AC3 - JRD's first impressions

[JRD]

Finally... playing it!  8)

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In Desmond's story arc you pick up right where you left in the end of Revelations... only a couple weeks passed since the first Assassins Creed game with Altair but you can tell Desmod has gone a long way.

But once inside the animus... well, everything has changed. My first impression was: it feels different and yet.... it feels familiar! This is a brand new game for sure. Not anything like the previous games. Everything looks and feels fresh new right from start.

Controls are more loose and movements fells much more fluid. I'm having a hard time getting used to the new controls after four games of pretty much the same layout, but I am adapting pretty fast actually! You now don't need to hold RMB+LShift+space to run. All you have to do is hold RMB and move WASD towards the desired direction and Haythan will run, jump, slide (!), climb... get to a ledge too high above ground and he'll stop. Tap space bar and he'll jump. You don't have walk, fast walk, run and sprint anymore... running was dropped. "E" is now the interaction key and it does prety much everything else... open doors, mount horses, defence stance, pet animals(!!), talk to NPCs...

Combat is completely different too. There's no locking on a specific target any more, you fight many gueards at the same time. "E" will defend an enemie's attack but must be used in combination with LMB and space to disarm and counter attack. Some moves are in slow motion and combat... in my opinion... feels way more fluid and natural... guess once I get used to it I won't miss the old system.

I thought I would start playing Connor right from start but instead I started in England with Haythen... a British master assassins doing a mission in an opera house that takes him to the New Continent.... and you get to play afair part of his trip across the Atlantic!

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Once in Boston you slowly start to build a story arc with your new character in 1754. I'm guessing Haythen is Connor's father and soon his heritage will prove essencial in telling the story of how the Assassins ended up in America.

Boston feels really alive and is beautiful. Weather effects, like PZ said, are very nicely done and really change the landscape. Clothes and hair are much more realistic this time and not like plastic in other games using older engines! I have a feeling that this historical setting will be the stage for another long series of games to come! There are so manythings to do and learn....  8)

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[PZ]

Great first impression, J - can't wait to see more pics and further impressions!

[JRD]

A weekend of gaming!!  8)

The game is really fun. I'm truly impressed by the jaw-dropping graphics. The seasonal cycle and weather changes are a wondeful feature. Within the same sequence you can have sun, rain, fog, storm, night time... all with beautiful light and effects. Very well done. The climate can change drastically between sequences or even within the same one. In one moment you might be running through knee deep snowy fields and, in the next, horse riding in a live, colorful forest surrounded by bugs and all kinds of wildlife!

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It seems like Ubi learned from Ezio's experience. In AC2, AC:B and AC:R you followed his life, building a strong relationship between players and characters. The story here goes the same way: You first play like Connor's father in England, come all the way to the New Continent, meet Connor's mother, learn a few things about them, play as a young Connor, a teenager Connor anwill only start his training to become an Assassin in sequence 5!!!!

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The game also deliver such a variety of things to do and in a unique fashion it will take a while to go through all that!

There are main mission of course but like other games of the series you can interact with the world around you. Only this time interaction is more organic than never... nothing like just bumping into a character and beating, running or killing people.... the diversity of environments like The Frontier and the Homestead add so much to the cities like Boston! You can literally get lost into the wilderness and there will be lots of things to do... mostly hunting, which will be very benefitial for you, but also collecting stuff!!! I've spent lots of time just hunting, free roaming and enjoying the landscape and I have not seen the same place twice. The terrain is amazing and the details of all vegetation, rocks and animals is amazing... specially predators like wolves, cougars and bears!!!!

Tired of being into the wild? Get to a town and go after "regular" side missions like chasing missing pages of Ben Franklin's book or help people deliver stuff all over the city. Tired again? Then get to your own manowar and set sail to fight naval battles against French and British ships at open sea!

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When everything seems to be covered, you are brought out of the Animus and the action is take to Desmond's hands... something I saw coming since the first game.

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[PZ]

Great images, JRD  :-X

Have you done forts yet?  They are really fun for me because I like the combat, which is like prior AC games; you can wait to pick off certain guys while they are alone, climb up, then assassinate from the air, etc.

[JRD]

Keep having lots of fun in the game   8)

The graphics are just beautiful and the variety of missions and environment (city + wilderness) create an amazing sandbox game with lots to explore!

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Just yeaterday I found Daniel Boone himself (with the dead beaver in his head and all). He gave me a mission... which I didn't quite get to be honest. I accepted it and got a message saying "look for clues in the frontiersman camp" but by looking at his camp I found nothing  ???? . I guess you are to start searching for more frontiersman to gather a few clues and then maybe come back to him.

