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Discussion Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - Single-Player Adventure Game

You are not alone. There have been very few games in the last few years that I felt like buying.
 
The only games I bought "recently" were ones I played YEARS ago and felt like finally owning for real.
Plus most of the LEGO games. But no serious new ones at all. :no
 
Since I bought Half Life 2 EP2 I have bought 3 games. COAS, IL2 1946 and Bioshock Infinite. I just got BSI to test the UE3 engine but it turned out to be not too bad. There is a little bit of storyline between all the gratuitous violence. The main attraction of the game is its historical elements. LOL And Quantum Physics.
 
MK: On the subject of history, I just watched something that immediately made me think of you.
There's a good animated video series on the web called Extra Credits, which aims to teach aspiring developers about proper game design in a clear and sometimes comedic way.
I keep up with their videos every week, but this week they posted something different: a video based solely on historical events.
It turns out the developers of Total War: Rome II contacted them and asked them to teach people about history via their videos. And they didn't even ask for a mention of them or their game.
Now I don't know about you, but to me this is incredibly heart-warming. Maybe some devs out there really DO care about history. :woot

 
Armada said:
MK: On the subject of history, I just watched something that immediately made me think of you.
There's a good animated video series on the web called Extra Credits, which aims to teach aspiring developers about proper game design in a clear and sometimes comedic way.
I keep up with their videos every week, but this week they posted something different: a video based solely on historical events.
It turns out the developers of Total War: Rome II contacted them and asked them to teach people about history via their videos. And they didn't even ask for a mention of them or their game.
Now I don't know about you, but to me this is incredibly heart-warming. Maybe some devs out there really DO care about history. :woot

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Wow that's pretty neat Armada. There are people that care....a few I guess.

Gives me a little glimmer of hope inside - Especially when I just got done reading this: http://www.infowars.com/newly-disco...912-shows-how-dumbed-down-america-has-become/

MK
 
That article is fascinating and alarming at the same time. Kind of reminds me of my school days; the number of people with seemingly no desire to learn was horrendous. :facepalm
 
The wasted potential in video game technology today is amazing. Can you all imagine if they made games toward one specific audience without the worry of sales numbers?

Sid Meier's Pirates is old as dirt but has more content or depth then AC4. Ultima Online is more sandbox then any mmorpg to date. The last good game I have played in years is GTA V and Skyrim thanks to modders.

Everything is dumbed down, games haft to appeal to too many people to make sales for the cost of game development. This leads to lack of creativity, content, scope and depth (generally speaking). Deadlines and annual releases like AC games.

When the technology is their to make absolutely incredible games. Kickstarters & indie games is about all the innovation we have now in video games (again generally speaking).

So hey you can board ships in AC4 seamlessly, the game visually look impressive, the combat is ACish, very unchallenging but visually impressive. Your not taking over & adding ships to your fleet (at least not in real time), your looting them or sinking them. A lot of the features like your crew are interface based, not real time. So am I going to play it? Probably, I knew what to expect the day I read "Black Flag". I will say they could have made the sailing and ship combat just a little less arcadey. Ships seem to sink & blow up way too quickly, you'd think your on a US destroyer shooting at a sail boat. Mortar shot may as well be missiles.

You cannot have scope, depth, rich content and real gameplay with todays video game standards. Video games are too expensive, the talent and tech is their, its the mainstream lazy consumer gamer that dumbs it down.
 
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Indeed that's the most frustrating thing on this game: They're SO close to making something TRULY amazing.
But then they didn't do it. The least they could have done is to have a realism mode.
I'm still hoping they'll see the light one day and make a proper non-AC pirate game on the same basis some day.
 
As it happens, they apparently DID look into making the sailing aspect more simulation-based, according to this video about the making of AC4.
They seemingly rejected that because it "wasn't Assassin's Creed", and so they settled on the more arcade-style 'sailing' we've seen in various videos.

What also continues to amaze me is how they could focus so greatly on historical accuracy for the game's setting, towns and certain characters, yet the ships don't seem to have benefited from this research at all. Even though one person in that video claims the ships were based on historical accuracy, and they "moved things around" to make it easier for characters to navigate (??!), a few of them are so clearly Napoleonic in design. The game is set in the Golden Age of Piracy, almost one hundred years earlier. :facepalm
 
I think if there is a possibility to mod it, something good may come out of it. Tho noone knows from the beginning. If the ships can be slowed down, turn more realistically etc, if there is a map, who knows, may even overexceed the best expectations. Because with PotC "labyrinth" jungles (this is for me the oldest game type inherited from 2D games), in fact similar or repeated islands and a few different towns, we can't keep variety for much more. Actually you can't visit an island in PotC - you pass intermediary from the shore scene to the town scene through a jungle labyrinth. No island to see. That's how your game is only the sea with the ability to pass to these predetermined land scenes like in the episodic games (Brothers in Arms), which is also the oldest stuff. So I am open to the new things, if they are not too screwed for modding.
 
I don't think the AC series has been very open to modding before, so I'm not sure that's going to change with AC4. I could be wrong, though.
 
From what I heard, indeed we can't expect much moddability there. Crying shame though;
they're SO close and I just know we could push them the last few miles to get to a TRULY good pirate game.
But I doubt they'll let us.
 
They wouldn't let us because they probably doubt that such a realistic sailing game would sell well enough... triple-A studios just don't take those risks. :shrug
 
Yea I am going to buy the game and I am excited about it, but if you gauged my excitement level on a scale from one to ten, it is around 6.5 to 7.
 
if in the worst tradition they have made the files unaccessible I may not try the original game at all. Reminds me a bit "Game of Thrones" - beautifull surroundings, but you cannot equip your weapon a normall way /has to be opened another screen for that/ and when you do, the operating with it is so clumsy that it's not worth the effort to continue.
 
For those that are interested in hearing the developers' reasoning behind various aspects of this game, here are all three parts of the video series I linked to above:
Making Assassin's Creed IV: Part 1 - Setting Sail
Making Assassin's Creed IV: Part 2 - Uncharted Waters
Making Assassin's Creed IV: Part 3 - The Pirate Assassin

For what it's worth, I think I'll probably end up buying the game when I get a PlayStation 4 later this year.
Unrealistic sailing aside, I do think it looks quite fun, and I at least want to see how the rest of the game works for the sake of research for Hearts of Oak. :checklist
 
I'm quite interested to see how AC 4 looks and plays. It DOES look very good if you ignore the obvious flaws in realism.
But as long as it is fun, they're definitely doing something right.

I'd be quite interested in someone from this community writing a proper review, with pros and cons.
Would be an interesting read for sure and we can use it as front page news and such. :cheeky
 
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