How To FIX the Current Parkour System | Assassin's Creed [Leo Talks]
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- čas přidán 2. 07. 2024
- Assassin's Creed's movement at its strongest was only the best version of an inherently flawed, imperfect system, but the players who found joy and satisfaction in learning how to play it well embraced its idiosyncrasies to come to a state of appreciation for its central ideas. In the pursuit of making Assassin's Creed a more generally-playable experience, Ubisoft have steadily removed and excised every remaining vestige of the movement systems the series once became mechanically famous for.
The real solution is something else, something neither new nor old, but until that happens, what can be done to make what exists right now the best it can be for both types of players, those who love the freedom of the classic games, and those who love the comfort of the new ones -- without destroying the enjoyment for either group?
A simple idea, taken from things the series has already done with the Animus at the beginning of every playthrough in Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla but applied to the concept of movement itself.
00:00 Intro
00:37 Control and Risk
02:10 The Animus Can Help
08:04 Player Investment and Optional Content
12:07 Conclusion
Jcers' Video:
• AC2 | Ravaldino's Secr...
j4k8's Video:
• Assassin's Creed 2 has...
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#AssassinsCreed #Parkour #LeoKRogue - Hry
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One thing that always bugged me about your "Parkour Filter" idea is that it would be challenging to create a world with level design that can complement both kinds of parkour, but watching this video made me realise that that had already been solved, all the way back in the first AC, and actually as I think about it more, it had always been that way until Syndicate. When I first played AC2, parkour was kind of on-rails for me, which I didn't mind. I just followed the mapped out path i saw in my mind, going up the big box-steps, jumping and swinging off beams till I got onto the roof. Until I saw AC2 parkour videos on CZcams with people do all kinds of ejects and chaining a variety of moves together to make their parkour more cool. It's kind of wild to think about because up till Syndicate, the player has been the "Parkour Filter", choosing whether to be on-rails and go in a straight line or chain together sick moves. But now Ubisoft has just forced everybody into the same (ironically) "no-filter" path, which sucks. Thanks for this video Leo.
Thank you so much! I tried really hard to explain why it's not as unreasonable as the people who disagree think, because often they disagree due to making an assumption that doesn't have to be true, that world design is always going to stay like this.
One day, world design will change again, and since we KNOW advanced movement gives many players grief, giving them options to simply not have their character ever do certain moves is the only way to make an automated system that tries to interpret player intention feel Fair to play.
Personally I liked the way AC3 did it with safe running (only holding down high profile) to avoid unsafe jumps. Then came along Unity, and all of a sudden climbing couldn't have any risk at all. I remember one instance where I wanted to back eject to a wall that was probably a mere several feet away, but no, the game thought it knew better than me.
@@aurllcooljay I found that a pretty good middle-ground as well. It made sense, all risky actions were basically right on the jump/legs button.
@@aurllcooljay This is why I shake my head so hard when people say that Unity had the best parkour. Unity had the best LOOKING parkour sure, but the system on a technical level is still much too automated. At least for me it is.
There's a video where a guy got stuck on a high wall in Unity. He couldn't go up, he couldn't go down, and he couldn't jump off because the game didn't deem it "safe".
@@ink4852 I'm a bit of a weirdo, so I like the challenge of wrangling a notorious system to my will to execute the sexy animations. So I can't disagree when people say that Unity looks the best, but neither can I disagree when people say the system is janky and unpredictable, because both of those feed into my enjoyment of Unity's parkour.
Sif: "Why do we love the old parkour? The real short answer is that it used to be fun and now it's not." I mean, he's right.
It makes sense tho....u r a warrior not an assassen they hav very hevy wepon and armorr 2 climb n it wud probably get tiring....so wil im med at Ubbisoft dey r going 4 realizm in games nd it iz awes0m3
@@protectbabysif Ezio was able to move perfectly while equipped with heavy weapon and armor of Brutus then why can't a demigod do that?
@@offtheradar1898 tbf that's kinda super unrealistic.
But realism in moments like that isn't usually all that fun so that brings us back to the original point. It's hard to feel as powerful as you used to be if your originally great options get dumbed/cut down or made visibly slower.
@@offtheradar1898 He was trolling
You need to make a course on cinematic and concise presentations, you have an amazing gift for it. Your solution is also very indegenious if it is implemented in any capacity during the making of future games and I don't really have anything to add to it, there IS a thing that I am aware of though and am very very annoyed about it, The games till unity, were so inexplicably unique, that I'm unable to find anything that gives me the same experience, maybe slightly similar, but that craving of the assassin fantasy is never fulfilled and I keep going back to the old games and unity, but I don't want to do that and really really want to experience a new world with that powerful feeling of moving through a group of enemies like the wind, silent and unseeable, like a true assassin. Enough of my rant, Good luck for your future vids!!!
This is the most thoughtful and mature take i have heard on this issue so far. Can’t Ubisoft just hire you already?
Would be nice, wouldn't it? :)
I need to improve at video-creation and interacting with a community, though.
I don't have any coding or game-design experience, so something like a Community Manager would be the only role even remotely reasonable. That said, CMs get tons of abuse and toxicity, and when I can't just rip someone a new asshole or insta-ban them for making me mad, I probably wouldn't do terribly well 😅
Also, a lot of my favorite people who used to work at Ubisoft don't anymore (particularly a bunch of the CMs), so I'm not sure I'd even want to be there anymore.
Wisely put and really thoughtful. While it sucks that the recent entries have gutted one of the franchise’s core mechanics, you make a concerted effort to not vilify the people these new systems are made to benefit.
Thank you.
I always loved to parkour from the Kenway games, but the flow of parkour in classic AC is still king. The shift from clunky to fluid is one you have to change yourself, which is something that I never caught onto in my first play through of the games, and only embraced in the last few years. What unique and lovely games
Hell yeah! Once it "clicks" and you understand the way things link together, you see it all so differently and your mind _unlocks._ It's sick.
@@LeoKRogue yes bro *exactly!* you start viewing all of it aspects in a entierly different manner, that feeling is so drastically unique in such a way to me, it's something that i constantly have *only* with Assassin's Creed, i love this frenchise so much, and i love your videos so much man
playing it back again shit feels clunky as hell but was good for its time tbh, it continued to improve title after title until AC parkour finally peaked in Unity. Sad they revamped the whole thing when the RPG era started, if they just kept the Unity parkour it'd have been perfect
@@SmoovyNovaFan tend to disagree, Unity’s parkour was pretty and the new moves for parkour down were cool, but ultimately it was way too clunky and unresponsive and unpredictable to be consistently enjoyable. I think that since it was the last AC to have a reasonably high skill ceiling, we tend to give it too much credit
@@chrismildon7512 its the opposite, i just got done binge playing AC1 to Syndicate for nostalgia's sake, its way more easier to make mistake on a game like AC2 or AC1 compared to Unity, which makes sense anyway since they just continued to build upon what they had from the previous game to the next, the mechanics evolved and improved overtime, you couldnt even free run downwards seamlessly till before Unity
Very well-written video, Leo. Big ups to basically everything you’re saying here. The idea to have an assisted movement mode really is the only way forward if we want to be able to enjoy parkour in Assassin’s Creed again.
I think something worth noting is that the existence of that system split would change the role of our guide/showcase content significantly. It would no longer be a case of “watch Leo K/Jcers/Execution Producer/etc to be able to enjoy playing these games”, but rather “watch (content creator) if you want to take your enjoyment of these games to the next level”. I reckon that such a change would make wanting to learn how to move effectively in AC significantly more appealing.
Plus, there’s also the perspective of someone who doesn’t engage with community content and just plays the game who has historically not engaged with the systems due to poor tutorialization. The fact that there’s an “advanced movement mode” will immediately and explicitly tell them that parkour in that game has depth to it and is worth exploring, unlike previous ACs, which never even bother to tell the player about wall ejects except for in a few side missions.
Overall, I see the inclusion of a system split like this doing nothing other than making the games more accessible to both newcomers and veterans, making parkour fun again, and making more people aware of the movement depth in the series. I can’t think of a single good reason not to do this, which means that it’ll never ever happen 🙃
At some point, if truly advanced movement returns, Ubisoft is going to have to address a large playerbase who doesn't want to be frustrated at feeling like their character is out of control. They don't have to do this exact idea, but they will have to do something.
They could also just delete all automation and make every action completely manual so the system isn't interpreting player intent and action-reaction is more one to one, but that's an entirely new movement paradigm built from the ground up that would need its own control scheme.
5:00 since tombs aren't in the first game, you can literally complete all of it's content without using them at all. The parkour tutorial doesn't mention them either. I'm convinced a lot of players don't know you even can side eject in the first game
I believe it. Same thing with Air Assassinates. AC1 leaves more to be discovered than any other game, and that's super cool but a lot of players remain unaware.
Great video. I remember how hard Assassin's Creed 1 was when I first played it and how much I bumped with people and stumbled off the roofs. As of late, AC 1 is one of my favorite games, and it is because of the freedom it offers and how much room it offers for improvement. Now I can tackle missions without being spotted, run through jar carriers without even breezing them and glide through the roofs without touching the ground in a complete gaming session. That is the magic of practice and the versatility of a game that permits such practice. It transforms what was once a grueling experience into one of the most satisfying experiences I've had with a game in recent memory.
I love it so much, yeah, the difference in how it feels to play before you're used to everything and after is just incredible. You feel like you know these streets and rooftops on an intuitive level. We don't have much interaction with NPCs in Assassin's Creed anymore. Back in the classic era, they were an obstacle that wasn't an enemy, so they had their own kind of interactions you had to keep in mind. It was a clever way to ground you in the era's Society as gameplay, albeit simple.
Step 1: Actually have parkour
I MEAN YEAH. But _evidently_ it's not that simple, hence why we gotta come up with something. x_x
I hope all these parkour fixes they found in the valhalla code yields noticeable improvement in ac rift
I know nothing about this.
I always remember watching... I think it was for AC3, all the talks they had talking about the process of developing the game. And I always, always, always, remember how big of a deal they made pointing out that Assassin's Creed has three core pillars of gameplay that must all be strong and balanced. Stealth, Combat, and Traversal. There is a very strong misbalance now
There is, and I think I can identify at least _part_ of why it happened.
