As people have pointed out cinematography and animations have gotten a lot worse over the years but I want to point out one more other thing.The dialogues are much more generic in recent titles making them feel imapctless.Older titles had a much more playful and weighty script and conversations felt natural
Dialogues play a very important role. In rockstar games, we can see the quality of work they do with everything including dialogues during gameplay and cutscenes.
"Oh nooo the templars corrupted the goverment...again...i must take them out stealthily while you all wait for my call" Thats the whole script for ya lol
Old: we as a team need to figure out the dynamics between these characters so we can write meaningful relationships New: okay chatgpt “assassins fighting and people disagreeing.”
Uniity literally had THE BEST cut scenes out of all the Ac games.. The animations and camera angles were on point especially the facial animations and the character movement was so realistic.. Unity could've been the game changer for the Assassin's Creed franchise if it wasn't for their decision to switch it up to RPG typa shit..
Big studios pressure developers to make more profit-friendly content, pay to play, micro transactions, level grinding for stretched out gameplay-hours… and of course sacrificing story, creativity and even whole play-styles to make whatever’s cheap, popular, and profitable.. And after only several tries, you get total garbage, big gane studios are literally bankrupting themselves by trying to squeeze every last portion of a penny out of these developers.. just look at what happened with the metal gear franchise because Konami’s lust for micro transactions, literally abandoning huge titles like silent hill and castlevania as well, because it’s not as “profitable” as mobile soccer games & pachinko machines.. will we ever get games As good as The Arkham Trilogy or AC Unity? Probably not from big studios but luckily there is dev teams out there still crushing it, I loved horizon Zero Dawn, Kojima first solo project Death Stranding was a MASTERPIECE just story rpg porn lol I hope that we as fans and players decide to do our part and not buy garbage, let these failing companies die and learn the hard way that you don’t squeeze us for cash on top of having shit product.. if it’s not top quality, we won’t buy. Then all that will survive and be left is the dev teams who love video games and love players.. Big studios have no love for us and we certainly don’t move them back… literally last option some of them have now is a totally faithful next gen remakes of their most valuable and beloved franchises.. metal gear delta for example, better be untouched story & dialogue and polished perfect visuals.. Weird, the company that believed it no longer needed AAA games and legendary games developers, now suddenly felt that their best financial move was to make a highly anticipated AAA remake of their most successful entry in a series hailed as the genre defining creations of a true master storyteller… who they overworked, alienated and fired back when he was in his prime.. Smart business.. that’s big money talk
I hear this complaint a lot that rpg isn’t liked.. it however completely outsells all the “earlier” titles, AC odyssey still generally sits in the top 10 most sold during sales or certain periods on every platform. Valhalla was also a top seller doing even better, which I personally found to be a very boring game but whatever. Aka all these people saying “let it go back to its roots”, well they are all full of sh*t, a minority clearly, especially considering how badly mirage is selling so far. (Plus all the other gripes relating to that game specifically) The one in Japan coming out, AC ..red? Watch that outsell everything, yet it’s rpg styled most likely.
It's so stupid, I haven't had interest in any AC game past Unity. they could've gone RPG route while still retaining that AC gameplay and feel but nah they just made generic RPG with Assassin's slapped on it. Mirage is not a step back to true AC formula, it's the same RPG formula with reskin to make it look like Assassin's Creed 1. no wonder the game isn't selling, it looks boring as shit. AC1, a game from 2007 has more challenging and fun combat than Mirage. I never got bored of Combat in that game and I get bored quickly.@@DikkieDikism
The cutscenes used to feel real, they reeled you in into the world as if you were part of everything and the conversation revolved around you, but now not so much
The 2 major things I've noticed with Mirage is the flat lighting and puppet mouth movements that really make it feel like you're playing a 360/PS3 (or early last gen) game at times. Especially if you compare to Unity, the lighting/shadows and mouth movements are so crisp
I love AC 1 cutscenes, easily still the best. The fact you can move in them and change the camera angles. Made it all feel so much more real. Should have kept that style for none action oriented cutscenes.
Ubisoft, Activision, EA…People used to love them. They said they were actually beloved, in ancient times. Now they are only a shadow of their former self.
