Assassin’s Creed Shadows

[one-armed dwarf]

There's apparently some movement within the company to sell itself off, apparently the campaign to do so has support from 10 percent of shareholders

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/01/assassins-creed-maker-ubisoft-ubi-faces-questions-over-its-future.html

 

It's all looking a bit razor's edge over there. I mean they've been in this position before I suppose, with the creeping towards a hostile takeover by Vivendi. But they've got nowhere near as much goodwill now

 

Now despite watching Succession twice, I'm no expert on boardroom cloak and dagger stuff, so maybe it's all a nothing. I found this comment on resetera interesting however

 

Quote

The company currently has a market cap of $1.5b (and falling) while it literally has more cash (over $1 billion) and assets (IP offices licenses etc) than the current market cap. That means investors essentially are saying the company is more or less worth nothing, since in theory someone could buy it out for $2 billion or so, fire everyone, keep all the cash, sell off all the buildings and whatever, and sell the IP for a few hundred million to anyone who wants to use it for future games.

 

https://www.resetera.com/threads/investors-want-ubisoft-to-sell-itself-off.998400/post-129606810

 

[Maryokutai]

I've also heard people mention that Ubi as it stands is inherently uninteresting as a company (from an acquisition standpoint) because they only have three or four really strong IPs but a truckload of employees across the globe. I'd imagine some people out there are possibly holding off in hopes for a THQ scenario, where they could acquire some of their IPs after the whole business shuts down so they don't have to deal with that annoying aspect of the workforce.

 

I still hope they can somehow turn this around, ideally by just reshuffling their leadership. People shit on UbiSoft a lot, but we'd lose quite a bit if they disappeared. There's a lot of history and talent there, they just need a better captain.

 

Also maybe we need a proper topic for this.

[mfnick]

The Ubisoft formula type of game is the most anti-me type of game there is and all the harassment stuff that came out just makes me hate them more. I should be excited for Shadows but I just hate their type of games. 

 

However over recent times I’ve learnt not to wish any company acquisition so hope this doesn’t kill them. Plus they do sometimes create excellence like PoP The Lost Crown.

[Maf]

This sounds mega annoying 

[Maryokutai]

I think it's UbiSoft in general that have adopted this odd accessibility stance where they allow you to simply turn of certain gameplay elements, which sort of makes them feel pointless and you might ask yourself why they even bothered implementing them in the first place. I think they always have a recommended setting to play these games, but the option being there raises some flags about overall game balance. Though I suppose AC has always played itself, more or less, anyway.

[radiofloyd]

Delayed to March 20th as posted in the Ubisoft thread.

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/assassins-creed-shadows-delayed-again-as-ubisoft-explores-sale
 

Bit of breathing space for those intending to get both Yakuza and Monster Hunter I guess, if such a gamer exists.

[mmmark]

Whole game has leaked. Although the only uploads are terrible shots of a monitor.

 

Looks bloody. 

[mmmark]

 

[Maryokutai]

 

I don't think I've seen such a drastic gap between a Performance and Quality mode in any game so far. The shot with the bamboo at 4:26 is nuts, looks like a comparison of a cross-gen title. On the other hand Quality mode does look rather sluggish, but you always get that effect when directly compared to a higher FPS mode.

 

Game looks kind of cool overall. Still not quite sure though if I should pick it up right away. I do have a bit of time right now but I'm also kind of interested in giving Xenoblade another look.

[one-armed dwarf]

Lot of the reviews sort of saying same old same old, which isn't surprising. Not saying it's bad or anything like that but just easy to save money on if you know what you think already about a Ubisoft game

 

edit that bamboo tree example shows off what makes the diff between last and current gen imo, this type of dynamic lighting. Some PS4 games look more dated to me than PS2 cause they're relatively close to PS5 except in this one way where the difference is drastic

[Maf]

I think this looks cool. But I’ll be waiting on the PS5 Pro and PC videos before deciding where to play it 

[Maryokutai]

The thing with AC is that even though they're very similar on surface level I've gone from strongly disliking certain ones to considering others all-time favourites, so it's not really a foregone conclusion either. Origins and Odyssey are fundamentally very similar but I find the former extremely boring while the latter ended up being a real highlight for me. Hard to gauge where this will land, but I suppose (genuine) player feedback will pop up any day now.

[Maf]

I’m interested in this one because it looks like they’re bringing back actual Assassin stuff. One of my problems with the series ever since Origins is there’s highly specific elements of this series that has been so dumbed down or stripped back, like the core elements of the Assassin gameplay are still there, but they’re so unimportant and feeling like they’re irrelevant the series has lost a lot of identity with it. I feel like the last few games should have been called Barbarian Creed more than Assassin’s. 
 

Mirage wasn’t quite the right answer, either. Even though it took AC back to something more classic - it was just a return to AC classic it didn’t actually push that formula or structure anywhere new. It was nice to return to it, but by the end it reminded me why I was bored of it. 

 

So hopefully with Shadows bringing back a ninja character they’re actually returning back to the feeling of being a quick, slick, sneaky Assassin but in a more modern game design

 

I haven’t looked at the reviews at all so maybe that’s not what this is. But this what I’m hoping for.  

[mmmark]

[Maryokutai]

11 hours ago, Maf said:

So hopefully with Shadows bringing back a ninja character they’re actually returning back to the feeling of being a quick, slick, sneaky Assassin but in a more modern game design

 

I might misremember but from what I recall this does a numbers check on assassinations and if you don't surpass the necessary damage threshold the enemy is going to live, which I think the previous couple of RPG Creeds had as well. Again, if I remember correctly you can turn on instant kills in the settings but you have to wonder how such an integral part of its gameplay is designed if you can just flip a switch and significantly alter how the feature works on the fly. 

[Maf]

Just sounds like a difficult toggle, really. Nothing wrong with covering both options for what players want

 

I remember something about that vaguely. I think I’ll just turn it off and one-shot dudes 

[one-armed dwarf]

Does Yasuke even have that mechanic, there's been a lot of complaints about his side of the game and not just by the racists (Gene Park brought it up in his take on the game). Sounds like he is mostly a standard type of action hack and slash character

[Maryokutai]

 

Seems to combine the standard version's Quality and Performance modes to a decent result that doesn't warrant to switch to anything other than Performance if you have a Pro IMO. 

 

Interestingly the hideout seems to capped at 30fps on any console platform on every setting, presumably because you can just throw so much stuff in there that 60fps couldn't be guaranteed. 

[Maf]

I think that’s where I’ll play it. PC might be a bit nicer for the better hair physics tech and reflections but I can trade that for 65” and HDR. 60fps with the ray tracing looks like the key graphics highlight here 

[mmmark]

I’ve got a month of Ubisoft+ to play this. Rest of the week sorted 😀