Combat is the most directly-interactable part of action games that the highest number of players experience and end up talking about. If your combat is bad, people will talk about it a lot more than if your stealth and movement is bad, because the consequences of those two being unwieldy (or the player being unskilled) is that you just end up in combat.
Now if the _combat_ is annoying, well, you're always ending up in it, so you start noticing that a lot. It's where players 'wash up' and 'collect,' combat-state is the destination upon which the stealth and movement spits them out if they're not good enough at them, so these players experience it so, so often.
After years of complaints that combat is too easy and simple and boring, a lock-and-pivot hitbox system is a reasonable step to take, but what was really crushing is that they de-focused the other two so much, just because a huge amount of players did. Like, where is the integrity? Can you support and back up your creation?
The fact that they just gave in and injected all of the focus into combat, simply because "well, lots of players will end up in here anyway," is just... I try not to be cynical but sometimes I wonder if the parkour and stealth received _SO_ little Love exactly BECAUSE they knew they could get away with it by making fighting your way through hordes of enemies feel somewhat decent this time around.
@@LeoKRogue Yeah, I mean there's always a bit of imbalance from game to game. Unity I think had good traversal and stealth, but was lacking in the combat department. Then they just way overcorrected by overhauling the combat system (which would be fine on it's own) while massively simplifying traversal.
I think one of the biggest kicks in the teeth was when Valhalla was announced, and a dev's response to backlash about the "Hidden Blade" being the wrong way around was, "He thinks it's so cool of a weapon, why would he want to hide it?"
Just like, wow, we haven't been Assassins in a long time lmao
It's rough too, because that reasoning is entirely in line with Eivor's actual character. If they continue to run AC the way they have been, it's like this weird no-win situation for anyone because if they _do_ concede to what we want and make cool Assassin stuff for the sake of cool Assassin stuff, it'll just be flat and ineffectual. It's not _just_ about the iconography and the symbolism, it's about the iconography, rituals and symbolism being present _for a reason._
@@LeoKRogue The biggest thing is always that Assassin *feel*. Like while AC4 is a pretty good game, it doesn't feel as much like I'm playing as an Assassin as it did in something like AC3 or Unity. It's just an odd number of games in the franchise leave you playing as not an Assassin lol, Odyssey probably being the biggest offender of that.
I really, really miss playing as an Assassin man. I feel like I'm being punished for my emotional investment in this world, universe and faction. Like, I like these characters, I like these hyper Reality-Aware god-ninjas. Can I please play as one again? Am I _allowed_ to like Assassins, Ubisoft? Is it a _sin_ to find Assassins _cool_ or something?
Think this could work with a lot more than just parkour. How about combat, not just more health but deeper like all enemies will attack whenever they want or not being able to cancel every animation with a dodge. Stealth will become deeper or Hud can be turned off and the game is designed around the hud being off not just allowing you to turn the hud off. Idk I just want an ac game that doesn't feel like a kid's game anymore. I can't play another 100 hour rpg that has less depth than an 8 hour souls game and that also wants me to pay money to get the best rewards.
Yes. They already have these kinds of granular toggles for some elements, just explode that out and apply it to so much more. Modern Assassin's Creed is, structurally, such a _soul-sucking_ experience that it just leaves you feeling withered if you want any shred of what you loved about these games lovely beginnings and try to put any of your emotions into it to get some of that. It just doesn't work and it feels like instead of improving they get worse every time. Not encouraging.
Used to be that the gameplay was a reflection of the line "nothing is true, everything is permitted". It's not the rules that tell you what you can do, but yourself. You jump off a high wall, you die. You are the one making decisions, and you must live with the consequences, whether glorious or tragic. You kinda lose this with the filter. It's my only gripe.
@@wifparanoid304 I agree but for example some people don’t wanna have to learn assassins creed unity’s stylish clunky parkour to be able to feel like an assassin. I see that side to but id also like to learn something and get good at the game as I play especially if the game is gonna be over 80 hours long.
@@wifparanoid304 I feel _exactly the same._ Movement in the classic games was absolutely reflective of the Assassin's Creed, and the loss of it hurt me more than most people for that reason. The problem is, we've _already_ lost this, though. The filter would _bring it back_ by making it acceptable to the designers to do so. If I believed that we could "just" get complex movement back without a compromise like this, then by all means, that would be better. And, at one point, I used to.
However, Ubisoft have had seven years to do that, and they haven't. If anything, they've only stripped out more and more. That's not very encouraging to me in terms of the prospect of bringing back an uncompromising advanced movement system everyone has to contend with. At least with something like this, the players who _want_ it can have it. Right now, no one can. :(
They should just flat out steal the combat from Ghost of Tsushima. That's the kind of reaction/parry combat that fits an assassin game. And people love it. And it has built in difficulty levels and in-game-item modifiers to make it easier/harder.
Unity was sort of it, but much simpler and clunkier.
Beautifully put together
I hope that someday in the future we actually get AC back, or perhaps we'll go into the Animus ourselves before that ever happens...
Assassin's Creed VR is a thing soon, soooo :)
That intro is sooo clean man🔥
Thanks!
Very thoughtful talk, Leo. I definitely agree with a toggle option, and from what I’ve seen, Ubisoft seems to be considering this kind of opt-in/opt-out design philosophy in many of their games currently. Even Valhalla seems to have a massive amount of parameters and options you can tweak to change your experience. I feel as though this would be logical next-step and certainly something that could be achievable.
I think the major hurdle to overcome besides parkour would also be stealth, because that’s arguably as controversial. The clear solution is to actually TEACH the player how to be properly sneaky, but some players often prefer different design philosophies for stealth in this series, whether it’s using a mix of parkour and blending to avoid enemies or to kill them in AC1 or AC2, its much more lethal iteration in Brotherhood and Revelations, the inclusion of more traditional stealth elements in the Kenways (and bush stealth), and then the streamlined traditional stealth of post-Kenway games. I don’t know if this issue is as simple as an opt-in/opt-out, and it’s something I’ve thought about occasionally. It would be definitely interesting to hear your thoughts though.
Thanks Kino. ^__^
This is tricky, because Stealth has had many more identities across Assassin's Creed than movement has, changing slightly with every different protagonist's personality and place in history, as well as sometimes _within the same_ protagonist in the case of AC2/Brotherhood/Revelations. In each of those three games stealth _does_ feel different when played to capacity just because Ezio's kit changes so dramatically, even with simple things like gun-charge speed.
For Stealth I think what needs to happen is that the developers decide what the character's persona, toolkit, and environment permits, and lean into that very hard while making it feel good and satisfying if the player adheres to those elements.
Stealth is also sadly still technically more advanced than parkour is right now, at least when it works and isn't constantly shattering to pieces in your hands, so not making it hopelessly buggy and then leaning hard on the individuality of the player-character for what gameplay that makes available is, I think, the play.
@@LeoKRogue I definitely agree for the most part. Stealth in this series feels the most immersive when it’s an extension of the player-character:
For Altair, it’s the anachronism of the Assassins in using what Bellec refers to as “the Levantine Approach”, which consists of using disguises and the environment to position yourself to publicly, brutally, and ruthlessly slaughter a target to make a political statement.
For Ezio, it’s making use of a much more reserved approach introduced by Altaïr, using technologically advanced tools to outwit his enemies using mundane infrastructure in urban environments, and his growing skill as he ages.
For Connor, it’s using his experience (and deep connection) with the to isolate, ambush and kill where enemies least expect it, often striking silently from the trees or a bush before exploding into violent carnage.
And I can go on but you get the idea. Where I believe people really disagree though is what the core fantasy should be. I believe AC should be closer to what I mentioned Ezio was, using infrastructure and urban environments to outsmart, manipulate, isolate, and kill your targets. Others still prefer the more streamlined approach that favors traditional stealth and crouching like Unity. And many others enjoy the current core fantasy which entirely devalues social stealth in favor of more simplified traditional stealth with RPG elements. When people disagree on what the very fabric of a game’s intended design should be, it’s very difficult to reconcile. Even beyond mechanics, I think that’s the major cause of the rifting in this community.
If stealth continues to lean on the personality and options available to each character, and Assassin's Creed continues to feature a diversity of protagonists across nations and history, then eventually everyone will cycle through various types of stealth they enjoy most, multiple times over the years. The issue is that right now, they're not _really_ leaning on a diversity of playstyles, and the types of stealth being featured are _the same_ across three whole protagonists, which is _INSANE_ considering Ezio who was just one, had variations in his all to himself.
_Some_ Assassins will lean more on using infrastructure, because that's what they have access to due to their upbringing, or training, or resources. _Some_ Assassins _won't_ do that and may be forced to take advantage of more 'traditional' stealth concepts. As long as every player-character feels solid and reliable and the game isn't struggling to not dump its innards in front of me, I'm pretty happy to play the different kinds of stealth that the series may make available.
@@LeoKRogue Yes, I think that’s fair. Thanks for talking with me Leo!
@@kinography9085 Thanks for being here. I love all you Sneaky guys. ^_^
Well put, and the positive perspective is much appreciated. I also felt really salty when Valhalla came out and the parkour somehow felt even worse, but that shouldn't be targeted towards the newer or more casual fans at all. We all win if this is incorporated in some shape or form (even though it's highly unlikely)
In truth, Ubisoft is the monster and they fuck us _all_ by making us fight each other. Pitchforks and torches until we get a good game, dammit! jk jk (mostly)
I would say the number one frustration I experience is when I'm trying to sprint after someone, and Arno or Ezio will just climb random things while I'm running, and getting off of a 1-foot ledge that I didn't want to climb is damn near impossible
Oh and also, I want more social stealth, and more parkour stealth. Any game that has a stealth button is bad at stealth
I definitely think trying to turn Assassin's Creed into a more 'general' stealth game was a mistake, since it already had unique strengths that were eventually dropped. Crouching can be useful, but it's heartbreaking when that's all we _get_ nowadays.
