After finishing my 3rd playthrough of Black Flag, the difference in cutscene, dialogue and voice acting is NIGHT and DAY! Black flag’s character all feel like REAL people with meaningful dialogue. I think we took the masterful story telling and dialogue in early ACs for granted. The stealth however looks really good.
Stealth is probably going to be really fun, yeah. Black Flag is one of the best examples, yeah. No character is boring to watch or listen to, everyone has inner tension and something they want, and the situations they're put in are stressful and emotionally-affecting enough that it pushes them to respond in entertaining ways.
Might I also mention that CLOTH PHYSICS ARE FINALLY BACK!I I don't know why they weren't present in Valhalla but Jesus Christ was it immersion breaking when the game had worse physics than the Ezio trilogy and AC1.
Cloth physics and the world physics. Seeing boxes, bags, apples move around when you or npcs tumble over them or the trees blowing in the storm. All good
Leave it to Leo to again have the best breakdown of what little information we have so far. Looking forward to when a larger variety of players get access to the demo to showcase what Shadows actually has to offer.
Hit the nail on the head for your first point. I genuinely don’t know how Ubisoft can go from some of the best, well animated, choreographed and directed cutscenes to whatever ai generated boring stuff they have right now.
Because those cutscenes take a lot of time and resources. It was feasible when the games weren’t as big, but in the RPGs there are so many conversations they can’t do that for all of them. In Origins a lot of the time it’s two characters standing still while talking so they made a modular cutscene system to change that.
@@Falconwing66 I just think it's a shame Ubi went for quantity over quality. Like Leo said, the overall acting and voice presentation needs a LOT of work, especially compared to previous games. It's very bland acting that does the "base minimum". Like if we just looked at the series pre-odyssey, characters had emotions, range and personality. It just looks really stiff from what is presented.
@@Falconwing66 your comment makes sense if this is an indie studios but Ubisoft is a triple A company. Do I even have to mention the amount of Microtransactions Ubi jam in their games to nickel and dime the players? They have more than enough money to invest into stuffs like this. This is just reek laziness
@@hoangle2483Ubi does have a lot of money, but they don’t give teams infinite budgets. Also calling them lazy is disrespectful. Anyone familiar with game dev will tell you it’s extremely hard.
Excellent breakdown as always Leo! It is nice to finally see some more evolution in stealth for this series (hopefully these evolutions aren't abandoned in the next game) , although as you mentioned I do find it strange how there has been effectively no mention of social stealth. I do think another gameplay demo would be beneficial as I still find myself with a lot of questions that went unanswered.
@@QuatarTarandir why? The showcase wasn’t disappointing actually had solid combat and map and showcases good and true AC stealth and ofc you can pet dogs
@@Envixin753 Well, to me the combat looked bad, and I wasn't impressed, especially having half the game where you play as a combat-focused character. And of course the story looks eh, the parkour looks eh, and pretty much everything except stealth and a few other features. And even then I was still not very excited about it
12:45 The use for the bell is TBD. Jorraptor asked about them and was told by Ubi they couldn't reveal it yet. This makes me think it's something else, like recruit actions.
Stealth looks like heavily Tenchu inspired with all the gaget related moves (Cling to ceiling, breath underwater...). Let's not forget that castles are said to be whole designed levels. So expect more indoor stealth, with hopefully, ways to crawl under the houses or go in secret passages.
I think that'll be really cool, yeah. Assassin's Creed has flirted with interior stealth from time to time, have always been curious what proper stealth inside intricate buildings would look like if done well. Hopefully Shadows answers that question for me.
@@LeoKRogue The cutscenes are really boring to look at too. The Witcher 3 solved this almost a decate ago. Ubisoft has no excuse given the experience they have.
Hi, I'm from Ubisoft's marketing team!!! Our development team at Ubisoft Quebec and our support studios around the world have been so hard at work these past four years crafting incredibly deep and impactful stealth systems that are affected by many systemic and handcrafted elements alike. In order to commemorate this achievement and show off their game to players properly, here is six minutes of Naoe climbing and performing basic assassinations. We also hope you enjoyed the few minutes of Yasuke slow walking through a village and conversating with an NPC before getting into a combat sequence beforehand. Please preorder and show your support. Thank you!!!
Dawg, you are the hero here. Save us from this mediocrity and uncreative impotent vision for Assassin creed projects. They need to give this sacred IP to some other studio before it gets bombarded by more mediocrity. By the way, hell to the fuck naaaooo. I ain’t preordering or purchasing until the reviews unanimously approve, that it’s a quality comeback for the AC franchise and when the price goes down to $40 or less, it doesn’t deserve any higher than 60! Hail hydra…. Fuck, I meant Hail @protectbabysif!
You are upset because in a gameplay showcase for Assassin's Creed Shadows, you got to see the protagonists engage in Parkour, stealth and combat? This is BS. 😂. What else they were supposed to show? People like you are cancer
here's naoe speaking the cringiest dialogue written for a character, in a work in progress game with a total of 20 minutes of revealed gameplay. pease preorder our deluxe edition and buy all our products
What do you think of the writing? I thought it was the cringiest thing ever ("I am justice", "It will be me and the shadows"). I can't remember being so put off by the writing in a game.
One thing I was hoping on Naoe's part was for them to show double or chain assassination and see the animation of it, because the chance is right there even if she only has one hidden blade.
They said each weapon gets a unique assassination animation and ability the scythe gives range I think the katana and tanto might be double assassinations
It'd be even weirder if he couldn't. One of the skills is Yasuke jumping like 15 feet into the air. If he was also somehow not strong enough to pull himself in armor up a 10 foot wall when you can deck Ezio, Arno, Bayek, Kassandra, Cassandra, Eivor out in basically as much or more armor would be kinda stupid.
@@Purple_Anxiety No but apparently that's been what they said. Honestly not really seeing much reason to play as Yasuke more than Naoe. She'll be better and stealth and parkour and still competent in combat whereas Yasuke is pretty much just combat orientated.
Great video. I’m glad to see someone call out just how awful the cinematic presentation of these games has been for YEARS now. It’s genuinely embarrassing how long these games have felt absolutely sterile and lifeless in terms of scripts and performances. When Naoe said “I won’t be alone… I’ll be with the Shadows™️” I audibly groaned. On a more positive note, I remember expressing a few times in your streams my skepticism regarding Shadows being able to pull off light and shadow stealth in a dynamic open world. I’m glad to see that I seem to have been proven wrong in that regard. Stealth genuinely looks fun and it may be the most mechanically interesting and varied it’s been since the classics. Although, as the token social stealth guy, I can’t help but feel bitter that we’ve gone ANOTHER game without any kind of meaningful social stealth. However, I wonder if that visibility meter could be iterated upon and also implemented into visibility inside crowds. That would be pretty interesting. Shame about the parkour, although the environment could hardly support anything more advanced than Origins’ system, unfortunately. The combat also looks very stiff and simple, which as you said, is very unfortunate if they have an entire protagonist whose kit is JUST that one thing plus a gun. I hope to also see practical examples of how the seasons and dynamic weather impact stealth and AI. They promised a lot in that regard but have oddly opted not to show any of it, despite those things being probably the most unique ideas this series has had in a long time. I agree with your thoughts on the spy system and exploration. I hope future AC games continue to try to use diegetic means of communicating information to the player and encourage organic exploration rather than handholding the player through every single step of the way, as if Ubisoft thinks the average person sniffs glue for fun. This is a great change and I hope more AC games rely less and less on HUD and waypoints to tell you what to do.
I so cringed at that line. Like seriously, it sounds like an edgy teen trying to be cool. Like I get what they were going for, but it was not there at all
I really like how enemies who cant be assassinated are properly telegraphed to the player now and force u to switch up your strategy. They remind me of the minigun brute enemies in Arkham Knight. They cannot be taken out silently in the regular way so you are in encouraged to leave them till last to avoid drawing the attention of other enemies. However u can still take them out earlier if u are smart with your environment and gadgets. Hopefully shadows is similar in this regard and there are other ways of taking them out other than straight up combat.
Yup, exactly. That's my thing. Other stealth/stealth-action games make use of unique enemy archetypes you have to respond to or engage with differently, and as long as everything is shown to the player clearly and there's no confusion or ambiguity, it's totally fine.
It's awesomely impressive how you pick up on things just by looking at them, man. Tons of people on Twitter kept asking what the down button prompt was and no one knew. You figured out the posture system and broke it down beautifully. Awesome work, brother. (It's M btw)
You think so? I've seen a lot of back-and-forth/mixed opinions on this around, and I'm not sure where I stand on it myself at the moment. It felt pretty basic/functional to me at best. I've been playing some games recently with really good dialogue and character-chemistry so I'm probably just seeing the difference in quality and vibes, I don't know.
@@LeoKRogue yea imo there's no dynamic between them at all. They seem to be working together cuz that's what the story of the game is. It doesn't feel organic.
there really is only one way to find out honestly. hearing like 3 clips of them talking to each other isn't going to give anybody the full picture so we shouldn't pretend it will. they also have like 5 months to fix it if the community receives what they did hear especially badly lol.
Very detailed analysis good work. Also huge thanks for making subtitles again they make me love channels so much more, which is great because yours is so exceptional
The game adds several immersive elements, which is a nice touch. I'm tired of crouching everywhere when I should be crawling. Combat looks mediocre, and the parkour is... never mind! The game caters to a different type of Assassin's Creed experience, which is fine, and I understand the motivation for trying different Assassin's Creed games for different gameplay experiences. But I'm freaking tired of not having a dense, city-focused Assassin's Creed game that offers the OG parkour experience that made me fall in love with the series. We want an Assassin's Creed game with a core focus on parkour.
In the same boat here. I recognize this is what it is, I'm not too broken up about it personally but I still wish for and hope for that cool city/parkour game.
To this day ive considered AC1 as the best game in the series. Pretty much for everything. Parkour, combat, stealth, story, protagonist, antagonists, and modern day. Top of the top tiers. All that being said, im shockingly and genuinely excited for shadows. But if im being honest, i just want a remake of the first AC. Modern tech, tweak it by a smidge, and add newgame plus. The day that happens is the day i shed a tear of joy for gaming. As always great video bro. As someone whos loved the series since first seeing the AC1 trailer on the G4 channel, i appreciate all the work youve contributed over the years. Thank you.
Hey, Mark Zuckerberg here! I have to say that, you are my favourite youtuber. You are the piece to my puzzle, the key to my heart, the love of my life. My majestic G.O.A.T. I just can't believe this is your last video, before you died... I still hear your voice in the middle of the night. Rest in piece, his majesty.
When I saw people complained about that my mind goes to thinking "did we just forget about Nujabes already?". Hip-hop in Samurai media is an underrated match.
I don’t mind it but them specifically playing that on Yasuke’s section just came off as pandering. It’d be cool if it’s related to the animus giving a modern soundtrack to the the game
@@LeoKRogue pandering as only Ubi can. Dude was literally African so hip hop makes no sense lol. It’s all the same to the virtue signaling weirdos. Will they stick to all black stereotypes in game? Will he be eating fried chicken while everyone else eats rice? This shit is absurd but thoroughly expected.
About the failed assassination, you can notice that the eye indicator is full, so that possibly has something to do with not being able to assassinate fully. Considering it's daytime, that probably makes sense
@LeoKRogue yeah I feel like with this game, lighting will probably matter a lot more than other ac games, so you can't just waltz into a fort during daytime to immediately begin stealth unlike other games. So night time will be the preferred time zone
You can also see a jar next to the guy that is presumably an explosive. If it’s not lethal, maybe it’ll break his armor and give an opportunity for an assassination like Leo said
I agree with the daytime theory whether or not it's on purpose... my first thought was you can clearly see her shadow on the wall in front of him which would be a dead give away and possibly why he was able to react and Dodge her attack... not sure if they really put that much thought into or not but maybe...
@wjcarey03 honestly, I believe it's reaching to expect the AI to be capable of actually detecting Noue's shadow. However, I do hypothesise that the full eye indicator has to do something with it. Otherwise, they wouldn't emphasise it so much to put it in the middle of the screen
If Ubisoft would use motion capture, it would make these games so much better. I know it’s much more expensive but can you imagine The Last Of Us or God Of War type of motion capture for these games.