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I found out that predators can be found pretty much in the same area. There's a cougar very close to Boone's camp and he is always there. Same goes for the wolf pack near the trinket location close to Peg Leg's site, in the harbormaster, Homestead. I means that on a few locations where you'll get to roam more frequently you'll know where they are but still, since the Frontier and Homestead are so large, you can always run into a cougar, bear or wolf any time without further notice (except for the fangs and claws around your neck).

Speaking of Peg Leg... he is that chap who is blabbering nonsense near the harbor in Homestead before you fix the ship. Once the harbor is back in shape again he'll hand you a few missions. Do what he asks and he'll give you letters to get to a certain Capitain Kidd's treasure. Find him 14 trinkets and meet two former Kidd's crew members at two locations: Fort Walcott and Dead Chest Island to get to his treasure. You'll get Kidd's outfit (  ???? ), a scale model of the Aquila and a Shard of Eden which is said to repel bullets... or at least most of them!

I've been also doing some forts... great fun and rewarding! I'm getting good in fighting except when cornered bymultiple enemies being some of them officers who can mostly repel your attacks and demand you brerak their defense. It gets a bit messy and dying is now much more frequnt than in previous AC games... frustration is quite low though, it actually feels more challenging than before. I now purchased a mean French Naval Axe which hangs heavily from my waist and springs some dreadful animations when fighting!  >:D . I was attacked by three soldiers at the same time and by countering their attack I killed the three of them with a single swing of that axe... the animation was just brutal. Sometimes you attack a soldier face to face and Connor will jump on him holding the axe on his back and hammer it down on the soldiers head.... it could open a man in half from head to toe in a single hit!  >:D >:D >:D

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[mandru]

I always enjoy your observations JRD.  :-X

I've been considering buying one of the French Naval Axes since it became available in the shops.  Your description pushes me even more strongly in that direction.  :-D

More so than the Officers when I consider what I find to be a difficult enemy there's the slower Brit soldiers in green kilts called Jaegers and man they are tough buggers.  The suckers will grab and hold your tomahawk strike with their left hand in a rock solid grip, chuckle and all but knock you on your butt with a headbutt. ???   In many of my open confrontations I end up with the officers dirt napping only to find a pair of grinning hungry looking Jaegers remaining but that may only be because the officers move more quickly and manage to get to me first.

I grabbed up one of the Goose Wing axes the Jaegers carry and played around with it a bit finding out that it's definitely not a tool of finesse.  It's funny the French Naval Axe has better combat stats than the Jaegers' Goose Wing and yet it costs a mere pittance comparatively at what I recall as being £750 vs £3650.



Edit: Correction it's the Hessian axe the Jaegers carry I incorrectly got the name "goose wing" from the shop's description of this item  :-[

[Art Blade]

I am glad that you guys are having a blast despite some of the chores the game comes up with. Keep it coming :)

[PZ]

Great pics, JRD!  :-X

[mandru]

After all my efforts on the post just above I've run into some confusion (conflict) between info in the Database and the names and appearance of the soldiers in the Brit forces.  ????

The kilted guys carrying the Hessian axes don't look anything like the illustration of Jaegers in the Database.  From my understanding Jäger is German for hunter (it's also the root source of the word jaguar) which Art would obviously know though I'm surprised he didn't point out that neither the Jaegers (from a specific region of Germany) or the Hessians (not from a specific region but still from Germany) probably wouldn't have knocked around in kilts.  If they were accustomed to lederhosen their legs would have been tough enough for the brambles encountered in the frontier but I suspect a kilt would have been far too airy for their preferences.

Adding to the confusion I recently completed a mission where the requirements for meeting sync included "gaining access then blowing up two ships without being detected" and secondly "performing an air assassination on the sole Grenadier you would encounter" which in the game turned out to be one of the tough kilted guys.  Going back to the Database and looking at the illustration of a Grenadier there was no resemblance to the in game character who got the hidden blade.

Maybe it's the irritation of being misidentified and stuffed into the wrong uniforms by UBI that's made these kilted soldiers such tough nuts to crack.   ;D

[Art Blade]

"Jäger" indeed translates to "hunter" and indeed we don't have kilts here. Which doesn't mean we have Lederhosen instead -- to my knowledge they are mainly known in Bavaria (you'll have seen pictures of the Münchener Oktoberfest) and seeing people wearing them anywhere else makes them appear a bit quaint and exotic not to say eccentric.  :)

[JRD]

I didn't get as deep as you n my research, mandru... all I'm striving to do is to get better in fighting them off. All it takes for a nasty desynch is to be surrounded by a few regulars and one or two Jagers without room to fight! To face them properly you have to disarm first and then slash  >:D

Here's a link of a guy using his French Naval Axe... although there's one animation missing... after hitting a regular, Connor passes his axe handle around the soldier's neck and snap it brutally!  8)

Assassin's Creed 3: BEST weapon in the game! (The French Naval Axe)

[mandru]

JRD cool video and a glimpse at the boarding axe (which has not yet become available for me) statistics.  :-X

Sorry JRD about being overly attentive to details but because I limit my game purchases I do tend to get carried away with the immersion factor.  :-[

I noticed something happening several times in this video that I've encountered in game that's a bit of a sore point for me.  Notice how the player disarms an enemy getting in a couple good unguarded whacks but then another opponent steps in and interrupts the killing blow by throwing a strike.

