Damn. I'll probably end up buying this before the PC version lands...
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Assassin's Creed Rogue |OT| Black Flag 2
- Thread starter VisceralBowl
- Start date
I've managed to put in about 10 hours into Rogue over this weekend and I'm completely smitten with it. The only regret I think I will have is that it will be over sooner than the last couple of AC's but as a massive plus the campaign really doesn't mess around and servers up the story and missions at a break neck pace that take in so much in a short space of time but still keeps things fresh and immediate with a lot of variety as well. Plus that set piece towards the end of Sequence 2 was top tier stuff. Shame I didn't wait for the PC release as it really could do with some TLC that the aging consoles sadly can't anymore but on the other hand I'm glad I'm not missing out on some of the stuff that might get spoiled. Plus these some very sneaky/cleaver digs at Ubi themselves in the pressent day stuff that has given me a chuckle.
Wreck-It Ralph
Member
Just beat the game. It was a good ending, but I'm not sure what was supposed to be mindblowing about it.
I still have quite a bit of the world to explore. Gotta get all those viewpoints! I did capture all the gang headquarters and forts, though.
Overall, I think this is my new favorite Assassin's Creed game. It takes the best of the series and does almost everything right without doing much wrong (no tailing/eavesdropping missions). Plus I love the setting.
I still have quite a bit of the world to explore. Gotta get all those viewpoints! I did capture all the gang headquarters and forts, though.
Overall, I think this is my new favorite Assassin's Creed game. It takes the best of the series and does almost everything right without doing much wrong (no tailing/eavesdropping missions). Plus I love the setting.
Ive been out a lot of the past AC games (meant to jump back in with Black Flag but was too busy last year, strongly considering picking up the americas collection now tho), but this one has totally enraptured me. I havent even finished the story yet, im still messing around with side stuff. I might give up on doing all of the renovations depending on how repetitive that winds up (i never have enough stone lmao). But other than that the game is just solid fun as someone who hasnt played one of these in forever.
I must admit the best area is the North Atlantic map. I loved sailing from place to place and looting each one of its collectibles. The compact, naturalistic areas made each port feel like a dedicated level from a collectathon platformer. It probably helps that Im so smitten with the locations they chose for those areas too. Not as fond of New York which felt like a total bore to explore for side stuff. Might have helped if the redcoats had more to say instead of repeating the same five conversations and less collectibles on random chimneys but what can ya do.
I must admit the best area is the North Atlantic map. I loved sailing from place to place and looting each one of its collectibles. The compact, naturalistic areas made each port feel like a dedicated level from a collectathon platformer. It probably helps that Im so smitten with the locations they chose for those areas too. Not as fond of New York which felt like a total bore to explore for side stuff. Might have helped if the redcoats had more to say instead of repeating the same five conversations and less collectibles on random chimneys but what can ya do.
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
In reading the reviews the biggest cricitism is that the side content is pretty much pointless in that you never need to do it.
Wreck-It Ralph
Member
Yeah, there's not really much reason to get the Templar armor, Native armor, or Viking sword, which seem to be the three major sidequests. You're basically indestructible unless you get completely overwhelmed. And one of the swords you can buy is actually better than the Viking sword for some reason. And then there are the war letters, the cave paintings, and the animus fragments, which do nothing but give you more flavor text that you're probably not going to read. There's also not much reason to do the naval campaign stuff, because once you capture a few economic zones, the money just starts pouring in. And I don't think the assassination interceptions or hunting challenges even give you anything except the satisfaction of completing them.
I stuck to main missions in Rogue as opposed to doing some side quests here but I found that my crafting inventory was next to nothing, I think the only item that I crafted was a pistol holster and that was part of the tutorial.
I never upgraded health, never upgraded any of the weapons (berserk, sleep, etc) because finding these animals just seemed so far out of the way.
The side quests make me think of the recent South Park episode where they talk about freemium and just tacking on things to keep you busy.
I never upgraded health, never upgraded any of the weapons (berserk, sleep, etc) because finding these animals just seemed so far out of the way.
The side quests make me think of the recent South Park episode where they talk about freemium and just tacking on things to keep you busy.
Wreck-It Ralph
Member
Wait, what's this all about now?
Once you collect all the documents in Abstergo you get a picture of a bridge.
If you are like me and read through all the (awesome) Sleepy Hollow entries you'll notice an entry to a bridge and even Violet is confused why it's there. By the end of the bridge is a church and behind it is a cemetery. Dig it up and you get the holders.
Wreck-It Ralph
Member
Interesting. Does it let you hold four guns like in AC4?
I'm too lazy to do all that though, honestly.
