I know this game is a little out of my wheelhouse, but there was just a ton I wanted to show you and talk to you about in it. I'm hoping to gradually expand my repertoire beyond just Skyrim, Pokémon, and Zelda to include other games and game series-- what others should I start to work in?
I'm here for your talking points and the "curation" of these spaces more than anything. Not sure how others feel but I'd watch this series if it was a game I'd never heard of. That said, Horizon Zero Dawn, if you're looking for ideas 😆
I found the dude dying on the way to the quiet place as oddly poetic. As if their existences are fundamentally incompatible, and he couldn’t get there alive. As a NPC, he’s destined to be loud, in a loud place. Mildly saddening.
In Deus Ex Human Revolution, any time you're in the streets of Detroit you'll hear a stock sound effect of a woman screaming in the distance. It gets really bizarre the twentieth time you hear it, after hours of real-time and days in-game have passed.
I usually tell people to think of the first game as a sort of tech demo for the other games in the series. 90% of stuff in AC1 falls into the category of "things you're supposed to run past and never look at again." It gets a little weird if you camp out in populated areas for a while and just let the NPC scripts run. For example, the top of the hill as you enter Jerusalem (I think, it's been a minute), where you can see the walls but you haven't actually approached the city yet. There's a constant supply of people leaving the city, which normally you'd gallop past on your horse and forget about. But if you just camp there for a while, the NPCs build up and eventually you have this absolute river of identical people marching up the hill toward you, which is probably not supposed to happen because you're not supposed to just sit there staring at them for an hour. The other games are slightly better about this.
Both this game and the first Mass Effect I felt were like this. Both are a little too rigid in the symmetry of their world, structure, and cast, a little shallow in some places, with more emphasis on the construction of a balanced and cohesive whole from a macro level than an actual minute-to-minute compelling experience or narrative, or real depth of connection between the characters. The mechanics, though solid, also in some places hint at a depth of concept without fully embracing it or integrating it into level and enemy design and variety. Having seen success as proof of concept and received feedback, the second games then take off with some of those elements and are a little less trippy.
Reminds me of the call of duty games, they always try to push you forward fast because the games start losing a LOT of immersion when you just stop for a few seconds after the NPCs have done their animations.
@@VeronicaWarlock Interestingly, Mass Effect Andromeda has similar vibes because of the struggles they had making the game, resulting in a lot of vast, empty space on planets and maps that were clearly rushed or scaled down from the original concept. Character models look like they belong in the first game. The underground vaults in particular are massive, mostly empty, and have that classic, brutalist design that Bioware loved so much. The vibe of the whole thing is just as trippy. I get why people didn't like the game (let's be honest it's not exactly good) but there's just...something about it.
@@Ledraalihonestly I’ll have to take your word for it. I never got past the first place where they let you loose on a vast open planet surface. Not the jungle map, the next one, I think it was a desert, where you drive around. I had no idea what to do, and I wasn’t attached enough to my crew to stick around. Even in the first game, I never felt like that. It did give me similar vibes, map-wise, but I just felt so untethered. I had a similar thing with Assassins Creed 3.
The garden in the back is a reference to the actual legend surrounding the Assassins IRL. Supposedly the leader would drug new members, have them wake up in the garden surrounded by beautiful women to convince them he had the power to send them and bring them back from heaven. IIRC this get alluded to when Al Mualim punishes Altair for the botched mission at the beginning of the game.
@@ZorroXidoMore the fact that Desmond couldn’t synchronize correctly with Altair (both because Desmond was stressed, and this memory was a trauma with a high level of stress for Altair)
@@Amikeur I don't remember well but I think Altair was surrounded by women, the real assassin's used drugs and then they were with the harem for, you know, even the word assassin's come from hashashiins, and means users of hashish, maybe you are right I don't know, but it's interesting that the effects of that scene are similar to the effects of the hashish, sounds with reverb, blurred faces and the effect of lag and double image of the camera
It sort of reminds me how Shadow of the Colossus basically makes an entire game world of these transitional spaces, save for a few collectibles you'd only know of from experimentation or outside trivia, and somehow turns that eerie feeling of not-quite-belonging into the entire atmosphere of the Forbidden Lands. Meanwhile here in Assassin's Creed it's like... they just didn't think you wouldn't have a horse sometimes? Bizarre game.
When the original came out I started an interactive website for each map square that showed what was there ruins, geography, fruit, lizards etc. so I explored the hell out of the game. I ended up only finishing about jalf the squares though.
What I love about the first Assassin's Creed in particular is the atmosphere. What I notice about it, that I believe was intentional and makes it perfect for one of these videos is that a lot of the game feels like a dream. When you think about the nature of the Animus, it makes total sense. Desmond is effectively in a forced coma and what he's experiencing is a cross between a dream and a highly immersive video game. It's reconstructing a memory locked in his DNA from an ancestor. Memories often have an etheral nature to them - imagine how a memory from a thousand years ago would be to think back on. Then there's the nature of the Animus creating an aproximation of things according to its programming and it can glitch out at times. The more games that come out in the series, the more they dilute that orginal concept and atmosphere. Later games also seemed to focus more on the technological nature of the animus. That orginal game is so unique.
I never processed it quite that way but you're exactly right. Immediately what comes to mind is the soundtrack's occasional Gregorian chanting combined with the Animus' AI voice. For an action-adventure game it's very surreal. Even comparing the Abstergo office in the first game to the rest of Abstergo seen in the escape sequence of AC2 (and later AC3) there is a clear loss of liminal unease.
@kivadacosta I think it's because the original director of the game, the guy who came up with the idea, was ousted by Ubisoft. I can't remember the details, but I think he left midway through Revelations and even then, his influence on the game was waining. That's why there's such a tonal shift with 3 onwards, I believe. The original director likes kind of philosophical, abstract ideas. The lack of the original vision is why I think most projects feel hollow now.
I wonder how much that ethereal feeling was intentional. AC1 was a very early HD game and a somewhat early 3D open-world game. It makes sense that it would have areas that are both unnecessarily large and unnecessarily detailed, but neither to the extent of actually being realistic.
Its kind of like a different form of the matrix that isn't quite as advanced and just has basic templates at times because it is going off memories which might not always be perfect on details in unimportant places. It doesn't need to fool you because you go in knowingly.
I'm so glad someone is talking about this! The original game was so dreamy, so liminal and just so melancholic.. There's something about the vast emptiness of it's world and it's washed out colors, but also the constant awareness of being in a video game. These kinds of spaces in video games are so fascinating. I have many memories of being ill, staying home and spending the whole day wandering around in games like this. Great video!
the low fps added to the dreaminess. watching this video 15+ years after my last time playing it and seeing the game with smooth motion is weird, also i dont know why i didnt notice it as a kid but this game has better graphics than ac2, the latter has more and better animation/voice acting so the kid me probably overlooked the graphics.
If you ended up looking at AC2, places in that game that give me this same kind of vibe: - uninhabited houses in the Apennine Mountains - some parts of the Assassin tombs - places in the final mission in Rome (not meant to be explored until the sequel) - Ezio's very odd bedroom/study/gallery in the attic of the villa
I have some questions about the internal logic of the machinery in the tombs. Who built this? How does it work? Why does it have to be so big? The whole Ezio trilogy is like this
@@icarusgaming6269 Pretty sure the tombs in 2 are built by Ezio's ancestors and they were built to secure artifacts, treasures and assassin seals that locked away the Armour of Altair. The ones in Brotherhood were probably built long ago by the Roman assasins and maintained by the Cult of Romulus. The Revelations though, are a mystery. Like the Lighthouse Tomb is just beyond any logic
The AppeninenMountais from AC 2 its like Kingdom from AC1. A lot of interesting space and views, very beautiful. So empy, nothing to do. Very off. Its something very magical for me.
Interesting compliment. The vibe I get from these videos is "listening to a buddy go on a monologue about a really specific aspect of a game he's only half playing while sometimes going off on tangents and hitting the bong again". Makes it sound kinda dumb, but it's actually pretty chill and interesting, definitely refreshing after the 100th video essay about how Skyrim is Skyrim.
AC 1 is a very odd game. There's so many elements in it that seem relics of an earlier development period or that seem out of place. One thing that always fascinated/frustrated me in the game was that during the mission to kill the Merchant-King, you can learn a piece of intel that there's an easy path up to where he is, but if you actually spend time looking for the path, it doesn't seem to exist. So much of the game seems to just exist without a real purpose; like most of the Kingdom is just empty space full of enemies with some busywork collectibles. I would really love to see a remake of this game.
Yea I feel like all the “investigating” is like that! Sort of disappointing but in a way it just kinda makes it a chill game to play with an awesome setting. I beat it yesterday and enjoyed it for sure.
The Kingdom is such a waste. It’s full of beautiful environments but not exploited at all, and as guards are constantly chasing us in there it limits exploration
That path does exist, you get the path described right in the intel ( there's a little drawing) and it takes you up to a beam from which you can air assassinate the merchant King. But yeah there are some things left out in the game, if you consider the kingdom for example, there are many areas in it which are not used at all in the story, like that area with the Roman ruins which is beautiful by the way..
