I am not getting this overly sensitive politically correct stance some are taking. The Game Informer article stated that not all on the American side would be portrayed as the good guys and neither will the British be portrayed as being the bad guys. This will be a story that is taking place during the time period that is relevant to Connor and the continuation of the fictional Assassin's Creed tale of the Assassins vs. the Templars, and there will be a gray moral spectrum on both ends. The game is not about the American Revolution and painting the Americans as the heroes and the British as the evil oppressors, so relax.
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Assassin's Creed 3 Game Informer Details
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
jakonovski
Member
The cover is a complete departure from previous cover arts. It's also channeling Mel Gibson's Patriot, something that no sane person should want near their Assassin's Creed.
So your obvious anti-Americanism isn't.
I think I'd rather Desmond sat at a bus stop and describe his ancestors' tales to an old lady than meet up with a gang of gormless twats and climb into a genetic memory machine.
Or, better yet, tear out the framing device completely.
Yeah, and it is also just a way to immediately show where the game is taking place. Because their weren't many easily identifiable structures at the time, they went with the flag. GI did the same thing with Revelations:
Haha since when has any game set in America been pro-American? Even dude bro games show americans doing pretty reprehensible things,and most other games depict the US as either a post apocalyptic wasteland where characters with fervent patriotism are th e bad guys or as a gigantic urban wasteland ie GTA or Deus Ex.....I have high doubts this game or the new Bioshock will show America/Americans in a good light....and anyway setting seems very original, hardly any games set during this time period
Well, I've found out that the GI article specifically mentions that they want to avoid Mel Gibsonising the whole thing, so that's promising.
jakonovski
Member
That's good to hear, I was already fairly confident that the game would be properly made but that implies they're also open about how the marketing could be interpreted, which is even better. I still predict a cover art change in the EU version. Perhaps that pic where Connor crouches on a rock, fits well with the rest of the series.
False Witness
Member
Ranged weapons do seem to be a more prominent feature this go around. They may just end up doing what you said. Just look at the inclusion of Den Defense and those first person Desmond sequences. Ubisoft doesn't really mind going crazy with different gameplay style.
Can't wait to see the seasons in action. I don't think they will be dynamic though. Seems like it would be a huge strain, but I can't say for sure. Wonder what the real-world time would end up being for a complete seasonal cycle to occur in-game if they did actually do it.
Also, fuck that was a huge post. Almost needed to include a tl;dr summary at the end.
I doubt it will be in game. It will probably be that the seasons changing when every time you skip forward in time.
False Witness
Member
Yeah, that's what I was figuring. It would be too wild to do it dynamically and it would potentially hurt the mission structure. For example, the winter battles obviously can't take place in the middle of summer.
Though I am interested in how it looks when we walk in snow. Apparently snow will be more then just the ground being white.
I still see it.
me too, not sure what he means then.
From the screens, it looks like it really piles up and you kinda have to push through it. Also, there seems to be a nice effect when blood hits it and it kinda melts the snow while also coloring it.
They may not change it up too much, but I really hope they do. They seem to have taken out the targeting system based on what Nirolak posted, so I'm guessing it may have been replaced with actual aiming for ranged weapons.
The magazine also said that it will slow you and your enemy down.
And the game seems to be a complete departure from the previous ones, so it's fitting.
jakonovski said:
I feel like the only exposure some of you have to the American Revolution at all is Mel Gibson's The Patriot, heh. Given the circumstances of the war and the ultimate outcome, a Redcoat about to receive a tomahawk to the forehead seems fairly apropos. The British Empire received a collective tomahawk to the head in that war.
People seem shocked that any element of nationalism figures into a story about revolutionaries triumphing over a domineering empire.
Yeah, I mean, it looks like it goes up to Connor's knees/waist. That's a lot of snow. Of course, it seems like we will have a much easier time walking through it than the AI.
Sorry, I meant the actual box art. I remember seeing PS3/360 cases. Even if the art is the same.
All three are still there.
jakonovski
Member
Your discussion style seems to be a combination of calling people anti-American and ignorant. When disagreeing over a video game. I should've taken my own advice a few posts ago.
That's the kind of stuff I'd need to see in action before I can believe it (gameplay not screenshots). I mean even games like uncharted didn't do this.
MoonsaultSlayer
Member
Got my best buy case. Worker guy said they just got em in and went to the back to get a handful to put out and gave me one. Almost left without it because cashier lady didn't put it in the bag. When I went back, security dude was looking at the case and lady was like "can I help you?" I pointed to the case and both were like "nah, you can't have this."
Luckily the guy that handed me the case told them what's up.
The end.
Luckily the guy that handed me the case told them what's up.
The end.
Agent X
Member
I've only played AC1 & AC2 (and Bloodlines on the PSP). I never got around to getting Brotherhood or Revelations. However, AC3 sounds really interesting. I can't wait to see the Game Informer article.
You come across as incredibly petty and thoroughly incapable of defending anything you're saying. Don't fault me for trying to wring some sense out of you. Discussions go both ways, and you aren't offering anything. When I originally brought up anti-American sentiment it was to get at why some people have an instant negative reaction to "patriotic" box art, and I said I understood that. But don't let that get in the way of your persecution complex.