I could. To be fair, The Last of Us and God of War are games with a much smaller scale, and many fewer NPC interactions than the average modern Assassin's Creed game, so I _understand_ why that's not really feasible, but then my hope and my dream is, just go _smaller._ If you can't make games _this massive_ remain consistently entertaining throughout their huge size, please scale down and deliver something more focused and refined.
On an unrelated note… I remember playing Red dead 2 right. Hear me out, it was the pinnacle of sublime creations of art, nuance, immersion, & alluring experiences. That challenge your open minded view on other games, that aren’t necessarily in the same league as RDR2 or a God Of War. When my adrenaline reached its climax, subsequent to RDR2’s scintillating beauty gracing my optic nerves. I took a deep breath, allowed my adrenaline levels to simmer down, took a hard look in the mirror & said to myself “every game & genre is exhilarating, sublime in its own way if done right. It doesn’t have to realistically enchant you with every encounter & every nuanced detail like RDR2 for you to be immersed. After observing the dilemma I was in, I realized that there are games that lack the sophistication of RDR2, yet I appreciated the type of art depicted and stories told without comparing masterpieces such as RDR 2 to it. In other words, Ubisoft can put a gun to my head. I ain’t buying the game or its ridiculously priced editions until that hoe comes down to $20.
@@LeoKRogue thank you, I spilled my heart out like a teenage girl for that game. Seriously though, wasn’t my intention to overwhelm with a lengthy poem. I’ll be succinct in future AC videos, fingers crossed 🤞🏼!
@@KravenZoro Nah, I love the game too and I think you're right. Please type as much as you wish to, don't let me limit your expression, it matters to me. I was just in an asshole mood from some other comments xD
@@LeoKRogue no worries, I won’t judge crude remarks at face value, until I have done my due diligence & understood the other side, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I do appreciate your articulate content (no glazing, just a matter of fact). I’ve seen the comments, I understand sir.
I started tuning out the dialogue in Horizon because the dialogue run on too long. Game devs need to learn more on how to weave a story by showing more instead of telling (talking).
I can empathize. There are definitely games out there that make engaging with their story the player's onus, so players have to choose to invest more deeply, and some nice lessons can be learned from those. It's not the right style for every game, of course, I'm just saying generally.
Like Leo mentioned, my biggest concern with the dual protagonists from a gameplay perspective is will there be enough reason for my to pick one character over the other? For example, if I barge in with Yasuke on an assassination mission there has to be some kind of downside to it. Maybe my target has a bigger chance to escape because he would be alerted. But if I go with Naoe it will be easier. And in the reverse if I pick Naoe for a more combat centric mission then I should get my shit rocked because Naoe should be made out of paper in combat. And it's not enough for Naoe to just have bad defense. If I fight 5 dudes clad in Samurai armor with Naoe, I should be having a rough time with them like I am playing a Souls game.
I don’t think it would make sense for social stealth to be in this game since a shinobi wouldn’t be hiding in a crowd they would stick to rooftops and shadows and yasuke is a 6ft tall black samurai he just doesn’t blend in.
great video something i noticed is when naoe is sneaking on enemies she extracts her hidden blade kind of similar to the older ac games so hopefully we can extract it whenever we want
It looks like that only happens whenever she's in range to Assassinate someone. It's probably an automatic thing, that helps you see if your button press will attempt a stealth kill. Useful when you have all your HUD/UI off, too though.
I'd like to mention: we see that we can finally flex the hidden blade whenever we want again which I love. Also each weapon has a special assassination technique: the katana can stab through shoji doors and the kusarigama has a ranged takedown. Naoe uses a tanto and the hidden dagger for combat so I think the tanto's special ability will be the dual assassination but I'm just speculating.
@@felipecosta94315 I though it wasn't because it didn't appear when Naoe had the option to assassinate the woman but I guess it could only show for guards.
It appears automatic, and happens when you're in Range for a stealth kill. A good way to see if you're close enough for one, without your HUD/UI on which I appreciate.
I’m somewhat excited for this one honestly. I’m definitely a stealth and parkour guy but this game looks like it’ll be fun and introduce some cool new concepts. I’m a little worried for the lack of depth Yasuke seems to have but I’ll reserve those worries until we see more. Some of the animations look choppy and I’m also not super impressed with the graphics but I’d like to see this game in a higher fidelity. Overall I’m not crazy hyped or anything but so far I’m looking forward to this one. Anyways, great content as always! You always break down tiny details that no one else touches on and I love it.
The stealth is definitely making my brain buzz with fun possibilities, yeah. I want to _try_ it, I want to see if it's really as cool as it wants me to _believe_ it is, because if most of this stuff is true this will be the most demanding and challenging stealth system Assassin's Creed has ever had, with a good ceiling for skill-expression and mastery, which would be nice.
@@LeoKRogue I couldn’t agree more honestly. Things like the light system, being able to destroy lights, grab enemies and go prone are going to have huge positive impacts on stealth. I loved Mirage’s stealth but it didn’t feel like it had that many real innovations so this is cool to see for me. I’m hoping this will be challenging stealth as for me, maybe it’s my skill level but Mirage’s stealth got a little easy for me at times. But yes promising new additions to stealth for sure, this just might shape up to be our best stealth yet but we’ll have to wait and see
I 100% agree that good acting has been almost non existent since origins but I personally like Naoe in the showcase and didn’t think too too bad about Yasuke
I think we can probably count on that, yeah. 😅 It gets tougher and tougher to really recommend anyone I know buy games at full AAA price nowadays, no matter what they are. Not to mention you just know there's going to be extra monetization on top, so.
Ok, my favorite thing hands down is the list that you get as your objective, my least favorite thing about ac especially the kenway saga which are the only games I’ve played so far, is the forced turning on of ship health/button prompts/enemy counter windows etc, and other objectives such as the ship you need to follow that makes the spy glass thing where it shows the name of the ship all but useless but I keep it on bc I want to see the loot I get from enemies
As always, you give a very rational look at the situation. Love it!! As a hardcore stealth player and a hardcore ac fan, I am happy that the series is finally expanding in the stealth space, as the genre itself is a rarity to see in video games nowadays. I am so excited for 'Hide in Shadows' mechanic! I actually recreated this a while back in Unreal Engine. Quebec does some great design, but they always NOT deliver the AC feel, whether it's the story, the world, the visuals. That department is well handled by Montreal and now Bordeaux.
I think that at least in Naoe's sections and during infiltrations in particular, Quebec probably have the AC feel on lock in this game, when it comes to those experiences. Hopefully I'm right but that's the feeling I'm getting so far. I'm really looking forward to the improved depth and demands of stealth, if they don't pull their punches and it's as interesting and immersive as it appears.
@@LeoKRogue Yes yes agreed, the Gameplay feels is nailed, I am skeptical about the story tho, it won't be a traditional ac story and I think will flow very differently. Speaking of that, I agree with your voice acting take, I thought Naoe would be fine, but that "Too slow!", aahhh. Hope the rest of the acting is good. I might play as Yasuke once in a while because so far I like his personality.
I’m playing unity again I never got passed the 3rd mission when it came out and I can’t believe how much higher quality of a game it is then the new stuff, ur videos really highlight it’s potential
it's also worth considering that both the brute and Naoe are in broad daylight when she goes for the failed air assassination in that clip. What if brutes are impossible for Naoe to kill in daylight, but considerably easier in shadow (assuming that setting is turned on)? Meaning she'll have to lure the brute over to that patch of darkness on the left in order to take him out. This means the devs have yet another ludonarratively consonant tool they can potentially use to challenge the player's skill with stealth
That could be interesting. For the moment we just don't know exactly how it works, so I tried to avoid making too many assumptions. Would be cool though.
The spaces where you are considered to be in a shadow could be ambiguous in some situations, especially for those who play on lower graphical settings. Hope they keep this in mind and work out a suitable way to convey it clearly.
I believe that's why the visibility meter being in the top middle of the screen is so important. If it's tough to see in-world, having a way to know how hidden or visible you are matters.
Nice observations… One thing I have noticed during the entire showcase of gameplay is the forced hate that people lash out just out of spite for Ubisoft, without even considering for a second the tremendous effort and passion that developers put in to make such games… If people paid close attention to subtle details, they would notice many new and innovative changes in this game.. For starters, we have ray traced reflections and dedicated global illumination models in AC, to better aid the dynamic stealth approach…we have dynamic seasonal and weather effects, and objects in the world reacting to them in real time, making the world more believable… We have a high number of destructible objects in the environment….the NPC interaction cutscenes are slightly better than the last 4 games, and more… What baffles me is that when the devs choose to take risks and seriously innovate, people are too busy shitting on their game (before it even comes out) because of some forced controversial hate, and later, when they don’t innovate much, the usual ‘ oh in hindsight, Unity wasn’t so bad, I wish they make games like that more…’ Perpetual hypocrisy at its peak..
Raytracing is definitely going to make a difference, I feel. One thing I see a lot of players forget about, or maybe they just don't know, is that RT is a technical innovation that means devs are forced to work _less_ rather than more, since light is much more simulated and needs less painstaking manual retouching. Could be nice, curious to see what it looks like running on native hardware when it releases. Dynamic light and shadow affecting stealth is also huge, it's representative of something older Ubisoft used to really hold close which is technology defining or informing what's possible in gameplay. The tech became available with PS3 hardware to have big crowds, so crowds became an important part of the experience then. The tech is available to have dynamic light and shadow on this generation, so we'll see it affect how we sneak through the world. Really cool stuff.
@@LeoKRogue yes, and one of the more significant factors is the story, of what we have been shown nothing yet, but of the two mainline games Quebec studios have developed, their narrative experiences have ranged from being decent to really good...even if I didn't like Odyssey as a whole, I somewhat enjoyed the story of Alexios/Kassandra as a seperate narrative from the larger AC universe Shadows just has the bad fortune of being the target of the hate train everyone is jumping on, just cause of that UBISOFT logo...
About the clip at 23:00 of the stealth immune enemy, one thing I see nobody mention is the bright red obvious explosive barrel he's standing right next to.
Not being able to kill brute enemies is present in stealth games for a long time. Splinter cell had it, you could take out normal sliders but not the big, armored ones. This is normal and people shouldn't be upset about it as long as normal enemies have guaranteed assassination.
Yup, Arkham games which are a lot closer to Assassin's Creed in feel and rhythm also introduce enemy types that have to be engaged differently over the course of a playthrough.
Enjoying this running theme of you making the best AC breakdowns on TH-cam, on the point of hoping Yasuke has meaningful & challenging combat I whole heartedly agree, one thing I noticed is one guy is attacked mid unblockable (parry only) attack, & killed instantly because of it, so here’s hoping things like that will get rewarded this time around
acting and body language in modern AC games is emotionally disengaging not entertaining and lacking in dynamism... you literally took the words out of my mouth mate... truer words have never been spoken... this is how I feel about modern AC games... and this problem persists in many other modern AAA games too... Origins was the last game to have properly executed emotional weight and engagement behind the acting and dialogue of its characters... Odyssey also had engaging voice acting and performance throughout most of its main story... since then its completely removed... it defeats the whole purpose of playing the game... I can't even get connected to any characters and feel anything for them... like I did for Ezio, Edward, Bayek, Shay, Connor, Evie, Haytham and Arno... And my opinion about the gameplay is that its a watered down version of Ghost Of Tsushima... a game that did a far better job (best I would say) at portraying Japanese culture and which Ubisoft desperately tried to imitate... but failed miserably and did worse in every aspect... Ubi just copy-pasted GOT's perfect gameplay without actually understanding or respecting any of it at all... it's just as bad, disengaging, vapid, soulless and mediocre as you would expect...
It's something I've been noticing on and off for some time, but I guess a part of me just thought.. y'know, _eventually_ they would improve at it. I'm just feeling very done with standing in front of an NPC occasionally nodding my head, followed by them occasionally nodding their head/gesticulating exaggeratedly with their arms every few seconds, while the camera cuts back and forth x 9999. I think it's crazy that I'm getting minor pushback on this in comments because _most_ people I know have been WAY HARSHER on this than me, noticing it for close to ten years now while it took me _this_ long to be like, "You know what, enough is enough."