@@vitoumbertoceliberti227 Air assassinations proper don't exist in AC1; unless you mean like a high profile assasination performed from a slightly higher vantage point
@@bigcat5348 Yes I mean that, technically that's an air assassination, even though it has a height limit of execution and you can only do it if the target is in a diagonal trajectory from where you are.
as a game designer myself, I must say that the unique joy you're able to find in the worlds we create is absolutely delightful. it is a breath of fresh air how you choose to find the good even in the "useless" experiences
You somehow awakened a feeling that I used to have when exploring these worlds as a kid. I remember watching and analyzing different environments on games and imagining how people would use this places and just “roleplay”. Those were good times
The stagnant black moat around the abandoned mansion might be my favorite odd and remarkable place yet. Wow. What an absolute seam of a place. It would've been really consistent with AC1 design philosophy to throw some guards in there or lower a gate so that you couldn't re-access the area, and I'm so glad they didn't.
It’s kind of impossible to explain. I’ve played through the game about 3 times in the past ~12 years, and it is still inescapably entrancing in the way something like Lego Star Wars is - the latter is a game I can’t remember a time before. AC1, on the other hand, I first played in 2011 because it came with Revelations on PS3. I was ~10, so it isn’t entirely nostalgia, especially because I had 3 AC’s under my belt by that point. It’s so infectious and I really can’t figure out why. I guess the purity and simplicity of the experience, alongside the PS3 charm really creates an atmosphere
6:49 Dude that is so true. This made me reminisce about that one time I played RDR2. That game gave that feeling of "this totally unreal patch of land made out of polygons feels like a real place because it was lived in by many sorts of humans" when I revisit the old camp sites. It gave me this nostalgic feeling that I don't even own.
Need For Speed Most Wanted (2005) has some really beautiful New England looking environments. And being a racing game, players almost never stop to just look around even though there are some beautiful autumn tree lines, mountains, harbors with moving ships, stadiums you can drive in, ect. And it has this weird combination of being really detailed at a glance, yet not detailed at all once you really look at it. (Since you'll only spend a second or two there.) It's surreal, like somebody trying to recreate the world but their only perspective of the world was looking at it for a split second through a car window.
That garden in the back of the castle is based off an old legend about the real life Nizari Assassins. As relayed by Marco Polo, the assassin headquarters contained a secret garden. During the final part of their training, assassin initiates were drugged with hashish and brought to the garden unconscious. Beautiful young women would greet the initiate when he awoke, before eventually being confronted by the assassin leader, Rashid ad-Din Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain (who the in-game character of Al Mualim is based off of). The Old Man would inform the initiate that this was a glimpse of the Islamic afterlife, and their only hope to return here was to assassinate the enemies of the Nizari. Obviously, modern scholars have refuted this as anti-Nizari propaganda. The garden was also said to be at Alamut, not Masyaf where the game takes place. But it's a popular part of the image of the historical Assassin Order, so of course Ubisoft was going to include it regardless.
I think the beautiful young women being shown to the initiates are meant to represent the 72 “hooris” that Muslim men will have access to when in heaven
He's been examining the powerlines of GTA 4 recently so there is hope for more GTA content. GTA five while significantly more populated has a lot of weird places too. Especially outside the city and under freeway passes, basically anywhere you were only ever intended to explore with a vehicle will feel weeeeeird on foot.
@@AmazingMrMe123to be fair we do have a lot of those places in real life too. Like the limnal sidewalks next to a suburban 4-lane main road. They're not really places where you're meant to be outside of a car.
@@magnusdagbro8226 yeah that's true for sure. Empty lots are some of my favorite places to stand. Like, anything could be here but instead there isn't.
I suggested this video when I first found your channel a year ago or something, I don't know if you got the idea directly from me, but I'd love to see more AC videos like this, in AC2 there's a whole area that's basically an unremarkable and odd place that connects Florence to Monteriggioni, you only ever really use it during a chase sequence on the story and has no reason at all to go back there, as well as the few houses and farms around the fort of Monteriggioni.
Yeah, I remember that there was one thing that got me about going back there, there is a tower that you blast past with Da Vinci, and it even has a perch to do a leap of faith. I 100%ed that game, but the last thing I need was to wear the auditore cloak in all provinces. I thought I had done it, and did each area twice, but the achievement didnt pop. I was confused, but then I was looking at the map and saw that region. I went there, found the tower we had blown past, and climbed to. The leap of faith spot. I put the cloak on, and voilá, Achievement unlocked. As it was the last thing I needed, I saved the game there, and that is where I left ezio, until this day. Come to think of it, that does some like an Austin video, where do you feel like you shoul leave a character after a game is done?
This is so interesting, reminds me of how I used to play games. Just go anywhere, random nooks and dead ends and places in the world. Before I understood how games lead you around and how games expect you to interact. Just wandering aimlessly, down side being I'd get stuck and not know what to do but I'd at least absorb everything in these weird little worlds. I play way more efficiently now so I have time to experience the main bits of games but man I miss being able to just wander and wonder in these worlds. I'd drop like 3 hours driving around free mode in Mx vs ATV untamed(might be cool for this series) doing nothing just going around the map
Lately I've had an obsession with games that help you to not get stuck without outright pointing you exactly where you need to go and holding your hand the whole way there while they're at it, and AC1 is the progenitor of this. There are so many unique lines of dialogue, recognizable landmarks, and odd NPC interactions that radially draw you toward your objective. Listen carefully to where the rafiq tells you to go and just go there. It helps to have Wiktionary open so you can parse the Arabic. If all else fails, Eagle Vision will tell you if someone is important or not. Even the bureau has a distinct green, onion-shaped tower to guide you back. The problem is you can skip all of this by just climbing a few viewpoints and robbing yourself of the experience. In fact, every HUD element tells you a piece of information the game already provides in a more immersive way. Turn them all off, as was originally intended. I've since figured out Spider-Man has a lot of this if you keep your finger off the scan and map buttons, and of course Ghost of Tsushima has some pretty organic exploration tools. I hear Elden Ring is pretty good for this. I think I really just need to play The Outer Wilds
I would recommend setting aside some time to do this again. Experiences like these can form a lot more powerful and meaningful memories than just playing through games in the standard way. I have a lot of good memories of flying around the castle grounds of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Gamecube).
I never knew I needed this in my life but I loved it. The Kingdom is full of great places for a sequel video. My favorites are the roman ruins and the village next to a lake. I love all the villages though, they're fully built out for parkour like the big cities but you never have to go to any of them and they might as well not exist unless you love collecting flags. They always make me think what it would've been like if they added gameplay to those villages, maybe have a target or two in the Kingdom as well.
That last place ironically illustrates a primary theme in this entry of the series (the philosophy of the Creed). Is Altair just a pawn? Is it alright that he is just a pawn? What value did the Creed bring in eliminating this particular target? Altair returning to the place that was once a party and is now lifeless reflects that maybe assassinating his target did not bring about the solution that he thought would happen. The Creed has blinded him, and he has yet to learn.
@IndyMiraaga Yes. I'm more talking about the broader story. How with each target, Altair begins to realize that although these targets do bad things, their confessions lead to developing Altair's worldview and his eventually realization that what was once a Creed to be "celebrated" under Mualim was actually a deception not worty of blind idolatry
Altair is such a good character, it was good to see his journey from a cocky assassin to a wise leader. Especially with the added context from Revelations and the Codex pages from AC2.
It demonstrates a primary *gameplay* theme, which is mission planning. Every investigation you do is only so you can unlock intel in your memory log. Every citizen you save is only so you can get vigilantes or monks to help with your next mission. The reason you can visit mission locations outside of the setpeice is so you can practice your plan ahead of time
One of my fav bits of environmental storytelling ever in a videogame was in the original AC - discovering Altair's left hand ring finger is missing. As I remember it is never mentioned in the game, and you wouldn't even notice unless you looked really closely, and by accident. We learn in AC2 assassins have that finger cut off to accommodate the hidden blade and commitment to the creed (not to marry), but, and correct me if I'm wrong, there is never any allusion to it in the first AC. Such a cool discovery as a player, to not be told this, then to piece it together yourself. Will always remember that moment.
It was expected that it would have been noticed when, at the end of the game, [spoilers] Lucy puts her hand to her chest and closes her ring finger, making it appear "missing", to signal to Desmond her belonging to the Assassins.
I was literally just doing this for fun on my own time the other day (walking around AC1 after beating it, looking at the world building) and visited some of these places myself. Love this commentary, love this idea. Also totally fascinated and mildly obsessed with the idea of standing in places outside of any point or reward structure in games. Instant subscribe.
