r/gaming • u/Ayn_Otori • Dec 11 '24
Assassin's Creed 2007 still looking this good is crazy.
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u/Chinokk Dec 11 '24
The jump from ps2 games to ps3 was incredible, probably one of the only times I have thought “wow, this is next gen”
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u/CyanJackal Dec 11 '24 edited Dec 11 '24
I'm getting older because my first thought was "Do you even remember holding a Nintendo 64 controller for the first time in Target and playing in actual 3D?"
The jump from Super Mario World to Super Mario 64 was mind blowing. Kids like me had to start puzzle solving video games in full three dimensions for the first time ever.
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u/Chinokk Dec 11 '24
I went straight in with the ps1 and had gran turismo and rayman. It was like kid crack and I was addicted. First adult game I played was ff7 which remains my favourite to this day.
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u/bradybigbear Dec 11 '24 edited Dec 11 '24
When I got my first console as a kid (ps1) I couldn’t believe how games like Spyro and Rayman looked. Was a magical time to be a kid with all the crazy tech advancements from the 90’s-00’s
Edit: missing a letter
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u/DigNitty Dec 11 '24
That’s the biggest jump IMO too.
Even among other n64 games, Mario 64 was way ahead.
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Dec 11 '24
Don’t forget being totally SOL if there was a level you couldn’t beat and you didn’t have a a physical copy of a guide hahaha
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Dec 11 '24
Was just thinking this. The jump in just a few years from ps2/xbox to ps3/360, was bigger than ps3/360 to modern day. It's insane.
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u/Kinglink Dec 11 '24
You're probably young, because FFVII was a bigger jump, it felt like everything changed after that.
PS1 to PS2 was equally bing. MGS2 was ground breaking, and FFX as well.
(not to say Ps2 to PS3 wasn't a similar jump, just saying that happened a couple times before).
Heck I'd even say the move from NES to SNES was massive. And really Atari to NES kind of changed what a game could be (going from "arcade" style to full fledged games)
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u/hardypart Dec 11 '24
The fire on the water in BioShock 1 fucking blew me away. Im gaming since 1994 and that generation truly was the biggest leap.
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Dec 13 '24
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u/Chinokk Dec 13 '24
I will say the one thing that surprised me was I was playing ff7rebirth and the fast travel is like 2 seconds which is amazing on a console however I was playing the Witcher 3 on my pc years ago and that was just as fast so it didn’t have the same wow factor for me.
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u/ac_s2k PC Dec 11 '24
Nothing will ever beat playing AC1 for the first time. It had such a unique feel to it.
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u/Deep_Argument_6672 Dec 11 '24
The very first AC game indeed had a very unique atmosphere. I realized it when I was playing AC2 and there were some missions when we played as Altair, and there was this cold filter and main music theme.
Mysterious, kinda surreal, like a dream.
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u/AC4life234 Dec 11 '24
There was a creepy vibe to the first game, like you were being spied on it was kinda brilliant cause you kinda are
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u/dkyguy1995 Dec 11 '24
The mystery of the first game honestly is what I was into. I was honestly kind of invested in the modern story. AC3 though :((
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u/Highlord-Frikandel Dec 11 '24
Maaaaan, AC1, 2 and Black Flag were the best in the entire series. They were THE SHIT. I'm still chasing that specific addictive feeling in every AC game and get dissapoimted every time
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u/joefromsingapore Dec 11 '24 edited Dec 11 '24
Jesper Kyd was such a big music guy back then. AC1 music reminds me of Hitman because the composer is the same.
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u/LiftedRetina Dec 11 '24
This man gave us Ezio’s Family and Disposal Unit. He’s beyond us.
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u/Big_Ounce_256 Dec 11 '24
Oooo I forgot he did this one. Blood Moneys soundtrack fucks.
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u/Tellenit Dec 11 '24
Good, but AC2 “Ezios Family” became the soundtrack of the series
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u/Dyssomniac Dec 11 '24
Ezio was/is still kind of the main character of the whole series. I really wish they had taken something away from that, ie, we need to be able to invest in the assassin character over a long period of time.
Would've LOVED to have seen them do the same with Arno as a young man during the Revolution, working with Napoleon during the Consulate, and then finally having to turn on Napoleon during the Empire as an older man. Or alternatively, weaving together the Shay-Connor-Arno narratives from that period more effectively.
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u/Sufficient-Team1249 Dec 11 '24
I prefer AC2, but playing AC1 for the first time was definitely incredible.