The auto-locking system turns you away from the guy on death's doorstep and locks on the new combatant.  Instead of letting you finish off the first guy it pulls you away and switches you to another enemy giving the first guy a chance to regain his weapon and possibly heal up a bit or at least catch his breath and balance before you can get back to him.

Watch that video again and see how often that happens.  I count four times a virtually defenseless and all but defeated enemy is able to gain a reprieve, grab their weapon back up and jump back into the fight because of the auto-lock redirecting its focus instead of deflecting the interfering blow from enemy "B" but allowing the player to stick to enemy "A" long enough to deliver the coup de grâce.  :-\\

[Art Blade]

mandru, that already happened in AC2. Imagine my surprise when I was surrounded by a few enemies and about to finally finish off the first one only to be redirected towards a random other enemy because he was shaking his toothpick at me. I remember that kind of combat to be a struggle of getting turned around and round and round.. ever since I avoided to get into the centre of a close-quarters combat not because out of cowardice but the inability to keep focussing on any given opponent due to cocked-up fighting mechanics

[JRD]

I saw that too mandru amd it also happens to me all the time!

@Art... you are correct, it happens in AC2 and other titles, but this time you don't "lock" on a target anymore but rather face an enemy and attack, which should allow players more freedom to direct their strikes to a nearly dead enemy instead of countering someone else's blow!

[PZ]

I noticed something happening several times in this video that I've encountered in game that's a bit of a sore point for me.  Notice how the player disarms an enemy getting in a couple good unguarded whacks but then another opponent steps in and interrupts the killing blow by throwing a strike.

I find that if I keep circling away from opponents so they don't get behind me, I can finish off the first guy and then quite often initiate the chain kill.  It took a bit of practice, but my combat skills have improved tremendously.

There is one mission where you are to kill a General, and are locked into the area of his camp so you can't run far.  There are dozens of soldiers guarding him, officers and regulars, so it because quite the challenge to keep from desynching.  Lots of running while my health recharged.  :-()

[JRD]

Gave Far Cry 3 a rest this weeked and resumed my AC3 playthrough.

I left the game somewhere in sequence 7 and managed to go as far as sequence 10 this weekend. 8)

Spoiler

I'm in New York playing missions with Haytham for as long as our interests are aligned! The story presents a very interesting conflict between Templars and Assassin's in both Connor's and Haytham's roles. In sequence 10, father and son get to speak about their ideas and Connor's mother. He claims he nevar gave Lee the order to burn Connor's village and seemed quite shocked when learned about Connor's mother death, burnd alive. There can be a twist in the plot there and the arguments presented by Haytham are very interesting. He is depicted as a mean character to keep his antagonism, of course, but one can not disregard his comments about revolutionaries being rich white landowners to whom the revolution means breaking apart from the British crown for own profit

Back on doing liberation missions and gathering assassin recruits for myself. There are now four with me. I can call one to assassinate a target, a marksman for ranged attacks, one for luring my target to a place where I can strike or have the four of them with me side by side to break havock all over the place. I managed to call them when I was surrounded by several red coats with officers and jaeggers and it all became a massive battle. When they get injured their icon will appear in red and their cool down time will increase but I didn't have to do anything to heal them and they were avaiable shortly after the fight.

Davenport Homesetad has grown under my interactions. I did several missions on the frontier gathering potential inhabitants to Achile's property and as they settle in Homestead, more missions became available to make their presence more interesting and profitable. I now have an inn, a lumbercamp, mines, crops and farms, all of them giving goods like wood, corn, meat, wool, milk, eggs, iron ore... all available to me for trading and crafting  :-X

Craftin and trading now became a bit easier for me. Either because I took the time to learn how to do it but also because some STEAM update fixed the poor interface design in the mannor book where you access your inventory. I found myself stuck on several occasions which made me forget about that featue for a while. I now learned how to send convoys and how to send more than one convoy at a time with improved room for carrying goods so my tradings are now very profitable. I still think the crafting interface overcomplicated and confuse but there is a great potential there for playing with all kinds of materials you gather in the Homestead

As I bought a trinket's map some time ago I now finished all Peg Leg's missions and have the Shard of Eden with me. It is indeed a First Civilization object that deflects bullets!  8) I will post more about those missions later on!

