Finished most things up last night, besides the collect-a-thon of locations. Got a few things to say, sorry for the text dump.
- Another Ubisoft
Environment/Art department doing crazily good work. Whether it's San Francisco, Egypt or Bolivia, these teams do such a great job of creating beautiful landscapes (with increasingly impressive draw distances) with excellent lighting usage. I actually found at points that the "living world" aspects drew me out of the immersion that the landscape/lighting alone had achieved. However...
- The
story is downright terrible. I've thought over it, rewatched some cutscenes and this is easily the component that all Ubisoft studios need to work on. Besides the stale, cold dialogue and only about 3 characters having decent VA work, the narrative jumps all over the place with inconsistent pacing. The game provides exposition on the least interesting moments in the story then skims over important figures being killed, historical figures' backstories and takes control out of the player's hands with random passing out/fainting or hallucination sequences.
- This is only emphasised by the
bizarre pacing. You absolutely fly through the first 8 or so targets in the Order before being ground to halt by the introduction of random, big bad dudes with no real backstory who represent the head honchos. At climaxes in the story, you're given inconsequential modern day segments or drawn-out sailing missions (the worst of these comes riiiight at the end of the campaign where you feel the game is about to end on 3 different occasions). The story overall just has zero patience with itself and wants to give the player the experience of an epic tale with developing characters but gives the player nowhere near the time or exposition to do so.
- Bayek could be one of the
worst main characters in the series (Note: I didn't play 3 or Black Flag). He has pretty much nothing to add to any situation besides "NYEK" (or whatever he was saying instead of "shit") and might as well of had a dedicated
"Press X to "HEEMMMUUUUUUU" option when the player needs some sort of motivation. What's more surprising is that Ubi managed to make a more engaging character out of your limited time with Aya. Her writing moves more subtly around her son's death and she adds more to the conversation than Bayek's favourite catchphrase...
"These men are evil, they will pay". This impacts the other characters in a negative light as the game expects you to have investment in Bayek's old friends he meets on the road. But I don't care about Bayek so I certainly don't care about his mates.
- The game
mashed together RPG-elements from recent titles but didn't manage to nail any of them and in turn, managed to lose the series' original identity for the most part. Gonna use bullet points to quickly explain these...
- The map is 80% desert, farmland or rural villages. This provides no real environment outside of the cities to engage in classic AC traversal mechanics. Further, when you're in the cities, the movement has been simplified. There's no particularly complex structures, furnishings or flourishes that Bayek can scramble or climb. The descent option is pretty much just grip/drop/grip/drop rather than something more fluid like Unity.
- The majority of combat encounters (especially in the story) are designed around the game's 'Dark Souls-inspired' combat system which means Bayek isn't really acting like an assassin for the most part (inb4 he's the first of the assassins because it's an AC game still) and the player is brawling with heavies or crocodiles in most cases rather than skulking, diving and stabbing.
Small notes
- The "follow road to objective marker" mechanic is nice and makes travelling a relaxing change of pace and gives the player more chance to admire the landscape.
- The gear/switching armours is pretty cool but I wish it had a little more impact on combat encounters.
- I wish it was a little easier to find certain items besides launching Senu in to the air and scanning.
- The final assassination being set in such a significant moment in Classical Civilisations is exactly what the series needs to be doing more of.
Overall, it's a beautiful game set in an incredible landscape that's let down by 90% of the characters being forgettable and a near non-sensical story. However, if this is the template for the series from now on, it's a good starting point to create more engaging narratives/characters in both the main story and side content.
Some photos...