Biggest thing I miss is upgrading your own town or sailing and conquering forts in black flag. Haven't tried valhalla yet but so far the newer stuff has been less impressive than the older games
It has been. Ravensthorpe doesn't feel like as much of a mechanic and meaningful system as Monteriggioni and the Jackdaw did, and there's not much to do there barring returning at the end of every arc and once in a blue moon to upgrade a weapon or something. I was actually a bit let down by it, I thought it would have a bigger, more important presence in the game. Eivor Varinsdottir's entire raison d'etre is to provide a home for her people, yet in the end I didn't feel a strong emotional connection to Ravensthorpe.
@@LeoKRogue You are bang on there. I feel more attached to Masyaf even. I hope AC returns to form soon.
I would love to see the quests get better. Recently got back into Runescape again and a point and click game from 20 years ago does better quests than most new games. The open world in AC feels so empty most of the time now.
One free way to get people loving the games again would be stuff like sea shanties.
Cool to see a reply from you :) Have a good day
Well you pretty much answered it in the first minute. The AC3+ parkour can feel very random at times, especially Unity with its many grabpoints and animations based on some very niche input.
Classic is very sober and simple, controllable and accurate. Really makes me feel like I’m the one doing the climbing.
Love it for that, yup yup. I've never had more control and more different things to control than back then. Was a great time.
Also for some reason in AC 3 in particular the game has really terrible detection of platforms, I can consistently make Connor jump into a very very tiny part of a slightly opened window because the game thinks that that is something Connor can jump on which he can't.
Love the use of ac1 in the intro, it's looks really cool! Also love the idea of letting players choose how the want to play because is a great way to make the games more accessible, but also because i started playing origins for the first time and movement really is so boring 😭
Aww nooo hahahaha I'm so sorry T__T I feel you though
Origins is so much better than AC1. AC1 is one of the worst games I have ever played in the 600+ games I've played in my life. It's so boring and repetitive, every given opportunity it wastes my time. The investigations aren't fun, just boring, the combat is awful, it's easy and not fun, especially considering how easily the dumbass guards are provoked, I have to constantly fight them because the chases are even worse.
OMG , this video is so sick man , just expressed everything I have ever thought of this topic so flawlessly and fluidly
Thanks so much, please share it around if you found it interesting or worth thinking about.
@@LeoKRogue sure , and I don't mean to sound cringey or anything but I genuinely think your videos are pretty amazing , and your passion for the things you love is endlessly commendable , a verry special and rare thing , I feel
This is probably the only time you are going to hear me say somenting like this , I don't usually do this , but yea , this is cool
Thank you. It's not cringe, it's much appreciated. I want to make it feel safe for people to express how they feel about my creative work, since it encourages me and it ends with people getting more videos to watch, which I'm sure is a nice little bonus. :)
I already know I’m gonna love this
I hope you did. :)
Oh I did and I am very into your idea of allowing the player to choose what kind of parkour freedoms they want. It’s seems like a good compromise for such a split community and i think it would be cool to see some game design that rewards you for getting places that are really hard to reach through advanced movement
I like this idea too because world-design and optional collectibles could incentivize a new player dipping their toes into learning if they really, really want a piece of loot for example.
And because Parkour Filters are a diegetic part of the in-game universe and lore in this case, whoever your Present Day character is can just flick the different filters on or off in order to get things done in the simulation.
If Present Day were playable and had parkour in it, by the time you get to the end of the game, chances are you've learned at least a little something, and whatever mission you play to finish the game might have a straight-forward route or a harder but more rewarding parkour-route that requires the use of advanced techs.
Been watching you for a while now and I love your content. This franchise has been a big part of my gaming lifetime, and you (along with other ACtubers) have been a pivitol part in me transitioning from someone who enjoys these games to a fan of them. I've always loved this idea of an opt-in feature to advanced movement, it seems like a no-brainer to accommodate all parts of the player base. I struggle to find myself excited at the prospect of future instalments of AC and I fear it's too late to reverse the damage, however seeing people talking about fixes and ideas brings me joy to see the passion for the series still alive.
Thank you Pint. Want me to be honest? I'm right there with you. I'm not excited for Assassin's Creed's future at all. There aren't really any gameplay videos of it on my channel for months now. I like talking about it more than I like playing it so that's what I'm doing. The older games still slap though.
I'm sending so much respect to you for subtitles. It's so important for non-English speaking people. Greetings from Russia!
Thank you! English is also my second language and I remember learning by reading subtitles on every TV show I watched 😅
man i love your videos they made me love the older games and play them again and enjoy them so much more. And your voice is very soothing! Great vid
Haha, thank you so much! That makes me happy. :D
I used to not like the old games because I only thought of the vertical. It wasn’t parkour it was climbing to me. Watching you play is very interesting watching you jump and swing and it has opens my eyes to a lot of things I never knew
Movement is definitely about both vertical and horizontal, and they make each other stronger. Moving horizontally efficiently lets you climb tall structures much faster, and being high up lets you move horizontally faster because you're ignoring / walking on top of walls that would block you at street level. And of course there's all the useful ways to move forward and side-to-side no matter where you are, on the ground, on the roofs, or in between (the sides of buildings).
Have you seen Jcers' recent parkour evolution video? It's the best one I've seen.
czcams.com/video/SAnzUkQsWAc/video.html
@@LeoKRogue the first game was the most frustrating to me trying to run away from guards and having Altair climb so slow and I’d always get knocked off. I saw your 2019 steam and I was blown away from watching you side and back eject not to mention vaulting
Yup! :D
You're right that the more casual players being the majority. That's a constant I've noticed in almost any game, regardless of their genres. For example, I play Apex Legends, a competitive multiplayer BR game. And despite starting around the same time as my friend and playing a similar amount of hours, I've improved leaps and bounds over her, because I actively engaged in the community to learn the game, while for her, Apex is simply a game to turn her brain off and shoot stuffs. She never even learned what a lot of in-game items do. And I can't exactly fault her for that, being that her kind of players always make up the majority of a game's audience. In a competitive game, give or take, only about 20% or so of a game's overall playerbase will have ever touched rank mode. Even in a casual game series like Assassin's Creed, I feel that it still applies.
Fantastic commentary Leo! You can hear the effort you put into weaving your thoughts into offering a seemingly legitimate solution. I almost completely agree with you. For me (which you began to touch on in the end), the thing that draws me into a game is fluidity. I want the games I play to feel fluid and freeing. In my opinion, the feeling you get when a character does exactly what you intend is the greatest, and is what I and many of my friends chase. It's kinda why I enjoy speedrunning in certain games. Getting a good run is so pleasing because it requires a mastery of character control and an intuitive understanding of the game world. I love the feeling of a seemingly limitless ceiling and being rewarded for trying to reach it.
Thanks! I feel the same, it was an implication through the rest of the video, but I had to say it out loud at the end just to make sure it was clearer. Ultimately, new players don't like classic parkour because they don't think it's fluid. Classic players don't like new parkour because we don't think _that's_ fluid. I tried to provide a basic concept for something that could accommodate both.
It does suck that all the time we put into improving at the series for a while was seemingly disregarded by Ubisoft in recent entries, basically discarding 'legacy-skill' as I called it. Really wish they wouldn't have done that, but it is what it is xD
@@LeoKRogue I totally agree. Also I appreciate how active are with responding to comments! Means more than you might think!
super well thought out. I miss chatting, Leo. I hope you are doing great!
Thank you. I might drop in at some point, not sure when. I'm doing okayish. ^_^
@@LeoKRogue oh i also stopped using discord a while ago. Was good times tho, chatting about stealth and ac games all day. Even tho I dont really make time for it anymore, I do still love the genre.
Leo described the different types of gamers when it comes to learning games with great accuracy. I wish devs would listen more the voices of players like this. It's going to be a win win for either sides.
One can only hope. x__x
Just finished my shift and you gave me just the video to watch! Thanks Leo K 🙏
Hope you had a decent day at work and that you slept well Ivan!
@@LeoKRogue ❤️
This is actually possible, I remember when Skate 3 came out, it had 3 different control modes. Easy, normal and pro (not the exact naming, but you get the point). While it's a vastly different game, I think that it would've been a great implementation in earlier games before the RPG AC ones.
Good call! I've never played Skate 3 so this is a great example to have in my pocket.
love your ideas and vids keep it up
I appreciate that. :)
I love listening to you break down this topic because you’re spot on! Hoping for a miracle with Mirage. Your point about a difficulty toggle gave me a great idea about how it could best be implemented. Choosing your difficulty could actually be built into the modern day storyline with the Animus and would allow the campaign to actually have 4 different unique endings. An example comes to mind where the player has to leave the Animus in order to save the life of an ally (hanging off a ledge or something) but the selected difficulty level would affect the player’s ability to act and therefore change the outcome of that scene. Only the highest difficulty would see the “real” ending. Food for thought.
That's a really sick idea and one I would personally love.
I doubt Ubisoft would tie it to endings, because that's a little exclusionary and I know from their development practices that they don't like doing that kind of thing. It leads to the art being unable to explore certain ideas, which sucks, but I get it.
I do feel that having certain moments only be possible if you think to do them throughout the story and have the right movement scheme is really, really cool though.
Another great video!
Thank you Tandy. :)
Great points. I would also like to add that it’s also to do with world design. AC wants to become a fantasy series featuring these imposing structures like pyramids, mountains and first-civ skyscrapers. They also want to create copy-and-pasted assets spread across a vast, empty open world. To enable a volatile mode would force them into redesigning a lot of these buildings, which means significantly more effort (if they wish to maintain the current trajectory of building bigger and bigger worlds), which means given it is Ubisoft we’re talking about, it’s extremely unlikely. :/
World design absolutely plays a large hand in it. I use this example time and again because it's the easiest to convey, but imagine AC2's movement system in Valhalla's world, or Valhalla's movement in AC2's. It wouldn't work at all, right? The mechanics the player has access to and the world they inhabit must resonate with each other.
Great video. I really do hope we get more parkour options in the future, especially with the amount of options in the gameplay settings of Valhalla getting parkour options would be nice
Thanks for watching and commenting. ^_^
I'd really like to see that yeah, as a stop-gap measure until movement is revamped to not be so automation-heavy in the first place, at which point these kind of toggles shouldn't be as necessary anymore.