Now, to be fair, the key moments in Origins & Odyssey (don't really remember Valhalla) where the cutscenes (pre rendered or not) were using mocap look great. Somehow still a bit lifeless but you can tell they're real, human, captured movements. Sure there are the AI generated ones for side quests that aren't important (where you can revolve the camera around randomly), but still more something than nothing in the older games where the quest givers talk but the camera doesn't change at all. But in Mirage, dunno how but even the mocap ones are lifeless. Like they forgot to put face tracking so the characters' emotion is nowhere to be seen. But the biggest let down for me is Basim's VA being as flat as an ironing board. Carlo Rota did a fantastic job in Valhalla, Lee Madjoub is a menace to voice acting.
eeeeeeh, lets not forget that the release version of Unity was SOOOOO Bad, that Ubisoft even had to give away full games at the time to unity buyers to make up for it (many got Watch dogs that way). The quality at releasetime was horrendous.
@@maximtcaciuc2904 visuals, sure. I certainly was an upgrage. Release wise, well... AC:Unity and Cyberpunk 2077 would be indistinguishable due to the amount of bugs in both of them.
@@maximtcaciuc2904 funny so do i, 8among other things) . i am pretty sure if you google it you can still find images from unity where the people were missing facing ,just floating eyeballs and teeth.
I remember playing AC Unity thinking ''Oh my god this is so awesome! Is this what video games are going to look like from now on?'' And the answer is no, no they did not.
Notice how Unity cuts to Elise WHILE Arno is the one talking, letting us watch her expression soften and see how she feels about who he was and who he's become. That's called making a creative decision, and placing trust in the animators. Beyond the performance, it's a camera choice that lets the player in on deeper character development. Let me tell you, that when you feel that trust and responsibility as an artist, you do better work as well. The other entries have some good animation (exceptoion: Mirage seemed to forget that blocking exists and characters move while they talk), but they simply cut to whoever is talking, shot, reverse, reverse, on and on. And the animation feels like an amateur stage play in response to an uninspired approach to showcasing it.
@@Czejenesku bruh…. That is literally what I said…. Ubisoft got smaller companies to do the work. Just like starfield did, and just like most triple A games do, because they know people will still buy it, despite being shit.
@@jayjayx5x1 It was made by Ubisoft Bourdeaux. Its wasnt outsourced. While a smaller studio its devs were working on AC games since Origins. Studio itself was created as a new UBI branch to during Valhalla, they made all DLCs for it. There is also another reason why it looks like this - UBI needs money, badly. They are probably at the worst state from all big companies. Hence Mirage wasnt allowed to cook for more. We really shouldnt grind on this game so much. Yes, its janky at places, but its also the best stealth game UBI made in years (on hard dif.). They need to know thats the way to go with the series. I think devs did an awesome job within the circumstances. I havent so much fun being an assassin since, well, Unity (talking about being an actual assassin)
People are mainly talking about the graphics, and it's understandable. Unity holds up amazingly for a game that is nearly a decade old. But I've also noticed that the cinematography has also taken a massive hit. In some of the old games it's really dynamic, like you're watching a movie. In Mirage it just looks really uninspired, flat and lifeless.
@@Czejenesku Isnt it a spin off as well? Not even supposed to be a major game. I just started it tbh, and it looks like its gonna be quite short compared to the last few
@@Czejenesku 400 people worked on Brotherhood, it took one year to make it. 600 people worked on ac mirage and it took 2 years to make. Do you see the big difference between the 2?
One word: Budget. The budget for Mirage was way lower than most of the previous games. It started as a DLC but it became larger than they were expecting so it became a game of its own, but with a smaller budget. I agree that Basim's voice actor sounds kinda dull, and some character movements like simple hand gestures could be better, but it lacks some scenes with more movement in the studio IMO. Many scenes are filmed inside a single room while having a conversation without much movement wich looks kinda boring, but because of a lower budget that wasn't always possible.
It was around AC: Odyssey that Ubi started using algorithms to assign preset emotions during cutscenes and procedurally generate a few dialogue lines for the endless notice board quests. In the older games it was all hand crafted, quality over quantity.
This whole console generation has been a downfall in AAA games design across all platforms and genres. Video games are becoming more and more "generated", be it with some algorithm or with AI, rather than hand-crafted. I am also seeing video games being designed more lazily, such as copy/paste padding content in open world games to make them "last" hundreds of hours. We need a renaissance!
@@richardhambel648At this point the only way forward in AAA will be to improve AI so that the generated content will be ever more interesting and meaningful. If you want a renaissance, turn away from AAA games and studios and play indie games.
The facial animations need to be much better too, but they're too lazy to do that. I think they used real models or actors' faces for the main characters in the games prior to Origins.
