It takes some guts to make the story of America's birth into one of defeat. Connor loses and will keep losing, just like the Mohawk and other Native tribes. On that level this game is a corrective to most macho games about white triumph and this fact definitely underpines most of the criticism of this game. Gamers like to feel powerful, they like to win, basically they like to be white. Haytham enables that fantasy, while Connor lives the reality of most of the planet. He's a real modern figure. Man of many identities. In that respects he represents the direction the industry ought to be going if it wants its much coveted maturity.
Sadly, he's betrayed by the fuzziness in his story, the poor way the revenge plot pans out. In terms of gameplay, there's the poor integration of systems and the unnecessary maps of New York and Boston. Ideally they should have made The Frontier the hub map, with the missions in NY and Boston reduced to linear events. The frontier plus the Homestead should have been the entire game. The Frontier is vast, filled with mountains and streams and falls, has a real sense of terrain, more so than Red Dead Redemption which so easily divides different parts into easily understandable patches. Here the forest, the mountains and streams are messily falling into each other, just like in life.
The game has real ambition. You don't feel any sense of triumph and its good that a game is trying to subvert expectations. You don't feel like you dominate your terrain, you feel like an outsider, because Connor is one, the notoriety in the Frontier never goes down, which is a nice gameplay touch. The fact that Connor spends all his time in colonial society underlies that. I wish we spent more time among the Iroquois and seen figures like Joseph Butler. The Templar targets are great, though Charles Lee is a real letdown from the real guy.
AC 2 managed to make historical figures alive, AC 3 is a comedown in that the founders are fairly staid. I wonder if anyone in the team read Gore Vidal's BURR where the founders are way more interesting. Aaron Burr would have definitely been an Assassin for sure, as would say, John Paul Jones. Neither are here and we see Jefferson in the DLC only. And That's Terrible. The DLC was another letdown of a genius idea.
Grandeur and Folly!
It takes some guts to make the story of America's birth into one of defeat. Connor loses and will keep losing, just like the Mohawk and other Native tribes. On that level this game is a corrective to most macho games about white triumph and this fact definitely underpines most of the criticism of this game. Gamers like to feel powerful, they like to win, basically they like to be white. Haytham enables that fantasy, while Connor lives the reality of most of the planet. He's a real modern figure. Man of many identities. In that respects he represents the direction the industry ought to be going if it wants its much coveted maturity.
Sadly, he's betrayed by the fuzziness in his story, the poor way the revenge plot pans out. In terms of gameplay, there's the poor integration of systems and the unnecessary maps of New York and Boston. Ideally they should have made The Frontier the hub map, with the missions in NY and Boston reduced to linear events. The frontier plus the Homestead should have been the entire game. The Frontier is vast, filled with mountains and streams and falls, has a real sense of terrain, more so than Red Dead Redemption which so easily divides different parts into easily understandable patches. Here the forest, the mountains and streams are messily falling into each other, just like in life.
The game has real ambition. You don't feel any sense of triumph and its good that a game is trying to subvert expectations. You don't feel like you dominate your terrain, you feel like an outsider, because Connor is one, the notoriety in the Frontier never goes down, which is a nice gameplay touch. The fact that Connor spends all his time in colonial society underlies that. I wish we spent more time among the Iroquois and seen figures like Joseph Butler. The Templar targets are great, though Charles Lee is a real letdown from the real guy.
AC 2 managed to make historical figures alive, AC 3 is a comedown in that the founders are fairly staid. I wonder if anyone in the team read Gore Vidal's BURR where the founders are way more interesting. Aaron Burr would have definitely been an Assassin for sure, as would say, John Paul Jones. Neither are here and we see Jefferson in the DLC only. And That's Terrible. The DLC was another letdown of a genius idea.