There is a reason in AC1's reward structure to visit a mission location outside the setpeice. It's in the intel you're awarded for completing investigations, hidden deep away in your memory log. Making a plan with the 2D maps will already take your assassinations from city-wide brawls to confident infiltrations, but practicing your plan ahead of time to work out any unforseen complications will make it airtight. That's why these places are open to you at any time
God I always love this series but especially this one. "When was the last time you just sat in your backyard" got me way too good. Something I used to do often before work and "life" consumed any waking free time. Even being out there with other people or doing gardening is a "task" of some sort.
It's so silly but I definitely do things like you did there trying to bring an NPC to a place they were never meant to go. I want to see these thoughtless beings "experience" something new.
I've always loved the earlier games in this series for this reason, sure the assassin stuff is fun and all but they just have such an interesting and kind of ethereal feeling to them in certain places, like the world is full of mysteries and secrets hidden just out of sight. I think it's most prominent in the first 2 games and then it gradually faded away as they got more refined and less creative.
I have always loved these sort of areas in video games. Though I've always found it hard to put into words the weird blend of nostalgic, peaceful, yet slightly disturbing and uncanny vibe that they have. But videos like this one bring me joy that others also understand this unique feeling, you are totally right about things like the feeling of being watched, the 'residual energy' and the 'sound of someone, somewhere doing something that you'll never find'
Yeah Ac 1 and 2 always sorta had that weird feeling to me that like we’re not supposed to be playing this. Also since the developers were sorta constrained with how much they could do and since the missions are repetitive it makes it feel like a simulation where not everything is perfect. Which is what it is story wise. Then you have the whole holy land aspect in 1 and the glyph puzzles in 2 which reveal the whole thing with adam and eve which isn’t explained until later games. Makes me feel like we were never supposed to see it.
Wasn't there also the fact that AC1 was originally designed to be played without any HUD or objective marker, but the uppers at Ubisoft freaked out and asked for the gameplay to be retooled at the last minute? Leading AC2 to become the template for the Ubisoft Open World Collectathon Borefest that we all know and love?
@@HellPeYou only have to collect codex pages to progress. The villa makes way more money than you'll ever need. The first AC that mandated a voracious appetite for side content was Black Flag with its statted ship combat
@@icarusgaming6269 I've managed to find the article evoking the AC1 design choices, but TH-cam apparently deleted my previous comment with its URL. Search for "HUD-less Design of Assassin's Creed 1"
that one horse road in Masyaf is also just a perfect transition from your home village to the unforgiving openworld known as Kingdom, so i really like the way it's designed
wow this is just a good TH-cam video. no ads, minimal post-production, a completely random but interesting topic and just a regular dude narrating it with. feels like sitting in your room at 8 pm and watching random videos, when you should be doing your homework.
If any newcomer wants to play this gem of a game. 1. Disable HUD, never enable it. Game is designed to be played without the HUD. Bureau leaders give you directions, you can make out the landmarks after some exploration. Climbing towers is useful that way. 2. Don't fast travel. Look around, the Kingdom is serene, full of untold stories. It is immersive to contemplate what the targets said, and how Al Mualim will respond to you on your way back. Coming back to Masyaf and seeing the reveal of the castle is remarkable as well. 3. Optional missions have no point. Flags, every 420 of them, are put to make fun of the completionists. No need to bother.
My freshmen year of college was 2007. AC 1 was a going-away gift from my mom, so I've always kind of cherished this game, warts and all, and still follow the series to this day.
I started highschool in 2007, I bought the game because jade raymond (she was everywhere promoting the game) and honestly, I think it sucks, never bothered to complete it 100% and didn't play it again (nor any other game from the series).
I really liked your note on how we treat spaces in video games that look nice but dont have direct purposes, because i think these places are still important to people, my favorite example is Final Fantasy XIV, where a sizable comunity of people will put on their nicest/cutest/silliest outfit and stand in a nice place, theyre a pillar of the community!
I forgot how gray this game is. A stylistic choice, certainly, but it does remind me of how a lot of games (particularly open world games) in this era just looked really bland because they were all going for some sort of gritty realism as though this gritty, real world we actually live in doesn't have color. 9:32 I like that tree just chilling at the top of that cliff in the background. Another example of something that really doesn't need to be there, but it makes it feel a bit more natural.
Always enjoy this series. I feel like most people don't appreciate enough the amount of little details and personality that goes into some video games.
The odd singsong voices in the travel areas have been in my head forever, I LOVE them, I love the mood they create. The in-between maps and travelling between the cities was always some of my favourite gameplay, I used to just walk the horse all the way from one city to another, just for the atmosphere. To me it really captured a sense of living history, even with the random American accent in the middle 😂
My first Any Austin video and i love it. This is so unlike many other gaming videos because this is so chill, you're not trying to add hype crazy edits, just enjoying the vibe. Even the little music sting when you transition from scene to scene! Love it. Good series to relax to
I don't know which assassin's creed it was, but the thumbnail made me remember a time I got stuck inside a wall next to a river and I found no way out other than closing and reopening the game Edit: I just realised it's not the first AC because Altair can't swim so it was probably the ezio trilogy
6:50 i always felt the same way about the beginning of Destiny in the Cosmodrome. you used to be able to get to the very very beginning where ghost woke you up and walk around and kinda just listen to the ambiance. you had to pass through this hallway that was bathed in orange sunlight. all around good vibes. the beginning of destiny. what a feeling
More assassin's creed would be a treat for sure. I think that a lot of places in these games count for this series and a lot of it is because, like you mentioned, you go through an area in a linear way and never need to return.
This is hands down my fave route series on this channel. probably my new favourite gaming thing on TH-cam. it’s like your exposing the small cracks in a world that at first glance seems to be cohesive and logical. I wonder what weird reality cracks exist like that in our world that we just haven’t happened to notice.
Having no connection to this series, I find the video superb. Austin can keep me glued and introspective despite no experience playing these titles. Exemplary and fascinating.
been like 10+ years since i played but when you mentioned that courtyard area that hasn't been used yet, it got my brain goin until suddenly OH I REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENS THERE. and i love remembering random things so thanks for that.
Woah that washing machine analogy is fascinatingly relatable. I love hearing about very specific feelings/vibes that I’ve experienced, but hadn’t put into words before. It’s always comforting to me to be reminded how fundamentally similar all of our brains are. We’re not alone. Jeffrey Lewis said: “Everyone you meet is you divided by what they’ve been through.” (Check out his music, he’s great)
9:53 _"You can't just let people walk everywhere... at least we didn't think we could until Breath of the Wild came out"_ is kind of an ironic declaration here given that Assassin's Creed in 2007 was the game that did "go anywhere, climb on anything" within cities ten whole years before Breath of the Wild 'borrowed' this idea and just extended it outside urban spaces, but with a stamina mechanic previously seen in Shadow of the Colossus. BotW is constantly given credit for inventing all the things it lifted directly from other games (see also ermergent gameplay with elements and physics and navigating by landmarks).
I like the video though. Interesting examination of spaces and details... though I can't really agree that WE (meaning everyone) don't just explore spaces for its own sake in games or real life without needing distractions. That's literally my favourite thing about these games, just soaking in these places and all the little details. It's the thing Ubisoft does better than almost anyone, recreating these real historical places in a tangible way that you can freely explore. It's wonderful.
I'm just glad that there's someone else out there who thinks of open world games as just an amazing place to go for a hike or to see what there is to see. I love environments in video games and I especially love how character models interact with the environments (that's more my flavor, seeing how the player gets to interact with that environment).
9:30 I would've literally never thought of something like that until you pointed it out, that's crazy hahaha thank u austin Most of the time I do run through areas like that, thinking "wow it's really sick playing this assassin dude, I really do be feeling like an assassin rn." Or "dude wow I feel like mario" without actually thinking how much small details like that completely shift that feeling
9:30 I think that platform is used to hide a Masyaf flag collectible, so it's not entirely pointless 10:24 That garden is a reference to the book, the assassin grandmaster would promise his warriors an afterlife of beatiful gardens and women, something like Elysium, Valhalla, Jannah etc. Real life hashashin assassinations were told to be near suicide missions, so they needed some incentive.
I'm kinda new to your channel but your vibes are right up my ally. If there was a game that I thought deserved your attention, It's elder scrolls 3: morrowind. If youre thinking "ok, so old Skyrim?" kinda. but also not even close. And I can't explain it. But I promise, It's got the goods in ways that are almost...alien?
I love your videos! Please make more! Assassin's Creed is one of my favorite series, so I'm happy you made a vid on it! I also love standing on top of those useless arches in your first area.
This video could be extended by so many more places. I collected all the flags that were in this game, for absolutely no purpose, and a lot of them really show how big the empty part of this world is. The entire kingdom that you usually skip by fast travelling is pretty much empty apart from a few guards that have no apparent meaning. To my knowledge, there is also no explanation of the red-helmet knights that stand around at completely random places. Also noteworthy: The kingdom has a surprising amount of lakes. Assassins Creed usually tries to be historically correct with its cities, but the kingdom seems completely fictional.