@@Mr.Ditkovich.the cutscenes that do use motion capture look great in these games but they only save those for special moments. They're also not given enough time to mocap every scene which leads to the npc cutscenes we all know and hate. Another reason is that odyssey and Valhalla are so massive that they really can't make every cutscene look good, and mirage had an extremely limited budget plus the fact that they were limited by Valhalla's engine. I'm not trying to defend it, but these are the reasons that I think causes cutscenes to look so bad. They could also be lazy😅
The cutscenes in Mirage feel like the earlier Telltale games, completely robotic and lifeless because of the preset animations and the fact they only walk from point A to B. It literally feels like you could be given a dialogue option at any moment but you don't. Assassin's Creed Origins had cool cinematic mo-capped cutscenes that were similar to earlier Assassin's Creed games, Odyssey had a few mo-capped cutscenes, but in Mirage, everything feels like it's made with the Sims.
That's because they fired most of the team that worked on previous games. Recently over 40 were fired before Mirage came out and already announced about every dialogue being done by Ai. All they need is just one helper on it. Even animations are done by ai since from wd Legion. Remember lifeless robotic emotions in Hogwarts Legacy dialogues? Done by ai animations. Ubi doomed themselves over 7 years ago.
@@void7837 This shit really is getting old, the idea for it was to be a dlc for Valhalla, but since almost two years the game was developed from 0 as a standalone game. This is no excuse for obi shits laziness, they are one of the most wealthiest studios, and Ubisoft Anvil is a powerful engine, saying the game as shit mechanics because it is Valhallas engine is complete crap as a game dev point of view, they simply made an half assed product, they had more than time to deliver something good. However such like EA, Activision, game freak they know their sheeps. They just need to tell people some sweet little lies and everybody gets hyped up, then use some TH-camrs like jo raptor and use them to bait their audience. Do you want to look at some games that where "dlc" look at halo dost, new vegas, vice city, far cry blood dragon (ironic), or heck dlc that are twice the man: blood and wine, new vegas dlc, cyberpunk dlc, dark souls 3 dlc, the list goes one.
I really wish it got more time to cook. The parkour still feels a bit floaty, the multiplayer was crappy, and the narrative gets really rushed towards the end, not to mention all the bugs it had at launch and still has. Looking at the DLC’s quality though, man, it could’ve been up there with some of my favorite games if it had just gotten a couple more years in the oven.
Now that I think about it, not many assassins had happy endings. Elise dies, Connor's people were eventually evicted, Altair died alone, Edward was murdered and his son became a Templar not to mention Caroline passed away while he was not home. The only one who got a decent ending was Ezio and maybe the Frye twins.
Edward Kenway’s part is one of the best acted characters in video game history. Brilliantly written and performed, in fact that whole game is like a movie.
I remember finishing the game when I was 14. I felt something deep, so heart shattering yet cozy. I stood there, unable to cry and in shock. As an adult, I realize it was a bad decision to let my kid self play it, but at the same time it's not a memory I wish to lose.
@@yawarapuyurak3271 Love this comment man. I genuinely remember the end scene with Haytham and feeling like I’d literally lived Edward’s life. He loses all of his friends, finds himself, realises the thing he’s chased his whole life doesn’t complete him, tries to do good but brings destruction to everyone around him. The arc is crazy, and dare I say it, my favourite of the series (don’t kill me Ezio fans)
Because the character was using motion capture of actual theatre actors, especially Edward Kenway's, who was played & voiced by Matt Ryan a.k.a John Constantine.
Edward is one of the most compelling characters in Ubisoft history because, like Ezio, he starts the game as a complete jerk and doesn’t improve himself until he loses everything he loves.
The cutscenes in previous games just felt alot more weighty, like your really watching two characters with different personalities interact, mirage and other recent titles seem to have missed that
I disagree. Origins and Odyssey had gorgeous cutscenes. Valhalla started this trend. I think Mirage is a transitional game, next ones will have a new engine - hopefully!
@@metodoinstinto Fair enough, I think Valhalla was where things hit a trough for sure. But absolutely, if they build upon mirage and with a new engine it could be great
@@metodoinstintoOrigins did most of the time, Odyssey absolutely did not, 80% of that games cutscenes were pre rendered models on a track, most of that is due to the scale of the game and the dialogue options.
Pretty sure Frostbite was ahead of its time well before Unity. Frostbite 2 and what EA did with it back in the day with the Battlefield games and others is still talked about today.
