Assassin's Creed 3 coming October 30, 2012

You never finished AC2 so I'm inclined to just disregard your opinion on all things. And Brotherhood has the best story and gameplay of them all.

Even if AC2 mysteriously takes a nosedive, I've had more fun in three hours of that than I have in 8 hours of AC3. It's Baldur's Gate versus Baldur's Gate 2 except in reverse.

At first this annoyed me as well. But AC3 has the best early-on spoiler of any video game in my recent memory, so I'm willing to completely forgive them those first 5-6 hours as they were building to it. It was that worth it. Plus nearly everything done as the first character carries over (mapping, Almanack pages, fast travel points, etc) so it's not like you lose something. However, I would definitely have liked a faster pace from beginning as grown Connor to getting the outfit/blades.

They don't tutorial enough, plain and simple. I'm learning how to fast-travel between cities and run-assassinate by reading this forum rather than because something told me in game. The crafting/trading tutorials were barely adequate. The only game part with a good length and depth of tutorial was naval combat. Still not sure how to play any of the games (except Bowls).

It bugs me immensely that the game just looks so horribly unpolished. Characters pop in and out of existence in cutscenes, coach drivers hold invisible reins, people sit inside tables, civilians shove their faces into the camera and direct terrifying thousand mile stares at the player; It feels like I can't go five minutes or two cutscenes without seeing something that makes me wonder why this game was released in 2012.

It probably sounds like a minor thing to complain about since there's far more substantial issues to nitpick, but it's a big deal to me since what I love most about AC is the feeling of walking around a city from the 1100's or 1400's. In AC3 I just feel like I'm playing a kinda janky open-world video game. My brain has long since been trained to blot out Desmond and I can even deal with Connor being a dumbass, but then I walk into an inn and see a dude standing inside his chair on my right and another floating in midair above the bar on my left. Enemies get stuck on corners during fights and do jittery dances while Connor rams a dude into a wall with such force that they both clip through it. This kind of shit happens everywhere where there are people and is really just the last straw for my suspension of disbelief, which has always been pretty stretched in AC.

There is some really good new stuff and usually I'd try to power through the crap just to reach that, but what's the point? It's AC and there'll be an equivalent of Brotherhood out next year with the same naval battles, the same tree climbing and hopefully just a little bit more polish. And tower defense pokémon battle dancing or whatever they think up to worsen the feature glut. Right now I regret buying this game because I really should have realised the smart thing to do is wait for Ubisoft's yearly schedule to turn out a finished product.

Played a bit of multi last night, still the same great multiplayer they've had since Brotherhood with some additional tweaks to the skills to make them far less overpowering from what I've seen. And the Wolfpack mode is a hoot, although a terribly messy one with PUGs.

So I really liked the pegleg missions except for a few items:

Achievement-breaking bug occurred tonight. I was camping out in the Homestead scanning everyone for the Encyclopedia of the Common Man. I got 3/3 for everyone except Lance the woodworker. Scanned him twice and he's now 2/3. But now when I scan him, I get the system message that he's already complete and it won't scan his new activity. Note: it doesn't tell me I've already scanned that activity, it says this person is already done. The strange thing is that earlier I was rescanning the farmers (accidentally) and it let me scan new activities "refreshing" my 3/3 on them.

Equis can you pass this bug on? I don't remember anything about the game state except I was in either seq 9 or 10 and had not yet done the "go pick up my missing package from France" mission for Lance. Also I was 3/3 on everyone else and I think they're all fully leveled up as well. Oh and I had finished the Pegleg missions, if that matters. I'll advise if it resets somehow when I play tomorrow and I can finish it.

I NEEDS MY CHEEVOES MAN... I NEEDS 'EM!!

I had this glitch, thankfully of the two types of that bug it's the one that doesn't require having an old save. Scan the lumberjacks and hopefully one of their actions will give you the achievement. I've also heard you can scan Lance's wife making butter but I never got that animation to appear.

Protip for those of you who want multiplayer xp without actually playing with others: Wolfpack invite only standard is super easy most of the way through and a good way to practice if you are unused to multiplayer AC in general. People have been posting videos of soloing maps on Hardcore difficulty even. It's amusing that I got much further on my own than in any of the PUG sessions I joined yesterday.