Those Templars are actually kind of cool. They're highly dangerous if they catch you off guard, but once you manage to kill one, he's gone forever, rendering that area safer to operate in. They're playing on permadeath mode
I just wanna say, thanks to your videos I find myself actually paying attention more to skyboxes in games like I was replaying Max Payne 1 and 2 and I was finding myself stopping and trying to really get a good look at the buildings in the background and the sky. I love your stuff.
really great pick for the series, and that last spot is amazing. its crazy to see how monotonous the color palettes of this era of AAA were. but beyond that theres actually some really gorgeous environments in here, so much handcrafted detail
I cannot describe how much I love this series and all the others where you look at some specific details. Reminds me of all the moments when I decide to stop in a random place and just stare at the skybox or landscape. An amazing feeling really.
would love to see this with more assassins creed games! something remarkable about unremarkable spots like this in a world that isn’t meant to just evoke a place that could exist, but to really try to BE a place that plausibly DID exist… man
Any chance you’d do an unremarkable and odd places for Quest 64? They had to abandon a lot of ideas during development so I feel like there’s a lot of interesting people/places being designed for something but ending up not getting used.
At the Mojave outpost in fallout New Vegas there is a locked gate to a large empty expanse of desert that is full of mountains and some plants but it is completely devoid of civilization aside from distant sounds of gun fire. This series made me think of that
9:48 I get where you are coming from, but I think a counterpoint that has developed since those times, is that nowadays people would check that platform expecting to find a collectible item of some kind, and when they don't find one, they will be slightly disappointed, and that's fine, but as these things add up over the course of the whole game, it can lead to players forming the opinion that there isn't much to find in the game's world, because every corner they turn expecting to find a little trinket is empty, it only exists for the sake of having a sense of location, when usually in modern games they exist as hiding spot for an item. There is also the question of whether collectible items even add much of substance to a game, it can be fun to hunt them down, but is that really the focus of your game or is it just a distraction? That's up to the developer to decide and the answer may vary, I've seen games where collectibles added to the experience, and I've seen other games where it was just some vapid pursuit that existed because that's what every game does, like an artificial inflation of play time. Maybe that's a problem, when spaces exist only as a context to contain a hidden collectible item, maybe for a more story-focused game it's better to not have those collectibles, and to not have these environments where there is nothing to be found... or maybe some game devs need to reasses how they intend for players to interact with the setting, and what it even means to be in these places, so that these "pointless" locations can exist just for the sake of existing, for the sake of giving the player the chance of being in that place, in that moment, experiencing the world of the game. 13:23 Honestly this seems kind of a waste of a location, look at this place, so much work must have gone into it, and they have only used it once? This would be a good place to have a minigame or side-quest or anything really, look at all of these assets and all of the effort that has gone into this level design, we only really see it once and that's a shame. This was a very cool video, I enjoyed being taken to these places, thank you.
I feel like many of the unremarkable places would be good as ambience content. Like, for us viewers to chill out in ourselves. Have you ever considered uploading clips like that (1 hour ambience i.e.)? Perhaps have a second "Unremarkable ambience" channel to refer to for people wanting more of the odd place in question, I dunno, just an idea.
This series definitely gets me thinking of all the strange liminal places I wandered into in games from my childhood, brings back some interesting memories. But also the liminal spaces in some of the bigger budget/super polished games today-- like I have a bonkers amount of hours in Cyberpunk, and it's relatively harder to find odd and unremarkable spaces due to the sheer amount of activities/etc. But the places that do feel like the cracks in between have a unique staying power compared to all of the incredibly minor side content I've somehow managed to memorize. I feel like I could write an essay on the spaces that feel vacant in that game
Based on the interactive load screens of the AC franchise and the empty weird area in the beginning, it makes me assume they wanted that area to mask a load screen while the next area loads, but they couldn't figure out the tech and left it as is. Like how they often use elevators in games. I have no evidence for this, but it's what it makes me feel like ,growing up with video games.
10:50 its the women being the virgins in the garden of earthly delights, the man on the mountain was said to give his assassins hashesh and put them in the garden of earthly delights before their mission - its from a book, tom holland crusades or history of assassins i think
There is something to being in an area with no perceived purpose and just enjoying it. Psychonauts 2 has an area in "Green Needle Gulch" with a little hot tub and the lighting there makes me feel very happy.
I would really like to see you cover rain world. It is full of these "not exactly environmental storytelling" landmarks you mentioned in the video and i really think you'd enjoy it!
5:30 I love the idea of someone giving a tour of a city, only to be accosted by guards, but instead of being afraid, they're just mildly annoyed. They kill the guards in a violent fashion and then continue the tour.
Oh yeah all the asscreeds did this particularly well. Despite being widely panned as an actual game, Unity was my favorite for this. You can just park yourself in a spot and just enjoy the ambiance like you're having a coffee in a time machine
I ABSOLUTELY love this content! I would honestly love to see more of this for more Assassin's Creed, culminating in a long vid exploring the evolution of unremarkable place within Assassin's Creed (and then tackle other series afterwards)
I remember really enjoying the feeling of places like these in Jak2/3, maybe you should check them out. Lots of funny little environmental details like this that are kinda in that compelling area between realism, imagination, and uncanny valley.
About the whole kinda balance with Realism and Game, I think AC2 is one of the best ones at that, cuz a lot of the games try to go for mostly real architecture, but in AC2 there's a lot of level design in the cities that aren't really realistic at all, but make it really fun to just run around in
11:30 This is why i love austin Sometimes we're just here to look at random places while he says nosense, but most(?) Of the time we're actually here to hear austin go on a philosophycal rant about how we lost the ability as a society to appreciate the little things in life that humanity used to care about in ways beyond artistic. ...or something like that.
I haven't played assassin's creed but the courtyard of women is likely related to the original story of the assassins in real life, where a guy was kidnapped, taken to a resort of hot women, and the grandmaster said if you complete an assassination then you can come back here and hook up with the ladies.
Man, you really forget just how monotone, grey, beige, green-ish games from this era were. Like dang, there really is no color in the original Assassin's Creed.
love this series. Makes me nostalgic for the times before the internet ruined everything were I'd just wander around Skyrim talking to myself, enjoying the world and the isolation.
13:59 this is so profound?! And i never thought to put it that way but yes opening the washing machine halfway through and staring into the dark water is unsettling
I know this game is a little out of my wheelhouse, but there was just a ton I wanted to show you and talk to you about in it. I'm hoping to gradually expand my repertoire beyond just Skyrim, Pokémon, and Zelda to include other games and game series-- what others should I start to work in?
I think you would have a *lot* of places to check out and experience in the Dark Souls series!
How about a video for the halo ce campaign? there's a few unremarkable and odd places there
Borderlands 1, Fallout 3, and Halo 2 could be great.
I'm here for your talking points and the "curation" of these spaces more than anything. Not sure how others feel but I'd watch this series if it was a game I'd never heard of.
That said, Horizon Zero Dawn, if you're looking for ideas 😆
Shadow of the Colossus is 90% Unremarkable and Odd places. Just a total playground of cool and somewhat uncomfortable scenery
He claims these are unremarkable places...but I just _know_ he's going to make some remarks.
P0wned
Oh, you better believe it.
He's a remarksist
😅😅😅😅
Here for the remarks, hoping i won't be disappointed.
*standing in the final boss arena*
“I’m sure this will be used for something.”
just wanted to make sure someone pointed it out.
😂 I specifically turned on my data to come to the comment section for this comment.
@@wearytaco1641how tf was you watching this if you couldn’t comment without ya data lol
@@spimblesdownloaded video beforehand probably
@@spimbles I have it downloaded so I can watch offline.
I found the dude dying on the way to the quiet place as oddly poetic. As if their existences are fundamentally incompatible, and he couldn’t get there alive. As a NPC, he’s destined to be loud, in a loud place. Mildly saddening.
Same
The concept of "the noises of someone doing something somewhere that you'll never find" just hits different
Me on an empty Garry's Mod map:
the dog barks in ac2 i think? used to make trip out.
In Deus Ex Human Revolution, any time you're in the streets of Detroit you'll hear a stock sound effect of a woman screaming in the distance. It gets really bizarre the twentieth time you hear it, after hours of real-time and days in-game have passed.
@@TriforceWisdom64 I mean it's realistic if it's Detroit
@ricardomiles2957 The person playing guitar in second mid inferno in counter strike
I usually tell people to think of the first game as a sort of tech demo for the other games in the series. 90% of stuff in AC1 falls into the category of "things you're supposed to run past and never look at again." It gets a little weird if you camp out in populated areas for a while and just let the NPC scripts run. For example, the top of the hill as you enter Jerusalem (I think, it's been a minute), where you can see the walls but you haven't actually approached the city yet. There's a constant supply of people leaving the city, which normally you'd gallop past on your horse and forget about. But if you just camp there for a while, the NPCs build up and eventually you have this absolute river of identical people marching up the hill toward you, which is probably not supposed to happen because you're not supposed to just sit there staring at them for an hour. The other games are slightly better about this.