@@LeoKRogue maybe something like this would also get the general audience to experiment with parkour have it become a core part of ac’s identity again
Lately I watched a Vid about the psychological thoughts and impacts of Souls Games, specially (ofc) Elden Ring atm. It was talked about, why Miyazaki don't want to have different difficulty. Because every human being should be given the same chance to overcome obstacles. It's like in life, we have a challenge, we are not prepared, we learn, we (maybe) come back and master it.
Why do I write this? Because I was always scared of Souls Games and will still hesitate everytime one's hitting the market. But I now understand why I would love Ubi to have the guts to stay true to "AC isn't for everyone". At least not for those, who aren't willing to learn.
I'm still think fondly of the time someone tought me AC ;) and from time to time I really miss the experiences of flow. But, well, life goes on.
Was very nice to hear your passion between some lines again. :)
You should play Elden Ring! It's the easiest one, and you can play a Mage more easily than in any of the previous ones. I highly recommend it, even for complete beginners. I appreciate your comment too, but alas, we know Ubisoft are like the anti-FROMSOFTWARE lol. They'll probably never do anything that might potentially exclude even the smallest amount of people.
@@LeoKRogue I DID play Elden Ring... Facing Endbosses atm ;) ... And yes, as a Mage... ^^
No, Ubi will never do such a thing like FROM... As you said, playerbase is too big now and pays too much... We will see what they're going to cook up :)
I know that it isn’t easy to do but I would absolutely love to see you do a video where you rank the assassins creed games. I think it would be really interesting. Love your vids man keep it up!
I've ranked them in terms of stealth, and that's good enough for me. ^__^
czcams.com/video/cV7XybywqSc/video.html
Good video. I like this good point. I have the same reasoning just like you but But at the end of the tittle of this article in the beginning at this video should be (AC 1-AC rogue). Continue what you did like that. This is what I like it
I Forget to tell do not put unity before rogue because the animations of acrobatic things is still good but it’s sadly not so fast , fluid and energetic just like the ancients AC( I mean AC 1 to rogue but not unity) . Sorry for the fans who like unity but with an objective and a subjective opinion the parkour is not very good but there is some good ideas about the animations when Arno do some good stuff when he climb some homes and monuments. This is just some facts and have some fun if some people like this game
You understand me very well, I feel many similar things. AC1-Rogue are all very good, I just think AC1-Rev are truly legendary in my heart. ^_^
I miss Leo talks please make more, always loved your content
Thank you. ^_^
@@LeoKRogue ofc
Everything about this. Especially since starting to watch your videos, I’ve wondered why an option couldn’t be placed in the game to handle input differences for player types. I hope they consider this. I enjoy the new games but the movements of AC1-Revelations is what I always go back to.
Thank you for watching, Rebecca. ^_^
I do think every movement system has its points of distinction and as you say there's _something_ to enjoy about all of them, but yeah, putting more choice in the player's hand, at least until they completely shift away from automation based movement would be a decent step to make everyone have a better time.
What's funny to me about the old AC games is it seemed like 95% of the damage I took in the game was fall damage after failing to pull off a fancy parkour stunt. In other words, it was my own fault because back then the control was mostly in my hands ("mostly" because, even back then, Altaïr and Ezio would occasionally do something weird/unpredictable.) Now parkour feels like it's on training wheels, like Ubisoft decided it should just be a way to get around rather than something to get good at with guards chasing you across rooftops.
Definitely my own experience as well. It felt really fun to get better at it and feel more in control as I kept improving. It also made it so in the moments the system DID actually screw up and misinterpreted the player's intent, we had ways to "force" certain jumps or movements and basically manually correct or compensate. Now if you're stuck on a wall, or fall off of something, there's no action you can do or decision you can make out of that, which tends to feel bad.
@@LeoKRogue
Exactly. And I'm starting to see more comments of people who had the experience too of playing through the games originally just doing the basic parkour stuff of more or less following the obvious paths up and down and across buildings only later discovering years later, from youtube videos or whatever, all the cool ejects and cancel jumps you can chain together to not only get around faster but look better doing it (not to mention confuse the heck out of the guards if they're chasing you).
I'm playing through the Ezio games again right now and damn it's so much fun getting around with a better understanding of the parkour in this older games. It's a challenge in and of itself, a like a full third of the game I never played.
I think the problem is the old games never really requires the players to do any of the more advanced parkour, they pretty much just leave you to figure it out and a lot of people never realized it was there.
This oversit sadly, I think lead to them dumbing down parkour over time to the point now it's just pretty much a basic climbing mechanic with some animations thrown in.
AC has always had awful tutorials.
Thanks for giving voice to an important part of the community!
I think another thing that could benefit the saga would be to add end-of-mission screens like the MGSV ones, in order to create competition between players and push them to experiment with new styles of play. Even a parkour map editor in a special section of the animus (such as the challenges in AC: Brotherhood) would give space to the creativity of the players. The post-launch support for AC: Valhalla was a weak attempt to create a live-service also because Ubisoft did not have the courage to put the power in the hands of the community.
Conceptually, I really like the Mastery Challenges in Valhalla for challenging post launch content, but the game's mechanics are such a mess, sometimes even now, that I've repeatedly seen the best Assassin's Creed players I know fail repeatedly due to bugs or strange interactions when the mechanics are pushed to their limit, as they are in those challenges. At the end of it all they weren't even satisfied because it was such a miserable experience, just happy it was over. I want rankings and leaderboards but if the core gameplay isn't smooth and reliable enough to make that feel good to play, it just can't happen and players won't want to put in the time.
Been rewatching some of your older marathon videos from 2019. Its really bittersweet with hindsight knowing what will happen. Do you think you'll ever do something like that again? Also I love your ending note that our efforts are best saved for fighting Templars and not each other.
Thank you Soter. I'm not sure if or when I'll do something like that again, I'm currently very excited and focused on my present endeavors, which I hope people will enjoy. ^_^
This captures why I preferred the old parkour perfectly, after I got good at the parkour (not mastered because god knows how long it takes to master it) it felt so good to weave through the city.
I keep coming back to your videos, this time I guess out of some frustration leading up to Mirage's release. I've had alot of debates with others who dont seem to understand why we miss the 1-Rev parkour. They often argue that the new engine cant handle it or they dont have time etc. I find this really silly since its not a new engine, they've had a decade to evolve their systems, the things we want back are actually fairly trivial and easy to implement if they actually wanted to.
I'm really glad my thoughts can be a bit of comfort or resonance sometimes. I've also been fifty-fifty on movement in Mirage.
On the one hand I recognize that Bordeaux's Mirage is a project with very short turn-around, team-size and dev time compared to major AC titles -- and they're not even selling it for full price. With the context under which it was made, I can grasp there's not a lot _this specific_ team could have done beyond what they have, that's totally fair. I'm still let down, but I get it. On the other hand it definitely sucks that this is meant to be evocative of Assassin's Creed's classic essence, and a major part of that will still be largely absent; fun movement with a bit of player-accountability.
What I'm much more upset about, and what the bigger thing for me is that all of Assassin's Creed as a whole constantly failing to iterate on movement just sucks. That _is_ a mistake, that _is absolutely_ a failure or at least a recurring bad decision.
A major, full-price game like Red, feels like it has no excuse.
A game like Hexe, even moreso, since Hexe is no longer working off the Origins framework but is something brand new. They can do it, they just have to care.
@@LeoKRogue thanks for continuing to reply a year in, appreciate you alot.
Kinda wish we could just have some cool true AC games like for Mirage and Red (even use the varying level of input you mentioned) then have spin offs like odyssey and valhalla where they can do whatever the hell the want with loose connections, cameos etc.
Feels really weird when Mirage is like the spin off of Valhalla, but is more AC themed than it, but still doesn't get some of the most fan wanted systems properly returned. I don't know how to properly articulate the frustration except that it's feeling a little backwards atm.
I appreciate Bordeaux's efforts though, and will treat Mirage as an Origins sequel with better environment. Hopefully we can find at least find a few cool ways to use some skill in movement. The city does look pretty great
That's fun to see, because "Origins sequel with better environment" is exactly how I see it myself. ^_^
Great video. More options benefit the player. Ubisoft already has tons of accessibility options in Valhalla and Mirage. Even Odyssey had the exploration or guided mode. If we look at other games, Insomniac Spider-Man games (including Spider-Man 2) have tons of options as well for puzzles, QTEs, combat difficulty and even web swinging. Older games like Soldier of Fortune even had difficulty settings for combat such as noise affecting enemy perception, the player and NPCs dying in 1-2 shots as well etc.
Yeah, what's really fun is, this video was made one year ago when we didn't even _have_ that many different games doing this stuff. By now, we're seeing so, so many other games releasing with these types of features, so the longer time goes on, the better this video ages.
I admit that the parkour is soo underrated on the Assassin’s Creed games and i'm not even that good at it but you’re absolutely right in everything man.
Thank you. It's a part of these games I've always found really fun and unique to them, there's nothing else quite like it in the rest of the industry, unless you want to go first-person but then that's not the same. I really want to have that greater depth and fluidity we used to have.
@@LeoKRogue You’re welcome and same honestly, a good franchise like this always needs a good parkour system.
I totally agree that a toggle-able parkour setting would benefit the games greatly. You shared some really great thoughts, and I think that world design wouldn't have to be an issue any more than it was in the classic ACs, where there were parkour skills you literally only acquired halfway through the game (catch ledge, climb leap, etc). It would be cool for the upcoming games to focus on parkour a lot more as part of the assassin fantasy, and even have character arcs where the main character maybe starts out with a basic skillset and more advanced moves get introduced as you progress through the story. Currently there is ZERO progression in terms of movement in the newer AC games. All focused on combat or stealth (and even then the focus is much more on combat).
I _do_ find it very mind-boggling that progression is such a core part of the modern Assassin's Creed experience, and it's a _satisfying_ part that I genuinely enjoy for the most part, but movement and navigation are simply _not a part_ of that progression system, neither in Origins, nor Odyssey, nor Valhalla. It's just _weird,_ like you'd think there would be _something_ related to parkour in some skill tree or gear somewhere, but nope. What you start the game with is exactly how you'll be moving by the end.