How come none of the surrounding people react to killing? Is the multiplayer mode supposed to be who gets the kill first with no NPC resistance beyond walking around and maxing out your points?

Ugh. It has multiplayer XP? Worst trend in gaming in recent memory.

AC multiplayer has had XP for as long as it has existed. Why is there such a trend in here of complaining about stuff as if its new crap that was added just for AC3?

Because that stuff sucks. It doesn't stop sucking just because it was in an earlier AC game.

I'm totally done with this game. I'm going to trade it in later today. Which means that I will stop hate-posting. I'm sure there's a good game in there somewhere, I just don't have the patience to dig it out.

I'm just saying people shouldn't act all surprised that a feature (and multiplayer XP and optional systems are features whether or not you like them) that was in previous games is also in this game.

This particular mode is all about getting elaborate kills quickly and efficiently. I imagine crowd ai is turned off so that 4 different people doing things in a map won't make the game explode under pressure. Everyone is working together in Wolfpack since you all share the same timer. Some abilities in multiplayer such as throwing a Gold Bomb into a crowd do cause AI reactions since that's the entire point of the item - to separate targets/players from civilians.

(Also this particular mode isn't really meant to be soloed)

Assassin Turkey Easter Egg (it seriously does work)

Funny as shit and I do love easter eggs, but damned if some of that time couldn't have gone into quashing bugs that I guarantee QA reported.

eta: that workaround for fixing the scan bug doesn't work for me. I think I had already scanned Cathy churning butter before, so maybe that's part of the problem? Meh, waiting on a patch.

So I've finished the game and I don't know if it's possible to address my question without spoilers but can anyone explain the postgame content? Pretend I just winked at you and said the word pivots.

Seeing as many of you are having bugs, is the game worth picking up? I was thinking I'd get the Xbox version for Christmas, but I don't want to be disappointed. I know their multiplayer is pretty great, but I'm usually a singleplayer (occasionally inviting friends over if it's a fun-looking game), so if the game isn't great then I'll probably wait until I find someone selling it for less.

If you aren't a day-one fan of the series like a few of us here, I'd wait for a second* patch. There are many smallish problems that presumably are easily fixable** plus a couple doozies that distract from enjoying the setting in general. I'll post in this thread as soon as a new patch hits my game, if that helps. Maybe by Christmas?

*There was a day one patch when I first loaded up, presumably with all those things they find between gold master and retail.
**Not a game programmer, but grammar and spelling errors in the Animus DB, a massive spoiler in the Animus DB, graphical glitches, dudes not showing up on the radar, piss-poor audio levels in certain follow-the-ally-and-chat missions, optional objectives not showing up until the end of a mission (when you've failed them), etc. probably have nothing to do with design or hard-to-find emergent gameplay logic; they are inexcusable. If I recall correctly, the Freemason V hint to unlock a fast travel point gives the wrong clue. WTH.

eta: Here's another minor but enlightening "bug" I just remembered. The achievements for the Desmond sequences each look like a die face with one to five pips depending on which sequence you finish: one pip for the first, two for the second, etc. You can only play these in the correct order as they are part of the storyline. Yet you get the three-pip achievement before the two-pip one. Why? Because someone made a boo-boo on an art asset and noone found it. Like I said, no effect on the game but shows a severe lack of polish.

I do own the other games. Hopefully those small things will be fixed by Christmas; I'm sure there are loads of people complaining about them everywhere. It's a shame that they didn't just wait another month to release it instead.

It would be great if you could let me know whether or not the next patch fixes things significantly, but if they aren't game-breaking errors then I'll probably get it anyway.

These are all significant problems, even allowing for a rush to get it out by the announced date. Shame on you, Ubisoft!

With so many teams working on so many different parts of the game I'm sure each one was limited in what they could do with regards to bug fixing. And so far the bugs I've seen have been minor things that would be last on the list to fix, maybe Angie could speak on this better than I.

Completing the Encyclopedia of the We Made All These (admittedly) Great Looking Animations You Should Watch Them only gets you an achievement and it's so not worth it.