Great points brother I’m excited to get hands on the game to really gage an opinion on it but from what we’ve seen so far it’s decent but will see on full release
can’t wait to watch this! u give the best takes in the community .. looking forward to this video & (from what we’ve seen so far) i’m kinda looking fwd to Shadows
As for Art Direction, this is the first game after the departure of Raphael Lacoste, AC's premier art director, maybe that is why there's a visible change in art direction. As for Parkour, I never particularly expected it with Japan's open ended fields and short storied buildings, excluding castles. The time period and environment are very important to the implementation of parkour, I think. We have a better chance of getting better movement in Hexe, which is said to take place in a very urban environment and from early reports looks like a hub based semi open world game.
That makes sense. It'll be an adjustment for me, with that being the case. I'm with you on the parkour thing, as soon as I saw the big, wide open fields and natural landscapes I was like alright. I know what this is going to be, and I know what it's going to be Not. Curious to find out which of the Hexe rumors turn out true.
It was so funny seeing her perform Spidey's web zip attack with her rope-sickle lol. But also quite badass, hopefully this attack is limited by range. I also appreciate how acrobatic she feels both through combat and assassinations. I remember sharing fantasies with you how an Assassin should be able to fight like a trickster, jumping behind enemy backs or rolling away after a kill to quickly disengage and it seems like it's at least partially implemented. What I saw from Yasuke was just Ghost of Tsushima's duel system (been playing it myself with my new Dualsense controller) and I can only welcome it. I always thought that GoT combat is what AC should have always been like, it looks amazing but is also challenging since you can't really see behind your back, making you focus on 3-4 enemies tops. That is unless there's a cheap mechanic where enemies off-screen become passive (like in DMC and other games). I personally find the ease of the combat and lack of damage sponges as a welcome change of pace, I've been starving lol. Never want to see any level-gated enemies ever again, only tough enemies that you have to learn how to fight AC1 style and maybe somewhat protecting yourself from their damage with better gear. All in all, didn't expect to like the game made by Quebec but what was shown in the demo I quite enjoyed. Don't even care about what the Abstergo symbol in the Animus means at this point if it means the actual experience is good.
That gap-closer Assassinate seems to be contextual, yeah, you can probably only really do it if there's no ground to walk on between you and the target, and it looks like you still have to be fairly close, but I have some questions about it still. One of the things I want to see properly explored before release and at launch. Nice to hear you've been playing Ghost of Tsushima, it's such a fantastic game. I know exactly what you mean about, "This is what AC combat should feel like." They have a lot of similarities, and you always feel deadly if you can stay calm and know how to respond to every enemy around you. Tools are super strong too, and it controls pretty smooth. They kinda cooked with stealth in this game, I'm enjoying what I see of it.
@@LeoKRogue Yeah, I also like the new kidnap system in this game as opposed to Syndicate because in that game it felt OP and looked a bit ridiculous. Maybe if you were limited to walk speed it would've worked better for me, and if you tried to run, you'd drag the person behind you and it would be very high profile. A move like that should be high risk for the high reward it gave you. Lucrezia gave Ezio more pain for attempting that lol. Here, the kidnap is just a tactical move that is basically picking up and hiding a body but while the NPC is still alive. If it was mixed with some sort of interrogation mechanic it would've been awesome because beating knowledgeable people in dark quiet corners for information was fun.
Iirc Leo, in the dev breakdown of the gameplay, they mentioned that social stealth is going to be an “implied” action, not an actual feature. So no aura to show you’re blended or no actual cover mechanic, but maybe it blocks line of sight partially? Unsure what that mean
We've had an update on it now. Social stealth is NOT a feature in the game, according to new information straight from the developers. The most we get is just, guards will not automatically aggro onto Naoe if she's walking around non-restricted areas, which doesn't really matter. That's it. There's no active layer to engage with, no blending of any kind, no social systems to leverage (hiring, bribing etc). All stealth in the game where it really counts -- restricted areas -- is traditional light-and-shadow stealth.
@@LeoKRogue That's the vibe I got but it's good to have confirmation. I wasn't hopeful it would be in here, so I guess I'm not surprised but I am a little sad to see that our shinobi character can't blend with the crowd, but I guess it would be hard to make it work for Naoe and not Yasuke, so who knows
Combat _could_ be great, what was shown is like... fine. It'll probably be pretty fun, depending on the complexity of enemy movesets and what they demand, we just didn't really get to see much of _why_ it's cool because they moved on from every piece of gameplay really quickly. I guess it's a necessity when trying to showcase two player-characters equally (which I really praise them for) but, ah, just walked away feeling like we only got the most surface look at everything.
I think I haven’t been this excited about an ac game since origins. I think the most exciting thing is seeing how good we can get at combat with naoe and stealth as yasuke. I like to think of it as a Batman Arkham knight system where Batman can do stealth takedowns everywhere but the other characters like red hood can still take down but not silently. Like imagine trying stealth as yasuke but you can’t go prone, hide in the darkness and his takedowns do a lot more noise. Where either character can do things but they have specialties
That's awesome, I bet that feels great. Ride that emotion and enjoy it, if you're seeing the kinds of things you like and look for. ^_^ Your understanding of the two characters specializing in their own expertise while the other one is worse at it is exactly right, from everything we've been shown so far in articles and videos. Something I hope properly matters a lot, in the final game, since it's such a big part of Shadows' uniqueness.
I just played Black Flag for the first time and completed it over only the course of a week haha, and then when I look at the acting in this AC Shadows gameplay teaser and I feel kinda sad knowing how much better it was only 11 years ago. Origins I agree was the last game with good voice acting and animations in cutscenes (Bayek is a goat character, and so is Captain Edward 😊)
Definitely, yeah! It becomes very noticeable when you have one of the earlier games to compare to. Sometimes I wonder if part of the issue is a bit of uncanny valley, where as visuals get more "realistic" it takes more to get us to 'buy in' but then I look at other games releasing around the same time and they're doing fine.
i love that there's all these gameplay differences that come with day/night cycle or seasons, but in the breakdown vid, the creative director (iirc) said that there's no meditation mechanic like the other rpg games, so you can't pick your time to strike this is a huge problem imo, it restricts creativity in runs because you can't just choose to do a run on a winter night or smth. it also seems like a pointless change, since origins, oddysey (iirc, i don't have that game) and valhalla all have this mechanic
No meditation / time-skip is a very interesting choice, while it's restrictive it also means considering time of day becomes properly important in a way it never was before, which I think is cool as a stealth player. It also makes sense because if a player could just always skip to night for example, they might never feel the slightest need to try Yasuke's powerful assaults on a guarded area, or vice versa. Maybe it was also hard to get in the game considering all lighting and shadow is dynamic / raytraced, given that apparently affects stealth and detection as well. If it's a case of, we can't have this sick gameplay feature and _also_ change time-of-day whenever we want, then I'm fine sacrificing that, since no other game with this interesting feature exists yet.
I don’t know if it was mentioned. But I think both characters will be capable of social stealth to a degree. The Shinobi will be able to hide in plain sight among the poor, while the samurai relies on his prowess and station to get access to areas. Here is hoping anyways.
i really like the armored guy tho, it makes you have to play AROUND the guy and adds a challenge that the old games lacked while not bullshiting you randomly out of stealth because its a really easy to know what the type of enemy is
I like him too. There are special enemy-types in Arkham games and some Splinter Cells that force similar, more thoughtful engagement with a space. As long as everything is communicated and telegraphed clearly, I have no issue with it.
damn thats the best analysis i saw, ubisoft release a small trailer and expect that we are going to be looking at the HUD, your work was essential to understand the trailer, thank you
As a fan of samurai and ninja movies and a long time ac fan i can spot alot of things that need improvement but my bar for ac shadows was so low that i was impressed by the gameplay especially naoe stealth gameplay which was classic ninja style, hopefully the parkour and combat gets improved before release.
28:09 That's exactly how I felt looking at the trailer. It looks really nice but it feels like it's lacking that immersion you would feel when walking around in like almost all the games, mainly the older ones. It's not gonna help the comparisons that will already be made about the game against Ghost of Tsushima but maybe it's because Yasuke is meant to feel out of place, I'll guess we'll have to wait for footage of Naoe walking around.
I feel like with stronger atmosphere, it'd help convey that feeling of being out of place even more for me, personally. There's still time for them to juice the atmosphere and ambience a little but who knows at this point. 😅
@@LeoKRogue Idk if its the art direction or lighting or whatever but yeah, it still looks inferior to Ghost of Tsushima despite being graphically much better with the textures and stuff. Then again you're right, it's not the final build so they can still improve the game in these 5 months.
I really come here for some sanity in the ac fandom. The community/comments on this video is so much better than the one on the trailer. I hate that I have to see so much racism in the comments of the trailer, so I'm glad to see actual focus on the game instead of that. Thanks Leo for providing a safer environment to talk about the franchise!
I'm kinda concerned by the number of cutscene assassinations naoe got when killing what seem to be normal guards. Its probably nothing, but I really hope we don't have cutscenes for every stealth kill or at least can turn it off
@@LeoKRogue I'm quite possibly just going insane tbh... idk, the ac fan glasses looking for reasons not to be excited. There's an air assassination on a normal guard where the fov shrinks and camera pans. Same-ish thing happened when she went to hide on the ceiling. Could just be for the showcase, but if it queues something like that frequently when doing those actions it'll definitely get old fast for me with how often I do stuff similar in previous games. Like I said, could be for the showcase to draw attention to new features
Good video. I agree with the points you made here Leo. I am a fan of the Splinter Cell games. I always wished for more sound and light factors in AC. Its just too bad that it is featured in a game outside of the traditional formula. There are features i do like though, like the clean map and investigation systems. Time will tell.
I don’t think they will ever make another game with the type of movement and parkour people want. I’m not even sure if they can even replicate it anymore
I'm sure they can, if it was a focus and a design goal. If not that, then they can at least make movement that's entertaining to engage with, which should really be the overarching goal before anything else. I think people would be fine if it wasn't the _exact_ auto-parkour + manual jumps paradigm of AC1-Rev, but it's fair that players want more to do while moving around than the most basic on-rails actions with minimal decision-making.
Why do people bash Odyssey and Valhalla for not being stealth heavy ? The way I see it, they were set in time periods way way before AC 1, 2 and 3, where Stealth has beem reformed through time. Not forgetting that Cassandra was a mercenary in a time where people prized martial prowess and open combat play amd Same for a Viking like Eyvor.
Because they were promised in interviews and articles to be stealth-_viable_ in a way they just weren't. Also, Valhalla's stealth was broken due to glitches and bugs, not intentional design. That's why people complain. They're fair, reasonable criticisms. Basically, if you market a game as one thing, and fail to deliver, you are pretty _lucky_ to receive the light criticism those games got. Besides, they popped off and were super successful anyway, they don't need the defense.
Great video. Especially the point about the combat concern. Will it be as rewarding as what they've made the new stealth out to be? Yet to be seen. I'm also worried that no climbing mountains will hurt my personal satisfaction at times. I really like being able to feel like i can go anywhere within the the map's area
I hear you, yeah. Both of those have questions around them, for me. Depending on how it's done, I do feel that some climbing limitations can actually be a good thing since it makes pathfinding a skill we get better at over the course of a playthrough, and that can be very satisfying. Naoe has her hook so she's a bit more movement-capable than previous characters who didn't have one, could play into parsing our environments a little more actively.
I thought the samurai countering the stealth kill was due to the shadow of naoei being right in front of the samurai. I hope at night or when they can’t see naoei shadow that doesn’t happen. It would be a great innovation imo.
It's kind of funny (in a bad way) to be an OG AC fan. It is very likely that half of the half of this game will be more appealing to me than the 3 prior main games combined. It's always great to hear your thoughts :)
Wouldn't be surprised, yeah. Still not the dense city-game classic fans probably hunger for but the stealth is definitely something they cooked with, 100%.
I've always been curious to how asian Assassins would climb pagoda-like buildings with the edges of the roof sticking out (and what parkour on asian architectures would look like in general). I guess now I know. The grappling hook is a cool solution.