@@LeoKRogue Yeah so sad:(
I can imagine scenarios with this parkour filter where a casual player sees a video of another player doing super cool stuff to zip around the map causing the casual player to become intrigued and want to learn how to do that. This filter system is also how you convert casual players into a hardcore fanbase, its why even a lot of players who play racing games casually will start experimenting with harder difficulties and simulation settings for higher prizes and faster speeds (or cooler, more realistic drifts if you're me). This toggle would be a golden ticket, a surefire way to turn someone who would've only bought the game and played the main story into a fan pouring hours into learning how to do the cool stuff they saw someone else doing
That was exactly my goal when conceptualizing it, yeah! I thought about, how can I make it so beginners aren't frustrated but they can still grow if they see something that's inspiring.
God I haven't even watched this yet and ik this vid gonna be fire
Was it? :)
@@LeoKRogue It certainly was! The part about players not wanting to invest heavily into one game really resonated, because I do this all the time too. And this may heavily contribute against my argument here but bear with me xD.
When you said you can't force players to learn a more complex system, I totally get it, since if the devs do so they risk a lot of people checking out. E.g, DOOM: Eternal took a very firm stance on making itself extremely mechanically complex, and a lot of people got put off. It punished you for refusing to learn and in a way it did force systems on you. However you can still be highly expressive and unique in your playstyle!
And that's what I love about AC in the same way. The parkour like you said was always engaging; on your feet thinking, 'fail states (fall damage, broken flow, desync) and expression of the power fantasy. Like you said it made you think! When a player is thinking they're engaged, when they're not they become bored. I just think the new ac games are making players think about the wrong things.
Pipe Dream mode: I think the ac devs really need to take a firm stance on what the game is. I really don't want these 80 hour games that feel like AI generations anymore. We need a skilled, engaging ASSASSIN game that demands your investment. A system that makes it clear that you are a lethal ghost,but with a lot of room for experimentation and expression, but never losing sight of what it is.
So yea vid was mad, as always beautifully spoken and edited.
@@gUwU47 I agree with you on them needing to take a firm stance. I feel like Ubisoft wants to have their cake and eat it too, which just ends up feeling horrible for the players caught in the middle. They've never actually decided _WHAT_ Assassin's Creed _IS,_ which leads players to getting attached to the era of Assassin's Creed they first played or first fell in love with. See tribalism between Unity fanboys, AC1-Rev chads and the RPG kids. Even I'm doing it in this comment - but I've always been honest. ;]
@@LeoKRogue I'm with you 150% on that. AC1-Rev (+AC3 :D) GIGACHADS 😎😎😎
@@gUwU47 The Kenways were pretty good, yeah. Some smart decisions there, and deeper than people typically realize, even me a while ago.
Optional parkour freedom is a brilliant idea but I doubt Ubisoft’s vision is broad enough to think of this option, in the last 7 or so years they go really hard with the idea of going safe and not experimenting at all when it comes to AC parkour because that simply gets them sales from people who don’t want to engage like some of us do, as you said.
But anyway, an amazing video which sheds light on the obvious issue,
Cheers
You bring up a very good point, which for the sake of this discussion I just didn't put in my video, but you're right. None of this matters unless they WANT it. I've said this before but Ubisoft are not as inept as we sometimes like to meme about. They CAN make a game that features the kind of depth we crave. They just don't want to.
@N7Andy “It needs to be brought to their attention”/their vision not being broad enough = same thing. You just used different words. The overall point is the same, there’s no way they’ll ever think of a parkour filter without videos like this, with filters they introduced in Valhalla, they only modified the most basic aspect - difficulty. How difficult stealth, combat etc are. Parkour filtering isn’t about making parkour more or less difficult, it’s about two different playstyles whose mechanics need to be consistent in the same world they created. In my opinion they’re too lazy to do that.
Ubisoft needs to watch, and consider, this video. Us veteran players were screwed out of how we love playing the games. It hurts. I agree with you, Leo K - if they did what you propose then those new players won't have to lose how they like playing, but those of us who have been here since the launch of the franchise in 2007 could also enjoy how we express ourselves via parkour in the ways we have learned to master what was available to us.
Well said, Leo. You've changed my perspective on a similar mindset of wanting the MMO feel to be removed. If AC doesn't do anything to remove the training wheels on the parkour, then this franchise is squandering a very passionate and dedicated fanbase.
Thank you for listening. ^_^
Unity parkour with more freedom will be the best parkour ever seen in video gaming history please use some of my videos I'm so underrated XD
Unity but with full cancels on every move would've basically been the first mod I'd push to see made, if modding support was possible in the series. I'd slap that on and _never_ look back.
the idea of just turning off advanced movement for players that want easy and boring gameplay was the only good idea i could think off too. hopefully ubisoft sees this video
Yup yup. Everything in this video is basically a band-aid to a permanent issue that will last as long as excessive automation continues, but at least this way people can be more comfortable while Ubisoft works on a more comprehensive solution.
The only _real_ way to "fix" parkour is to create an entirely new system that goes back to the drawing board of AC1's core concepts and re-forges them while throwing out lots of the automation and not adding _more_ automation over the years like what's happened with the series today.
Another reason why many have the opinion of "I have jumped to my death less in newer games" is because there is far less parkour and tall buildings in the first place in the newer games.
That's a very smart point that isn't considered too often, you're right. What doesn't go up won't come down, after all.
The main problem with the parkour in the older games is that you weren’t taught it. As someone who came from the new generation of AC’s and recently picked up the Ezio trilogy (loving it btw) I didn’t know how to do most stuff until I saw it on CZcams. The game never teaches you to back eject and definitely not how to side eject. I think it’s a shame many people can’t see the beauty in the old system because they had no mentor.
Yes, yes, yes! Exactly. If it weren't for helpful people way back in the day, even I wouldn't have known how to do most of the useful techniques that helped me feel in control, and then helped me teach that control to others in the future. AC's tutorials have always been pretty awful.
I have been playing AC since i was 6 years old, and i have to say that the new ones are not *that* bad. Obviously as an OG and italian follower i Say that the Ezio Trilogy and the classic Assassin's Creed games in general are better, but there are many ways to let new and old players co-exist. I'm really Happy that you used your position as an influencer to educate people ti what AC really was and reasonable ways to bring it back. Ubisoft Is capable of doing it, they Just have to try. Btw been following you for a Long time and you are the best :)
Thanks Jacopo! I appreciate that a lot. :D
And yeah, you're right, there are parts of new Assassin's Creed that I do really enjoy. If I didn't like _anything_ about them, then I simply wouldn't care. It's because I see the potential and the good qualities that motivates me to think how it could be even better.
@@LeoKRogue i totally agree. Hope to meet you One day, irl or online. You are the G.O.A.T.
Coming from a person new to Assassins Creed, I loved this video. It explained well to me why the older games are so beloved.
As someone who only played Origins and Odyssey as of yet, I cannot draw any comparisons here as I am still fairly new to the franchise. I have been mostly playing games like Devil may cry, Bayonetta, God of War. Games that throw you into fights and have you take care of them with big and stylish combos. So Assassins Creed was very out of the ordinary for me.
But after Origins and Odyssey got me into the franchise with their rpg elements, and having replayed Ghost of Tsushima a number of times, I started to enjoy playing quietly and swiftly. At some point I had a lot of videos from Unity show up in my recommendations and I have seen how swift, fluid and graceful parkour looked. I tried AC2, but unfortunately I just couldn't really get drawn into it. Even though I like stealth, I also like open combat.
I want to experience though what the old parkour system felt like. Is there one of the older games that you would recommend to someone who started with the new trilogy?
I would try very hard to stick with AC2, or if that really doesn't work, do Brotherhood. Brotherhood has really fast-paced, fluid combat (though, very easy and not challenging, it's only focused on flow and looking cool) and is all set in a huge city so parkour involves a lot of varying environmental opportunities.
well you can think of it this way. Imagine if Capcom removes the ability for you to jump cancel and string different combos and moves in DMC. that's what i feel with the newer AC's parkour system. basically turning the game into a dumbed down version of its former self, like DMC2 did to the DMC franchise lmao
@@m3rl1on That is actually a comparison that is easy to understand for me XD I cannot imagine for the life of me if I couldn't do all my usual combo strings.
Then I am praying that Mirage is going to fix it.
@@m3rl1on exactly how I feel with modern GOW games
Leo K out there calling out for a Popular Front of parkour. Nice
I have to.
I still think AC can work well as an RPG. It just needs to be well balanced and fair to both new fans and old. It’d be incredible if they did something akin to Vampyr or even Horizon, where progression is consistent and enjoyable. If only…
Assassin's Creed could've _always_ worked as an RPG, if it had been done in a manner befitting and conscientious of it. They had three opportunities and somehow managed to bolt the most arduous chaff that the role-playing genre itself often carves away in _all three of them. How._
The problem isn't that it's in RPG the problem is how they choose to implement the RPG aspects of the game.
@@LeoKRogue lol ikr?
It's getting to be that time of year.. when I replay all of the original ac games..
I should do that too.
that's a genius idea about letting people chose their level of parkour control. because I want 100 percent of the parkour to be controlled by me.
Me too, I miss having access to all my actions and not having to pray to the Automation-Gods that my character 'wants' to eject or drop when I tell them to.
Finally, Someone who talks like a mature person. As a person who started out with the original AC and loved the last trilogy, I couldn't agree more. The biggest bummer in the past three games were parkour and stealth's importance for me. I wanted Valhalla's combat mixed with Unity's parkour and stealth. But the problem for parkour mostly comes from city // obstacle's design. Cities are often hosting wide streets with short buildings and the character can climb anything similar to spider man... I'm not talking about realism, but it really breaks both the immersion & reasons for thinking your escape route (planning ahead). I don't mind the RPG mechanics (heck, I do like them) but I just wish Ubi could fix the parkour/stealth too. It requires smooth animations like unity as well.
Thanks! My goal with this video was to discuss a potential improvement to current parkour in the most plausible way possible that wouldn't burn any particular group of players, until Ubi creates a less automated system that doesn't need these considerations anymore.
It is true that mechanics and environment both define each other's existence, and something more needed to be done to up our interactivity with flatter ground and wider streets. Alas.
Remember Forum of the Ox in Revelations? It was one of those tomb hunts sequences and it was all intense badass parkour and great adrenaline music. My personal favorite parkour sequence in all of the series.