Anyway:
All viewpoints synced: Check
All locations visited: Check
All forts and gang HQs captured: Check
Got Native Armor: Check
Got Viking Armor and sword: Check (no trophy for this? oh well, it's badass anyway)
All Templar maps collected: Check (not gonna bother actually getting the Templar Armor though)
Total play time: 23 hours
Good game, but I think I'm done with it.
Whaa? But you're too lazy to collect documents and run in Sleepy Hollow for a complete total of 10 minutes?
As for how many guns it holds I couldn't tell you. That was the last thing I did in that game after beating the campaign. I want to revisit, but I think I'll just wait for the One release.
yeah even if armor is useless in this game because of how op you are in combat, the viking armor just looks fucking rad
Just finished this, credits still rolling. I was at 15 hours before I started playing today, so probably 17-18 total now, about 60% total completion. It's basically Blag Flag 2 with way less tailing missions and a more interesting story. I enjoyed it a lot. And as others were saying a few pages back... the end made me want to put in Unity (but I'm still waiting that one out). It really is a shame this didn't come out first and give Unity some more time in the oven.
EDIT: Credits STILL rolling... 15 minutes later. And they were going for 5-10 minutes before I posted. I always worry I'll miss something if I skip them, some special scene after the credits or something. And I'm not even sure I have the option, if you press start it brings up a menu that lets you Resume or Quit. Not sure what Quit does, not chancing it
EDIT2: Trophy didn't pop until the game loaded after the credits, glad I stuck it out
EDIT: Credits STILL rolling... 15 minutes later. And they were going for 5-10 minutes before I posted. I always worry I'll miss something if I skip them, some special scene after the credits or something. And I'm not even sure I have the option, if you press start it brings up a menu that lets you Resume or Quit. Not sure what Quit does, not chancing it
EDIT2: Trophy didn't pop until the game loaded after the credits, glad I stuck it out
I got Rogue through a Black Friday sale and I gotta say, that music in the main menu is very good. I guess that's a promise for a good start
Actually the start is very dry. It gets good quickly though, and I would put off open world stuff until you upgrade your first mate.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
I thought it was a remix. lol
I still think it's weird that it's there, but why not. It's the best piece of music in the franchise.
Oh yeah, looks like they remixed it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmlCudR3JPk
Why not just hire the guy to come back and do more music for the games? Yeesh.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
Nope, no seasons. New York is always non-snowy. The North Atlantic area is always covered in snow though, but there isn't really much in the way of towns there.
I just finished the main story. I really liked the game. But then again I'm a huge assassin creed fan. I'll end up trying to get as close to a 100% sync as possible and then moving on to the next one. I do have to say though, I'm underwhelmed with the metastory.
Shay's story is awesome, albeit short and with such a great premise they could have done more. But the overall metastory is meh. The modern day battle between assassins and Templars pales I comparison to the metastory up to AC III where you're communicating with pre cursor civilizations, and racing against time to save the world. The most amazing and jaw dropping moments of all of those games was when you learned about the precursor civilization, the dialogues, the history, the race against time. And for as much as people complained against Desmond - he was infinitely better than what you are now in ac4 and this - just a game developer.
In the past games - The Templar vs. Assassin confict was in the background, the forefront was understanding the history, communicating with Juno and the like, and being messengers and conduits for Desmond to try to save the world. You change that into some seemingly meaningless fight between some assassins you've never heard of and some Templars who look like mercenaries and some pieces of Eden which really have super limited power if they're not helping you find the answer to save the world. It's all just meh.
Shay's story is awesome, albeit short and with such a great premise they could have done more. But the overall metastory is meh. The modern day battle between assassins and Templars pales I comparison to the metastory up to AC III where you're communicating with pre cursor civilizations, and racing against time to save the world. The most amazing and jaw dropping moments of all of those games was when you learned about the precursor civilization, the dialogues, the history, the race against time. And for as much as people complained against Desmond - he was infinitely better than what you are now in ac4 and this - just a game developer.
In the past games - The Templar vs. Assassin confict was in the background, the forefront was understanding the history, communicating with Juno and the like, and being messengers and conduits for Desmond to try to save the world. You change that into some seemingly meaningless fight between some assassins you've never heard of and some Templars who look like mercenaries and some pieces of Eden which really have super limited power if they're not helping you find the answer to save the world. It's all just meh.
Doug Heffernan
Member
Finally got around to playing this after picking it up for $25 on Black Friday.
I am loving it so far. It feels like a fitting finale to the last gen saga of Assassin's Creed.
Definitely the best and most polished AC game ever released in my opinion.
Is it more of the same? Yes, but a much better and finely tuned version of it.
