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Assassin's Creed movie is 65% present day, 35% past

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I dunno, it makes sense for a movie. Especially if they want to turn this into a franchise. It's really strange in a movie to have basically two protagonists with completely different backgrounds who are played by the same actor. They have to focus on one, and it makes sense to focus on the character who will appear in the possible sequels.
 
Maybe they will have him break out and use his newfound skills in present day or something. I want this movie to be good...
 
People in this thread are being ignorant as fuck. This character isn't Desmond miles and this is a film not a video game. You have no idea if this character will be compelling or not and you have no idea what the story will be like.

But I don't expect there to be a measured reaction.
 
KevinCow said:
This just seems to be completely missing the point of the series. It's like making a Doom movie without demons, or a gritty and realistic Mario movie.
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What? That's a ridiculous sentiment. The future/present is as integral to the (early) AC games as the past. Considering the entire game and motivation behind everything is just a framework for a present-day corporation to find ancient sci-fi precursor tech.

In the narrative of the game, the Animus "gameplay" and past are just a means to an end to forward the future/present plots. But being a game, they have to take centerstage
 
jotun? said:
I will never understand you people

This is always how those parts make me feel: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/12/06/incorporated
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Man, I could go into depth but I'd be fighting with a lot of people to get over my viewpoints. I did an in-depth post on reddit when Assassin's Creed Unity came out basically about how pissed I was they got rid of the modern day aspects which might give you some perspective on my viewpoint. Kinda long though haha

It's so funny, this is exactly what I looked up the AC subreddit to talk about. i'm totally with you guys on this. I seem to remember Patrice Desilets specifically talking about how AC3 was supposed to be mostly a modern day game with Desmond as the main protagonist and the end to the trilogy. That was the original plan for the game and why they ended up having to kill off Kristen Bells character. It's shouldn't come as any surprise that she was only in the first 3 games and then was killed off. I'd bet anything she signed a 3 game contract with Ubi and by AC:Brotherhood, that contract was fulfilled. She probably didn't care to do more and at that point the franchise was so successful, they didn't need to waste money on Hollywood talent to sell games.

However, it really shows how far the game veered off it's original story arch that Patrice had planned out. Ubisoft went from being a moderately well known publisher to one of the top dogs in the industry and it was all thanks to AC. Once they did that, they did what all big companies in the entertainment industry do, they homogenized the **** out of it with their customer surveys.

Now, gone are all the really cool mini puzzles and genuinely interesting stories. I still remember how awesome and oddly kinda creepy the glyph puzzles were in AC2 and how epic that final boss battle was only to leave it on an incredible cliffhanger. There was a level of polish and story direction that the series hasn't seen since then.

With AC:B, I actually think the game itself was a superior overall game than AC2, but you could tell with the story they didn't really know where to go with it. It basically was just a retelling of AC2 and all the end really did was further explain AC2's ending, which kinda midichlorian'd the mystery that AC2's ending left the player with.

AC:R just kinda furthered the "we really don't know where the story is going yet". It was cool revisiting Altair, but the fact that they barely even touched Lucy's death from the previous game save for a couple of lines of dialog when that was supposed to be the biggest cliff-hanger from that game, then that they just threw out the whole "Oh, well she was a Templar traitor the whole time!" excuse for why she needed to be killed..... it was all pretty weak sauce story telling for killing off what was a pretty major character. So much more could have been done with Desmond dealing with her death, ya know, character development and such, but he barely even talks about it in that game. The most damning evidence that the story had lost it's way at this point though is that they went with the most cliche of storytelling tropes when you have no clue where to go with your story..... The dreaded "main character coma" plot. On top of that, AC:R was easily the weakest of the Ezio trilogy game-wise, the Tower Defense experiment was horrendous imo (mostly because I hate TD games) and the bomb crafting was pointless busy work.

I had hopes after AC:R that maybe, just maybe, if AC3 what they had been planning was still in the works, but once it was clear it wasn't going to be a modern day game, that hope faded. I think they clearly tried to work some of it in as this had the most extensive Desmond missions of the whole series and really gave you a taste of how cool a present day AC game would have been in the universe they had set up, but Ubisoft was in full "market research" mode by this point and knew that apparently a majority of people polled didn't like the modern day stuff and just wanted to run around in the past and kill ****. There's no chance what we got in AC3 was the anything remotely close to the original vision for the ending of the AC "trilogy".