It seems that Quebec games are really trying to experiment with that exploration mode thing, which is I guess smth that I appreciate the most about their games. Even in Odyssey despite me not loving it most of the time it was really interesting and exciting to hunt down Cult members, searching for clues, deciding how you would approach the target in the open world or just randomly stumbling on them while free roaming. Interesting to see how Shadows spy network will work in the game combined with that Exploration mode
I think Black flag excellently, dealt with this on instances when the interaction was not cinematic heavy or emotionally gripping they simply kept the camera to third person mode with more focus on cheeky and good deliveries rather than focusing on sloppy animation of face. When the cinematic camera did shifted to face the facial expression really gripped you. A similar approach could be taken in newer games, just give us proper facial expression with good facial captures and please make the dialogue make sense. No human talks like the people portrayed in newer titles. The moment someone speaks that is precisely when my immersion breaks. Also deviating a bit,lets talk about harder game modes, where we see enemies with bigger health pool. I say you could just use the tenant of the creed to make it more challenging. Like in the hardest mode. The assassin needs to kill only his target, stay his blade from the flesh of the innocent. Donot get detected things like these, i believe incorporating this as a difficulty spike makes you truly feel as an assassin as you level up side by side of your character, from being a novice to a master assassin. Failing to meet the criteria would not fetch 100% sync. Further some more lore heavy missions could be locked behind these sync gates encouraging players to take stealth seriously and evaluate their surroundings like a true assassin would. Sorry that you had to read through a lot, it was something that was there in my mind for some time. Let me know what your thoughts are.
Black Flag did a great job, for sure, it also had a lot more to work with in the voice acting and dialogue department. Darby McDevitt is crazy good at writing character-drama, conflict and tension between different people in a story. That helps _a lot_ when grabbing the player's attention, even in 'calmer' moments or when there's not that much going on. I always enjoy the idea of making story and lore part of the game's challenge and difficulty. Those types of immersive framings for gameplay are usually quite fun for me to experience and engage with, so I'm always wishing Assassin's Creed does something cool with that some day. Especially things that relate to or connect to the Animus and Present Day, big fan of all that.
I get that this is meant to be the next Big RPG game, but the seeming lack of social stealth still irks me, because Naoe isn’t just a Shinobi, she IS a Capital A Assassin. The first time we’ve played as an actual Assassin since Syndicate, so potentially not having one of the core things from AC is still really bothersome.
I know Basim is a Hidden One and I appreciated that Mirage did try to recapture that feeling from the old games, but that’s not the same as being a “Post Altaïr’s reformation of the Brotherhood” Assassin
Ubisoft has been pretty consistent about instituting systems and carrying them over to other titles (i.e. taming animals). Now, don’t quote me on this, but remember I said it- What if these sneaking, light and shadows systems are a precursor to a future Splinter Cell game?
On a surface level maybe, and when it comes to their other series, yes. But Assassin's Creed specifically has had a really bad habit of introducing something and then scrapping or sidegrading it for next game instead of actually building on it and growing it further. What's so notable and interesting about Shadows is that NPC-dragging was expanded on from Kidnapping in Syndicate, dual protagonists was expanded on from dual protagonists in past AC titles, and the Spy Network + Intel system is an evolution or iteration on Exploration Mode which Odyssey introduced. I think that's really cool and could mark the beginning of AC not just discarding previous good ideas but holding onto them and making them more robust as time goes on. Would love to see that, personally. I wouldn't be surprised if they use some of these ideas for a future Splinter Cell, since we know Splinter Cell Remake is a thing and last I heard they were still hiring on for that, right?
I enjoyed the gameplay; I'm excited to play with both characters and take advantage of the overall game mechanics. What I like the most is the exploration. I disagree about the art direction; I find the AC settings always very visually appealing. But overall, you raised very pertinent points and made it very clear what type of player you are. Great analysis!
22:17 pure descriptive genius, after that beautiful explanation the enemy's "Big"ness was so apparent to me, that I was in awe. Jokes aside man, great breakdown and i love your point of view always in these scenarios as you dont give up hope and belief. There are always two types of people - ones who hail every new entry as the savious of the franchise or the ones that hate it like the game cussed out their mama(sorry). This game looks like it will be good and sure the same parkour moveset for the FIFTH DAMN TIME irks me, it'll prolly change (right....right?). Also people dont mention it much but the robes flow in the wind - hell yeah - properly after ac 1 i believe and thats very cool. Hope to see reviews and clips from you. Keep up the amazing work LEO🙏
This breakdown is great, was waiting for it! I’m bummed about the gutted level design with regard to parkour. I wasn’t really expecting it, but it still stings nonetheless considering its AC! Stealth mechanics seems good enough and familiar enough to the point that I’m left wondering if and when we will see a new Splinter Cell game. I also wonder if Yasuke was a late addition to the game since the early promotional artwork for AC: Red featured only Naoe!
Yasuke has been part of the game since the beginning / the conception phase, as far as I know. All of the promo materials I've seen have pretty much positioned both characters equally, except for a leaked asset of Naoe from before the game's reveal.
Perfect commentary addressing hard truth complaints that AC has been suffering from these past few years. you perfectly put forward what all of us desperately want to change for greater art. this should be seen by everyone working at Ubisoft behind not only the AC series, but every IP they bring fourth.
Glad you found some common ground, I know some of these grievances are things many players have voiced to me in private over the years, so I figured I'd mention them since they'd started to bother me too.
off topic: have you checked out rooftops & alleys yet? that one parkour game that a viewer told you to check out during a bloodborne stream. it released a few weeks ago and it's been getting pretty much daily updates, and you'd probably enjoy it a lot. otherwise, good video
Im glad youre not focused on the whole historical inaccuracies. I could honestly care less about them and since when has AC ever stuck 100% to history anyways. Im just extremely excited to finally have the chance to play AC in Japan, hopefully with more of Unity's parkour mechanics.
They've never been one of the things I most lean on as far as how much I will enjoy the videogame, yeah. I think about the biggest inaccuracies I've heard about in Shadows are architecture and clothing. Character-stuff seems solid. I don't have much hope for parkour anywhere close to Unity, unfortunately. 😅 I just feel like if they had something to show, they'd show it, unless they blow us away with some new footage later to prove me wrong, I'm expecting more of Origins-Mirage parkour here.
i hope we get blowing darths. just because it sound weird that someone would just walk arround with a stick in case they needed to breath underwater. if it doubles down as a blowdart pipe it looks more realistic
you’re absolutely right about the cutscenes, ac has had terrible cutscenes since odyssey. can’t believe ubi regressed, considering ac2 had heart wrenching cutscenes filled with vibes, despite the graphics it was full of charm. something like tlou2 has cut scenes damn near comparable to a feature film. ac isn’t close to anything like that at all. i get what people might say, the open world makes it harder to make set pieces and add dressing. however, the witcher 3 had good, serviceable cut scenes. ghost and red dead had amazing ones. i really hope ubi can improve this considering they’re really fucking rich, lol. i just want to be able to feel the stories again. haven’t felt anything that really impacted me since ac4. i’ve fully given up on a refined parkour system, so hopefully they can figure out everything else.
Lean heavily into ninja theme ✔ Ninja moves (dive and roll, hook, pointless flips)✔ Actual stealth complexity (light meter, hostages, crawling) ✔ Fluid parkour (apart from vaulting)❌ Lean into AC lore (??? wait and see)
Because of how long AAA games take to concept, develop, market, and release, I actually don't think that's the case. Instead we'll probably end up seeing the alternation they talked about in that article. www.ign.com/articles/ubisoft-wants-to-make-more-focused-games-rather-than-have-one-game-do-everything Basically, it's just too soon to come to a conclusion that nothing like Mirage will ever happen again, AAA dev doesn't move quick enough to be so sure of that just yet. Even if they were making another game similar to Mirage right now, as I type this comment, we just wouldn't _hear_ about it for another two years or so.
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![Why Do I Avoid Endgame Gear? | Assassin's Creed Unity [Leo Talks]](/img/n.gif)
After finishing my 3rd playthrough of Black Flag, the difference in cutscene, dialogue and voice acting is NIGHT and DAY! Black flag’s character all feel like REAL people with meaningful dialogue.
I think we took the masterful story telling and dialogue in early ACs for granted. The stealth however looks really good.
Stealth is probably going to be really fun, yeah. Black Flag is one of the best examples, yeah. No character is boring to watch or listen to, everyone has inner tension and something they want, and the situations they're put in are stressful and emotionally-affecting enough that it pushes them to respond in entertaining ways.
This is one of the gameplay breakdowns of all-time! Awesome to hear you're loving the stealth. That makes me more excited for it :)
Wicked! ^_^ It's definitely the element I'm most looking forward to.
Might I also mention that CLOTH PHYSICS ARE FINALLY BACK!I I don't know why they weren't present in Valhalla but Jesus Christ was it immersion breaking when the game had worse physics than the Ezio trilogy and AC1.
True! Good spot.
Cloth physics and the world physics. Seeing boxes, bags, apples move around when you or npcs tumble over them or the trees blowing in the storm. All good
The fact that Valhalla had the same team as 1
Leave it to Leo to again have the best breakdown of what little information we have so far.
Looking forward to when a larger variety of players get access to the demo to showcase what Shadows actually has to offer.
Thanks, as always. ^_^
I'm looking forward to that too, I think there's so much more to see that we just didn't get to take a look at this time.
Hit the nail on the head for your first point. I genuinely don’t know how Ubisoft can go from some of the best, well animated, choreographed and directed cutscenes to whatever ai generated boring stuff they have right now.
Because those cutscenes take a lot of time and resources. It was feasible when the games weren’t as big, but in the RPGs there are so many conversations they can’t do that for all of them. In Origins a lot of the time it’s two characters standing still while talking so they made a modular cutscene system to change that.
@@Falconwing66 I just think it's a shame Ubi went for quantity over quality. Like Leo said, the overall acting and voice presentation needs a LOT of work, especially compared to previous games. It's very bland acting that does the "base minimum".
Like if we just looked at the series pre-odyssey, characters had emotions, range and personality. It just looks really stiff from what is presented.
@@Falconwing66 your comment makes sense if this is an indie studios but Ubisoft is a triple A company.
Do I even have to mention the amount of Microtransactions Ubi jam in their games to nickel and dime the players?
They have more than enough money to invest into stuffs like this. This is just reek laziness
Yeah, it's probably just a matter of game-scale/feasibility. Still sucks for the end user, though.
@@hoangle2483Ubi does have a lot of money, but they don’t give teams infinite budgets. Also calling them lazy is disrespectful. Anyone familiar with game dev will tell you it’s extremely hard.
Excellent breakdown as always Leo! It is nice to finally see some more evolution in stealth for this series (hopefully these evolutions aren't abandoned in the next game) , although as you mentioned I do find it strange how there has been effectively no mention of social stealth. I do think another gameplay demo would be beneficial as I still find myself with a lot of questions that went unanswered.
you always be speaking FAX
100% there with you, I want to see another gameplay demo that goes into more detail on things a little closer to release, perhaps.
Agreed I love how leo notices the animus symbol or the animus feel
When in the town with Yasuke, it didn't look like there was any opportunities for social stealth like with basim
@@llama6394Yasuke definitely can’t do social stealth, Naoe might be able to.
The way my smile dropped when I saw Naoe doing the RPGCreed jump
Saaaaaaaaaaaame heeeeeeere...
I would be the same...except I was already disappointed and wasn't smiling, lol
@@QuatarTarandir why? The showcase wasn’t disappointing actually had solid combat and map and showcases good and true AC stealth and ofc you can pet dogs
@@Envixin753 The combat looked stiff and boring to me.
@@Envixin753 Well, to me the combat looked bad, and I wasn't impressed, especially having half the game where you play as a combat-focused character. And of course the story looks eh, the parkour looks eh, and pretty much everything except stealth and a few other features. And even then I was still not very excited about it
12:45 The use for the bell is TBD. Jorraptor asked about them and was told by Ubi they couldn't reveal it yet. This makes me think it's something else, like recruit actions.
Ooooohhhh. That is really, really interesting, thank you for noting.
TBD ? people always use acronyms and half the time like here i have no idea what it means....
@@SuperBallanito be defined / to be determined
It's probably the same as the wind-chime from GoT
@@LeoKRogueit is almost guaranteed that the bell is definitely a cherry bomb like feature.