[PZ]

Very nice JRD  :-X

[Dweller_Benthos]

I got this free with the new video card. Tried it out over the weekend. I could probably get into it if it was first person, but I just can't play third person games, they bug me to no end. I'll probably uninstall it, and get that 15GB back. Too bad, it does look fun, but I just can't get past the player perspective.

At least it doesn't crash like FC3 does all the time.

[JRD]

As you have it already installed you could give it a try. AC3 is very immersive once you get into it. The only problem is that the story is now so woven you wouldn't understand much of it without some internet research... and it could sound like... ewww... w@&k!  :-(

Connor's story is a brand new arc though so you maight follow it eventually!

But if the 3rd view is not your cup of tea.... then forget it!

[PZ]

... and it could sound like... ewww... w@&k!  :-(

OMG what bad language!  ???

I agree though, about the AC series - it is a marvelous series once you get past the 3rd person aspect, which for me was relatively easy because it is the only way to watch and enjoy the blade fighting you do in the game.  Although I will not go back to AC1, I plan to visit all of the other AC games again.

[JRD]

I did another complete playthrough of all games up to Brotherhood, which I left hanging because AC3 came out. After completing AC3 I plan to finish this playthrough of Brotherhood, then Revelations and again, AC3.

Never did play AC1 again though... it lacks so many good aspects fixed in AC2 I'm sure I will hate it if I ever try it again.!  :-(

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, I just can't deal with 3rd person games. About the last one I used 3rd person for was one of the Jedi Knight series and that was only when doing a light saber duel, as it was easier to see how the moves worked.

[PZ]

Never did play AC1 again though... it lacks so many good aspects fixed in AC2 I'm sure I will hate it if I ever try it again.!  :-(

Although I did complete AC1, it was a struggle for me because AC2 was actually my first game of the series.  The only reason I did AC1 was because I loved AC2 so much, and wanted some of the back story.

... About the last one I used 3rd person for was one of the Jedi Knight series and that was only when doing a light saber duel, as it was easier to see how the moves worked.

I know  what you mean; that's why 3rd person is useful in AC, that and the fact that quite often a group of thugs are attacking you and it helps to have a broader view.

[Art Blade]

I played some Jedi Knight long ago. Bloody long ago, actually, at a friend's place. And, unfortunately, I had to use his computer. Yuck. It was like a slideshow while walking through treacle. To sum it up: bad memories  :-D

[JRD]

By exchanging some Uplay credits I got Ezio's outfit to use in AC3  8)

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Playing in the Homestead is fun. You gather several artisans throughout the Frontier, Boston and NY and have them settled in Homestead. As they get there you can get missions from them which will increase their role in the property and in exchange provide goods for you to purchase and trade. A blacksmith, a taylor, a hunter, a miner, a farmer, a lumberjack.... all will give out missions. Some are plain silly like herding pigs back to the stye or stop a fight between two artisans but some are great fun like helping Norris, the miner to get raw minerals to forge a knife by exploding a British controlled mine in the Frontier and drawing atention of the red coats!  :-X

Three convoys initiated and three convoys unsuccessfully terminated.  my cash losses total somewhere around  £[/b] 30,000.  Every time I get a notice out of the blue that I've lost the current convoy and I've no idea how to make this part of the game w@&k.

@ mandru... as I was doing sidemissions in the Homestead I also took the time to send some convoys from the manor to run as I was out in the property. Out of the blue I got a message saying I had 5 minutes to defend a convoy... and the message merely blinked on the screen. Checking the map I could see a legend for "Defend convoy" but I could not see that icon anywhere in Homestead  . I was luck I had to go to the frontier to do the mine mission and I checked the map and saw that bloody icon. I had time to reach the location in time to defend the convoy from red coats and ended up having it safe and sound arriving at the destination with all goods and money.... phew... but that bloody part of the game was a complete surprise for me  :D

I also found some stupid bugs thus far. In one sequence I was fighting a whole squad of British soldiers, jaggers and officers when, somehow, I lost my main weapon...  ??? ... only problem is that Connor never realised that and kept swinging his hands as if holding an axe... which obviously never hit any soldier  :D ... needless to say I died an horrible death  ::)

In several occasions I was lookig for a "wanted" sign to rip out of the wall to lower my notoriety and found one after what seemed like an eternity... only to find out I didn't have the option to interact with it  :D

The worst so far was to hit ESC and select "restart from last checkpoint" and be directed to the very start of the mission again....  :D