It was no surprise by Black Flag that they had started to relegate the modern day aspect to the background with a majority of it being entirely skippable if the player so chooses. As much as I loved Black Flag from a pure game standpoint, probably the best in the franchise next to AC2 and AC:B, they completely ruined all of the intrigue and mystery the modern day portions had. The Animus went from being the cool and dangerous piece of technology to basically being just a normal desktop computer. I absolutely HATED how meta that ****ing game got and how cute the writers thought they were being by having you be a "developer" at a game studio. Abstergo went from being this dark and sinister company to being a ****ing game studio. They still mention Abstergo having their hands other companies around the world, but from the players point of view, we're inundated with fake "Abstergo Entertainment" ads that totally takes any of the threat out of the company that's supposed to be the main villain of the series. It's like Darth Vader wore a pink tutu around his waste. Even if he had the exact same helmet and armor on, with that tutu around his waste, he loses all credibility. Seeing as this is the internet where everything exists, here's a visual example of my analogy.....

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WTo8tG0u5j...lie+Vader2.jpg

Now with AC Unity, I've gone through a decent chunk of the game and seen two present day.... cutscenes. Combined lasting all of maybe 3 minutes. While I'm certainly not done with the game, from what I've heard, I have my expectations very VERY low for this improving later on.

At this point now, I'm actually totally lost with what the present day plot is. I just barely remember what a Sage is from AC:BF and I certainly don't remember why they're so important and why Abstergo needs them.

Gameplay wise, AC:Unity feels like one step forward and about 3 steps back. I love the downwards parkour, but the controls still have a tendency to be a little clunky. Oddly enough, climbing upwards seems harder than I remember from previous installments. I do enjoy the back to basics with "less rules" for Assassinations a la AC1 and generally harder fights, but some of the ways the made the fights harder are just cheap. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen any way to use a enemy body as a bullet guard when an enemy is targeting you with a gun like you could in AC3 and BF. If you're trying to fight a big group, if two guys pull out guns, you're basically dead. I guess it's they're way of trying to dissuade the player from getting into huge one on 20 conflicts and be more stealth oriented, but it's made trying to fight your way out of things feel overly restrictive. And why no horses exactly? We're horses not invented yet in Paris during the 1700's? My guess is this was a design choice as trying to navigate on a horse with a billion mindless NPC's probably was a nightmare. They were so pleased with themselves that they could fill up nearly every square inch of the screen with NPC's that they decided they didn't need horses.

AND another thing (props to anyone who's still with me on this).... What the **** happened to the shooting mechanics from AC:BF?! It feels like they went back to the jankey as **** shooting mechanics from AC3. Black Flag had corrected AC3 terrible shooting mechanics and at least made something somewhat playable. Unity for some reason just dropped a lot of the gameplay improvements BF had implemented and I can't figure out why. My best guess is that this was developed by a different portion of Ubisoft's multiple studios. This was probably developed by the division that made AC3, whereas Black Flag was developed by the division that made AC:R.

I could keep going on, but I've clearly gone on long enough. When looking back on it and seeing the promise the story originally had if they hadn't market tested the **** out of it, it actually is pretty depressing. As gorgeous as the game is, Unity is the first time where I can truly feel the passion for the franchise by the developers being noticeably absent and them just setting the series to cruise control.

What they really should do is try something drastically different. Now that they know they can do successful multiplayer and coop gameplay, why not look into doing a psudo-mmo. Its not like they can't work it into the "story" since apparently everyone and their grandmother can relive ancestors memories. Players can choose to be either Templar or Assassin, they can have multiple time periods for the player to jump into where they can create custom characters for those time periods. Obviously with mmo's, even psudo ones like Destiny or like this would be, the story will be thin as paper and the missions will be somewhat repetitive, but how is that any different from what the Assassins Creed series is right now?

TL;DR - Hey Ubisoft Market Research Team..... Fuuuuckkkkkk yyyyooooouuu.
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Exploratory said:
People in this thread are being ignorant as fuck. This character isn't Desmond miles and this is a film not a video game. You have no idea if this character will be compelling or not and you have no idea what the story will be like.