Yeah I know, but I like getting these kinds of achievements because they involve me seeing stuff the developers spent time on: animations, interesting places in the environment, etc. They are different to me than achievements of, say, grinding to 100th level doing only the same stuff over and over.

Interestingly today I was able to scan the lumberers and farmers again (though both were already completed). Instead of the completion notification, it simply refreshed the 3/3 activities count on each. Strange.

So looking into the Pegleg wolves thing.

It is in fact a bug, and not designed as intended. It has been flagged but I'm not sure it will be fixed by the PC version since I'm not working on that.

I apologize on behalf of the designer, who sits near to me. I have stolen his candy as punishment.

Everyone has more than 3 things you can scan, hell it's frustrating enough watching those fuckers sit and whittle or eat apples instead of doing what you need to scan with the 4 or 5 activities each person does as is.

Adree: I haven't done the end stuff yet so I haven't seen how that wraps up. I picked up the, uh, things that are in Boston and New York, I'll head out into the frontier next.

Equis: since I've wrapped up the game and damn near got the full 100%, I feel qualified to tell you the game is almost completely a success. I loved the hell out of the Aquila sections, I loved roaming the countryside doing little side missions as palate cleansers between the heavier full missions. The homestead was pretty awesome, seeing how all the characters' missions started to twine together as they became a community was really fulfilling. Looking forward to seeing what you guys do next, whether it's DLC for AC3 or the next big thing.

And dude, I know you're probably hearing this way too much, but I have to add my voice: whoever thought it was a good idea to throw in a bunch of chase missions and add optional objectives like "take no damage" or "don't collide with any people" apparently has no idea what fun actually is and deserves to have his or her candy stolen.

Big ole patch coming
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/726389-Assassin-s-Creed-III-Thanksgiving-Patch-Spoilers-Forums

Too much to list really, mostly mission fixes. No more deertrees. The Animus database entry that spoils the prologue no longer unlocks early. No more cheating in the Boston Brawlers missions (you could smokebomb among other fun things.)

Completed all the things last night. There were about 9000 people named Sebastian involved with making this game. ;)

Overall I'm satisfied with the game. It was much better than AC:Rev and had some great new things in it. The naval sections, tree running, fast travel, and hand-to-hand combat were all great. The audio and music were very well done, except for mix levels. Environment was gorgeous. Haytham is definitely the best character in this game from a development point of view, and a DLC prequel where you play him would be basically awesome. The missions where you led groups of Patriots by telling them to fire (rifles or cannon) were really good ideas and would like to have had more of them. Loved building the Homestead, very much like Montiglierre (?) in AC2. The game feels like four or five teams built it, each team's part being great unto itself but without really connecting well to the other parts; so if you view AC3 as a kind of collection of mini-stories (each with their own gameplay style) that all occur in the same locale you'll be all set.

eeek! spoiler removed, sorry.

Critiques. Needed more tutorials, by far; the only really good one was piloting a ship. It seemed like half the game was either cutscenes or "walk here, press A to talk, walk there, press A to talk" type stuff; would have liked more action. And it would have been nice to have more "find the X in gold using eagle vision" as opposed to "go to the green dot already placed on the map". Also the copy-editing (grammar, spelling, typefacing, etc) in the ADB and accounting book, and the UI in the accounting book for crafting/trading, were really really bad. To the point where I won't shut up about it. The 100% optional objectives were highly imbalanced, some being trivial and some being herculean. Why were the Animus pivot-points not part of the game before the end of the story? They had potential to be a cool collectible during, rather than after, the game (I grant you this complaint is more for someone like me who plays everything with the storyline rather than gunning through the story then playing open world stuff.)