Stealth looks like heavily Tenchu inspired with all the gaget related moves (Cling to ceiling, breath underwater...). Let's not forget that castles are said to be whole designed levels. So expect more indoor stealth, with hopefully, ways to crawl under the houses or go in secret passages.
I think that'll be really cool, yeah. Assassin's Creed has flirted with interior stealth from time to time, have always been curious what proper stealth inside intricate buildings would look like if done well. Hopefully Shadows answers that question for me.
So glad you agree with the acting thing too, i felt crazy complaining about it
You are not crazy and we are not alone. AC has had flat, disengaging acting and often writing for years.
@@LeoKRogue The cutscenes are really boring to look at too. The Witcher 3 solved this almost a decate ago. Ubisoft has no excuse given the experience they have.
Always great to see you post, interested to see how this game pans out
Thanks Jay! Will be keeping an eye on this.
Hi, I'm from Ubisoft's marketing team!!! Our development team at Ubisoft Quebec and our support studios around the world have been so hard at work these past four years crafting incredibly deep and impactful stealth systems that are affected by many systemic and handcrafted elements alike. In order to commemorate this achievement and show off their game to players properly, here is six minutes of Naoe climbing and performing basic assassinations. We also hope you enjoyed the few minutes of Yasuke slow walking through a village and conversating with an NPC before getting into a combat sequence beforehand.
Please preorder and show your support. Thank you!!!
Lol
huge
Dawg, you are the hero here. Save us from this mediocrity and uncreative impotent vision for Assassin creed projects. They need to give this sacred IP to some other studio before it gets bombarded by more mediocrity.
By the way, hell to the fuck naaaooo. I ain’t preordering or purchasing until the reviews unanimously approve, that it’s a quality comeback for the AC franchise and when the price goes down to $40 or less, it doesn’t deserve any higher than 60!
Hail hydra…. Fuck, I meant Hail @protectbabysif!
You are upset because in a gameplay showcase for Assassin's Creed Shadows, you got to see the protagonists engage in Parkour, stealth and combat? This is BS. 😂. What else they were supposed to show? People like you are cancer
here's naoe speaking the cringiest dialogue written for a character, in a work in progress game with a total of 20 minutes of revealed gameplay. pease preorder our deluxe edition and buy all our products
The goat has uploaded
bless
The Indian has spoken
@@aliabbasi5379 ??? im not indian, also that's such a strange comment to say
This got awkward quick!
LEO! Awesome to see from you!
Hidden One! Probably watched 7 of your videos today. 🤣😂 Always enjoy your content as well!
@@thetramp1138 thanks dude. Appreciate that 🙏
My stomach hurts after drinking KFC Pepsi.
Oil up 😋be there in 5😊
same
@@star7323you little minx
What do you think of the writing?
I thought it was the cringiest thing ever ("I am justice", "It will be me and the shadows").
I can't remember being so put off by the writing in a game.
I don't like it.
One thing I was hoping on Naoe's part was for them to show double or chain assassination and see the animation of it, because the chance is right there even if she only has one hidden blade.
Unfortunately, probably will just be the knife throw from before
They said each weapon gets a unique assassination animation and ability the scythe gives range I think the katana and tanto might be double assassinations
@@blacksheep6415 I think the Tato special assassination is stabbing through the door
Double assassinations are in the game, not the "chain" throw@@QuatarTarandir
@@jaloniwilson Was that every confirmed though? I don't believe it was, and they probably would've shown it if it was
Can Yasuke even parkour thought? Seems like he is such a beefcake strength build character.
He can parkour just not as fast and acrobatically as Naoe. Naoe can also climb certain walls Yasuke can't apparently.
It'd be even weirder if he couldn't. One of the skills is Yasuke jumping like 15 feet into the air. If he was also somehow not strong enough to pull himself in armor up a 10 foot wall when you can deck Ezio, Arno, Bayek, Kassandra, Cassandra, Eivor out in basically as much or more armor would be kinda stupid.
@@danieldaw1778 Yeah idk his design is all over the place
@@obsidianwarrior5580 Do we have gameplay footage of him doing any climbing and stuff?
@@Purple_Anxiety No but apparently that's been what they said. Honestly not really seeing much reason to play as Yasuke more than Naoe. She'll be better and stealth and parkour and still competent in combat whereas Yasuke is pretty much just combat orientated.
Great video. I’m glad to see someone call out just how awful the cinematic presentation of these games has been for YEARS now. It’s genuinely embarrassing how long these games have felt absolutely sterile and lifeless in terms of scripts and performances. When Naoe said “I won’t be alone… I’ll be with the Shadows™️” I audibly groaned.
On a more positive note, I remember expressing a few times in your streams my skepticism regarding Shadows being able to pull off light and shadow stealth in a dynamic open world. I’m glad to see that I seem to have been proven wrong in that regard. Stealth genuinely looks fun and it may be the most mechanically interesting and varied it’s been since the classics. Although, as the token social stealth guy, I can’t help but feel bitter that we’ve gone ANOTHER game without any kind of meaningful social stealth. However, I wonder if that visibility meter could be iterated upon and also implemented into visibility inside crowds. That would be pretty interesting.
Shame about the parkour, although the environment could hardly support anything more advanced than Origins’ system, unfortunately. The combat also looks very stiff and simple, which as you said, is very unfortunate if they have an entire protagonist whose kit is JUST that one thing plus a gun.
I hope to also see practical examples of how the seasons and dynamic weather impact stealth and AI. They promised a lot in that regard but have oddly opted not to show any of it, despite those things being probably the most unique ideas this series has had in a long time.
I agree with your thoughts on the spy system and exploration. I hope future AC games continue to try to use diegetic means of communicating information to the player and encourage organic exploration rather than handholding the player through every single step of the way, as if Ubisoft thinks the average person sniffs glue for fun. This is a great change and I hope more AC games rely less and less on HUD and waypoints to tell you what to do.
I so cringed at that line. Like seriously, it sounds like an edgy teen trying to be cool. Like I get what they were going for, but it was not there at all
Great comment, I don't really have anything to add, just good points overall.
I had fun with Kassandra lines.
This is a side quest though. The main story missions will have mo cap and hopefully better acting.
I’ve never clicked on a video so fast. Thanks in advance Leo
You're welcome, have fun.
I really like how enemies who cant be assassinated are properly telegraphed to the player now and force u to switch up your strategy. They remind me of the minigun brute enemies in Arkham Knight. They cannot be taken out silently in the regular way so you are in encouraged to leave them till last to avoid drawing the attention of other enemies. However u can still take them out earlier if u are smart with your environment and gadgets. Hopefully shadows is similar in this regard and there are other ways of taking them out other than straight up combat.
Yup, exactly. That's my thing. Other stealth/stealth-action games make use of unique enemy archetypes you have to respond to or engage with differently, and as long as everything is shown to the player clearly and there's no confusion or ambiguity, it's totally fine.
You can turn on guaranteed assassinations as well.
@@LeoKRogue Just wait until they let you unlock heavy takedown skill like in other ubi games XD
It's awesomely impressive how you pick up on things just by looking at them, man. Tons of people on Twitter kept asking what the down button prompt was and no one knew. You figured out the posture system and broke it down beautifully. Awesome work, brother. (It's M btw)
Thanks so much M, appreciate the support as always.
@@LeoKRogue Habbibi, Leo
The dynamic between the two protagonist was actually pretty good they seem they bounce off each other well.
You think so? I've seen a lot of back-and-forth/mixed opinions on this around, and I'm not sure where I stand on it myself at the moment. It felt pretty basic/functional to me at best. I've been playing some games recently with really good dialogue and character-chemistry so I'm probably just seeing the difference in quality and vibes, I don't know.
@@LeoKRogue yea imo there's no dynamic between them at all. They seem to be working together cuz that's what the story of the game is. It doesn't feel organic.
there really is only one way to find out honestly.
hearing like 3 clips of them talking to each other isn't going to give anybody the full picture so we shouldn't pretend it will.
they also have like 5 months to fix it if the community receives what they did hear especially badly lol.
Very detailed analysis good work. Also huge thanks for making subtitles again they make me love channels so much more, which is great because yours is so exceptional
Thank you so much, glad you enjoyed this one.
I appreciate the shout-out on the subtitles as well, I usually try to remember to put them in.
The game adds several immersive elements, which is a nice touch. I'm tired of crouching everywhere when I should be crawling. Combat looks mediocre, and the parkour is... never mind! The game caters to a different type of Assassin's Creed experience, which is fine, and I understand the motivation for trying different Assassin's Creed games for different gameplay experiences. But I'm freaking tired of not having a dense, city-focused Assassin's Creed game that offers the OG parkour experience that made me fall in love with the series. We want an Assassin's Creed game with a core focus on parkour.
In the same boat here. I recognize this is what it is, I'm not too broken up about it personally but I still wish for and hope for that cool city/parkour game.
Found your channel recently and I'm really enjoying it. Been looking forward to your thoughts on Shadows!
Appreciate that, stick around.
Very interesting commentary!
The highlight for me was Yasuke petting a dog. Very cute dog
Adorable doggo, yes. ^_^
To this day ive considered AC1 as the best game in the series. Pretty much for everything. Parkour, combat, stealth, story, protagonist, antagonists, and modern day. Top of the top tiers. All that being said, im shockingly and genuinely excited for shadows. But if im being honest, i just want a remake of the first AC. Modern tech, tweak it by a smidge, and add newgame plus. The day that happens is the day i shed a tear of joy for gaming. As always great video bro. As someone whos loved the series since first seeing the AC1 trailer on the G4 channel, i appreciate all the work youve contributed over the years. Thank you.
AC1 is definitely, to me, the best and most enjoyable game in the series. Thanks for the nice comment, will keep doing my best. ^_^
@@LeoKRogue 🤜🤛 hell yeah brother
Hey, Mark Zuckerberg here! I have to say that, you are my favourite youtuber. You are the piece to my puzzle, the key to my heart, the love of my life. My majestic G.O.A.T. I just can't believe this is your last video, before you died... I still hear your voice in the middle of the night. Rest in piece, his majesty.
thanks bro, your product, Facebook, sucks balls btw
Elon musk better b!tch
@@LeoKRoguedamn leo is on smoke today 😂
Bro what is this comment section 😂
@@Noir-c9kidk whats gotten into this community but their bananas, I love it.
The best part was the Japanese hip hop music while dude was fighting lol
i mean Japanese hip hop go hard
Hell yeah. Unironically a big fan of that, hope his OST actually sounds like that in-game TBH.
When I saw people complained about that my mind goes to thinking "did we just forget about Nujabes already?". Hip-hop in Samurai media is an underrated match.
I don’t mind it but them specifically playing that on Yasuke’s section just came off as pandering. It’d be cool if it’s related to the animus giving a modern soundtrack to the the game
@@LeoKRogue pandering as only Ubi can. Dude was literally African so hip hop makes no sense lol. It’s all the same to the virtue signaling weirdos. Will they stick to all black stereotypes in game? Will he be eating fried chicken while everyone else eats rice? This shit is absurd but thoroughly expected.
About the failed assassination, you can notice that the eye indicator is full, so that possibly has something to do with not being able to assassinate fully. Considering it's daytime, that probably makes sense
That's actually pretty interesting, if it's consistent behavior that can be read by glancing at your Visibility that way.
@LeoKRogue yeah I feel like with this game, lighting will probably matter a lot more than other ac games, so you can't just waltz into a fort during daytime to immediately begin stealth unlike other games. So night time will be the preferred time zone
You can also see a jar next to the guy that is presumably an explosive. If it’s not lethal, maybe it’ll break his armor and give an opportunity for an assassination like Leo said
I agree with the daytime theory whether or not it's on purpose... my first thought was you can clearly see her shadow on the wall in front of him which would be a dead give away and possibly why he was able to react and Dodge her attack... not sure if they really put that much thought into or not but maybe...
@wjcarey03 honestly, I believe it's reaching to expect the AI to be capable of actually detecting Noue's shadow. However, I do hypothesise that the full eye indicator has to do something with it. Otherwise, they wouldn't emphasise it so much to put it in the middle of the screen
If Ubisoft would use motion capture, it would make these games so much better. I know it’s much more expensive but can you imagine The Last Of Us or God Of War type of motion capture for these games.