I gotta try this
Both this game and the first Mass Effect I felt were like this. Both are a little too rigid in the symmetry of their world, structure, and cast, a little shallow in some places, with more emphasis on the construction of a balanced and cohesive whole from a macro level than an actual minute-to-minute compelling experience or narrative, or real depth of connection between the characters. The mechanics, though solid, also in some places hint at a depth of concept without fully embracing it or integrating it into level and enemy design and variety. Having seen success as proof of concept and received feedback, the second games then take off with some of those elements and are a little less trippy.
Reminds me of the call of duty games, they always try to push you forward fast because the games start losing a LOT of immersion when you just stop for a few seconds after the NPCs have done their animations.
@@VeronicaWarlock Interestingly, Mass Effect Andromeda has similar vibes because of the struggles they had making the game, resulting in a lot of vast, empty space on planets and maps that were clearly rushed or scaled down from the original concept. Character models look like they belong in the first game. The underground vaults in particular are massive, mostly empty, and have that classic, brutalist design that Bioware loved so much. The vibe of the whole thing is just as trippy. I get why people didn't like the game (let's be honest it's not exactly good) but there's just...something about it.
@@Ledraalihonestly I’ll have to take your word for it. I never got past the first place where they let you loose on a vast open planet surface. Not the jungle map, the next one, I think it was a desert, where you drive around. I had no idea what to do, and I wasn’t attached enough to my crew to stick around. Even in the first game, I never felt like that. It did give me similar vibes, map-wise, but I just felt so untethered. I had a similar thing with Assassins Creed 3.
The garden in the back is a reference to the actual legend surrounding the Assassins IRL. Supposedly the leader would drug new members, have them wake up in the garden surrounded by beautiful women to convince them he had the power to send them and bring them back from heaven. IIRC this get alluded to when Al Mualim punishes Altair for the botched mission at the beginning of the game.
That’s tight
in the beggining the faces of the people are blurried, thats an effect of the hashish
@@ZorroXidoMore the fact that Desmond couldn’t synchronize correctly with Altair (both because Desmond was stressed, and this memory was a trauma with a high level of stress for Altair)
@@Amikeur I don't remember well but I think Altair was surrounded by women, the real assassin's used drugs and then they were with the harem for, you know, even the word assassin's come from hashashiins, and means users of hashish, maybe you are right I don't know, but it's interesting that the effects of that scene are similar to the effects of the hashish, sounds with reverb, blurred faces and the effect of lag and double image of the camera
@@ZorroXido It's either that or the Animus's "feature" that gets patched in the new version, like Altair not being able to swim
I love how Austin's take on the themes of the game is: "there's a lot of religion and shit"
Gasping gashes, wadda you doing ‘ere?
It's not like he's wrong. Assassin's Creed avoids actually saying much of anything on the topic.
just doin some philosophy
"I like when stuff is in a place"
Preach brother.
It sort of reminds me how Shadow of the Colossus basically makes an entire game world of these transitional spaces, save for a few collectibles you'd only know of from experimentation or outside trivia, and somehow turns that eerie feeling of not-quite-belonging into the entire atmosphere of the Forbidden Lands. Meanwhile here in Assassin's Creed it's like... they just didn't think you wouldn't have a horse sometimes?
Bizarre game.
For sure - Shadow of the Colossus is basically "Unremarkable and Odd Spaces - The Video Game".
@@ReverendTed ICO as well, it's 100% like that.
When the original came out I started an interactive website for each map square that showed what was there ruins, geography, fruit, lizards etc. so I explored the hell out of the game. I ended up only finishing about jalf the squares though.
What I love about the first Assassin's Creed in particular is the atmosphere. What I notice about it, that I believe was intentional and makes it perfect for one of these videos is that a lot of the game feels like a dream. When you think about the nature of the Animus, it makes total sense. Desmond is effectively in a forced coma and what he's experiencing is a cross between a dream and a highly immersive video game. It's reconstructing a memory locked in his DNA from an ancestor. Memories often have an etheral nature to them - imagine how a memory from a thousand years ago would be to think back on. Then there's the nature of the Animus creating an aproximation of things according to its programming and it can glitch out at times. The more games that come out in the series, the more they dilute that orginal concept and atmosphere. Later games also seemed to focus more on the technological nature of the animus. That orginal game is so unique.
I never processed it quite that way but you're exactly right. Immediately what comes to mind is the soundtrack's occasional Gregorian chanting combined with the Animus' AI voice. For an action-adventure game it's very surreal. Even comparing the Abstergo office in the first game to the rest of Abstergo seen in the escape sequence of AC2 (and later AC3) there is a clear loss of liminal unease.
@kivadacosta I think it's because the original director of the game, the guy who came up with the idea, was ousted by Ubisoft. I can't remember the details, but I think he left midway through Revelations and even then, his influence on the game was waining. That's why there's such a tonal shift with 3 onwards, I believe. The original director likes kind of philosophical, abstract ideas. The lack of the original vision is why I think most projects feel hollow now.
Exactly what I was thinking too!
I wonder how much that ethereal feeling was intentional. AC1 was a very early HD game and a somewhat early 3D open-world game. It makes sense that it would have areas that are both unnecessarily large and unnecessarily detailed, but neither to the extent of actually being realistic.
Its kind of like a different form of the matrix that isn't quite as advanced and just has basic templates at times because it is going off memories which might not always be perfect on details in unimportant places. It doesn't need to fool you because you go in knowingly.
I'm so glad someone is talking about this! The original game was so dreamy, so liminal and just so melancholic.. There's something about the vast emptiness of it's world and it's washed out colors, but also the constant awareness of being in a video game. These kinds of spaces in video games are so fascinating. I have many memories of being ill, staying home and spending the whole day wandering around in games like this. Great video!
the low fps added to the dreaminess. watching this video 15+ years after my last time playing it and seeing the game with smooth motion is weird, also i dont know why i didnt notice it as a kid but this game has better graphics than ac2, the latter has more and better animation/voice acting so the kid me probably overlooked the graphics.
If you ended up looking at AC2, places in that game that give me this same kind of vibe:
- uninhabited houses in the Apennine Mountains
- some parts of the Assassin tombs
- places in the final mission in Rome (not meant to be explored until the sequel)
- Ezio's very odd bedroom/study/gallery in the attic of the villa
I have some questions about the internal logic of the machinery in the tombs. Who built this? How does it work? Why does it have to be so big? The whole Ezio trilogy is like this
@@icarusgaming6269
Pretty sure the tombs in 2 are built by Ezio's ancestors and they were built to secure artifacts, treasures and assassin seals that locked away the Armour of Altair.
The ones in Brotherhood were probably built long ago by the Roman assasins and maintained by the Cult of Romulus.
The Revelations though, are a mystery. Like the Lighthouse Tomb is just beyond any logic
The AppeninenMountais from AC 2 its like Kingdom from AC1.
A lot of interesting space and views, very beautiful. So empy, nothing to do. Very off.
Its something very magical for me.
The Appenine mountains also have the same music as kingdom from ac
@@Graf-Fischgen-von-Fischgesicht I didnt notice that, maybe thats its why I make the relation.
The biggest empy spaces of AC franchise.
The silence is deafening. I had no idea it was possible in AC1.
This is my second favorite series on youtube please never stop nobody does like you
number 1 is mr beast
"nobody does like you" 😔
(jk, I know what you meant)
Number 1 is unemployment surveys
Interesting compliment. The vibe I get from these videos is "listening to a buddy go on a monologue about a really specific aspect of a game he's only half playing while sometimes going off on tangents and hitting the bong again". Makes it sound kinda dumb, but it's actually pretty chill and interesting, definitely refreshing after the 100th video essay about how Skyrim is Skyrim.
@@any_austin This aged poorly.
AC 1 is a very odd game. There's so many elements in it that seem relics of an earlier development period or that seem out of place. One thing that always fascinated/frustrated me in the game was that during the mission to kill the Merchant-King, you can learn a piece of intel that there's an easy path up to where he is, but if you actually spend time looking for the path, it doesn't seem to exist. So much of the game seems to just exist without a real purpose; like most of the Kingdom is just empty space full of enemies with some busywork collectibles.
I would really love to see a remake of this game.
Yea I feel like all the “investigating” is like that! Sort of disappointing but in a way it just kinda makes it a chill game to play with an awesome setting. I beat it yesterday and enjoyed it for sure.
The Kingdom is such a waste. It’s full of beautiful environments but not exploited at all, and as guards are constantly chasing us in there it limits exploration
That path does exist, you get the path described right in the intel ( there's a little drawing) and it takes you up to a beam from which you can air assassinate the merchant King. But yeah there are some things left out in the game, if you consider the kingdom for example, there are many areas in it which are not used at all in the story, like that area with the Roman ruins which is beautiful by the way..