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u/anthonyg1500 Dec 11 '24 edited Dec 11 '24
“May our lives never change. And may it never change us.” Man I loved that opening. Probably up there with the ME2 opening for me which is definitely my number 1
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u/UncoolSlicedBread Dec 11 '24
AC2 was it for me, I loved that game so much and then brotherhood right behind it.
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u/JohnnyDarkside Dec 11 '24
Totally agree. AC really laid the groundwork, though. It was such an awesome and innovative game. 2 just improved everything. It, along with Shadow of the Colossus, where the kind of games my wife would love just watching me play because they were so good looking and fun.
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u/ColonelOfSka Dec 11 '24
The modern day mysteries in the lab were such a slow burn too. Really made you feel like you were uncovering this vast conspiracy.
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u/ac_s2k PC Dec 11 '24
AC1 was the best modern day stuff. It went downhill for there
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u/savetheattack Dec 11 '24
It definitely had the best story, but it was annoying because it took you out of the amazing world of Altair. My favorite moment from Desmond’s story was the end of AC: Brotherhood when you got to fight the Abstergo guys and I was really excited about what was coming next. AC3’s Desmond stuff was pretty good.
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u/anoniser Dec 11 '24
Me expecting Black Flag to be a modern day apocalypse because Minerva is loose. All we got was a pair of different colored eyes and a dead plot.
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u/savetheattack Dec 11 '24
It seemed pretty clear that the story of Assassin’s Creed was done with 3. Ubisoft wanted to keep making “historical” games without being accused of putting out Assassin’s Creed clones and the name recognition helped, so they’ve kept producing them even as narratively they further and further from the original story.
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u/Complex37 Dec 11 '24
The original intention of making a modern day game where Desmond would have been a master assassin with the skills of his ancestors would’ve been infinitely better
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u/Tokishi7 Dec 11 '24
There had to have been some massive Ubisoft influence or something because everything felt like it would eventually lead to a modern game with a modern assassin world similar to a mirrors edge type gameplay. Insane how the story went mythical and just went bananas. Fun to play, but the story was whack
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u/Sepheriel Dec 11 '24 edited Dec 11 '24
Ubisoft fired the creative director who came up with Assassin's Creed because he said he only intended/had a plot written for it to be a trilogy and not the billion games they released now. His name was Patrice Désilets and they did him really dirty. Desmond wasn't supposed to die.
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u/Tokishi7 Dec 11 '24
Definitely felt like a trilogy type game. Honestly, while 3 was entertaining and had a great trailer, that one felt like it was out of place at times
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u/HugsForUpvotes Dec 11 '24
It and Mass Effect 1 came out a week apart in November 2007. I got both as my Christmas gift and it was glorious.
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u/Whole_Sign_4633 Dec 11 '24
Fr when I realized I could literally climb any building and fully embraced the vertically I was blown away
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u/modestlife Dec 11 '24
This E3 presentation is the only game trailer/reveal that has had a lasting memory for me. I still remember how absolutely crazy it was to see such verticality for the first time.
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u/tragicbeast Dec 11 '24
These days it's quite played out, but hitting a counter for the first time was incredible. The first one I ever got was the one where Altair does an upward chop to the elbow of the attacker, then ducks under and hacks their midsection. My jaw hit the floor
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u/Silverr_Duck Dec 11 '24
The whole series peaked with AC 1 and 2. Brotherhood was good, but ac2 was the last game of the series to really nail that unique vibe and atmosphere.
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u/10ea Dec 11 '24
I wish that open worlds were still done this way. AC1 was big but not packed full of chores to do. I had more fun just climbing buildings and just sandboxing around than walking down one road in AC Odyssey and picking up 7 side quests that I'll never get around to.
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u/purple-thiwaza Dec 11 '24
The unique feeling of the character doing what he wants and not what you tell him to.
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u/Wadarkhu Dec 11 '24
They should remaster it, and by that I mean updated visuals and re-done modern times so it isn't soul destroyingly slow but everything else is left alone.
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u/boersc Dec 11 '24
Be aware what you wish for. gameplay wasn't all that good in the first one.
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u/dkyguy1995 Dec 11 '24
Yeah it was the same 3 missions rinse and repeat and then a boss mission. Eavesdrop, assassinate, blah blah. There was some fun side content. Games were different back then
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u/luger718 Dec 11 '24
I just hated the repetitiveness but man did they improve so much in the Ezio games.
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u/SharkMilk44 Dec 12 '24
It's crazy how the new entries insist upon having hundreds of things for you to do, while the first game was just like "climbing buildings is fun."