I could. To be fair, The Last of Us and God of War are games with a much smaller scale, and many fewer NPC interactions than the average modern Assassin's Creed game, so I _understand_ why that's not really feasible, but then my hope and my dream is, just go _smaller._ If you can't make games _this massive_ remain consistently entertaining throughout their huge size, please scale down and deliver something more focused and refined.
I've wanted an AC game set in Feudal Japan for SO LONG, I'm hoping to god that it's as good as Ubisoft promises.
Hope so. ^_^
On an unrelated note… I remember playing Red dead 2 right. Hear me out, it was the pinnacle of sublime creations of art, nuance, immersion, & alluring experiences. That challenge your open minded view on other games, that aren’t necessarily in the same league as RDR2 or a God Of War. When my adrenaline reached its climax, subsequent to RDR2’s scintillating beauty gracing my optic nerves. I took a deep breath, allowed my adrenaline levels to simmer down, took a hard look in the mirror & said to myself “every game & genre is exhilarating, sublime in its own way if done right. It doesn’t have to realistically enchant you with every encounter & every nuanced detail like RDR2 for you to be immersed.
After observing the dilemma I was in, I realized that there are games that lack the sophistication of RDR2, yet I appreciated the type of art depicted and stories told without comparing masterpieces such as RDR 2 to it.
In other words, Ubisoft can put a gun to my head. I ain’t buying the game or its ridiculously priced editions until that hoe comes down to $20.
that's a lotta words to glaze RDR2 but fair
@@LeoKRogue thank you, I spilled my heart out like a teenage girl for that game. Seriously though, wasn’t my intention to overwhelm with a lengthy poem. I’ll be succinct in future AC videos, fingers crossed 🤞🏼!
@@KravenZoro Nah, I love the game too and I think you're right. Please type as much as you wish to, don't let me limit your expression, it matters to me. I was just in an asshole mood from some other comments xD
@@LeoKRogue no worries, I won’t judge crude remarks at face value, until I have done my due diligence & understood the other side, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I do appreciate your articulate content (no glazing, just a matter of fact). I’ve seen the comments, I understand sir.
Had me in the first half! XD
I started tuning out the dialogue in Horizon because the dialogue run on too long. Game devs need to learn more on how to weave a story by showing more instead of telling (talking).
I can empathize. There are definitely games out there that make engaging with their story the player's onus, so players have to choose to invest more deeply, and some nice lessons can be learned from those. It's not the right style for every game, of course, I'm just saying generally.
Ghost too. Or maybe I'm too familiar with the narrative and dialogues the characters have that it sounds like drivel to me
Like Leo mentioned, my biggest concern with the dual protagonists from a gameplay perspective is will there be enough reason for my to pick one character over the other? For example, if I barge in with Yasuke on an assassination mission there has to be some kind of downside to it. Maybe my target has a bigger chance to escape because he would be alerted. But if I go with Naoe it will be easier. And in the reverse if I pick Naoe for a more combat centric mission then I should get my shit rocked because Naoe should be made out of paper in combat. And it's not enough for Naoe to just have bad defense. If I fight 5 dudes clad in Samurai armor with Naoe, I should be having a rough time with them like I am playing a Souls game.
Yes, yes, yes. This is what I want. Actual meaningful distinction in how each character makes me understand the world around me, mechanically.
I don’t think it would make sense for social stealth to be in this game since a shinobi wouldn’t be hiding in a crowd they would stick to rooftops and shadows and yasuke is a 6ft tall black samurai he just doesn’t blend in.
A Shinobi who is _also_ an Assassin*.
Yes, it would make sense. But it's fine.
great video something i noticed is when naoe is sneaking on enemies she extracts her hidden blade kind of similar to the older ac games so hopefully we can extract it whenever we want
It looks like that only happens whenever she's in range to Assassinate someone. It's probably an automatic thing, that helps you see if your button press will attempt a stealth kill. Useful when you have all your HUD/UI off, too though.
I'd like to mention: we see that we can finally flex the hidden blade whenever we want again which I love.
Also each weapon has a special assassination technique: the katana can stab through shoji doors and the kusarigama has a ranged takedown. Naoe uses a tanto and the hidden dagger for combat so I think the tanto's special ability will be the dual assassination but I'm just speculating.
In the gameplay video it looks like Naoe can only show the hidden blade when she's in the range to assassinate someone. It seems to be automatic.
@@felipecosta94315 I though it wasn't because it didn't appear when Naoe had the option to assassinate the woman but I guess it could only show for guards.
It appears automatic, and happens when you're in Range for a stealth kill. A good way to see if you're close enough for one, without your HUD/UI on which I appreciate.
apparently you are right about the tanto dual assassination
I’m somewhat excited for this one honestly. I’m definitely a stealth and parkour guy but this game looks like it’ll be fun and introduce some cool new concepts. I’m a little worried for the lack of depth Yasuke seems to have but I’ll reserve those worries until we see more. Some of the animations look choppy and I’m also not super impressed with the graphics but I’d like to see this game in a higher fidelity. Overall I’m not crazy hyped or anything but so far I’m looking forward to this one. Anyways, great content as always! You always break down tiny details that no one else touches on and I love it.
The stealth is definitely making my brain buzz with fun possibilities, yeah. I want to _try_ it, I want to see if it's really as cool as it wants me to _believe_ it is, because if most of this stuff is true this will be the most demanding and challenging stealth system Assassin's Creed has ever had, with a good ceiling for skill-expression and mastery, which would be nice.
@@LeoKRogue I couldn’t agree more honestly. Things like the light system, being able to destroy lights, grab enemies and go prone are going to have huge positive impacts on stealth. I loved Mirage’s stealth but it didn’t feel like it had that many real innovations so this is cool to see for me. I’m hoping this will be challenging stealth as for me, maybe it’s my skill level but Mirage’s stealth got a little easy for me at times. But yes promising new additions to stealth for sure, this just might shape up to be our best stealth yet but we’ll have to wait and see
Something I haven't stopped to think about is how damn good your speaking skills are. I could hear you yap for hours.
Thank you.
5:05 ive noticed a lot of people overlook this but that looks exactly like the world events we had in unity and before
Yeah, Ubisoft loves those kinds of dynamic events.
I 100% agree that good acting has been almost non existent since origins but I personally like Naoe in the showcase and didn’t think too too bad about Yasuke
That's totally fair.
Whatever happens, it's not gonna be worth the ridiculous price tag.
I think we can probably count on that, yeah. 😅
It gets tougher and tougher to really recommend anyone I know buy games at full AAA price nowadays, no matter what they are. Not to mention you just know there's going to be extra monetization on top, so.
@@LeoKRogue so it's time to set sail again 🏴☠️ That's usually what I tell friends to do but they keep pre ordering anyways
Ok, my favorite thing hands down is the list that you get as your objective, my least favorite thing about ac especially the kenway saga which are the only games I’ve played so far, is the forced turning on of ship health/button prompts/enemy counter windows etc, and other objectives such as the ship you need to follow that makes the spy glass thing where it shows the name of the ship all but useless but I keep it on bc I want to see the loot I get from enemies
As always, you give a very rational look at the situation. Love it!!
As a hardcore stealth player and a hardcore ac fan, I am happy that the series is finally expanding in the stealth space, as the genre itself is a rarity to see in video games nowadays.
I am so excited for 'Hide in Shadows' mechanic! I actually recreated this a while back in Unreal Engine.
Quebec does some great design, but they always NOT deliver the AC feel, whether it's the story, the world, the visuals. That department is well handled by Montreal and now Bordeaux.
I think that at least in Naoe's sections and during infiltrations in particular, Quebec probably have the AC feel on lock in this game, when it comes to those experiences. Hopefully I'm right but that's the feeling I'm getting so far. I'm really looking forward to the improved depth and demands of stealth, if they don't pull their punches and it's as interesting and immersive as it appears.
@@LeoKRogue Yes yes agreed, the Gameplay feels is nailed, I am skeptical about the story tho, it won't be a traditional ac story and I think will flow very differently.
Speaking of that, I agree with your voice acting take, I thought Naoe would be fine, but that "Too slow!", aahhh. Hope the rest of the acting is good.
I might play as Yasuke once in a while because so far I like his personality.
I’m playing unity again I never got passed the 3rd mission when it came out and I can’t believe how much higher quality of a game it is then the new stuff, ur videos really highlight it’s potential
Thanks!
it's also worth considering that both the brute and Naoe are in broad daylight when she goes for the failed air assassination in that clip. What if brutes are impossible for Naoe to kill in daylight, but considerably easier in shadow (assuming that setting is turned on)? Meaning she'll have to lure the brute over to that patch of darkness on the left in order to take him out. This means the devs have yet another ludonarratively consonant tool they can potentially use to challenge the player's skill with stealth
That could be interesting. For the moment we just don't know exactly how it works, so I tried to avoid making too many assumptions. Would be cool though.
The spaces where you are considered to be in a shadow could be ambiguous in some situations, especially for those who play on lower graphical settings. Hope they keep this in mind and work out a suitable way to convey it clearly.
I believe that's why the visibility meter being in the top middle of the screen is so important. If it's tough to see in-world, having a way to know how hidden or visible you are matters.
Nice observations…
One thing I have noticed during the entire showcase of gameplay is the forced hate that people lash out just out of spite for Ubisoft, without even considering for a second the tremendous effort and passion that developers put in to make such games…
If people paid close attention to subtle details, they would notice many new and innovative changes in this game..
For starters, we have ray traced reflections and dedicated global illumination models in AC, to better aid the dynamic stealth approach…we have dynamic seasonal and weather effects, and objects in the world reacting to them in real time, making the world more believable…
We have a high number of destructible objects in the environment….the NPC interaction cutscenes are slightly better than the last 4 games, and more…
What baffles me is that when the devs choose to take risks and seriously innovate, people are too busy shitting on their game (before it even comes out) because of some forced controversial hate, and later, when they don’t innovate much, the usual ‘ oh in hindsight, Unity wasn’t so bad, I wish they make games like that more…’
Perpetual hypocrisy at its peak..
Raytracing is definitely going to make a difference, I feel. One thing I see a lot of players forget about, or maybe they just don't know, is that RT is a technical innovation that means devs are forced to work _less_ rather than more, since light is much more simulated and needs less painstaking manual retouching. Could be nice, curious to see what it looks like running on native hardware when it releases.
Dynamic light and shadow affecting stealth is also huge, it's representative of something older Ubisoft used to really hold close which is technology defining or informing what's possible in gameplay. The tech became available with PS3 hardware to have big crowds, so crowds became an important part of the experience then. The tech is available to have dynamic light and shadow on this generation, so we'll see it affect how we sneak through the world. Really cool stuff.
@@LeoKRogue yes, and one of the more significant factors is the story, of what we have been shown nothing yet, but of the two mainline games Quebec studios have developed, their narrative experiences have ranged from being decent to really good...even if I didn't like Odyssey as a whole, I somewhat enjoyed the story of Alexios/Kassandra as a seperate narrative from the larger AC universe
Shadows just has the bad fortune of being the target of the hate train everyone is jumping on, just cause of that UBISOFT logo...
@@thenexus9902 We need better bosses for Ubisoft employees
Fun fact about the chonky dude in armor that can block your assassination: the button prompt says "Stealth Attack" and not "Assassinate"
Yep! Even before anything is attempted.
About the clip at 23:00 of the stealth immune enemy, one thing I see nobody mention is the bright red obvious explosive barrel he's standing right next to.
True.
Not being able to kill brute enemies is present in stealth games for a long time. Splinter cell had it, you could take out normal sliders but not the big, armored ones. This is normal and people shouldn't be upset about it as long as normal enemies have guaranteed assassination.
Yup, Arkham games which are a lot closer to Assassin's Creed in feel and rhythm also introduce enemy types that have to be engaged differently over the course of a playthrough.