@@vitoumbertoceliberti227 Air assassinations proper don't exist in AC1; unless you mean like a high profile assasination performed from a slightly higher vantage point
@@bigcat5348 Yes I mean that, technically that's an air assassination, even though it has a height limit of execution and you can only do it if the target is in a diagonal trajectory from where you are.
as a game designer myself, I must say that the unique joy you're able to find in the worlds we create is absolutely delightful. it is a breath of fresh air how you choose to find the good even in the "useless" experiences
You somehow awakened a feeling that I used to have when exploring these worlds as a kid.
I remember watching and analyzing different environments on games and imagining how people would use this places and just “roleplay”.
Those were good times
The stagnant black moat around the abandoned mansion might be my favorite odd and remarkable place yet. Wow. What an absolute seam of a place. It would've been really consistent with AC1 design philosophy to throw some guards in there or lower a gate so that you couldn't re-access the area, and I'm so glad they didn't.
I was really into these early assassins creed games, and AC1 really does just have that FEEL to doesn't it?
it’s got rizz
It’s kind of impossible to explain. I’ve played through the game about 3 times in the past ~12 years, and it is still inescapably entrancing in the way something like Lego Star Wars is - the latter is a game I can’t remember a time before. AC1, on the other hand, I first played in 2011 because it came with Revelations on PS3. I was ~10, so it isn’t entirely nostalgia, especially because I had 3 AC’s under my belt by that point.
It’s so infectious and I really can’t figure out why. I guess the purity and simplicity of the experience, alongside the PS3 charm really creates an atmosphere
Definitely. This game had so much character to it.
@@any_austin Jade Raymond had some rizz for sure, she sold me this game.
While these places may be unremarkable, this series sure is remarkable to me. Great stuff.
6:49 Dude that is so true. This made me reminisce about that one time I played RDR2. That game gave that feeling of "this totally unreal patch of land made out of polygons feels like a real place because it was lived in by many sorts of humans" when I revisit the old camp sites. It gave me this nostalgic feeling that I don't even own.
Need For Speed Most Wanted (2005) has some really beautiful New England looking environments.
And being a racing game, players almost never stop to just look around even though there are some beautiful autumn tree lines, mountains, harbors with moving ships, stadiums you can drive in, ect.
And it has this weird combination of being really detailed at a glance, yet not detailed at all once you really look at it. (Since you'll only spend a second or two there.)
It's surreal, like somebody trying to recreate the world but their only perspective of the world was looking at it for a split second through a car window.
That garden in the back of the castle is based off an old legend about the real life Nizari Assassins.
As relayed by Marco Polo, the assassin headquarters contained a secret garden. During the final part of their training, assassin initiates were drugged with hashish and brought to the garden unconscious. Beautiful young women would greet the initiate when he awoke, before eventually being confronted by the assassin leader, Rashid ad-Din Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain (who the in-game character of Al Mualim is based off of). The Old Man would inform the initiate that this was a glimpse of the Islamic afterlife, and their only hope to return here was to assassinate the enemies of the Nizari.
Obviously, modern scholars have refuted this as anti-Nizari propaganda. The garden was also said to be at Alamut, not Masyaf where the game takes place. But it's a popular part of the image of the historical Assassin Order, so of course Ubisoft was going to include it regardless.
I think the beautiful young women being shown to the initiates are meant to represent the 72 “hooris” that Muslim men will have access to when in heaven
@@meatiest1989
It's certainly possible. But the whole story is likely a myth, since the Nizari had a lot of enemies, both inside and outside Islam.
Why woud it be antiNizari propaganda. It sounds awesome and very enticing
@@jozefcyran2589 cuz it makes the nizari sound like a bunch of druggies in a personality cult
thats definitely something al mualim would do lol, and altair would probably convert the garden to some boring recreational area
Your burnt log monologue is timeless.
A burnt mono"log"ue, if you will.
"Here, I'm gonna show you some peace and quite" *accidentally makes the peace and quire eternal*
Grand Theft Auto 4 would be great for this sort of video format. So many lovely little hidden alleys and courtyards in Liberty City and Alderney...
He's been examining the powerlines of GTA 4 recently so there is hope for more GTA content.
GTA five while significantly more populated has a lot of weird places too. Especially outside the city and under freeway passes, basically anywhere you were only ever intended to explore with a vehicle will feel weeeeeird on foot.
@@AmazingMrMe123to be fair we do have a lot of those places in real life too. Like the limnal sidewalks next to a suburban 4-lane main road. They're not really places where you're meant to be outside of a car.
@@magnusdagbro8226 yeah that's true for sure. Empty lots are some of my favorite places to stand. Like, anything could be here but instead there isn't.
I suggested this video when I first found your channel a year ago or something, I don't know if you got the idea directly from me, but I'd love to see more AC videos like this, in AC2 there's a whole area that's basically an unremarkable and odd place that connects Florence to Monteriggioni, you only ever really use it during a chase sequence on the story and has no reason at all to go back there, as well as the few houses and farms around the fort of Monteriggioni.
Yeah, I remember that there was one thing that got me about going back there, there is a tower that you blast past with Da Vinci, and it even has a perch to do a leap of faith. I 100%ed that game, but the last thing I need was to wear the auditore cloak in all provinces. I thought I had done it, and did each area twice, but the achievement didnt pop. I was confused, but then I was looking at the map and saw that region. I went there, found the tower we had blown past, and climbed to. The leap of faith spot. I put the cloak on, and voilá, Achievement unlocked. As it was the last thing I needed, I saved the game there, and that is where I left ezio, until this day.
Come to think of it, that does some like an Austin video, where do you feel like you shoul leave a character after a game is done?
This is so interesting, reminds me of how I used to play games. Just go anywhere, random nooks and dead ends and places in the world. Before I understood how games lead you around and how games expect you to interact. Just wandering aimlessly, down side being I'd get stuck and not know what to do but I'd at least absorb everything in these weird little worlds. I play way more efficiently now so I have time to experience the main bits of games but man I miss being able to just wander and wonder in these worlds. I'd drop like 3 hours driving around free mode in Mx vs ATV untamed(might be cool for this series) doing nothing just going around the map
Lately I've had an obsession with games that help you to not get stuck without outright pointing you exactly where you need to go and holding your hand the whole way there while they're at it, and AC1 is the progenitor of this. There are so many unique lines of dialogue, recognizable landmarks, and odd NPC interactions that radially draw you toward your objective. Listen carefully to where the rafiq tells you to go and just go there. It helps to have Wiktionary open so you can parse the Arabic. If all else fails, Eagle Vision will tell you if someone is important or not. Even the bureau has a distinct green, onion-shaped tower to guide you back. The problem is you can skip all of this by just climbing a few viewpoints and robbing yourself of the experience. In fact, every HUD element tells you a piece of information the game already provides in a more immersive way. Turn them all off, as was originally intended. I've since figured out Spider-Man has a lot of this if you keep your finger off the scan and map buttons, and of course Ghost of Tsushima has some pretty organic exploration tools. I hear Elden Ring is pretty good for this. I think I really just need to play The Outer Wilds
I would recommend setting aside some time to do this again. Experiences like these can form a lot more powerful and meaningful memories than just playing through games in the standard way. I have a lot of good memories of flying around the castle grounds of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Gamecube).
4:17 the NPC pop-in in the window behind Austin was awesome
😂
I never knew I needed this in my life but I loved it.
The Kingdom is full of great places for a sequel video.
My favorites are the roman ruins and the village next to a lake. I love all the villages though, they're fully built out for parkour like the big cities but you never have to go to any of them and they might as well not exist unless you love collecting flags. They always make me think what it would've been like if they added gameplay to those villages, maybe have a target or two in the Kingdom as well.
That last place ironically illustrates a primary theme in this entry of the series (the philosophy of the Creed). Is Altair just a pawn? Is it alright that he is just a pawn? What value did the Creed bring in eliminating this particular target?
Altair returning to the place that was once a party and is now lifeless reflects that maybe assassinating his target did not bring about the solution that he thought would happen. The Creed has blinded him, and he has yet to learn.
Isn't the target the one that kills everyone in the party though...?
@IndyMiraaga Yes. I'm more talking about the broader story. How with each target, Altair begins to realize that although these targets do bad things, their confessions lead to developing Altair's worldview and his eventually realization that what was once a Creed to be "celebrated" under Mualim was actually a deception not worty of blind idolatry
Altair is such a good character, it was good to see his journey from a cocky assassin to a wise leader. Especially with the added context from Revelations and the Codex pages from AC2.
It demonstrates a primary *gameplay* theme, which is mission planning. Every investigation you do is only so you can unlock intel in your memory log. Every citizen you save is only so you can get vigilantes or monks to help with your next mission. The reason you can visit mission locations outside of the setpeice is so you can practice your plan ahead of time
@@IndyMiraaga tbf they were a bunch of asswipes
Literally find peace watching these
I figuratively find turmoil watching them
Altair sure loves his liminal grove.
"Come here, I want to show you some peace and quiet."
*Murder*
Super excited to see this - you could honestly do an entire series of these for the bulk of the AC games
One of my fav bits of environmental storytelling ever in a videogame was in the original AC - discovering Altair's left hand ring finger is missing. As I remember it is never mentioned in the game, and you wouldn't even notice unless you looked really closely, and by accident.
