Review: Assassin's Creed III
Jun. 14th, 2015 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkBottom line: I loved this game a lot, despite its flaws. I think of it as an imperfect gem.
Gameplay
By far my biggest complaint with the gameplay is that I hated the beginning 3 sequences with Haytham. I could not care less about Haytham (although I did get a kick out of calling him "douchebag dad" whenever he showed up later in Connor's story). If it was really necessary to make us play as the villain and/or show how Connor/Ratonhnhaké:ton's parents got together, I wished the game could've at least cut down Haytham's section significantly, since a lot of that part felt like I had to run around as an errand boy in order to get the Templars together.
Overall I liked the gameplay a lot. The combat is fluid and dynamic and the sidequests are fun and engrossing. Occasionally I had difficulty with some of the main story missions, mostly because some of the forced stealth/eavesdropping missions were pretty punitive and the AI was occasionally wonky, but nothing was too frustrating. Having played this game along with Black Flag simultaneously, I have to say that Black Flag's controls and HUD felt more streamlined (particularly the weapon selection, Eagle Vision tagging, and enemy map icons), but ACIII's were serviceable.
I have to give a shoutout to the glitches, though. My God, the glitches. I don't really mind cosmetic glitches that are hilarious but don't affect the gameplay, but I encountered numerous glitches that forced me to restart missions. Some examples below:
- During the Homestead mission to rescue Lance, I killed all the guards harrassing him but could not get the next cutscene to trigger. I walked into his burning cart, got stuck (couldn't move out of it), and died, and when the mission restarted everything was okay.
- In sequence 10, while trying to steal the mercenary's clothes without being detected, I kept running into this weird glitch where I would somehow not loot the mercenary's clothes "properly" and be unable to progress.
- In sequence 12, while chasing Charles Lee, in the boat, he just stopped and I couldn't trigger the next part of the memory until I restarted.
- Once, when I booted up the game, something was wrong with Connor's character model and colors kept flashing on the screen in a definite seizure-inducing way.
Also, sometimes the follow-NPC sequences weren't timed correctly and conversations would be cut off by cutscenes before they finished, which was a shame.
I wanted to drop a special note about the end-game pivots/cheats—they're absolutely a blast to play around with.
Story
Once again, I hated having to start the game as Haytham. It felt fairly pointless from a narrative standpoint because the first 3 sequences gave us very little additional context on who Thomas Hickey, John Pitcairn, William Johnson, etc. were.
I really wish the script went through a few more rounds of editing for logic/consistency. Many times I felt like the script didn't explain how characters knew about each other (i.e. I would've liked to see who told Connor about Haytham and what his reaction was, and vice-versa).
It was frustrating in particular because I think the story overall had a lot of potential and the themes (freedom vs. order, idealism vs. pragmatism) were really interesting, but the script didn't really go far enough. I would've liked to see Connor argue back more with the Templars, and they really, really should've kept his moving soliloquy in the game.
I like Connor/Ratonhaké:ton a lot and I'm quite sad that his character still gets short shrift by Ubisoft/certain parts of the AC fandom.
History
My sister pointed out to me that ACIII's take on the Boston Tea Party is flat-out inaccurate (for the real Boston Tea Party, the Sons of Liberty dressed up as Native Americans, there were more of them throwing tea into the harbor, and they weren't being harassed by guards while dumping the tea), which makes me nervous about the accuracy of other parts of the game and disappointed as a history geek.
I actually wish we could've seen more of the American Revolution and substituted Haytham's boring introductory blather with more Revolution battles/conflicts with the Native Americans. My sister really wanted to see the Battle of Saratoga, for example. I also wish we could've seen more Native Americans other than just Connor's tribe, and it struck me how there are almost no Native American NPCs just walking around or doing things in the Frontier, which is a disappointment.
ACIII is pretty good with diversity by video game standards, what with featuring Connor/Ratonhnhaké:ton, his Mohawk tribe, and Achilles, but the game still presented a view of the American Revolution that was disappointingly white and male. It didn't show the women that followed the American and British armies, for example, and it would've been really nice to see figures like Martha Washington (who was known for visiting the Continental Army) and Molly Brant, the Mohawk wife of William Johnson, who helped convince the Mohawks to keep fighting for the British throughout the war.