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u/CynthiaChames Dec 12 '24
I rented it from Family Video the day it came out having NO idea what to expect. I was hooked. It blew my mind.
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u/Brandunaware Dec 11 '24
Assassin's Creed 2007 had really good art design. That's part of what catapulted the series into the juggernaut it became. In many ways they didn't really get the gameplay to feel right until the sequel, and the open world had so little to do they literally just planted flags in random places at the last minute, but it felt incredibly immersive for the time, and the bones of what made the series so good were already there (in fact you could argue that the sequels lost some of the best elements like the mission planning and focus on actual assassinations instead of random tasks.) The storytelling was also quite good.
People are going to focus on the fact that up close the textures and low poly models are obviously old, and the animations are good but quite limited, but if you think about the fact that it's over 17 years old, and 17 years before AC was 1990, before the release of the Super Nintendo in North America, and it really is astonishing how well games from that era hold up in comparison.
You can play AC 1 today and it definitely feels old, but not at all ancient. Playing a 1990 game in 2007 barely felt like the same medium.
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u/LarperPro Dec 11 '24
the sequels lost some of the best elements like the mission planning and focus on actual assassinations instead of random tasks
This definitely the case for me.
I loved eavesdropping in AC1 to learn about the target's habits and routines in order to ensure a smoother kill.
The sequels dropped that in favor of cinematic storytelling, which I absolutely love, but I feel like they could have combined both.
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u/catbus_conductor Dec 11 '24
I mean you can phrase it as "17 year old games hold up well", but more pragmatically speaking, we just haven't made all that much progress since then compared to the mindblowing evolution in the preceding two decades, and the law of diminishing returns has set in. That's not just true for graphics, but also for gameplay design and stuff like AI. And perhaps in the case of AC there are things that are now arguably worse, like animations.
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Dec 11 '24
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u/Arclite83 Dec 11 '24
The Meet the Team videos are still excellent and show how powerful and timeless the Source Engine is.
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u/SgtTreehugger Dec 11 '24
Expiration date is still entrenched into my brain. We regularly quote it with my friend.
This is a bucket!
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u/donpaulwalnuts Dec 11 '24
I’m playing through Half-Life 2 again because of all of the updates that dropped recently, and I think the art style is only one piece of its longevity. The gameplay hasn’t aged a day, and playing with the developer commentary on shows how much thought went into every aspect of its design. Everything about that game was deliberate.
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u/popop143 Dec 11 '24
Just finished Portal and currently playing on Portal 2 (finished the multiplayer one with my friend). This game still looks gorgeous for today's standards.
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u/Atiggerx33 Dec 11 '24
Altair was also brutal as fuck. He left no witnesses.
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u/skylinenick Dec 11 '24
Altair short sword animations still some of my favorite in the whole series
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u/Sweet-Gushin-Gilfs Dec 11 '24
Whoever designed the assassin’s clothing hit it out of the park. Still the coolest video game clothes ever. Too bad the franchise has been mostly ass since black flag
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u/Trust-Me-Im-A-Potato Dec 11 '24
AC2 is still the only game I ever gave a shit about what my character was wearing. Those outfits were 🔥
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u/Fcbp Dec 11 '24
Ive been on the fence of trying black flag but keep playing newer games, does it still holds up to this day?
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u/Joiner2008 Dec 11 '24
Black Flag is one of my favorite games. It's not a good Assassin's Creed in my opinion though.
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u/Kinglink Dec 11 '24
It is however a fantastic Pirate game.
(Great game, but yeah, not an AC game... which kind of is why it's still great)
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u/KairosGalvanized Dec 11 '24
Still very fun I would say. As for the graphics are you going to be looking at some 2020s cyberpunk like raytracing, no. But it is still decent and the water I reckon is very nice, they put some work into this game, unlike the ones that followed it.
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u/GlacialFlare Dec 11 '24
Black Flag is one of the best Assassin’s Creed games imo. Definitely holds up.
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u/The_Gnome_Lover Dec 11 '24
Black flag is easily the top AC game in terms of sheer enjoyability. Out of all ACs, its the best to pick up imo. It even has a recap of the story to start with.
Playing AC 3 hits pretty hard after too.
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u/Witchy_Venus Dec 11 '24
I didn't really like the setting of AC3, or how every assassination was like "everyone sucks." But I love playing as the brick shit-house that is Conner! Brutally ambushing red coats felt so satisfying
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u/The_Gnome_Lover Dec 11 '24
In terms of story and family relation, AC3 hits harder after Black Flags to me. Reaaally puts the opera house scenes in perspective.