Enjoying this running theme of you making the best AC breakdowns on TH-cam, on the point of hoping Yasuke has meaningful & challenging combat I whole heartedly agree, one thing I noticed is one guy is attacked mid unblockable (parry only) attack, & killed instantly because of it, so here’s hoping things like that will get rewarded this time around
Will do my best to keep it going. :)
acting and body language in modern AC games is emotionally disengaging not entertaining and lacking in dynamism... you literally took the words out of my mouth mate... truer words have never been spoken... this is how I feel about modern AC games... and this problem persists in many other modern AAA games too... Origins was the last game to have properly executed emotional weight and engagement behind the acting and dialogue of its characters... Odyssey also had engaging voice acting and performance throughout most of its main story... since then its completely removed... it defeats the whole purpose of playing the game... I can't even get connected to any characters and feel anything for them... like I did for Ezio, Edward, Bayek, Shay, Connor, Evie, Haytham and Arno...
And my opinion about the gameplay is that its a watered down version of Ghost Of Tsushima... a game that did a far better job (best I would say) at portraying Japanese culture and which Ubisoft desperately tried to imitate... but failed miserably and did worse in every aspect... Ubi just copy-pasted GOT's perfect gameplay without actually understanding or respecting any of it at all... it's just as bad, disengaging, vapid, soulless and mediocre as you would expect...
It's something I've been noticing on and off for some time, but I guess a part of me just thought.. y'know, _eventually_ they would improve at it. I'm just feeling very done with standing in front of an NPC occasionally nodding my head, followed by them occasionally nodding their head/gesticulating exaggeratedly with their arms every few seconds, while the camera cuts back and forth x 9999.
I think it's crazy that I'm getting minor pushback on this in comments because _most_ people I know have been WAY HARSHER on this than me, noticing it for close to ten years now while it took me _this_ long to be like, "You know what, enough is enough."
3:55 I’m pretty sure they did mention that it will only exist for Naoe, could be wrong
Interesting. Hopefully they clarify in future news!
very good breakdown, i havent noticed before many of these details you explained
Great points brother I’m excited to get hands on the game to really gage an opinion on it but from what we’ve seen so far it’s decent but will see on full release
"Decent" is a good word for how I'm feeling.
can’t wait to watch this! u give the best takes in the community .. looking forward to this video & (from what we’ve seen so far) i’m kinda looking fwd to Shadows
Hopefully I continued to give good takes in this video lol, some of the stuff I say gets pretty cooked sometimes >:P
@@LeoKRogue haha nonetheless, i appreciate you sharing w/us all.
As for Art Direction, this is the first game after the departure of Raphael Lacoste, AC's premier art director, maybe that is why there's a visible change in art direction. As for Parkour, I never particularly expected it with Japan's open ended fields and short storied buildings, excluding castles. The time period and environment are very important to the implementation of parkour, I think.
We have a better chance of getting better movement in Hexe, which is said to take place in a very urban environment and from early reports looks like a hub based semi open world game.
That makes sense. It'll be an adjustment for me, with that being the case. I'm with you on the parkour thing, as soon as I saw the big, wide open fields and natural landscapes I was like alright. I know what this is going to be, and I know what it's going to be Not. Curious to find out which of the Hexe rumors turn out true.
It was so funny seeing her perform Spidey's web zip attack with her rope-sickle lol. But also quite badass, hopefully this attack is limited by range. I also appreciate how acrobatic she feels both through combat and assassinations. I remember sharing fantasies with you how an Assassin should be able to fight like a trickster, jumping behind enemy backs or rolling away after a kill to quickly disengage and it seems like it's at least partially implemented.
What I saw from Yasuke was just Ghost of Tsushima's duel system (been playing it myself with my new Dualsense controller) and I can only welcome it. I always thought that GoT combat is what AC should have always been like, it looks amazing but is also challenging since you can't really see behind your back, making you focus on 3-4 enemies tops. That is unless there's a cheap mechanic where enemies off-screen become passive (like in DMC and other games). I personally find the ease of the combat and lack of damage sponges as a welcome change of pace, I've been starving lol. Never want to see any level-gated enemies ever again, only tough enemies that you have to learn how to fight AC1 style and maybe somewhat protecting yourself from their damage with better gear.
All in all, didn't expect to like the game made by Quebec but what was shown in the demo I quite enjoyed. Don't even care about what the Abstergo symbol in the Animus means at this point if it means the actual experience is good.
That gap-closer Assassinate seems to be contextual, yeah, you can probably only really do it if there's no ground to walk on between you and the target, and it looks like you still have to be fairly close, but I have some questions about it still. One of the things I want to see properly explored before release and at launch.
Nice to hear you've been playing Ghost of Tsushima, it's such a fantastic game. I know exactly what you mean about, "This is what AC combat should feel like." They have a lot of similarities, and you always feel deadly if you can stay calm and know how to respond to every enemy around you. Tools are super strong too, and it controls pretty smooth.
They kinda cooked with stealth in this game, I'm enjoying what I see of it.
@@LeoKRogue Yeah, I also like the new kidnap system in this game as opposed to Syndicate because in that game it felt OP and looked a bit ridiculous. Maybe if you were limited to walk speed it would've worked better for me, and if you tried to run, you'd drag the person behind you and it would be very high profile. A move like that should be high risk for the high reward it gave you. Lucrezia gave Ezio more pain for attempting that lol. Here, the kidnap is just a tactical move that is basically picking up and hiding a body but while the NPC is still alive. If it was mixed with some sort of interrogation mechanic it would've been awesome because beating knowledgeable people in dark quiet corners for information was fun.
Hey leo, loved the video. Always love to see you taking a stab at new or old stealth games. THIS IS WHY I SUB!!!
Thank you.
Iirc Leo, in the dev breakdown of the gameplay, they mentioned that social stealth is going to be an “implied” action, not an actual feature. So no aura to show you’re blended or no actual cover mechanic, but maybe it blocks line of sight partially? Unsure what that mean
We've had an update on it now. Social stealth is NOT a feature in the game, according to new information straight from the developers. The most we get is just, guards will not automatically aggro onto Naoe if she's walking around non-restricted areas, which doesn't really matter. That's it.
There's no active layer to engage with, no blending of any kind, no social systems to leverage (hiring, bribing etc). All stealth in the game where it really counts -- restricted areas -- is traditional light-and-shadow stealth.
@@LeoKRogue That's the vibe I got but it's good to have confirmation. I wasn't hopeful it would be in here, so I guess I'm not surprised but I am a little sad to see that our shinobi character can't blend with the crowd, but I guess it would be hard to make it work for Naoe and not Yasuke, so who knows
Stealth is great.
Combat is not.
Parkour is dead.
And I am sad.
At least we got a grappling hook
Combat _could_ be great, what was shown is like... fine. It'll probably be pretty fun, depending on the complexity of enemy movesets and what they demand, we just didn't really get to see much of _why_ it's cool because they moved on from every piece of gameplay really quickly. I guess it's a necessity when trying to showcase two player-characters equally (which I really praise them for) but, ah, just walked away feeling like we only got the most surface look at everything.
@@LeoKRoguei really hope we get double hidden blades again
I think I haven’t been this excited about an ac game since origins. I think the most exciting thing is seeing how good we can get at combat with naoe and stealth as yasuke. I like to think of it as a Batman Arkham knight system where Batman can do stealth takedowns everywhere but the other characters like red hood can still take down but not silently. Like imagine trying stealth as yasuke but you can’t go prone, hide in the darkness and his takedowns do a lot more noise. Where either character can do things but they have specialties
That's awesome, I bet that feels great. Ride that emotion and enjoy it, if you're seeing the kinds of things you like and look for. ^_^ Your understanding of the two characters specializing in their own expertise while the other one is worse at it is exactly right, from everything we've been shown so far in articles and videos. Something I hope properly matters a lot, in the final game, since it's such a big part of Shadows' uniqueness.
I just played Black Flag for the first time and completed it over only the course of a week haha, and then when I look at the acting in this AC Shadows gameplay teaser and I feel kinda sad knowing how much better it was only 11 years ago. Origins I agree was the last game with good voice acting and animations in cutscenes (Bayek is a goat character, and so is Captain Edward 😊)
Definitely, yeah! It becomes very noticeable when you have one of the earlier games to compare to. Sometimes I wonder if part of the issue is a bit of uncanny valley, where as visuals get more "realistic" it takes more to get us to 'buy in' but then I look at other games releasing around the same time and they're doing fine.
i love that there's all these gameplay differences that come with day/night cycle or seasons, but in the breakdown vid, the creative director (iirc) said that there's no meditation mechanic like the other rpg games, so you can't pick your time to strike
this is a huge problem imo, it restricts creativity in runs because you can't just choose to do a run on a winter night or smth. it also seems like a pointless change, since origins, oddysey (iirc, i don't have that game) and valhalla all have this mechanic
No meditation / time-skip is a very interesting choice, while it's restrictive it also means considering time of day becomes properly important in a way it never was before, which I think is cool as a stealth player. It also makes sense because if a player could just always skip to night for example, they might never feel the slightest need to try Yasuke's powerful assaults on a guarded area, or vice versa.
Maybe it was also hard to get in the game considering all lighting and shadow is dynamic / raytraced, given that apparently affects stealth and detection as well. If it's a case of, we can't have this sick gameplay feature and _also_ change time-of-day whenever we want, then I'm fine sacrificing that, since no other game with this interesting feature exists yet.
@@LeoKRogue thats a good point yea, if you can't skip to nighttime for stealth you'll have more incentive to play with yasuke
I don’t know if it was mentioned. But I think both characters will be capable of social stealth to a degree. The Shinobi will be able to hide in plain sight among the poor, while the samurai relies on his prowess and station to get access to areas. Here is hoping anyways.
That's pretty cool! Hopefully we get some more communication on that in future, if it's the case.
I think this game should have either strong sound design for indicating sound generation, or a sound indicator on the hud.
I think so too. Something to either convey how much we're making, or rules intuitive enough to learn and memorize so we don't need it.
@@LeoKRogue Something as simple as having audio barks from NPCs so we know they heard something would be good too, which is what Thief did
Just thought that I hope they kept the slide because it would be really cool and stylish to slide into a prone position imo
That would actually be really cool. They probably did, since they never showed off what crouching after a sprint does.
i really like the armored guy tho, it makes you have to play AROUND the guy and adds a challenge that the old games lacked while not bullshiting you randomly out of stealth because its a really easy to know what the type of enemy is
I like him too. There are special enemy-types in Arkham games and some Splinter Cells that force similar, more thoughtful engagement with a space. As long as everything is communicated and telegraphed clearly, I have no issue with it.
damn thats the best analysis i saw, ubisoft release a small trailer and expect that we are going to be looking at the HUD, your work was essential to understand the trailer, thank you
Thanks. ^_^
As a fan of samurai and ninja movies and a long time ac fan i can spot alot of things that need improvement but my bar for ac shadows was so low that i was impressed by the gameplay especially naoe stealth gameplay which was classic ninja style, hopefully the parkour and combat gets improved before release.
28:09 That's exactly how I felt looking at the trailer. It looks really nice but it feels like it's lacking that immersion you would feel when walking around in like almost all the games, mainly the older ones. It's not gonna help the comparisons that will already be made about the game against Ghost of Tsushima but maybe it's because Yasuke is meant to feel out of place, I'll guess we'll have to wait for footage of Naoe walking around.
I feel like with stronger atmosphere, it'd help convey that feeling of being out of place even more for me, personally. There's still time for them to juice the atmosphere and ambience a little but who knows at this point. 😅
@@LeoKRogue Idk if its the art direction or lighting or whatever but yeah, it still looks inferior to Ghost of Tsushima despite being graphically much better with the textures and stuff. Then again you're right, it's not the final build so they can still improve the game in these 5 months.
I really come here for some sanity in the ac fandom. The community/comments on this video is so much better than the one on the trailer. I hate that I have to see so much racism in the comments of the trailer, so I'm glad to see actual focus on the game instead of that. Thanks Leo for providing a safer environment to talk about the franchise!
You're welcome, I tend to be very unforgiving to people who disrupt the vibe here.
I'm kinda concerned by the number of cutscene assassinations naoe got when killing what seem to be normal guards. Its probably nothing, but I really hope we don't have cutscenes for every stealth kill or at least can turn it off
Not really sure what you mean by that, it's probably just camera-framing/zoom.
@@LeoKRogue I'm quite possibly just going insane tbh... idk, the ac fan glasses looking for reasons not to be excited.