Gameplay
By far my biggest complaint with the gameplay is that I hated the beginning 3 sequences with Haytham. I could not care less about Haytham (although I did get a kick out of calling him "douchebag dad" whenever he showed up later in Connor's story). If it was really necessary to make us play as the villain and/or show how Connor/Ratonhnhaké:ton's parents got together, I wished the game could've at least cut down Haytham's section significantly, since a lot of that part felt like I had to run around as an errand boy in order to get the Templars together.
Overall I liked the gameplay a lot. The combat is fluid and dynamic and the sidequests are fun and engrossing. Occasionally I had difficulty with some of the main story missions, mostly because some of the forced stealth/eavesdropping missions were pretty punitive and the AI was occasionally wonky, but nothing was too frustrating. Having played this game along with Black Flag simultaneously, I have to say that Black Flag's controls and HUD felt more streamlined (particularly the weapon selection, Eagle Vision tagging, and enemy map icons), but ACIII's were serviceable.
I have to give a shoutout to the glitches, though. My God, the glitches. I don't really mind cosmetic glitches that are hilarious but don't affect the gameplay, but I encountered numerous glitches that forced me to restart missions. Some examples below:
- During the Homestead mission to rescue Lance, I killed all the guards harrassing him but could not get the next cutscene to trigger. I walked into his burning cart, got stuck (couldn't move out of it), and died, and when the mission restarted everything was okay.
- In sequence 10, while trying to steal the mercenary's clothes without being detected, I kept running into this weird glitch where I would somehow not loot the mercenary's clothes "properly" and be unable to progress.
- In sequence 12, while chasing Charles Lee, in the boat, he just stopped and I couldn't trigger the next part of the memory until I restarted.
- Once, when I booted up the game, something was wrong with Connor's character model and colors kept flashing on the screen in a definite seizure-inducing way.
Also, sometimes the follow-NPC sequences weren't timed correctly and conversations would be cut off by cutscenes before they finished, which was a shame.
I wanted to drop a special note about the end-game pivots/cheats—they're absolutely a blast to play around with.
Story
Once again, I hated having to start the game as Haytham. It felt fairly pointless from a narrative standpoint because the first 3 sequences gave us very little additional context on who Thomas Hickey, John Pitcairn, William Johnson, etc. were.
I really wish the script went through a few more rounds of editing for logic/consistency. Many times I felt like the script didn't explain how characters knew about each other (i.e. I would've liked to see who told Connor about Haytham and what his reaction was, and vice-versa).
It was frustrating in particular because I think the story overall had a lot of potential and the themes (freedom vs. order, idealism vs. pragmatism) were really interesting, but the script didn't really go far enough. I would've liked to see Connor argue back more with the Templars, and they really, really should've kept his moving soliloquy in the game.
I like Connor/Ratonhaké:ton a lot and I'm quite sad that his character still gets short shrift by Ubisoft/certain parts of the AC fandom.
History
My sister pointed out to me that ACIII's take on the Boston Tea Party is flat-out inaccurate (for the real Boston Tea Party, the Sons of Liberty dressed up as Native Americans, there were more of them throwing tea into the harbor, and they weren't being harassed by guards while dumping the tea), which makes me nervous about the accuracy of other parts of the game and disappointed as a history geek.
I actually wish we could've seen more of the American Revolution and substituted Haytham's boring introductory blather with more Revolution battles/conflicts with the Native Americans. My sister really wanted to see the Battle of Saratoga, for example. I also wish we could've seen more Native Americans other than just Connor's tribe, and it struck me how there are almost no Native American NPCs just walking around or doing things in the Frontier, which is a disappointment.
ACIII is pretty good with diversity by video game standards, what with featuring Connor/Ratonhnhaké:ton, his Mohawk tribe, and Achilles, but the game still presented a view of the American Revolution that was disappointingly white and male. It didn't show the women that followed the American and British armies, for example, and it would've been really nice to see figures like Martha Washington (who was known for visiting the Continental Army) and Molly Brant, the Mohawk wife of William Johnson, who helped convince the Mohawks to keep fighting for the British throughout the war.