You're right it had a terrible broken release followed by years later gaining a following based on nostalgia. I'm sure in a few years it will be odyssey or valhallas turn.
Unity ran like shit for me despite having been able to run black flag 60fps no problems, all the NPCs were doing some weird bon jovi hair spin thing as well, game was a disaster and the end of a legendary franchise.
@@Box0rzeven if syndicate was a downgrade both unity and syndicate was super solid in term of graphics and art style tbh how the hell a 2014 game looks better than a 2023 one with all this new technology we have like ue 5 mind blowing 😂
@@b4bnikthere's something I don't like about cyberpunk's atmosphere, the graphics are good but like the theme of the place is a stereotypical 90s-00s future movies, which I hate tbh, mostly the style, they just add robotic shit everywhere arm, legs, etc... like it does not look clean, the people does not look clean they look like random scraps put together.
In all of the other cutscenes you can pick up on what’s happening even if you’ve never played the game, there is emotion, meanwhile in mirage I literally had zero idea what they were saying and now am confused
@No-you-are-wrong-stop-LARPing dude is saying ubisoft's "woke and left wing" when they have sexual harrasment cases and sexism in their company ???? you do realise that if a company had any hint of leftist values, they would give a sh1t about their workers and protect them from dangerous workplaces wherer they could be harassed ? stop going on 4chan/reddit it's rotting your brain with alt right stupidity
I'm the guy you're talking about. I noticed the same thing. It's the difference between character writing and naked exposition. Also, the calibre of voice actor.
Lots of people seem to be noticing it. I noticed in my playthrough that everyone moved and talked like robots, but it really is a striking difference when you consider Unity is almost a decade old. This seems to have started in Odyssey, and I’ve been playing AC2 the last few days for the first time in probably 10 years, and everyone moves and talks like a normal person would, when they’re standing around it looks natural, not like you’re hovering over a character select in a fighting game.
Its cause they're getting lazy ibswear there was scene in valhall that looked way better like when you meet king Alfred it looked so real idk whats happening but also when its a gameplay cutscen or áreas cutscene it gets darker😊
Lmao odyssey has incredible animations for conversations. The conversations in Odyssey are dynamic. They change based on your input. And there's hundreds and hundreds of quests and NPCs with multiple dialogue options and multiple story paths. It is not remotely compare that to a completely linear cutscene
It sounds as if they animated the cutscene and didn't let the voice actors watch it before recording their lines. It sounds stiff like I'm in the recording booth with them
It’s not the visuals that’s the main problem in the new generation ac games, It’s the cinematography. 90% of the time it feels like the same cutscene with different backgrounds and words. They have moments of awesomeness, but they’re so few of them spread across hours of boring dialogue
Cut scene from ac odyssey (not sure if i have to include origins) to mirage. I hate the stance that characters stand and hug their chest so much. Compare to old AC and we can see it's so much downgrade. In AC mirage that was great that dialogue is less chit-chat but the stance is still unacceptable.
It’s not shown here but I think Syndicate was amazing with its cutscenes. The characters talking made me really get into them. Evie and Jacob’s sibling banter and arguments, Starrick’s menacing demeanor that lost its calm control as you took over more and more of London, and the fun yet still authentic feeling feel so threatening. And the cinematography was on point with showcasing each character and the tone of the scene. Idk, I just really liked Syndicate’s characters and cutscenes. It’s my personal favorite despite all of its flaws and as the last game of the OG AC design, it’s always a shame they didn’t expand on the good they had with it. But that can be said for all the other ones too.
Syndicate was made together with Unity, lot of tech and assets were similar. The drop started with the RPGs, Odyssey especialy, as they started to drop motion capture in favour of automatic animations (which is commor for RPGs, Mocaping every line of dialogue would be really expensive I imagine). In Mirage, they didnt return to the professional mocap cinematography, for reasons unknown.
Old cutscenes used mocap, new ones doesn't. That's why the facial and body movements are so stiff. If I'm not mistaken, Origins was pretty much the last one to use proper mocap.
Wow… those cutscenes are like watching a movie. The sheer quality of animation, lighting, and that detail in the models, never realised just how good it actually looked. The voice acting is also so realistic and brilliantly done… I should really go replay Unity after all these years.
I never finished Unity. I really liked the game imo it could’ve been the best assassins creed but it was plagued with bugs. This made me want to go give it another go. 9 years later….
@@2inches2hardit's sooo good. i didn't play it on initial release but decided to give it a try on PS5 through PS Extra. Chef's kiss! Idk what the fuck is going on for real for real in the story but the gameplay and world is spectacular. Def my favorite AC game now. 10/10: will make you feel like an Assassin.
