill requirements to it.
Bring back the damn ropedart.
Bring back Tombs.
 
D

Deleted member 471617

Unconfirmed Member
Very happy that there's no multi-player or co-op. A pure single player campaign will make me very happy. Really wish they keep the game called Victory. Syndicate sounds fucking stupid and honestly, reminds me of the isometric overhead shooter from twenty years ago or the fps a few years ago. Either way, changing the name is stupid.

As much as I love Ubisoft and they're my number one developer, publisher, third party and go to company, im really hoping that the playable woman character isn't being forced into the game just because of people complaining as people will complain no matter what anyway.

If the character switching is done ala GTA V, it should be good. If not, I wouldn't be surprised to see it become a negative instead. Personally, I would have just kept it as one main character and yes, a male character. Hopefully, this doesn't backfire and screw up the game and franchise more than what it already did after Unity.

Going by screen shots, im happy that the map is back to being a circle instead of a square box and that the health goes around the map ala Far Cry 3. Nice.
 
I still haven't played Unity yet (I know I will someday when it's super cheap) but I am looking forward to this one. Just please be good and solid out of the gate and I'll buy.
 
D

Deleted member 80556

Unconfirmed Member
So, you still have to play as the male character throughout the vast majority of the actual gameplay missions. Switch to the female only inbetween missions? I...guess this is okay but its still pretty shitty.

Bah, what a disappointment. I want to play with gal more, specially in free roam. I've been playing with a dude in these games for almost 10 years, it's time for a change.

Confirming this

Lmao.
 
reasons...

It's sad because letting the player choose satisfies both audiences and wouldn't be that hard to do. That's why you don't see character creation games having these kinda topics and why those games tend to sell very well. Look at Saints Row 4 Gat outta Hell. Odd game to choose but it works.
 
If they always planned this I support it. If this was shoehorned in following the Unity debacle, I'm not for it. Follow your artistic vision people, not someone else's.

Well, I mean, "no playable women" isn't really something I'd call an artistic vision. :v The reason why most of AC's protagonists are men is almost guaranteed to be a marketing thing and not an art thing.
 
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