You gotta play Dying Light 2 if you love Mirror's Edge. :D One of my faves.
@@LeoKRogue I watched videos for that one. Nice action but I'm scared. XD
@@ilovebiscuits7771 It's not actually that scary most of the time, it's just a cool story with a light zombie skin. I think you'd really enjoy it. ^_^
@@LeoKRogue Idk..I watched some and getting chased by zombies made me feel anxious for the player. haha
btw, did you play Code Vein?
@@ilovebiscuits7771 I did! I really enjoy BANDAI NAMCO's RPGs, and Code Vein is what made me excited for Scarlet Nexus. Not the same kind of game by any means, but amazing nonetheless.
Looking back on this after seeing the AC: Mirage gameplay reveal is so bittersweet tbh.
:[
@Leo K [Rogue] I hope AC Mirage is going back to form in this way. The reason the original AC games are so liberating is because when you make a risky back eject… etc it’s so satisfying when you do have skill and the know how to catch ledge in a super clutch way. All in all I hope AC Mirage is what they are claiming it to be and we’ll have to wait for gameplay to have any real concrete evidence. Thanks and keep up the good work.
Indeed. I really enjoyed having a lot of ownership over my actions and having more actions I can do.
Ubisoft is Abstergo at this point convince me otherwise they are our modern day templars 💀
Modern Templars would be way cooler and scarier than that, is the only thing I've got xD
I think three settings would be a good idea.
'Synched' Mode, where you are given complete control of everything, including animation cancels. I'd even tack on that the Player Assassin will just run off rooftops with this enabled instead of stopping. This is self-explanatory, honestly. For the old school fans or people who put in the time to learn.
'Assisted' Mode, where "volatile" actions (back and side ejects, manual jumping, etc) are disabled. Easy to pick up and play, not as punishing. For people who mostly want to engage with basic stealth, combat or even just the story.
'Balanced' Mode, where you still can do "volatile" actions, but most of them (basically all but manual jumping) are restricted to the end of canned animations. You can side eject only after youre finished grasping the windowsill you hopped up to, for instance. It would act as a stepping stone between 'Assisted' and 'Synched' mode, for those that want to get better and learn the fuctions of "volatile" actions, but lack the button discipline to not eject in random directions under pressure.
My reasoning for this is because I think having two drastically different settings is not entirely helpful. Good players will obviously gravitate towards Synched Mode, and Casual players will likewise gravitate towards Assisted Mode. But what about Casual Players that want to get better? If they play Casual Mode, they don't even have the option of learning how to eject or the landing position of a jump. If they play in Synched Mode, they'll likely be overwhelmed or turned off because they were never given the opportunity to learn the mechanics or button discipline necessary to succeed.
Having an 'Medium' mode to compliment the 'Easy' and 'Hard' modes gives those players freedom to choose when tohey want to start learning.
Really like this idea.
Being cool when you're in complete control>>>>Being cool when the game does it for you
You get me.
With the rise of indie and AA budget games, I wish some developer would take advantage of this gaping void in the market, the "old Assassin's Creed" style of game. It would never be on the same level of quality in terms of production value, graphics, or writing as Ubisoft's AC, but seeing the resurrection of the old formula would already be a good, and interesting, service to the gaming community. Plus all the parkour montages of older AC games and Unity floating around, I think a project like that can attract a sizable audience.
Even the most basic kind of Assassin's Creed parkour is pretty difficult to make feel smooth on a technological level, but maybe in time, and with new engines like Unreal 5, we may see some interesting results. It took Ubisoft years of prototyping and dev to figure out how to even do AC1's climbing if I remember correctly, and they're not poor by any means, even back then.
For indies to not get it done sort of makes sense in that light, if you need so much know how and resources just to make a basic version of it seem playable at all but yeah, these kind of questions of feasibility really make me intrigued by Unreal 5 and what it can offer.
you put this so well i wanna cry
and shame on you for making me believe, for a moment, that ubisoft might even listen :p
I hope I could entertain you for a short time. ^_^ That's good enough for me!
I hope there can be a happy medium..I quite enjoy unity's parkour and just had been recently playing AC2..and it seems a little too sensitive for me..unless I am following the obvious paths , I dont feel confident at all , even more if I need to parkour down for some reason. I do agree there needs to be chances for people to actually make mistakes and hopefully not everything is climable so that movement is not completely braindead and a little puzzle in itself
A happy medium is what we're trying to achieve, yeah. Letting players choose their own level of complexity or assistance is ideal.
Basic Classic Movement Guide
czcams.com/video/MXrg_3_3FBA/video.html
Ezio Trilogy Parkour Down Guide
czcams.com/video/FMYhWVa_464/video.html
Currently playing Ac1 for the first time since i was young and did a vault first try 😎
Lovely.
If this system was utilized, I think most players would choose an advanced mode over a simple mode. I could be wrong, but I think the solution would be to give the advanced mode a slightly intimidating name. "Expert mode" or something
Maybe just enabling it by default would work too
Enabling it by default would probably be Recommended yeah, a lot of games start out with options that are labeled in that kind of way, or a tooltip that says "This is only recommended for players who are confident with X or Y."
Preety good video my man. I understand the RPG elements but we wouldn't complain if the core elements of Assassins creed were still present otherwise it wouldn't be AC it would just be another RPG. The. Witcher has Witcher senses, Witcher signs all things which make the Witcher what it is. Core elements Parkour, Social Stealth, Hood, Hidden Blade.
Thanks! I do feel similarly. I never had an issue with Assassin's Creed being an RPG, conceptually. It's HOW they did it and all the things they chose NOT to do that are awful.
Something I would also emphasize is the power of defaults, which Ubisoft knows as well as any tech company. Having the RPG movement system be the default with advanced moves as an option unlockable in settings would mean that casual players would see no difference, but the minority that wants the old movement system back would derive immense benefit. These games have budgets in the hundreds of millions with non linear storylines and ungodly amounts of side quests. I find it hard to believe they couldn't provide the option of catch ledge, high profile vs low profile rooftop drops, and maybe even some expanded features. It could not only appease the old fans but also re-establish the series as the premier parkour video game on the market - maybe even attracting new consumers looking for a good parkour game.
Maybe they'll include this in the AC1 remaster they're definitely announcing this September 🥴
Yes indeed, and to some extent they already do this, just with non-movement related things like Combat/Stealth/Navigation Difficulty, among a bunch of others.
The default settings are pretty simple, but any player can tinker with and make more granular changes in whatever direction they want. For everything except movement, of course.
Hehehe, as for September... Man. I don't know xD
We'll see what happens but I find it hard to hope :P
I think now would be the perfect time for Ubisoft to return to the older systems and refine them. The casual players skill level has increased significantly over the past 5 years alone, and people are more willing than ever to learn the deeper mechanics of their favorite games and improve. I think that back in 2016 when this shift to simplified parkour began, it was during a time where the casual player base wasn't willing to learn, or saw no need to, but they went the simplification route too late as about a year or two later speedrunning and mastering the technical mechanics in video games started to become more mainstream and popularized through large streamers
I've recently been pondering similar ideas. In my heart I really hope, and want that to be true, but on the other side of the coin I also have the awareness that the majority of players who purchase Assassin's Creed games don't even go online, look up CZcams videos, watch gaming streams, or anything like that. It may be hard to believe but the average player of videogames nowadays is someone who doesn't interact or engage with them on a "community" level, and the people who do, like you and me are actually a rare sub-set of that much-bigger group. By definition, players who view or create content around a game or engage with its community are considered "hardcore" by publishers. That's a concept that haunts me...
I was never that good at Ac parkour but when i learned how to grab ledges and walls while in the air, that was a game changer
It's such a noticeable difference, right? And it makes sense: when you're falling through the air, the only control you have over your character is their grab direction. You want to always be in control of your character, so you should never refuse to use that ability if you need it.
If they bring back unity style parkour in the next game maybe they can work back to people having more control and eventually have an assist option because that is a good idea
I think so too, whatever movement they design doesn't even have to look anything like we've seen before either, actually. But as long as they're using an automated system, they can either give players depth or comfort, and they have to pick one or the other unless they let the players pick for themselves.
A parkore mode switch would be a great idea, there could be an ac1-revalations mode, an ac3-ac4 mode. And a unity-syndicate mode, and newer rpg ac parkore mode
That seems very advanced compared to my idea, but it could maybe be achieved through how strict the filter intensity is.
As a kid I played Need for speed I think, anyway they had a toggle where you can either drive in arcade or realistic mode and I thought that was pretty neat.
Yup, exactly the kind of idea I'm talking about! :D
I think the same effect can be achieved with intelligent control bindings. Wallruns, side hops and safety snaps, the three fundamental safe actions, all fit cleanly onto one button without any overlap. To do any potentially dangerous action, you'd have to press another button like jump or crouch, building on my design doc from Reddit if you recall. As long as you don't press any other button, you cannot possibly be put in a position in which you could take fall damage or make a motion exceeding a certain distance. This gives level designers the freedom to occasionally place an obstacle that's difficult to overcome without using an advanced action, since they've already trained themselves to methodically place control hints every time they do this in the past with ejects since they *know* they're poorly tutorialized. It also prevents disabling certain features rendering an entire button on your controller completely useless
What I don't have a solution for is the idea erroneously engrained by classic AC that you must hold jump to do any parkour actions at all. These four games have somehow carried over this misconception across *seven* other games, and that hurts my brain. As you mentioned, it's difficult for us to fathom the mindset of the player who doesn't want to learn, but all I need to make this system work is for them to unlearn this singular idea, which seems like a reasonable compromise. Any insights on this?
Handling and automation are extremely important! In a perfect world, the basic, safe system would not handle like the RPGs because they handle horribly. Jcers' theory is that Syndicate's hyper-safe automation was carried through into the RPGs, which I can see if we also add that many moves that were barely functional in Syndicate like side hops from below a perpendicular surface were stripped out entirely. Future automation must more consistent about wallrun heights, targeting distances, and momentum transfer, or any advanced moves added to it will inherently feel just as horrible
Honestly, the less involuntary automation there is, the better for the player in the end, which is part of what Parkour Filters address on a macro level. Being able to immediately define what you want and don't want control over is one of the only truly reliable ways to make any system that _tries to read the player's mind_ even remotely feasible if you want genuine complexity.