But I don't expect there to be a measured reaction.
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stay frosty
 
Eh, i would have preferred them to have a higher percentage of the past in the movie. I feel like that would be more interesting, just because of the setting alone.

My expectations have dwindled a bit but I guess I have to see what they do in the present day scenes. The kicker will be how interesting they make present day scenes and how long it takes for him to get into the animus.

Im more or less in for the fighting and assassinations lol.
 
I like the present-day stuff in Assassin's Creed games (at least until ACIII and after where they basically sidelined it/destroyed it) so this doesn't bother me.
 
I feel like this will be more of a Da Vinci Code than an Assassin's Creed. Or maybe Mission Impossible. I guess we don't have enough movies like that so AC needs also to become one.
 
I don't understand why the present day part is so hated here, sure I didn't like it that much in the game but the reason why it was kinda boring is because in the game the modern passages were short and you couldn't do much, which has nothing to do with the movie.
 
Should have presented the movie taking place in past but as film goes on odd things happen like a sign from modern era or subtitles disappearing, wrong language then at end reveal the whole animus future crap.
 
Hystzen said:
Should have presented the movie taking place in past but as film goes on odd things happen like a sign from modern era or subtitles disappearing, wrong language then at end reveal the whole animus future crap.
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I think everyone already knows Assassin's Creed takes place in a simulation. You wouldn't be fooling anyone
 
It makes sense since this is a movie and not a game. He isn't actually in the past, so what he is doing is goal oriented towards gaining skills and information that can be used in the present. So between setting up the premise, showing the progression of his skills, and then the final conflict, that sounds about right.
 
Well the way the animus functions looks to be way more interesting to look at. So there's that. And if the story is half decent, with these actors I don't really care if they are in the past or the present.
 
DedValve said:
But the past is the most entertaining part!
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Only really because that's where the effort has been put in the games. Had they made an open world section in present day and put just as much attention into the gameplay there people would be singing a different song. Remember this isn't a game but a movie. How things will be handled will clearly be different.

As said the entire focus of the animus is to bring knowledge from the past into present day. The present day events are important and should be treated as such. It's actually a negative the games don't handle the present day better not that there is a present day.
 
Effect said:
Only really because that's where the effort has been put in the games. Had they made an open world section in present day and put just as much attention into the gameplay there people would be singing a different song. Remember this isn't a game but a movie. How things will be handled will clearly be different.
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That exists and it's a different game(s).
 
shira said:
What is the game ratio like 10:90?
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Because it has to be. In actuality, the Animus and reliving the past is just a tool in Astergo's arsenal. Everything we play is akin to a researcher watching a subject during a sleep study.

For the sake of the game, the past is the focus because it has to be. In the grand scheme of things however, the future/present is what drives everything and the past is only a means to an ends.
 
It is the best looking video game movie so far judging by the trailer. Instead of pulling an internet we could just wait to see how the film is.
 
What a shame. I was so disappointed when the trailer showed them doing stuff with the Animus at all since the present day stuff is always the worst part of these games. We'll see how it turns out, but this certainly has me less excited.
 
Whyyy?

The modern day stuff is the weakest part of AC, I don't even know why they bother with that shit in the games in the first place.
 
Drencrom said:
Whyyy?

The modern day stuff is the weakest part of AC, I don't even know why they bother with that shit in the games in the first place.
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Isn't it the weakest part because Ubisoft put most of the work for the Past sections. I imagine with the movie can make the modern day stuff much more interesting.
 
Present day setting is more interesting anyway.

Hopefully a movie will be able to capture that and maybe we'll get a AC present day game as well
 
Modern stuff was always interesting, the problem is the modern stuff in this doesn't look at all like the sleek modern stuff in the games, unless Syndicate became all grim dark horror, which I've not finished yet.
 
Since this is the first AC movie, it might makes sense to spend more time in the present than in the past. Kinda like in an origin story, the superhero doesn't put his costume or use his power in the first half of the movie.
 
robotzombie said:
Assassin's Creed |OT| Days of 65% Future 35% Past
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ERb6GmW.gif
 
Not a big deal, I thought the present day stuff in the games was an interesting concept, Ubisoft just didn't do a good job taking it anywhere. Hopefully they do better here, really hope they cut out the precursor race stuff. Movie still looks sweet.
 
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