Rogue or Unity?

[Rosa Giovanno]

Hey guys, it's almost that time of year again! Assassin's Creed Unity and Rogue are both being released next month. So I thought I'd open a discussion: Which one (or both) are you getting, looking forward to, etc? If you're pre-ordering, which pre-order offer are you going with?

Here's a Gamescom video and the trailers:

www.gamespot.com/videos/assassins-creed-unity-vs-rogue-gamescom-2014/2300-6420879/

Unity: www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7DEwM7VpfU

Rogue: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCjk7DTowhY

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAdUuo7JEEc


For myself, I'm excited about being primarily back on land in Unity, and the multiplayer is supposed to be really awesome this time around, as well as more realistic game play. One thing about Napoleon though, is that he looks a lot like Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice in my opinion, just saying. And super psyched about playing an Irish Templar in Rogue, something new

[Horatio Davis[Inactive]]

I'm most likely going to end up with both games (Unity depending on when I upgrade to next-gen).  I do have my doubts and concerns for both.  Ubisoft is really great at making trailers and hyping up games, sometimes making the game look deceptively good (e.g. AC3 left some things to be desired as did Watchdogs).

For Rogue, I'm concerned it will be the same-old same-old with all the stuff I enjoyed but might be sick of from Blackflag and all the stuff I didn't like from AC3.  The fact that you play as a Templar isn't an issue for me (as I know it is for Onas/Vitale).  I enjoyed the intro to AC3 more than I think I enjoyed the rest of the game even though SPOILER you were an unwitting Templar then.  I really enjoyed Blackflag, but there you were pretty much indifferent and on your own side with the game lacking any serious Creed lore.  I think a differing perspective might be fun and interesting.  If I don't get i right away, at the very least it's a game I will pick up in the off season when the price drops and I have more free time.

For Unity, I'm pretty excited.  Next-gen graphics, engine, etc.  It'll also be nice to get off a ship, away from the frontier, and back into a city.  From the looks of it, Unity will also bring us a strong Assassin story, something which has been missing since Revelations.  My greatest concern with Unity, however, is that the cooperative multiplayer will be a mess.  I LOVE co-op and the idea of AC co-op is just a dream come true, but we know so little about it at this point.  All the footage they show is all pre-scripted demos rather than actual "free" gameplay.  I've also read conflicting things about how the co-op will work.

On the "oh my God I would love this" side of things would be a drop-in drop-out system where friends can share a city much like a Rockstar game.  On the "why even bother" side of things the multiplayer will be limited to only a handful of contracts and all players need to be in a special lobby and load into this prescripted co-op mission.  I'm afraid it will absolutely not be like the former and instead be very close to the latter.  What makes AC great is the ability to free roam around the environment and explore.  I don't know about how you guys play, but I certainly don't rush through the missions.  I go over nearly every inch of the map and spend far more time in little stupid fights than I do in actual missions.  And when it comes time to do a mission, I do it because it's convenient for me.  If I have to go to some special location, wait for my friend to get to the same place, set up a lobby for a mission (which might have no significance on the story), and then play one of five missions then why bother?  I could just play GTA and get both a slew of missions and a huge sandbox to play in.  If experience has taught me anything it's that the sandbox ends up being the most fun, especially when playing with friends.

Sorry for being a downer, but that's my honest assessment.

[Vitale Demato de Cordoba[Inact]

So to get the obvious out of the way, no I don't want to play a templar. The name of this friggin game is Assassins Creed! When did we give up on the good guys?? Did the Templars suddenly start acting like civilised people and someone just forgot to tell me? Last we saw of them in modern world, was at a game development in Montreal or some frenchy bs, and the gal on the phone was chewin everyones ass talkin about "It doesn't matter what we want, we say jump, you say how high!" The templars are not misunderstood, they are out for blood and domination.