People still throw themselves off edges in Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla which I barely brought up but I think it's so important to think about because it just proves that as long as Assassin's Creed features a system that has a basis in "interpreting" player intention instead of just... Letting us do actions, these things will happen no matter how much you simplify it. They'll make us unable to _walk_ one of these days and players will _still_ find a way to jump off a cliff because the automation just read their mind in a way they didn't expect and didn't realize they should've released buttons for.
To un-teach Jump Button spam, that honestly should've been, and should still be, the game's responsibility because the only way _we_ can do it on our side is to literally speak to every single player we ever teach and manually reiterate that statement at their face every time. "You don't have to hold/press jump for this, this is just movement. You don't have to press jump for this, doing that will jump you away from your surface, like it does on the ground." Stuff like that. It's inelegant but god damn man, they could've put in a little tutorial message _somewhere._ 😭
@@LeoKRogue And I quote from the first five minutes of AC3, "Hold ONLY RT to freerun safely"
Ah, AC3. Much like AC1 (and AC1 is still in that purgatory), a game that straight-up wasn't available on PS4/XB1 generation consoles for way too long. (XB could at least BackCompat it.) I _have_ to imagine that hurt some players' mechanical understanding of, say, Black Flag and Rogue. They're not the same games or anything but without that foundation from AC3, ohh mannnn
@@icarusgaming6269 You don't need to hold the legs to do parkour. There is no dedicated jump button when you are in low profile you simply cannot jump at all. There is a legs button which only in high profile allows you to jump manually when pressed and when held combined with movement it does sprint/freerun/climb (more specifically it does wallrun but that's the main way you start a climb wallruns smoothly chain into climbing if you have handhold but you have other ways to start climbing as well) depending on context but only if you are in motion, when stationary it changes Ezio's pose to a low crouch preparing to spring into jumping or freerunning.
When only high profile is held and not legs you briskly run and have more fine motor control able to easily turn to face a wall to initiate a wallrun or be better positioned to make jumps or any parkour moves you want. There is parkour moves that you can do only holding HP and not the legs button. I am constantly releasing the legs button in parkour and often don't hold it at all during sequences instead opting for precise taps because it's always guaranteed perfect smoothness and control if I am precise enough with my presses and my movement, if you hold freerun any slight movement adjustment is telling the game "go here" which is why you need to be careful when you use the legs button instead of sloppy and know that you don't need to be holding it all the time during parkour or hold it to even do parkour at all. You have the option to hold it constantly if you want to have a more automated experience but it's not optimal and the game never tells you it is every time the game teaches stuff about movement it is teaching a specific concept isolated on it's own in an environment that allows you to practice it and see how it works it doesn't want you to think there is one way to move at all.
The wallrun heights in classic AC are consistent you have an apex wall run height that you will always reach unless there is a handhold for you to grab onto then you will instead smoothly transition into climbing or hanging on the handholds depending on their positioning and if you can keep climbing or it's not possible. Wallrunning is a way to smoothly initiate climbing but not the only way you can manually jump into climbing as well and also drop into it which is a low profile action so you couldn't jump if you tried. You don't have to hold legs button to climb only to start the climbing after that legs is only used in climbing if you want to eject from the wall whether it be backwards, sideways, diagonally or upwards if you are playing with climb leap.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the three fundamental safe actions being wallruns, side hops (like in Unity and Syndicate?), and safety snaps, I'm just not sure what that is. Wallruns aren't safe at least not in classic AC you can cancel at any time out of one into an eject which is unsafe actions that can make you take fall damage if used carelessly. Why are side hops a fundamental action why not side ejects and the other eject types? Side hops are just limited version of side ejects designed to be safe because ejecting in old AC games was not safe and pissed of players & whatever safety snap is I don't think that's an action but some feature of the navigation system.
@@LeoKRogue I was thinking about the automation the other day. I'd love to play an AC game that doesn't automate player movement. Doesn't direct a player to the closest ledge, just sends you where you aim. Doesn't keep you glued to a beam, just lets you walk across it and maybe fall off. Stuff like that.
I just started playing unity, and was excited to feel the parkour out. the parkour is really fun, but I think that 1-revelations has a better parkour system because you need to think a little bit more, which keeps you more engaged. Unity is definitely more automated than the ezio trilogy. It seems that these two eras of parkour in AC are the most favoured among fans, and for good reason! imo unity has the fluidity, but the ezio games have the strategy.
Yeah, they both do a different thing really well. The 2017-2022 era leans hard on accessibility and ease-of-use as its claim to fame, but I find myself thinking that while they're great for general moving around without thinking about it much, they're harder to control in the moments you need it most, like when you need to precisely and quickly get to a very specific spot under time-pressure. Because of that they're ironically less accessible to me, personally.
@@LeoKRogue that’s true, control is a huge factor as well. Which, if you asked me, unity is lacking a little bit.
Oh. My. God.
Yes. I just agree. I can't say much more.
I really hope Infinity is a stand-out game in the franchise, and branches out from the rest.
I love the idea of having the Animus be able to help you, mid-play session. It's simply a great idea.
On my own notes:
Assassin's Creed now resonates with me on a whole new level, after I finally began to enjoy and engage myself with the gameplay, not to mention the wonderfully crafted stories. Using your guides and my own experiences throughout has helped me enjoy the older games far, far more than ever before.
Which is unfortunate, because I simply do not like the RPG style games. I think they are bland and repetitive. I hope that Ubi can merge the systems, as proposed to make something truly great. I think Infinity will have to be their Swan Song, or Leap of Faith. (depending on how cheeky you're feeling)
I also really want Mirror's Edge style parkour/combat moves, expanding on the traditional Air Assassinate.
Thank you Leo, for the wonderfully thought out and high-quality viewing experience.
Thank you for your wonderful comment, and for expressing your deepened appreciation for the series. There's definitely some truly special things in these games, I'm glad I could give you a small helping hand in feeling how cool they are for yourself.
I think AC3 did something like this. Not to the extent you're describing, but like this. You had your basic free running (RMB) that was safe and didn't easily allow you to yeet yourself off of things, and then you had a more aggressive free running (RMB + Spacebar I believe) which more or less took off the safeties. So in a way they've already done it, they just needed to refine it.
Yup, a good start I think. Notably, AC3 also takes place in natural environments in addition to cities so it's the closest in setting to what the new games are doing. Another good reason to draw inspiration from it.
to me, this same principle is what made me not enjoy at all playing the hitman world of assassination trilogy. remember what i commented a few videos back about my OCD, and how i prefered immersion and fluidity over perfectionism and repetition? well, hitman is all about repetition. its a game where you do the same levels over and over, and the knowledge piles together for the perfect run. learning parkour in AC was different from that. it felt real, and a mistake leading to a deadly fall was very immersive. i wish they kept those options in the new games.
Can you elaborate a little further, I'm not sure exactly what you're commenting on but I want to grasp it better because it sounds really interesting. I do vibe with the 'organic' and immersive way a lot of us were pushed into learning AC's movement systems as a result of just, _playing_ the games in order from AC1 and forward, though. There was a parallel there between Player and Desmond, where each would stack knowledge and skills from the Assassin you'd _just_ Synced with and be still armed with that muscle-memory when you moved onto the next one.
@@LeoKRogue I think they're saying that the older games allowed you to make and recover from mistakes and they liked that because it lent to a sense of immersion. In hitman, when you mess up the game isn't literally over but it is sort of conceptually over. In OG AC when you mess up there's quick consequences but then you recover and get back to it.
@@trashee973 im not really sure about what im saying either lol, but thats pretty much it. playing hitman made me feel like i was in a cage, i was forced to either play the "hardcore" way and spend many days repeating the same level to practice and get information to complete the assassination challenges, or i focused only on the opportunities, and the game handed everything to me. it felt mechanic, lacked immersion, and if i got detected i was forced to reset. i never had that moment where you go "woah thats cool" playing hitman. parkour on earlier AC games was different. you feel like a new assassin, jumping from rooftop to rooftop for the first time. exploring the map this way was very exciting. you gain experience on tombs and optional challenges that improve your parkour, but if you failed, most of the times you would simply loose time or fight some enemies instead of dying or having to reset. mistakes had consequences that kept the gameplay flow going. completing a tomb very fast because of your skills felt good, and grabbing a ledge after a fall that you thought meant certain death felt very good too. it felt alive, dynamic, you could adapt to changes like an assassin would.
The new rpg assassins creed lock you out of back ejecting from high height and and doesn’t fling you like in old ac games side ejects are eliminated entirely so parkour is always this linear path that feels choreographed instead of created on the spot if i want to swing from a rope at any height let me do that.
Yes. I want to be able to move freely. The reason I'm not allowed to is that if they let me, then _other_ players _might_ accidentally hurt themselves because they pressed the wrong button at the wrong time. So why can't _those_ players have their simple, safe movement, and we can have our awesome, risky and tactical movement? Everyone's happy.
@@LeoKRogue exactly i think its the higher ups and business suits that tell the developers to change things to cater to a certain demographic of players and time restrictions that wouldnt allow for improvement on the system,this is speculation tho but i feel the developers care for these things but simply cant due to limitations from the higher ups. Idk but hopefully thats the case.
A great number of the devs _do_ care, yeah. I think that, among other more serious reasons, is part of why _so_ many senior or well-known developers and ComDevs that were on Assassin's Creed straight-up left Ubisoft recently to work elsewhere. People are jumping ship, working on that brand must _really_ freaking suck from certain perspectives.
I agree that a parkour filter would probably be the best option for modern ac in an ideal world but from a game design perspective we run into a problem when it comes to giving players the option to reduce complexity when that complexity is what makes the game fun.
Parkour has always been an important part of ac so being able to turn it off (from my perspective at least) seems to be analogous to removing any challenge in combat in any other game. We wouldn't be able to do that as the game would lose its appeal and people would get bored, which is a similar thing that happens with ac. A large number of players no longer get as much fun out of ac because there's less to do.
Essentially, by reducing the complexity of the experience, the experience is less interesting, and so people care less. This applies to most players aswell. If a majority of players are willing to learn a combat system then they should be willing to learn a parkour system too.