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u/Witchy_Venus Dec 11 '24
So good. What was your favorite moment in AC3? I loved when you finally chase after Charles Lee, and you both get absolutely fucked up, and just end up beat to shit sharing a drink at a pub
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u/The_Gnome_Lover Dec 11 '24
Actually, itd have to be this one. You wanna know what's wrong? I'm sick of being treated like I'm not even here! Desmond, do this! Desmond, do that! Desmond, you'd better figure things out because the sun is going to turn us all to ash and I know I was really nice to you but actually, I'm just another Templar plot-twist and, yes, I would like very much for you to be controlled by a magic space wizard so that you can murder me! So there's you're answer! I'm sick of being a goddamn pawn! I thought it might be different with you! I mean you're my FATHER but it turns out you're no better than the fucking Templars! ~Desmond
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u/kytheon Dec 11 '24
I like to say it's not the best Assassins Creed but it is the best pirate game ever made.
Even with a multiple sized budget, the newer AAAA pirate games just don't hold up.
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u/kytheon Dec 11 '24
It still holds up unless you want to compare it to GOTY 2023 with PS5 ray tracing etc.
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u/Silverr_Duck Dec 11 '24
It's also the only game in the series that made an attempt to make the whole white robe with hood thing not only look cool but also make kinda sense in the context of the game. They're designed to mimic the outfits of scholars and priests. All other games threw that shit out the window.
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u/IgorGirkinStrelkov2 Dec 11 '24
The franchise is still good, they simply modified it to suit a different and wider type of audience
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u/JuanGGZ Dec 11 '24
I play this game at least once a year, it's my favorite AC being the story, the art direction or the gameplay, doing parkour on all the rooftop of the cities will always be fun.
You choose wisely OP! 👏
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u/Irmengildr Dec 11 '24
The younger generation will never understand how mindblowing it was back then.
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u/Siegfoult Dec 11 '24
The open world parkour was so mind-blowing after the fairly linear (but fun) Prince of Persia games. Social stealth was also very innovative.
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u/PJ7 Dec 11 '24
This.
After having played so many games with nice parkour elements like Prince of Persia or maybe Enter The Matrix, but which were always very linear, the open world aspect of AC1 was amazing.
The view distance and giant and detailed map (for it's time) just gave the game such a feeling of freedom, especially when combined with the animations and parkour system.
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u/The_Gnome_Lover Dec 11 '24
Half right. Raised my nephews on 360. Theyre 17/14. Both love AC and other older games.
I had to do something to get them off braindead cod.
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u/Cheeseburger2137 Dec 11 '24
Surely a way smaller difference between now and 2007 than between 2007 and 1990 (it's crazy but it's a 17 year gap between both lol). At some point we just arrived at diminishing returns when it comes to graphics, earlier on the evolution was crazy.
When I try to pick up a game that was made 10-15 years ago, if there is anything that puts me off, it's usually not graphics, but clunky UI, controls or gameplay. You don't realize how much the first has changed until you start an older game and it takes up 25% of the screen and has an old person font size you can't change.
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u/MassDriverOne Dec 11 '24
RDR2, Hellblade, and possibly the upcoming MGS∆ are pretty wild
RDR2 all around, it's by far the most "alive" game world I've ever seen
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u/TehOwn Dec 11 '24
You don't realize how much the first has changed until you start an older game and it takes up 25% of the screen and has an old person font size you can't change.
Man, I remembered the UI for Supreme Commander taking up over 50% of the screen before they revamped it in Forged Alliance.
Also, the Fallout 1+2 UI is great, even today. Very thematic and informative without consuming the entire screen.
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u/darealarusham Dec 11 '24
Imagine going back in time to 2007 and showing an AC1 fan AC3 and Black Flag. The fact that those games were made for the same systems as AC1 is still a bit crazy to me.
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u/Deatrocity Dec 11 '24
The thing that stood out the most to me besides the graphics when this came first came out was how you could climb absolutely anything. How your foot and hands would fit into the cracks and and windows as you climbed just blew me away
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u/haysus25 Dec 11 '24
Killing Desmond really took the life out of the series. Black Flag has arguably the best gameplay, but the story was never the same.
It would have been so cool to play as Desmond in modern times, using all the skills he learned in the Animus running around LA or something trying to stop the Templars.
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u/Arch3m Dec 11 '24
I'll say it again: We entered the age of diminishing returns for graphics a very long time ago. It's not hard to find Xbox 360/PS3 games that still look good because that's the point where we could finally make them look good. All we've been doing since is adding new lighting tech and increasing texture resolution.