That Kotaku review is spot on.
I am loving it so far. It feels like a fitting finale to the last gen saga of Assassin's Creed.
Definitely the best and most polished AC game ever released in my opinion.
Is it more of the same? Yes, but a much better and finely tuned version of it.
That Kotaku review is spot on.
I am playing through just because I got it for $25 and I'm an AC junkie, but this just is overkill for me. It is so similar to AC4 I cannot believe it was a stand alone release. I dig the Templar thing, but it kinda throws the whole franchise on it's head with the good/bad guys which I don't get (maybe it will be explained).
The "real life" sequences are so bad I cannot believe it. Literally the same assets as AC4.
The "real life" sequences are so bad I cannot believe it. Literally the same assets as AC4.
Oh, pretty much completely the same assets. Except instead of orange-ish markers they are now blue. Ha!
Sod it seeing as this out on PC now may as well give the old dog some new life.
PC port is pretty solid. Here's what graphical bells and whistles there are.
Environment Quality has 3 settings, affecting draw distance and LOD transitions for foliage, buildings, ships and the such like.
Texture Quality has 2, Normal and High with High using around 1.2-1.4gb of VRAM at 1920x1080 with everything else dialled up.
AA sadly is on FXAA which itself has pretty poor coverage but downsampling is an option due to lower performance cost than Black Flag.
Shadow Quality has 4 settings, Off, Normal, High and Very High with higher resolution shadow maps the further up the settings but transitions are still about 20 foot around you.
Reflection Quality has 3 settings, Off, Normal and High. These effect reflections in water and such (oddly it didn't appear to effect the reflective surfaces in the present day office).
Aniso is available in 4 factors, Off x4, x8 and x16 and works as expected.
Ocean Quality has 3 settings Normal, High and Very high and effects the physics like waves and such when out on the ocean.
Post Effects Quality has 2 settings, Normal and High which seems to alter the effects like snow flakes and leaves.
Motion Blur is On or Off and is camera orientated.
Ambient Occlusion has 4 settings, Off, SSAO, HBAO low and HBAO high (I'll post some pics bellow).
God Rays and Volumetric Fog both have 2 options of On and Off and work much in the same way the did in Black Flag (though no Nvidia tessellated God Rays this time).
And Vsync is On or Off. Haven't tested fully but I think it's triple buffered at bloody last but I'm taking advantage of borderless window mode so eh.
So over what I played on 360 late last year it's quite the upgrade as you'd expect with performance being a solid 62fps (same framerate cap as the past couple of games sadly) at 1920x1080 and even downclocking a single 780 and 2560x1440 only went as low as ~55fps. Reflections for a start aren't the low res cube maps from the console version but do appear to be some form of Screen Space Reflection like found in Black Flag on PS4/XO/PC. Also Ambient Occlusion if I recall was lacking from my time with Rogue on 360 and really that boost to contact shadowing give's the flat image much needed depth. Here's what each setting looks like in practice.
Only had a muck about until the mid point of Sequence 2 so haven't got to New York where the worst of the pop in was but yeah solid port so far but will have a better play around tonight when I get in from work. So while Rogue doesn't have some of the Nvidia goodies like HBAO+, Percentage Closer Soft Shadows, TXAA and Tessellated God Rays the performance gains are very welcome.
PC port is pretty solid. Here's what graphical bells and whistles there are.
Resolution options are same as III and Black Flag so what ever is avilable on your system and constrained to 16:9 so multiples are fine for multi monitor setups but 16:10 and 21:9 will be windowed and pillar boxed respectively (though there's a workaround over at WSGF already). Also yes that is actual borderless window support out the box in an Assassin's Creed title.
Environment Quality has 3 settings, affecting draw distance and LOD transitions for foliage, buildings, ships and the such like.
Texture Quality has 2, Normal and High with High using around 1.2-1.4gb of VRAM at 1920x1080 with everything else dialled up.
AA sadly is on FXAA which itself has pretty poor coverage but downsampling is an option due to lower performance cost than Black Flag.
Shadow Quality has 4 settings, Off, Normal, High and Very High with higher resolution shadow maps the further up the settings but transitions are still about 20 foot around you.
Reflection Quality has 3 settings, Off, Normal and High. These effect reflections in water and such (oddly it didn't appear to effect the reflective surfaces in the present day office).
Aniso is available in 4 factors, Off x4, x8 and x16 and works as expected.
Ocean Quality has 3 settings Normal, High and Very high and effects the physics like waves and such when out on the ocean.
Post Effects Quality has 2 settings, Normal and High which seems to alter the effects like snow flakes and leaves.
Motion Blur is On or Off and is camera orientated.