Not that the assassins have been much better off as of the 1700s. First you get Eddy, who is no assassin. I don' givadamn how you church it up, that guy only ever worried about money. Then you got Conner, who was an idiot, and didn't even know what the Templars were doing, he was just fighting for the sake of fighting. No ear to politics, no official press for the creed, just one elaborate ass revenge mission for someone who killed mommy.

Conner... lord hubart, I could go on about the fail in that character for days.

The engines keep getting stronger, and that's in Ubisoft's favor. The navigation of both 3 and 4 were far superior to 1 and 2. The fighting got a little dulled down, but there are only so many buttons. Still though, when I'm Edward, and I'm fightin on a ship, and your engine can't pick up me using the ONLY BLOCK BUTTON AVAILABLE!!! And you can't say that it is me, on the land, I never take hits. During a stealth(Stealth loosely applied, I usually just killed everyone quicker by boarding from a swim, and taking out all the objectives, then boarding via ship commands) boarding I never once took damage. During a ship boarding, and I tested this many many times, I would hit the block button and nothing. Not... every time, but enough to make it a severe headache. I had the four uber pistols, and the assassins' swords, along with everything else, so I could use everything at my disposal and come out on top in less than thirty seconds, even on a man of war, but that isn't the point. I should be allowed to play, howevvvvvvvver I want. That's the freedom of FREEROAM. Or at least, it's suppose to be.

That single glaring fail aside, the combat was far flashier, and easier, and therefor more fun. I'm not my brother, I don't want to have to pull my hair out to beat a fictional enemy, just lemme fight him straight up, and may he with the best reflexes win. They say the combat got an overhaul in Unity, so time will tell if it's a good change or a bad one. Regardless of what they do with Unity, I hope they fixed the issue with ship boarding counters in Rogue.

Ok, on to the actual good. The movement is better. Far less often did I jump in completely the wrong direction as Ezio was so prone to do. And also, climbing was slower, which made for more interesting dynamics in fights. Conner's brain aside, the guy was an absolute beast, and with him I could easily slaughter every enemy on the field, no matter how many. Edward was close to that, if a little less flashy. I'll be glad to be back to one sword, no game developer has managed to make a duel wield that I like. Maybe the Force Unleashed I, but only because it's so old that I cut it slack.

I don't know why Naval mode was cut from ACU. It's the goddam french revo baby! The best naval battles in history were fought in this time period! I'm all for a city setting, but that war was everyfrigginwhere. What happened? Solid ocean combat, plenty of room to expand, plenty of room to improve, a base system that was right on! And just cut it dawg?!? Bad move.

Multiplayer sounds enticing. I will always put a co-op game ahead of everything. The ability to join my friends in combat and see the sights will never get old, and extends gameplay by a margin so huge, its not calculable. That said, it also depends on how you do it. GTAV was tha absolute perfect style as far as drop in drop out. The multiplayer was an absolute slugfest of players, but meh, what did we expect? There was no common enemy to fight, and even if there had been, who would have cared? But what worries me, is that the multiplayer element for ACU has been described as only a few playable missions. Did any of you ever play Two Worlds 2? Friggin yikes. Solid magic system, has yet to be beaten. Solid enemies, good for a fight. Solid graphics(for the times) could have used some architectural improvement, but the leveling system and world were too fun to care. The gamebreaker was that you only had six playable missions with co-op, and single player was trash. Play through them all three times, and you'd do what me an J did, find a glitch, exploit it. Jus show me the endgame so I don't feel like I wasted forty bucks.

Now I know, this isn't two worlds, but if you take out the ability to freeroam, then you have destroyed the purpose of co-op gameplay in a freeroam game. Me an Rog want to team up, and go take down all the city guards in tandem. Me an my bro wanna stand back to back and fight guards to we either kill them all, or die trying. Force us into a mission we can't stray from, and terminate our co-op directly after, and you have defeated the whole point.

So Unity is on a short leash for me. A very short one.