From a directing standpoint the characters are moving (blocking) and internalising what they are going to say before saying it, making them feel more believable because people do that, the lack of music in the dialogue exchanges seemed to support the player to be more focused in the moment, therefore more immersed. and the actors deliver their lines authentically, and the writing is alot more efficient and interesting, with arguments, differences of opinions and conclusive statements about what they just talked about, along with some neat subtext like the first scene where the character mentions that he intends to write a book about the protagonist, he responds "if you do, make it short" says alot about him with very little words.
The amount of times (I think it started in odyssey) i have seen the 2 common animations in cutscenes being the one where characters cross their arms or when they place their hands on the sides of their hips have appeared so much that I've lost count how much they've been reused
Yeah, but AC games were always been awful. 2nd, Brotherhood and Revelations had too many tutorials instead of being an assassin games that you figure out on your own. I still can't believe how brainlets are so empty in the skull when they're looking for help in KC Deliverance and Okami. Both games don't have tutorials and how to find. Both are games to use your knowledge of finding by yourself and completing the games to the end.
Black flag was just so insanely good, every other assasins creed couldn’t compare. The plot was just so amazing and took you for a spin, they had fun dynamic scenes, amazing voice actors and animations… Not one thing was holding it back.
@@Zack-bl2gg I have another counter-point; The "real life" Abstergo plotline *outside* of the Animus. That shit has been utter garbage since Desmond died. And I didn't even have strong feelings for or against Desmond, but there's no denying that even if the plot is going to be shit, it's still better to have an *actual character* interacting with the bullshit "real world" plotline, than just having an empty husk walking around a boring building with barely anything to interact with. If they had given the player character a face, voice actor, and personality, there'd at least be a *potential* enjoyment factor to be had during those segments.
I know the game is 9 years old by now (christ almighty, time flies when you're not having fun) but SOMEHOW, Unitiy's visuals still got me like 'damn this looks good'. there's just something about how the game looks
unity was made on the assumption that consoles would be more powerful than they actually were. If you think about it no game on ps4 has looked better than infamous second sun and the order 1886 even those were early titles, hardware does not become magically better 5 year after release. Unity looks just as good as any other game released now because graphics and hardware has not improved much since when they designed the game for powerful pcs and ported it to weaker consoles.
Its not just the graphics, its art design. It had a unique charm to it. Really nailed the atmosphere. Shame the story itself didnt deliver. Could have been a great game
@@arkgaharandan5881 but they did re-release the PS4 with 4k and xbox with updated hardware. But honestly screw that, they need to make games fun and couch co-opy again
I remember in Unity when a mission was about to start, Arno had the area analised. So after he had a zoomed in image to his face and he looked so real. Now in mirage it's always these static distant angles with lifeless expressions.
Schrodinger's Assassin's Creed; Choosing between a game made in 2014 that feels like it was made in 2023, or choosing a game made in 2023 that looks like it was made in 2014.
AC Unity was the peak of what the engine could deliver, sadly held back by the old-gen hardware... The cinematics, the highly detailed interiors, the fluent parkour... That game still is a gem
I'm very critic of every AC after Revelations, but I enjoyed Unity a lot despite its notorious flaws. Not a game I would disparage. Still, very strange game in many aspects. Like, I could run the game in a mid specs desktop PC without much issues. It really needed some extra polishing before release.
My favorite will always be Black Flag because of the pirate era but Unity has a special place in my heart. Nearly everything about was beautiful (minus the ending but that can be debatable). You can truly feel the passion behind it.
I feel Black Flag has the best single story of any game in the franchise (I say single because Ezio's story spanned over three games, and they're really meant to be taken as parts of a whole).
This is depresaing. I noticed a degradation in cutscene quality years ago when more and more games implemented RPG mechanics. Gamers didnt care about stories as much as they wanted very long games. The industry seemed to take less care on cutscenes and animation to meet demands of bigger games with RPG elements.
Its pathetic because The witcher 3(2015) had decent facial animation considering it wasn't mocap. Yet how many years later and AC Mirage has more uncanny faces than Fallout New Vegas
The hilarious thing is, I've never met someone in my life who wanted RPG elements in a non RPG game, yet they keep doing it even when it's not even remotely necessary. Look at Wolfestein Youngblood: totally unecessary RPG mechanics with beautiful enviroments but with very little variety and practically non-existent plot and character development. Who asked? Not a single soul.