We learn in AC2 assassins have that finger cut off to accommodate the hidden blade and commitment to the creed (not to marry), but, and correct me if I'm wrong, there is never any allusion to it in the first AC. Such a cool discovery as a player, to not be told this, then to piece it together yourself. Will always remember that moment.
It was expected that it would have been noticed when, at the end of the game, [spoilers]
Lucy puts her hand to her chest and closes her ring finger, making it appear "missing", to signal to Desmond her belonging to the Assassins.
I was literally just doing this for fun on my own time the other day (walking around AC1 after beating it, looking at the world building) and visited some of these places myself. Love this commentary, love this idea. Also totally fascinated and mildly obsessed with the idea of standing in places outside of any point or reward structure in games. Instant subscribe.
There is a reason in AC1's reward structure to visit a mission location outside the setpeice. It's in the intel you're awarded for completing investigations, hidden deep away in your memory log. Making a plan with the 2D maps will already take your assassinations from city-wide brawls to confident infiltrations, but practicing your plan ahead of time to work out any unforseen complications will make it airtight. That's why these places are open to you at any time
God I always love this series but especially this one. "When was the last time you just sat in your backyard" got me way too good. Something I used to do often before work and "life" consumed any waking free time. Even being out there with other people or doing gardening is a "task" of some sort.
It's so silly but I definitely do things like you did there trying to bring an NPC to a place they were never meant to go. I want to see these thoughtless beings "experience" something new.
I still do. Just plop into a chair and exist in my yard under a tree.
I've always loved the earlier games in this series for this reason, sure the assassin stuff is fun and all but they just have such an interesting and kind of ethereal feeling to them in certain places, like the world is full of mysteries and secrets hidden just out of sight. I think it's most prominent in the first 2 games and then it gradually faded away as they got more refined and less creative.
I have always loved these sort of areas in video games. Though I've always found it hard to put into words the weird blend of nostalgic, peaceful, yet slightly disturbing and uncanny vibe that they have.
But videos like this one bring me joy that others also understand this unique feeling, you are totally right about things like the feeling of being watched, the 'residual energy' and the 'sound of someone, somewhere doing something that you'll never find'
The first game feels so nice, I can’t really explain it. I love it so much more than the others, even as barebones as it is.
Yeah Ac 1 and 2 always sorta had that weird feeling to me that like we’re not supposed to be playing this. Also since the developers were sorta constrained with how much they could do and since the missions are repetitive it makes it feel like a simulation where not everything is perfect. Which is what it is story wise. Then you have the whole holy land aspect in 1 and the glyph puzzles in 2 which reveal the whole thing with adam and eve which isn’t explained until later games. Makes me feel like we were never supposed to see it.
Wasn't there also the fact that AC1 was originally designed to be played without any HUD or objective marker, but the uppers at Ubisoft freaked out and asked for the gameplay to be retooled at the last minute? Leading AC2 to become the template for the Ubisoft Open World Collectathon Borefest that we all know and love?
@@HellPe You know I never heard about that, but that is very interesting.
@@HellPeYou only have to collect codex pages to progress. The villa makes way more money than you'll ever need. The first AC that mandated a voracious appetite for side content was Black Flag with its statted ship combat
@@icarusgaming6269 I've managed to find the article evoking the AC1 design choices, but TH-cam apparently deleted my previous comment with its URL. Search for "HUD-less Design of Assassin's Creed 1"
that one horse road in Masyaf is also just a perfect transition from your home village to the unforgiving openworld known as Kingdom, so i really like the way it's designed
10:55-12:02 is why I watch your vids, very thoughtful commentary spurred by an otherwise mundane setting in an aged game
wow this is just a good TH-cam video. no ads, minimal post-production, a completely random but interesting topic and just a regular dude narrating it with.
feels like sitting in your room at 8 pm and watching random videos, when you should be doing your homework.
If any newcomer wants to play this gem of a game.
1. Disable HUD, never enable it. Game is designed to be played without the HUD. Bureau leaders give you directions, you can make out the landmarks after some exploration. Climbing towers is useful that way.
2. Don't fast travel. Look around, the Kingdom is serene, full of untold stories. It is immersive to contemplate what the targets said, and how Al Mualim will respond to you on your way back. Coming back to Masyaf and seeing the reveal of the castle is remarkable as well.
3. Optional missions have no point. Flags, every 420 of them, are put to make fun of the completionists. No need to bother.
My freshmen year of college was 2007. AC 1 was a going-away gift from my mom, so I've always kind of cherished this game, warts and all, and still follow the series to this day.
I started highschool in 2007, I bought the game because jade raymond (she was everywhere promoting the game) and honestly, I think it sucks, never bothered to complete it 100% and didn't play it again (nor any other game from the series).
I really liked your note on how we treat spaces in video games that look nice but dont have direct purposes, because i think these places are still important to people, my favorite example is Final Fantasy XIV, where a sizable comunity of people will put on their nicest/cutest/silliest outfit and stand in a nice place, theyre a pillar of the community!
I forgot how gray this game is. A stylistic choice, certainly, but it does remind me of how a lot of games (particularly open world games) in this era just looked really bland because they were all going for some sort of gritty realism as though this gritty, real world we actually live in doesn't have color.
9:32 I like that tree just chilling at the top of that cliff in the background. Another example of something that really doesn't need to be there, but it makes it feel a bit more natural.
I took a screenshot and cranked the saturation up 200× and it still looks a little grey.
I think it was an aesthetic thing of videogames in that era, to look all grey or all yellowish brown.
Happy monday to you too Mr. Unremarkable and Odd places in Assassin's Creed
Always enjoy this series. I feel like most people don't appreciate enough the amount of little details and personality that goes into some video games.
The odd singsong voices in the travel areas have been in my head forever, I LOVE them, I love the mood they create. The in-between maps and travelling between the cities was always some of my favourite gameplay, I used to just walk the horse all the way from one city to another, just for the atmosphere. To me it really captured a sense of living history, even with the random American accent in the middle 😂
My first Any Austin video and i love it. This is so unlike many other gaming videos because this is so chill, you're not trying to add hype crazy edits, just enjoying the vibe. Even the little music sting when you transition from scene to scene! Love it. Good series to relax to
I don't know which assassin's creed it was, but the thumbnail made me remember a time I got stuck inside a wall next to a river and I found no way out other than closing and reopening the game
Edit: I just realised it's not the first AC because Altair can't swim so it was probably the ezio trilogy
Revelations. For sure.
Altaïr is in it too, so it even could have been the OG himself.
6:50 i always felt the same way about the beginning of Destiny in the Cosmodrome. you used to be able to get to the very very beginning where ghost woke you up and walk around and kinda just listen to the ambiance. you had to pass through this hallway that was bathed in orange sunlight. all around good vibes. the beginning of destiny. what a feeling
More assassin's creed would be a treat for sure. I think that a lot of places in these games count for this series and a lot of it is because, like you mentioned, you go through an area in a linear way and never need to return.
This is hands down my fave route series on this channel. probably my new favourite gaming thing on TH-cam. it’s like your exposing the small cracks in a world that at first glance seems to be cohesive and logical. I wonder what weird reality cracks exist like that in our world that we just haven’t happened to notice.
Having no connection to this series, I find the video superb. Austin can keep me glued and introspective despite no experience playing these titles. Exemplary and fascinating.
been like 10+ years since i played but when you mentioned that courtyard area that hasn't been used yet, it got my brain goin until suddenly OH I REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENS THERE. and i love remembering random things so thanks for that.
Woah that washing machine analogy is fascinatingly relatable. I love hearing about very specific feelings/vibes that I’ve experienced, but hadn’t put into words before. It’s always comforting to me to be reminded how fundamentally similar all of our brains are. We’re not alone. Jeffrey Lewis said: “Everyone you meet is you divided by what they’ve been through.” (Check out his music, he’s great)
9:53 _"You can't just let people walk everywhere... at least we didn't think we could until Breath of the Wild came out"_ is kind of an ironic declaration here given that Assassin's Creed in 2007 was the game that did "go anywhere, climb on anything" within cities ten whole years before Breath of the Wild 'borrowed' this idea and just extended it outside urban spaces, but with a stamina mechanic previously seen in Shadow of the Colossus. BotW is constantly given credit for inventing all the things it lifted directly from other games (see also ermergent gameplay with elements and physics and navigating by landmarks).
I like the video though. Interesting examination of spaces and details... though I can't really agree that WE (meaning everyone) don't just explore spaces for its own sake in games or real life without needing distractions. That's literally my favourite thing about these games, just soaking in these places and all the little details. It's the thing Ubisoft does better than almost anyone, recreating these real historical places in a tangible way that you can freely explore. It's wonderful.