There's an air assassination on a normal guard where the fov shrinks and camera pans. Same-ish thing happened when she went to hide on the ceiling. Could just be for the showcase, but if it queues something like that frequently when doing those actions it'll definitely get old fast for me with how often I do stuff similar in previous games. Like I said, could be for the showcase to draw attention to new features
@@pgh3316 Those look like showcase things to me, yeah. It would bother the hell out of me if it was like that in the real game xD
thank
s for this man, I've been waiting for your review
Thanks for waiting.
Good video. I agree with the points you made here Leo. I am a fan of the Splinter Cell games. I always wished for more sound and light factors in AC. Its just too bad that it is featured in a game outside of the traditional formula. There are features i do like though, like the clean map and investigation systems. Time will tell.
I don’t think they will ever make another game with the type of movement and parkour people want. I’m not even sure if they can even replicate it anymore
I'm sure they can, if it was a focus and a design goal. If not that, then they can at least make movement that's entertaining to engage with, which should really be the overarching goal before anything else. I think people would be fine if it wasn't the _exact_ auto-parkour + manual jumps paradigm of AC1-Rev, but it's fair that players want more to do while moving around than the most basic on-rails actions with minimal decision-making.
I just skimmed through the video and I have to disagree
im gonna touch you
sick
Lmfao
All I'm saying is if the shadow stealth thing works we may finally get the Remake Splinter Cell
I think if you skimmed it you don't really get to have an opinion, at least not a valid one
Why do people bash Odyssey and Valhalla for not being stealth heavy ? The way I see it, they were set in time periods way way before AC 1, 2 and 3, where Stealth has beem reformed through time. Not forgetting that Cassandra was a mercenary in a time where people prized martial prowess and open combat play amd Same for a Viking like Eyvor.
Because they were promised in interviews and articles to be stealth-_viable_ in a way they just weren't. Also, Valhalla's stealth was broken due to glitches and bugs, not intentional design. That's why people complain. They're fair, reasonable criticisms.
Basically, if you market a game as one thing, and fail to deliver, you are pretty _lucky_ to receive the light criticism those games got. Besides, they popped off and were super successful anyway, they don't need the defense.
Great video. Especially the point about the combat concern. Will it be as rewarding as what they've made the new stealth out to be? Yet to be seen. I'm also worried that no climbing mountains will hurt my personal satisfaction at times. I really like being able to feel like i can go anywhere within the the map's area
I hear you, yeah. Both of those have questions around them, for me.
Depending on how it's done, I do feel that some climbing limitations can actually be a good thing since it makes pathfinding a skill we get better at over the course of a playthrough, and that can be very satisfying.
Naoe has her hook so she's a bit more movement-capable than previous characters who didn't have one, could play into parsing our environments a little more actively.
I thought the samurai countering the stealth kill was due to the shadow of naoei being right in front of the samurai.
I hope at night or when they can’t see naoei shadow that doesn’t happen. It would be a great innovation imo.
If it's something that advanced I'd be very surprised, would love to know more specifics on what causes this interaction to resolve that way.
It's kind of funny (in a bad way) to be an OG AC fan. It is very likely that half of the half of this game will be more appealing to me than the 3 prior main games combined.
It's always great to hear your thoughts :)
Wouldn't be surprised, yeah. Still not the dense city-game classic fans probably hunger for but the stealth is definitely something they cooked with, 100%.
I've always been curious to how asian Assassins would climb pagoda-like buildings with the edges of the roof sticking out (and what parkour on asian architectures would look like in general). I guess now I know. The grappling hook is a cool solution.
Yeah, makes sense. Jin does much the same in some instances in GoT. ^_^
I really liked Kassandra's voice acting in odyssey and male eivors acting in valhalla (though it doesn't save the game)
They have their moments, yep.
It seems that Quebec games are really trying to experiment with that exploration mode thing, which is I guess smth that I appreciate the most about their games. Even in Odyssey despite me not loving it most of the time it was really interesting and exciting to hunt down Cult members, searching for clues, deciding how you would approach the target in the open world or just randomly stumbling on them while free roaming. Interesting to see how Shadows spy network will work in the game combined with that Exploration mode
One of my biggest questions and curiosities for now, as well. How deep does it go? We'll have to see.
I think Black flag excellently, dealt with this on instances when the interaction was not cinematic heavy or emotionally gripping they simply kept the camera to third person mode with more focus on cheeky and good deliveries rather than focusing on sloppy animation of face. When the cinematic camera did shifted to face the facial expression really gripped you. A similar approach could be taken in newer games, just give us proper facial expression with good facial captures and please make the dialogue make sense. No human talks like the people portrayed in newer titles. The moment someone speaks that is precisely when my immersion breaks.
Also deviating a bit,lets talk about harder game modes, where we see enemies with bigger health pool. I say you could just use the tenant of the creed to make it more challenging. Like in the hardest mode. The assassin needs to kill only his target, stay his blade from the flesh of the innocent. Donot get detected things like these, i believe incorporating this as a difficulty spike makes you truly feel as an assassin as you level up side by side of your character, from being a novice to a master assassin. Failing to meet the criteria would not fetch 100% sync. Further some more lore heavy missions could be locked behind these sync gates encouraging players to take stealth seriously and evaluate their surroundings like a true assassin would.
Sorry that you had to read through a lot, it was something that was there in my mind for some time. Let me know what your thoughts are.
Black Flag did a great job, for sure, it also had a lot more to work with in the voice acting and dialogue department. Darby McDevitt is crazy good at writing character-drama, conflict and tension between different people in a story. That helps _a lot_ when grabbing the player's attention, even in 'calmer' moments or when there's not that much going on.
I always enjoy the idea of making story and lore part of the game's challenge and difficulty. Those types of immersive framings for gameplay are usually quite fun for me to experience and engage with, so I'm always wishing Assassin's Creed does something cool with that some day. Especially things that relate to or connect to the Animus and Present Day, big fan of all that.
I get that this is meant to be the next Big RPG game, but the seeming lack of social stealth still irks me, because Naoe isn’t just a Shinobi, she IS a Capital A Assassin. The first time we’ve played as an actual Assassin since Syndicate, so potentially not having one of the core things from AC is still really bothersome.
I know Basim is a Hidden One and I appreciated that Mirage did try to recapture that feeling from the old games, but that’s not the same as being a “Post Altaïr’s reformation of the Brotherhood” Assassin
To be fair, maybe it's in the game and we just haven't seen it, I just don't like to make that assumption until I have the proof in front of me.
Ubisoft has been pretty consistent about instituting systems and carrying them over to other titles (i.e. taming animals). Now, don’t quote me on this, but remember I said it- What if these sneaking, light and shadows systems are a precursor to a future Splinter Cell game?
On a surface level maybe, and when it comes to their other series, yes. But Assassin's Creed specifically has had a really bad habit of introducing something and then scrapping or sidegrading it for next game instead of actually building on it and growing it further.
What's so notable and interesting about Shadows is that NPC-dragging was expanded on from Kidnapping in Syndicate, dual protagonists was expanded on from dual protagonists in past AC titles, and the Spy Network + Intel system is an evolution or iteration on Exploration Mode which Odyssey introduced. I think that's really cool and could mark the beginning of AC not just discarding previous good ideas but holding onto them and making them more robust as time goes on. Would love to see that, personally.
I wouldn't be surprised if they use some of these ideas for a future Splinter Cell, since we know Splinter Cell Remake is a thing and last I heard they were still hiring on for that, right?
@@LeoKRogue Great observations 👍🏼
I enjoyed the gameplay; I'm excited to play with both characters and take advantage of the overall game mechanics. What I like the most is the exploration. I disagree about the art direction; I find the AC settings always very visually appealing. But overall, you raised very pertinent points and made it very clear what type of player you are. Great analysis!
Awesome. ^_^
22:17 pure descriptive genius, after that beautiful explanation the enemy's "Big"ness was so apparent to me, that I was in awe. Jokes aside man, great breakdown and i love your point of view always in these scenarios as you dont give up hope and belief. There are always two types of people - ones who hail every new entry as the savious of the franchise or the ones that hate it like the game cussed out their mama(sorry). This game looks like it will be good and sure the same parkour moveset for the FIFTH DAMN TIME irks me, it'll prolly change (right....right?). Also people dont mention it much but the robes flow in the wind - hell yeah - properly after ac 1 i believe and thats very cool. Hope to see reviews and clips from you. Keep up the amazing work LEO🙏
Big. With _armor._ v_v
I definitely try to see the nuance in things, thanks for the comment. :)
This breakdown is great, was waiting for it! I’m bummed about the gutted level design with regard to parkour. I wasn’t really expecting it, but it still stings nonetheless considering its AC!
Stealth mechanics seems good enough and familiar enough to the point that I’m left wondering if and when we will see a new Splinter Cell game.
I also wonder if Yasuke was a late addition to the game since the early promotional artwork for AC: Red featured only Naoe!
Yasuke has been part of the game since the beginning / the conception phase, as far as I know. All of the promo materials I've seen have pretty much positioned both characters equally, except for a leaked asset of Naoe from before the game's reveal.
Ah! I didn’t realize the early posters were leaked stuff! Nvm then, tinfoil hat off lol
Perfect commentary addressing hard truth complaints that AC has been suffering from these past few years. you perfectly put forward what all of us desperately want to change for greater art. this should be seen by everyone working at Ubisoft behind not only the AC series, but every IP they bring fourth.
Glad you found some common ground, I know some of these grievances are things many players have voiced to me in private over the years, so I figured I'd mention them since they'd started to bother me too.
The hook blade has two parts. The hook...and the blade.
It does indeed.
off topic: have you checked out rooftops & alleys yet? that one parkour game that a viewer told you to check out during a bloodborne stream. it released a few weeks ago and it's been getting pretty much daily updates, and you'd probably enjoy it a lot. otherwise, good video
I have! Looks sick.
Im glad youre not focused on the whole historical inaccuracies. I could honestly care less about them and since when has AC ever stuck 100% to history anyways. Im just extremely excited to finally have the chance to play AC in Japan, hopefully with more of Unity's parkour mechanics.
They've never been one of the things I most lean on as far as how much I will enjoy the videogame, yeah. I think about the biggest inaccuracies I've heard about in Shadows are architecture and clothing. Character-stuff seems solid.
I don't have much hope for parkour anywhere close to Unity, unfortunately. 😅
I just feel like if they had something to show, they'd show it, unless they blow us away with some new footage later to prove me wrong, I'm expecting more of Origins-Mirage parkour here.
i hope we get blowing darths. just because it sound weird that someone would just walk arround with a stick in case they needed to breath underwater. if it doubles down as a blowdart pipe it looks more realistic
That makes sense. Also cool Mirai Nikki icon.
you’re absolutely right about the cutscenes, ac has had terrible cutscenes since odyssey. can’t believe ubi regressed, considering ac2 had heart wrenching cutscenes filled with vibes, despite the graphics it was full of charm.
something like tlou2 has cut scenes damn near comparable to a feature film. ac isn’t close to anything like that at all. i get what people might say, the open world makes it harder to make set pieces and add dressing. however, the witcher 3 had good, serviceable cut scenes. ghost and red dead had amazing ones. i really hope ubi can improve this considering they’re really fucking rich, lol. i just want to be able to feel the stories again. haven’t felt anything that really impacted me since ac4. i’ve fully given up on a refined parkour system, so hopefully they can figure out everything else.
Lean heavily into ninja theme ✔
Ninja moves (dive and roll, hook, pointless flips)✔
Actual stealth complexity (light meter, hostages, crawling) ✔
Fluid parkour (apart from vaulting)❌
Lean into AC lore (??? wait and see)
I recently replayed Mirage and with Shadows' reveal, I think Mirage's design aesthetics are sadly just a one-off
Because of how long AAA games take to concept, develop, market, and release, I actually don't think that's the case. Instead we'll probably end up seeing the alternation they talked about in that article.
www.ign.com/articles/ubisoft-wants-to-make-more-focused-games-rather-than-have-one-game-do-everything
Basically, it's just too soon to come to a conclusion that nothing like Mirage will ever happen again, AAA dev doesn't move quick enough to be so sure of that just yet. Even if they were making another game similar to Mirage right now, as I type this comment, we just wouldn't _hear_ about it for another two years or so.