More bug reports (putting here for Equis or someone else, hopefully they can be addressed):

• In the Animus entry for the Treaty of Paris, the text says something like "not to be confused with the Treaty of Paris of 1768" but the title bar says something like "signed 1768".
• If you are notorious and bribe a barker to go back to incognito, the animus lines (?) stay in the world where nearby wanted posters previously hung.
• The names of the special items for crafting are all fouled up. Some in all caps, some not. Some say this is such-and-such 1 but there is no 2, 3, 4. Alphabetizing is also out of order (make it hard to find something) and there is no way to see from the main recipe menu if you've already crafted something or not so you have to go in, see the red outline and notice, then go back out which takes you back to the top of the start of the menu. Rawr!
• On one of the naval missions (it's one where you are responding to a distress call to rescue a ship) the missions starts you at speed heading into a bunch of rocks and you don't get post-cutscene control of the ship until it's too late to avoid them.
• Connor's ponytail doesn't appear in certain cutscenes/places when wearing the indian outfit (the one you get for all the feathers). He looks like a clean cut fellow.
• In one cutscene near the end Connor paints his face with warpaint and it's like this big deal of a close-up; the very next bit of that cutscene, no more face paint. Jarring.
• Near the last few hours of the game my bait was constantly at 0 after buying some (thankfully I didn't need it anymore) and my weapons loadout display showed the wrong weapon alot, such as fist when I had the hidden blade equipped, etc. I'd use [RB] to manage weapons and it was correct, just not in the main UI.
• Some of the facial animations were way out of synch with the audio in one of the last few cutscenes; I think it was with Charles Lee but don't remember for sure.

I notice this happens with all of the special outfits.

OK I can see that. I guess for me it's more when it happens; if it were earlier in the game it would make more story sense.

I am currently thinking very uncharitable things about the moral character of anyone involved in the decision to tie in-city fast travel points to a game tax of slogging through endless identical sewer tunnels. I'm sure their family and friends love them and that they have many positive qualities, but they still need to reflect on their lives and the choices they're making. Even if nothing is true, it is still nevertheless true that endless identical sewer tunnels always suck, and even though everything is permitted, this shouldn't be allowed anymore.

Much is forgiven if any of them share responsibility for the rope dart. I bet the rope dart is why their friends and families love them. Part of why Desmond isn't very awesome is because he's never had a rope dart.

I enjoyed mapping out the fast travel checkpoints. Of course I obsessively filled in all the blank spots on the map, because I hate blank spots. So I'm probably an outlier.

And I finished collecting the, you know, post-game things, and I still don't get it. Maybe a bridge to future DLC?

If that is the case, it's very poorly explained. But it's not super-critical in any case.

Played just into Sequence 09 this weekend, where I'll be mostly faffing about leveling up my guild recruits and doing side stuff for awhile. Figure I'll pick up the main quest again after the big upcoming patch. I already wish I'd waited earlier: it's been awhile since any game has inspired quite the intensity of nerd rage I experienced in finishing up sequence 8. I think whoever was responsible for the foot chase section in it actually hates me on a personal level. I can only imagine what it'd be like if I actually cared about getting full synch.

Things I really wish I'd learned before:
1: Eagle Vision makes clues show up at significantly greater distances than normal vision does. This sharply reduces aggravation with the "search big green circle for a clue" mission sections.
2: While counter-killing everyone is entertaining as always, it's really best to always leave at least one guy right by you so you can have a quick shield in case of imminent musket fire.

I don't actually remember if this was an addition to the series or was there in 2 and 2.5 (never played Revelations), but the moments when you counter when two or three enemies are attacking you simultaneously and Connor just flips out and kills all of them near simultaneously are just never getting old for me.

I think that is new to AC3, and it's my favorite thing about the game.

There's a worse chase sequence later in the game. You'll know it when you come to it, and do yourself a favor: immediately look it up on YouTube. There's a non-intuitive and non-obvious path you're supposed to take instead of just following the target. Just look up a video, because it will change that chase to merely difficult instead of practically impossible and rage inducing.

They are beautiful. I snicker a little every time it happens, and feel dejected the times I realize I just missed the opportunity to trigger a multikill.

They should really patch an arena mode into the Animus. Shamelessly stealing Batman Arkham City's challenge maps, basically. The combat ones, not the stealth ones because that is so not AC's strong suit. (The Assassins really need to steal Bruce Wayne's sperm in order to ensure that they have access to better genetic memories of how to do stealth-predatoring for their future generations.)

I...worse? Oh god. Duly braced.

I ended up swallowing my pride with the chase and did the youtube thing, and the solution there was already non-intuitive path that relied on having psychic foretelling of the dude's preset route.