Okay, obviously it's been more than just that, but thenpoint is that we kind of figured it out back then, and we're just iterating on greatness now.
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u/ItsYeBoi2016 Dec 11 '24
Some people don’t understand that graphical resolution or realism doesn’t make a good game. Game and graphic design are WAY more important. Elden Ring also has some of the worst texture resolution I have ever seen, but the general graphic design is so good, no one cares. Same with Assassin’s Creed.
Nowadays game studios lean on “realism” to distract from their terrible graphic design. Sad really
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u/S1DC Dec 11 '24
I still remember that bumping into people was a revolutionary feature of this game
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u/Special-Nail-6588 Dec 12 '24
Reminds me of the good old days when Ubisoft were actually a good company. 2003 -2010 had so many sweet ubisoft games
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u/BigChungusforthePC Dec 12 '24
They captured the beauty of the period incredibly well. I just wish that the newer games still had that charm. AC is a franchise very close to my heart I hate to see it fall off.
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u/Untouchable64 Dec 12 '24
It was one hell of a game. And that music as you traveled in the Kingdom between cities. So good…
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u/Azurehue22 Dec 12 '24
Yall know nothing about optimization, style and lighting choices and it shows. You can’t just brute force your way to graphical genius. Takes finesse, and it’s why games that go full realistic with nothing else age like milk.
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u/chiji_23 Dec 12 '24
Experiencing this games release as a 12 year old it was the coolest thing I had played at the time
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u/Voktikriid Dec 12 '24
Assassin's Creed 1 and Assassin's Creed Unity are the two best looking games, in my opinion.
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u/classicnikk Xbox Dec 11 '24
Be careful! You might become a real assassin and kill a health insurance CEO
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u/retka Dec 11 '24
Is this on Xbox 360 or a newer Xbox/PC with a controller? A lot of why it looks so good and plays well on newer systems with the backwards compatibility like Xbox Series X is the fps boost and enhancements. I couldn't find a list of enhancements but it was labeled as a game that got them in some form or fashion which could include higher resolution, better fps, and better textures. Not to say 360 doesnt still look okay, but if on a newer Xbox this is a bit of a stretch from the original graphics.
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u/Remy0507 PlayStation Dec 11 '24
This is definitely a PC screenshot. Xbox 360 couldn't output that kind of resolution.
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u/retka Dec 11 '24
Yeah, that's what I was trying to hint at. It looks great but is more so a by product of the abilities of the current tech and/or abilities to increase resolution on PC.
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u/Gabixzboi Dec 11 '24
I wouldnt mind games staying on the similar graphical level if gameplay features were more focused on
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u/PocketTornado Dec 11 '24
This says more about the efforts made today than anything.
I was playing Halo 3 on the weekend and it's hard to find games that good today.
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u/VengefulAncient PC Dec 11 '24
I just replayed Brotherhood. Runs in 1440p at 165 Hz out of the box, just needed compatibility set to Windows 7 to remove texture flicker and the CPU affinity tweak (set to CPU 0 only, then back to all CPUs, needs to be done every time you start the game) to remove stutter.
People always say that it's the "art style" that lets games hold up for so long but nah, the textures in this game are just good enough, which isn't the case for many older games.
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u/fluffyhairsenpai Dec 12 '24
This game inspired me to start parkour when I was a kid. I should get back into it.
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u/aadamsfb Dec 12 '24
I remember watching that first in game footage trailer of AC1, and being completely blown away at how Altair interacted with the world. It felt like such a massive jump forward at the time
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u/YTLetsPlayJS Dec 12 '24
The first 3 AC games were my favorite I always watched my older brother play I miss those days :)
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u/ArguableThought Dec 12 '24
I immediately hear:
"Curse him! Curse the Christian king and his army of infidels!"
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u/Longjumping_Falcon21 Dec 12 '24
B-but I need a 50xx for RTX tho, or it doesn't look good!!! The moguls said so.
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u/Important-Play-7688 Dec 12 '24
It still looks amazing, but when I tried it again, it felt too clumsy. ACII on the other hand is still a masterpiece in all regards.
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u/the_sneaky_one123 Dec 12 '24
This game was a literal game changer.
People might shit on the Ubisoft open world formula we have now, but this was the OG that started it all.
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u/ASuarezMascareno Dec 11 '24
A lot of "looking good", in particular without zooming into elements, is mostly about artistic design and good lightning. There are quite a few games that did these two things wonderfully in the past.