Red Blaster
Member
This is the new "I can't identify with CJ because he's black"
charlequin
Banned
The imagery that's available to reference in the public consciousness about this period is patriotic imagery, for a very specific reason: this was a conflict of very uneven investment between the colonies and England, and part of the American response was an aggressive propaganda/team-building effort, to create a new "American" identity that could bring people together on their side and help motivate them against the larger British forces. Once the war was over, the mythology of the conflict got puffed up more to help support the process of actually hashing out the nature of the new, independent state.
What I mean is: setting a game in any historical place and time involves heavy use of familiar signifiers to help clue people in to what they're looking at. In the Crusades you need the figures of King Richard and Saladin and the signs of the cross and the crescent; in Renaissance Italy you need scheming patrician families and the Sistine Chapel; if they did a game in the French Revolution they'd need to include the Bastille and the guillotine and what have you. The signifiers that exist for the American Revolution are all things that America has invested with patriotic meaning continuously since the war was actually fought; there's no way to actually visually present something as happening in this period, intertwining with this event, that won't use lots of "patriotic" images and themes. The thing to do is to actually present content that takes those themes and examines them with nuance and perspective, which (modulo the pretty low standards I hold for videogames and historical accuracy in the first place) I think there's a decent chance AC3 will do.
If you want a straight-up indication that the game won't be suffused with constant FUKKYEAs, Connor's background is that his village was destroyed by colonists (not British soldiers), so right at the start of the game the first thing they're establishing is people on the American side doing something monstrous and awful.
Errr... what are you talking about.
jakonovski
Member
This is actually one of the best clues that there's more below the surface so to speak. Connor is a Mohawk and they fought on the British side precisely because of incidents with the colonists. So how do we get from that to rubbing shoulders with Washington? There's no way the game could be dumb now.
Details like this are what renew my belief in the coolness of the franchise.
There's a shot of the main character looking down from a hill at a small band of British soldiers as they march through a forest. There was a similar scene in the Patriot where Mel Gibson slaughtered a bunch of redcoats to rescue his son.
Although people painting this whole game with the same brush as that turd of a movie because of one scene is ridiculous.
ETA: I can't wait to see how this game looks on the consoles. AC:R was a huge step up in image quality.
James Woods
Banned
1: People still butthurt over The Patriot. Shit was 12 years ago
2: People that credit it to Mel Gibson. Roland Emmerich, the hater of humanity responsible for Stargate, Independence Day and the magnum opus that is 2012 made The Patriot. I always laugh when people throw the film at Gibson and his hate for the english. While Gibson was a mega star at the time and no doubt made creative decisions on the film it is still Roland Emmerich's movie.
2: People that credit it to Mel Gibson. Roland Emmerich, the hater of humanity responsible for Stargate, Independence Day and the magnum opus that is 2012 made The Patriot. I always laugh when people throw the film at Gibson and his hate for the english. While Gibson was a mega star at the time and no doubt made creative decisions on the film it is still Roland Emmerich's movie.
No, I don't think he's necessarily wrong here to assume some of that, when the only people jumping to conclusions about this being some patriotic love-fest do so off a couple pieces of artwork, instead of bothering to do any further analysis. That kind of knee-jerk reaction, without reading up on any of the context, says a lot about a person's biases. Whether you call it anti-Americanism, or a deep-seated fear of American patriotism, or any other more preferable, less pejorative term, this fear about the game is purely irrational.
Anyone who reads the OP (saying that Americans and British have good guys and bad guys), or thinks about the context of the series' story as a whole (Templars founded America and that Washington was one of them), or the context behind the game's production (Canadians and Frenchmen are making this game) should come to the realization that this will probably not be some AMERICA FUCK YEAH EAGLES FOX NEWS love letter.
Don't forget about the fact that the main character is a Native American, who probably wishes that all white men, and especially the colonists, would just go away.
N
NinjaFridge
Unconfirmed Member
Washington was not a templar.
jakonovski
Member
Judging people without asking them for clarification is a really bad idea (yeah I know I'm a huge hypocrite).
Apologies, I assumed he was in previous games because he had the apple. But I guess that doesn't make sense anymore, if he's an ally of the MC in this game.
Doesn't invalidate the rest of what I said though.
Most history isn't "morally grey" - it's just terrible, terrible, terrible. Historical accuracy and even-handedness is a good goal but in a creative work, especially a videogame, you have to make concessions for tone; because this game isn't a historical document about the american revolution, it's a videogame for entertainment with the revolution as a setting. Otherwise the tone of every single work would be like the film Hunger.
I too don't understand people getting upset over the setting. In past games the political situation has always been a backdrop for the main conflict (assassins vs templars), and from the OP it seems like they're saying right out of the gate that they're not taking sides. Even if it does end up pandering to an American audience, I personally wouldn't care.
jakonovski
Member
He was a freemason (=Templar) historically and the S16 files say he had an Apple of Eden. They also made some noises IIRC that America was to be the Templars' grand experiment.
It'd be a torturous retcon to not make him one. He could be a double agent or leave them or whatevs but at some point he should be one.
Conversely, jumping into a thread and whining about your worst fears, without knowing the context behind the game, isn't giving the greatest first impression to work with either. It just strikes me as ridiculous this is even an issue.
James Woods
Banned
I hope they don't at all.
Red Blaster
Member
The Patriot clearly invented the idea of a woodland ambush on a British patrol during the revolutionary war.