The issue then with allowing a toggle is that if you do not force a player to be challenged they won't engage with the more interesting parts of the experience and quit after the game fails to catch their attention because the best parts of the game they disabled.
In general most players that beat the first part of a game dont finish it (you can see this by looking at the difference in players who beat the 1st achievement and who beat the game) so from a design and development standpoint it dosent make sense to let your players ignore something that might keep them playing even if some are put off by it
What I'm saying is that those who are likely to ignore parkour are likely to ignore the rest of the game too. I think an option is great, but as a way to improve accessibility for a minority rather than permit the apathy of a majority who may not even finish the game.
You can never truly turn it off, ALL players would still experience a mandatory baseline of the system otherwise there is simply no video game.
Other games already do things like this and work perfectly fine, with occasions of Assist players eventually growing hungry for the more rich experience and delving deeper into the system's complexity because they were welcome to experience the basic fun behind it before adding on more components.
Players feeling like they can enjoy a game and then after already beginning to love it reaching for more interesting mechanics on their own terms would even likely boost completion numbers which you briefly talk about.
What do you think is a better, more realistic idea for Ubisoft to do that would bring back advanced movement for us to enjoy? Something you can see them greenlighting and funding?
Besides, what you're describing is literally the way the games are right now. What I'm describing is at least adding another layer of opt in depth on top of that.
Upon reviewing this comment and the video I have changed my view and I now agree that this type of system is the best compromise possible and, if ubisoft ever pursues parkour again, the best way for ac to move forward.
The concern in my original comment was more related to a question of game design, namely how do you make a player engage with your systems.
An analogy to this situation is DMC5 and its assist option.
Like you say the assist option allows players to get into the game when they are less familiar with the mechanics and later engage with the full system, or play the game as a classical hack and slash.
The thing is, DMC5 is based upon its combat. You are always inclined to get better at it. In ac though, parkour whilst a major part if the game can be completely ignored.
This is fine. People can play how they want and how they are comfortable with, but the question is why would ubisoft invest time into a mechanic people dont use.
By the way this isn't me saying I think this is likely or would happen as a result of an assist system, (I personally think ubisoft will re-implement parlour in the near future) but it does raise another question.
Would it not be better for newer and returning players to have guides to advanced parkour? Ac has had things like this but they have never been fully developed fully.
These guides would make the system present to each player that sees it, and seeing cool shit in these guides could incentivise people to try to imitate it.
Essentially, have these guides on CZcams be an actual part of the game.
To me, Assassin's Creed is as much about parkour as it is about combat or Assassins. The next step for these games isnt reducing the game's legacy to accommodate for a new one but instead to build on what came before, like you said in the video when talking about combat stealth and parkour.
And I feel for this to happen they all have to be represented equally as much by the game itself as its mechanics.
@@Greetanate One solution to things like this is to make movement an integral part of the game, which might be easier than we first admit just because humans are 3D lifeforms, so movement is integral to basically all of our activities, including action games.
There's nothing more motivating than _needing_ to get from point A to point B because otherwise you literally don't get to play at all. No matter how good you are at sneaking (which requires movement) or combat, you don't get to do any of that until you reach an objective or area that features them. Which necessarily entails movement. Then, the task of the designers is to make _spaces_ interesting to move through, with a variety of micro-challenges along the way.
Someone who is doing an action repeatedly emotionally benefits from getting better at it so the experience is smoother or more interesting for them, so I _do_ think players will eventually pursue it of their own volition. The ones that don't, wouldn't have no matter _how_ many guides you put in front of them. I know this because I am a guide-maker, and it's a simple truth that some people just don't care. :[
On advanced movement guides being part of the games; _YES._ Games having better internal documentation is one of the best ways to put the power to learn in a player's hands, so I've ALWAYS had a bone to pick with Ubisoft for how poor their tutorials and in-game mechanics descriptions always are, compared to a lot of other games. They're not strictly "bad" for just getting into the game and managing your way through a normal playthrough, but they rarely actually mention or clue players in to potential intricacies, it's just the basics.
@@LeoKRogue thanks for the replies and being willing to discuss things :)
@@Greetanate And thank you! ^_^
One thing that I find odd is how few people there seem to be who miss the old parkour system, but still prefer the new combat system. Aside from the stupid RPG features, I have found the hitbox-based system of Origins and Valhalla to be much more engaging. You're no longer on rails, you're not forced into one single style of combat but you're allowed to express yourself, learn and try out new strategies. The new combat is to the old combat, what the old parkour is to the new parkour.
In my mind, the more direct control you have over your character, the better. A perfect game would have parkour similar to the older games, with a hitbox-based combat system not unlike Valhalla or Origins but with a heavier emphasis on remaining grounded in reality, both visually and mechanically.
Yeah, I think the base principles of the hitbox combat are actually pretty good. Not the most popular thought among classic fans, but it's got merit for sure, especially if they up the player's lethality when we _do_ eventually play as a real Assassin again. I think I liked Origin's combat the most just because Adrenaline wasn't the limiting-factor behind most of your moveset, you could freely link Parries into Sleep Darts into Hidden Blade stabs on the slept guard, and other cool things like that. I don't like the idea of "mana" restricting everything we do, and I think we need to move away from, or at least revamp this system for greater freedom.
Don't quite agree with the combat system comparison. You can play different ways in the old games as well. For example in AC 2 you can play like the average person and just spam counter kill or you can be creative and use more techniques. You can grab the weakest enemy in the group and throw them into everyone else to knock them down, you can strafe left and right then hit the enemy after they attack to trigger a kill animation, you can parry an attack by holding block and then attacking right after blocking an attack to trigger a kill animation, you can throw people into wooden scaffolding and market stalls to kill them instantly, you can use the knives, hidden gun, crossbow, smoke bombs, etc. and the list goes on and on. You would be surprised at how many ways you can actually do fights in the old games.
Using only fists in AC 2, I can kill a guard by punching him to death, grabbing him and then pummeling him repeatedly, throw them from a high ledge, into water, a market stall or wooden scaffolding, I can run into him and push him so he falls on the ground and then I go behind him to do a kill animation (these are pretty brutal, there's an animation where Ezio punches them in the back and then throws them back into the ground to stomp on their face), I can throw them and then do a kill animation by going behind them, if they are fighting someone else I can run at them from behind and use the shove button which knocks them to the ground and then do a kill animation, I can tackle and then do another kill animation, I can throw sand at their face, I can steal their weapons and then kill them with it, etc.
@@LeoKRogue also Leo K did you know that you can throw sleep darts and poison darts on sources of fire to create a cloud that affects everyone in it? Hell you can even do it by just throwing your own torch or using a weapon/bow with fire effect, I know ships have like a small row of burning coal that you can throw the sleep dart into to make a cloud. You can do it with campfires too, I think that's the one most people know about because it's part of a money farming strat.
@@steveweast475 This. It may seem quite unintuitive that someone who prefers complete manual control over a character would want a system full of locked animations, but the hitbox based combat consists completely of locked animations too (if not slower ones). The biggest difference is the fact that moves simply do not connect the same way they do when your enemy's animation is designed to react a certain way. At the end of the day, both the old parkour and combat were about getting expressive (even if i wouldn't mind the games getting harder by NOT letting you simply parry and spam attack at every enemy), and the old games do practically everything the hitbox combat does, just more smoothly, with more movements and tools to use. The old combat system is so in depth and expressive, still offers full freedom in terms of moves, strategy and mobility while managing to look better.
A easier and better (imo)"parkour filter" would be a mix of Odyssey's thing where you almost cannot die of fall damage + Syndicate more limiting aspects doesn't allow you to throw yourself in harms way while you parkour.
Theres certain options in games nowadays that let's you skip puzzles, and Valhalla has a 1 shot hidden blade mode in settings. Another thing you can do is have the parkour tomb sections during the main story but also have it be skippable in the main menu as a compromise
If you can decide which aspects to have filtered out, sure. You can set it to be that "heavy." Otherwise that doesn't solve the main issue which is players lacking freedom or the granularity to decide how MUCH responsibility over their movement they want.
@@LeoKRogue fair
reimplementing catch ledge on its own would make me buy the new game ngl
But like, the _good_ Catch Ledge, the good one that's directional and lets you reach sideways/backwards.
@@LeoKRogue You could also decide whether you'd like directional or general catch ledge via toggle 🤯
WOW. You got me with my own special move and video idea. Well played. Yes, I like that.
2:45 Haha, isn't it what Ubisoft exactly did? As Abstergo developed the Animus and turned it into an entertainment system for the masses in-game, parkour system became much more user friendly.
In theory, yeah!
brother... finally... we get assassin creed mirage, assassin creed classic and RPG thats the future
It looks like it. :)
Playing AC Unity's co-op and watching how other players behave partially confirms your theory that some players either don't care about learning the finer details of the movent system, don't want to learn, or are completely fine just knowing the basics. Too bad i can't go back to that since the Xbox servers have been broken for awhile.
Playing Unity with randoms can occasionally reveal the same with regard to stealth, too. ^_^
How many times have you been exposed by some matchmaking partner who just runs in, completely impatient?
I like cheese.
Good man.
@@LeoKRogue you like cheese?
@@smeep6846 I find cheese is often very effective.
@@LeoKRogue :)
you know in every game what i playt its always taught nerve thing when you tag map to get something and it seems its down level of building so you just press hogh profile button andfalls off from one building to another which is literally closely
Yep. Knowing how to move the way you want makes such a huge difference in how fun it is to play.
I'm a AC classic parkour fan but I always wonder if we can have the old parkour with player's freedom but have the swiftness and coolness? of AC Unity, the thing we can get ever close to the old parkour system at least for me is AC unity, and one thing that I really want is that if they are going to appeal to the casual fan, at least gives us the option to turn on and off the assist mode when it comes to parkour with that at least I/we know that they are still trying to appeal the AC fans cause with the recent games I notice that we lose the Assassin's essence when it comes to the gameplay (I'm not including the story cause as far as I know they still have that assassin-templar conflict going on)
I would love that, for sure. Who knows what's going through their head right now though, I'm not sure I've seen a game discard one of the things it was famous for so readily before.