Thrilled this series is still on-going and shockingly this is a great pick for it
I'm just glad that there's someone else out there who thinks of open world games as just an amazing place to go for a hike or to see what there is to see. I love environments in video games and I especially love how character models interact with the environments (that's more my flavor, seeing how the player gets to interact with that environment).
9:30 I would've literally never thought of something like that until you pointed it out, that's crazy hahaha thank u austin
Most of the time I do run through areas like that, thinking "wow it's really sick playing this assassin dude, I really do be feeling like an assassin rn." Or "dude wow I feel like mario" without actually thinking how much small details like that completely shift that feeling
9:30 I think that platform is used to hide a Masyaf flag collectible, so it's not entirely pointless
10:24 That garden is a reference to the book, the assassin grandmaster would promise his warriors an afterlife of beatiful gardens and women, something like Elysium, Valhalla, Jannah etc. Real life hashashin assassinations were told to be near suicide missions, so they needed some incentive.
I'm kinda new to your channel but your vibes are right up my ally. If there was a game that I thought deserved your attention, It's elder scrolls 3: morrowind. If youre thinking "ok, so old Skyrim?" kinda. but also not even close. And I can't explain it. But I promise, It's got the goods in ways that are almost...alien?
I played Morrowind a couple years ago. Awesome vibes. I’ll get around to it eventually.
There is something oddly beautiful about these videos, AC1 was a really gorgeous game
I'd also love to see an Elden Ring episode. I bet there at least SOME places in that game that you weren't meant to hang around in
I love your videos! Please make more! Assassin's Creed is one of my favorite series, so I'm happy you made a vid on it! I also love standing on top of those useless arches in your first area.
This video could be extended by so many more places. I collected all the flags that were in this game, for absolutely no purpose, and a lot of them really show how big the empty part of this world is. The entire kingdom that you usually skip by fast travelling is pretty much empty apart from a few guards that have no apparent meaning. To my knowledge, there is also no explanation of the red-helmet knights that stand around at completely random places. Also noteworthy: The kingdom has a surprising amount of lakes. Assassins Creed usually tries to be historically correct with its cities, but the kingdom seems completely fictional.
Those Templars are actually kind of cool. They're highly dangerous if they catch you off guard, but once you manage to kill one, he's gone forever, rendering that area safer to operate in. They're playing on permadeath mode
I just wanna say, thanks to your videos I find myself actually paying attention more to skyboxes in games like I was replaying Max Payne 1 and 2 and I was finding myself stopping and trying to really get a good look at the buildings in the background and the sky. I love your stuff.
really great pick for the series, and that last spot is amazing. its crazy to see how monotonous the color palettes of this era of AAA were. but beyond that theres actually some really gorgeous environments in here, so much handcrafted detail
I cannot describe how much I love this series and all the others where you look at some specific details. Reminds me of all the moments when I decide to stop in a random place and just stare at the skybox or landscape. An amazing feeling really.
would love to see this with more assassins creed games! something remarkable about unremarkable spots like this in a world that isn’t meant to just evoke a place that could exist, but to really try to BE a place that plausibly DID exist… man
Currently watching this in my backyard for absolutely no reason. Like you said, it's a multi sensory experience that I can't get in my bedroom.
Any chance you’d do an unremarkable and odd places for Quest 64? They had to abandon a lot of ideas during development so I feel like there’s a lot of interesting people/places being designed for something but ending up not getting used.
At the Mojave outpost in fallout New Vegas there is a locked gate to a large empty expanse of desert that is full of mountains and some plants but it is completely devoid of civilization aside from distant sounds of gun fire. This series made me think of that
Bird at 1:35
9:48 I get where you are coming from, but I think a counterpoint that has developed since those times, is that nowadays people would check that platform expecting to find a collectible item of some kind, and when they don't find one, they will be slightly disappointed, and that's fine, but as these things add up over the course of the whole game, it can lead to players forming the opinion that there isn't much to find in the game's world, because every corner they turn expecting to find a little trinket is empty, it only exists for the sake of having a sense of location, when usually in modern games they exist as hiding spot for an item.
There is also the question of whether collectible items even add much of substance to a game, it can be fun to hunt them down, but is that really the focus of your game or is it just a distraction? That's up to the developer to decide and the answer may vary, I've seen games where collectibles added to the experience, and I've seen other games where it was just some vapid pursuit that existed because that's what every game does, like an artificial inflation of play time.
Maybe that's a problem, when spaces exist only as a context to contain a hidden collectible item, maybe for a more story-focused game it's better to not have those collectibles, and to not have these environments where there is nothing to be found... or maybe some game devs need to reasses how they intend for players to interact with the setting, and what it even means to be in these places, so that these "pointless" locations can exist just for the sake of existing, for the sake of giving the player the chance of being in that place, in that moment, experiencing the world of the game.
13:23 Honestly this seems kind of a waste of a location, look at this place, so much work must have gone into it, and they have only used it once? This would be a good place to have a minigame or side-quest or anything really, look at all of these assets and all of the effort that has gone into this level design, we only really see it once and that's a shame.
This was a very cool video, I enjoyed being taken to these places, thank you.
I feel like many of the unremarkable places would be good as ambience content. Like, for us viewers to chill out in ourselves. Have you ever considered uploading clips like that (1 hour ambience i.e.)? Perhaps have a second "Unremarkable ambience" channel to refer to for people wanting more of the odd place in question, I dunno, just an idea.
This series definitely gets me thinking of all the strange liminal places I wandered into in games from my childhood, brings back some interesting memories. But also the liminal spaces in some of the bigger budget/super polished games today-- like I have a bonkers amount of hours in Cyberpunk, and it's relatively harder to find odd and unremarkable spaces due to the sheer amount of activities/etc. But the places that do feel like the cracks in between have a unique staying power compared to all of the incredibly minor side content I've somehow managed to memorize. I feel like I could write an essay on the spaces that feel vacant in that game
Based on the interactive load screens of the AC franchise and the empty weird area in the beginning, it makes me assume they wanted that area to mask a load screen while the next area loads, but they couldn't figure out the tech and left it as is. Like how they often use elevators in games.
I have no evidence for this, but it's what it makes me feel like ,growing up with video games.
How about the memory corridor shown as the background during philosophical discussions with your assassination targets?
10:50 its the women being the virgins in the garden of earthly delights, the man on the mountain was said to give his assassins hashesh and put them in the garden of earthly delights before their mission - its from a book, tom holland crusades or history of assassins i think
There is something to being in an area with no perceived purpose and just enjoying it.
Psychonauts 2 has an area in "Green Needle Gulch" with a little hot tub and the lighting there makes me feel very happy.
15:45 he found peace and quiet
I would really like to see you cover rain world. It is full of these "not exactly environmental storytelling" landmarks you mentioned in the video and i really think you'd enjoy it!
5:30 I love the idea of someone giving a tour of a city, only to be accosted by guards, but instead of being afraid, they're just mildly annoyed. They kill the guards in a violent fashion and then continue the tour.
Oh yeah all the asscreeds did this particularly well. Despite being widely panned as an actual game, Unity was my favorite for this. You can just park yourself in a spot and just enjoy the ambiance like you're having a coffee in a time machine
I ABSOLUTELY love this content!
I would honestly love to see more of this for more Assassin's Creed, culminating in a long vid exploring the evolution of unremarkable place within Assassin's Creed (and then tackle other series afterwards)
I remember really enjoying the feeling of places like these in Jak2/3, maybe you should check them out. Lots of funny little environmental details like this that are kinda in that compelling area between realism, imagination, and uncanny valley.
First video I’ve seen from you and I’m really interested in this, just admiring and appreciating the little things in video games
About the whole kinda balance with Realism and Game, I think AC2 is one of the best ones at that, cuz a lot of the games try to go for mostly real architecture, but in AC2 there's a lot of level design in the cities that aren't really realistic at all, but make it really fun to just run around in
11:30
This is why i love austin
Sometimes we're just here to look at random places while he says nosense, but most(?) Of the time we're actually here to hear austin go on a philosophycal rant about how we lost the ability as a society to appreciate the little things in life that humanity used to care about in ways beyond artistic.
...or something like that.
I haven't played assassin's creed but the courtyard of women is likely related to the original story of the assassins in real life, where a guy was kidnapped, taken to a resort of hot women, and the grandmaster said if you complete an assassination then you can come back here and hook up with the ladies.
An author made this up in the 30s lol. The game is based on his book, not the real history
@@icarusgaming6269 Right, the courtyard is from the story.
I love this!! There are countless great games with amazing spots in this series, so I would truly appreciate some more of these!!
Man, you really forget just how monotone, grey, beige, green-ish games from this era were. Like dang, there really is no color in the original Assassin's Creed.
360 eta
Era
You make some good points. You're riding that line between rambling inanely and high-level philosophy.
love this series. Makes me nostalgic for the times before the internet ruined everything were I'd just wander around Skyrim talking to myself, enjoying the world and the isolation.
Don’t let your dreams be dreams
13:59 this is so profound?! And i never thought to put it that way but yes opening the washing machine halfway through and staring into the dark water is unsettling