Ezio's story was full of life, and adventure and I felt like I'd accomplished something in each leg of his story. Conner... no. And Edward was even more jumbled and disappointing. Did they even have a story to tell? Or did they make it up as they went along, because it felt so broken. First you're here, doing A, then stop A, we gotta go do B for a bit, then WOAH! A TIME! Then C comes out of nowhere, and suddenly I'm suppose to feel attached to these characters, but I don't because you failed to give me the chance.

At least with Conner, you got the city you helped to build, and leveled each of those who lived on your land. When the guys came to attack the town, I was like HELL NO YOU DON'T! NOT ON MY LAND! With Edward, I never felt connected. Where was this supposed relationship between him and Adewale? All the guy ever did was question your every move and splice in conveniently unanswered damnthewhiteman comments. Fits with history? Meh, the racism maybe. The rest sure didn't. But the story aside, or perhaps more in your face, I was promised that Adi and I would go on adventures and be pals! Well I guess they canned that idea! More like Edward on his own! Remember Revelations, when you could recruit like, 72something assassins. And each one was handsaved, and each one trained by you? Each one a specific recruit with skills you could use? Customisible, and useable and tangible? They even had side stories! Where was that with the crew? Just a bunch of apparently drunken numbers that I bought from the shady dude next to the bar... Adi should be proud...

Where was my investment when one died? Where was the Assassin's recruits that would join my fight, and make me feel like I was part of something greater than myself?? Well it wasn't there! FAIL.

So single player has been a wash for two games. i still played em, I still loved em. I liked all the elements of AC3 that they got rid of, and hated all the ones they kept. I miss revelations, and have high hopes for Unity, but lets be honest, I haven't even preordered it yet, and I don't know if I'm going too. I'm just about to the point of waiting to see what the game is before I waste money on it.

You don't know how much it pains me to say all that, because I LOVED this series, and endorsed it wholeheartedly once upon a time. But the formula that made it great has been tossed so far aside, that the only thing left that's interesting is the origin lore. Things like this site, where we could still write an assassin the way they are portrayed by the background notes, and see the world in the correct light. To save people, and feel like it was worth the effort. To fight an enemy who is an actual enemy, not this latest fad of swapping sides every time we can't come up with a new story to tell. If you don't got a story dog, then don't try to tell one!

And Rogue... Don't even get me started. Like I wanted to play a templar in a game still titled Assassin's Creed. Friggin frakin fr.....

[Horatio Davis[Inactive]]

You're being a little hard on Black Flag. Back when it came out you and I played it constantly and 100%-ed the damn thing. Black Flag was an excellent game overall, but I agree about its faults. When it came to gameplay, AC4 was "the shit". The modern story line was also an interesting change from Desmond.

But back in the 1700s the story was lacking. AC3's drifting from the Creed part of Assassin's Creed was one of my biggest complaints and AC4 took it a step further. So much time was covered I also cared very little about most of the characters and I was often questioning the motivations of these people. And I totally agree that captaining a ship was not the same as running a network of assassins.

What I've seen from the trailers and short demos, however, BOTH games turn back toward the Creed. Unity has internal Assassin politics and actually being trained as an assassin instead of just finding an assassin blade and immediately being a badass and knowing how to jump into hay. Rogue includes a fall from the Order and reveals some of the mysteries about the Templars.

Even if you're playing a "bad guy" you still learn more about the real lore of the game instead of just stabbing people in a new location and time period. That's why I liked the beginning of AC3 so much, because up until the end, you thought this was actually the assassins and you were doing all kinds of plotting and planning and assassin-y stuff. Even though you were actually a Templar the whole time, Haytham and his boys were so much more Assassin-like than Connor. The intro to AC3 had a close feel to the earlier games than Connor in AC3 or any of AC4.

Between the two games, I'm probably going to do Unity first and (assuming the co-op isn't shit) I'm going to spend more time on that one, but I'm not just going to write off a major release in the franchise because it's Templars. At worst, it's going to be very similar to Black Flag and I really enjoyed Black Flag despite the lack of Assassins.


Oh, I just remembered that Black Flag only gave you the rope dart on like the last mission. Worst game ever.