Ambient Occlusion has 4 settings, Off, SSAO, HBAO low and HBAO high (I'll post some pics bellow).
God Rays and Volumetric Fog both have 2 options of On and Off and work much in the same way the did in Black Flag (though no Nvidia tessellated God Rays this time).
And Vsync is On or Off. Haven't tested fully but I think it's triple buffered at bloody last but I'm taking advantage of borderless window mode so eh.
So over what I played on 360 late last year it's quite the upgrade as you'd expect with performance being a solid 62fps (same framerate cap as the past couple of games sadly) at 1920x1080 and even downclocking a single 780 and 2560x1440 only went as low as ~55fps. Reflections for a start aren't the low res cube maps from the console version but do appear to be some form of Screen Space Reflection like found in Black Flag on PS4/XO/PC. Also Ambient Occlusion if I recall was lacking from my time with Rogue on 360 and really that boost to contact shadowing give's the flat image much needed depth. Here's what each setting looks like in practice.
AO - Off said:
AO - SSAO said:
AO - HBAO Low said:
While not as accurate as Nvidia's HBAO+ in Black Flag to me that's still a great enhancement.AO - HBAO High said:
Only had a muck about until the mid point of Sequence 2 so haven't got to New York where the worst of the pop in was but yeah solid port so far but will have a better play around tonight when I get in from work. So while Rogue doesn't have some of the Nvidia goodies like HBAO+, Percentage Closer Soft Shadows, TXAA and Tessellated God Rays the performance gains are very welcome.
lucebuce12
Member
OH SWEET GOD, THE SOUND WHEN YOU CHANGE WEAPONS IS SO ANNOYING.
I really hope someone can make a mod that removes/changes it.
I really hope someone can make a mod that removes/changes it.
Just started playing it on PS3 over the weekend. On sequence 1, it's already frozen three times to where I needed to hard reset. A couple of other times, had to reset because of crazy glitching and artifacts all over the screen.
Fucking Ubisoft. With all of these studios across the world, is it really hard to hire some quality control?
Fucking Ubisoft. With all of these studios across the world, is it really hard to hire some quality control?
Novel Mike
Member
Came here just to see this kind of thing thanks! Really debating picking it up again as I started on PS3 but never got very far (just got to new york when I quit) and have a new beefy computer so I was hoping it would look better.
Mad Season
Banned
Kotaku review. glowing
http://kotaku.com/assassins-creed-r..._source=Kotaku_Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow
http://kotaku.com/assassins-creed-r..._source=Kotaku_Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow
Nyteshade517
Member
Here's a PC version HUD-less screenshot I took today...looks good to me
Emperor Bohe
Member
anyone know how this runs on a late-2013 iMac ( windows 8.1 boot camp). I was able to run AC3 in 720p 60fps, but AC4 ran like shit (had to buy that on Xbox One)
jim2point0
Banned
This game is not pretty. These are maxed settings downsampled from 2880p.
chromatic9
Member
Black Flag looks way better. How come they can't reuse a lot of that?
Blast Processing
Member
This game is not pretty. These are maxed settings downsampled from 2880p.
It's a gussied up 360/PS3 game bound to sell so little as to probably not make money on the port. Did you really expect Witcher 3 graphics?
I'm just glad to finally have it on my platform of choice.
About 2 hours in, it's definitely a melange of 3 and Black Flag, both of which I loved. I'm looking forward to more.
Corpsepyre
Banned
Getting locked 60, at 1080p, with everything maxed out.
Core i3 4130, 4 GB ram and R9 270x here. Game's really fun as well.
Core i3 4130, 4 GB ram and R9 270x here. Game's really fun as well.
This game is not pretty. These are maxed settings downsampled from 2880p.
Is that the area from AC3?
I played a bunch of Rogue on PS3. Might grab it on PC some day when the price dips below 10 EUR just to have a complete collection.
As for the game's quality - I still contend that this was supposed to be a DLC pack for Black Flag and not a full-on separate game. It definitely feels padded out with some janky filler every now and then.
As for the game's quality - I still contend that this was supposed to be a DLC pack for Black Flag and not a full-on separate game. It definitely feels padded out with some janky filler every now and then.
Mendax
Member
Yes
Why did you plan to skip it? It is a really solid entry in the franchise.
Although the storyline is quite short I still found all of the content fun and worthwile, and as the game has as much content as black flag that would be one hell of a DLC pack..
It doesn't look better on ps360, and the pc port of black flag is probably the same as the new-gen version while Rogue on pc is the ps360 version
DustyVonEric
Member
Exactly. And now we wait.
Played some. Was fun on PS3 though. Don't want to knock it.