@@sibusiso2841That's because animation is done by humans, there's plenty reused animations in other scenes. Mass Effect trilogy has the same. Only difference is these robotic animations are done by ai. Even lifeless facial animations in Hogwarts Legacy is done by ai. TW3 and ME trilogy were done manually for years. Ubisoft became way lazier that they even use ai dialogues as well. This is why they sound robotic and off.
@@sibusiso2841 Looking back, The Witcher 3 animation and cutscenes were good for being an RPG and the scale it had. It would be impressive if most of it wasn't mocapped.
One thing I hate that seems to be extremely common in modern games with in engine cutscenes is shot reverse-shot camera angles. They feel so dull and boring, and it doesn't seem like it would be so hard to put in some wide angle shots and cinematic shots.
@@assassin8636 I'm guessing you disagree with my opinion but your complete lack of any sentence structure at all is making it very hard to tell. And if you don't even know what I'm talking about in the first place then why give your opinion?
Hearing Edward's realization about what the destruction his path had caused to his friends and family is so palpable. It genuinely makes me want a sequel with him after Black Flag even though we have the tie-in novel. I also hope for a Haytham game in the near future.
There's so much more story to tell with most characters in the series. Arno discovered part of the Rosetta Stone, Connor helped establish early America and Syndicate's ENTIRE narrative hinges on an artifact Edward brought back to England
Same thing with Origins though. God when Ubisoft does that stupid accent, it's so insanely annoying. I absolutely hated Odyssey for it and apparently they have the same stupid accent in Mirage
@@EditHandIe The absolute dogshit tryhard inclusive accent is so garbage, it makes me unreasonably angry. Top that off with bland voice acting and an even worse script
I even understand these shitty cutscenes in a huge game full of quests like Odyssey. You can't make cool mocaps and cutscenes all the time. But a short game like Mirage? What the fuck? Like, Origins' cutscenes were better than this.
True, but Mirage was extremely limited by what came before so I believe they didn't have the time nor money to make it look as good as something like Origins.
@@Malte_Lorentzi that's not an excuse. If you don't have enough money or time to release something that is meant to be made with passion (marketing for Mirage heavily implies it's a passion project), well, don't release it. Ask for more resources from the start (I know other studios work on AC: Red and Hexe, and probably something else), explaining team's vision to bosses
@@mannycalavera9328 I see what you mean and I do agree with you to some extent, but I believe that they did all they could to make this as good as possible and it's clearly made with passion even though it's flawed. I even think it was bordeaux who asked the higher ups if they were able to make this a full game. While I do think a "back to the roots" experience should have been made from the ground up I still can't believe they made a game this close to the originals with Valhalla's toolset. They clearly did all they could with what they had to work with, and they probably just really wanted to make this game. I guess the marketing gave people unrealistic but justified expectations Which is both the communities and Ubisoft fault.
Damn Unity had such beautiful cinematic scenes, the world was perfect and the parkour was so fun. If it would have come out today (without the bugs at launch) it would have been such an epic experience and easily a 9/10. I love that game but the story was a bit flat/boring.
Parkour wasnt fun it was just pretty if you went from black flag to unity you will be hate the feeling of it. It feels like you dont have enough control over it and its pretty clunky too
@@holycrusader8738 what no way?! The animation of Arno jumping down and doing a spin while doing it was so cool and satisfying. I miss the old parkour the animation of the new games just look awkward and feel like shit. I don't understand why they don't just reuse Unity animations.
It's the RPG formula, once they decided to go there with Odyssey, and Vahalla especially, THAT, is where the cinematics started becoming " bad ". If you're used to RPG games then you already know those kind of cinematics.
@@razumovskyiyou call odyssey's vo good but Valhalla's and mirage's bad, strange, Look I'm not saying you're wrong because it's your opinion after all. But to me most side characters have quite terrible voice acting in all three games and I can only think of like 5 characters in Odyssey with competent vo, That being said Odyssey is a straight up comedy.
Nah. That's plain laziness from Ubisoft. To prove you wrong about Valhalla, go watch the cutscene with Basim and Evior. It's the only amazing cinematic cutscene in the whole game, it really showcased how lazy Ubisoft is.
@Juangg55Personally, I never got the bugs from Unity. It was my first AC game too! Besides for the story, which I admit is very mediocre, the graphics, parkour, combat, *THE SOUNDTRACK* historical accuracy (minus the disguise ability which I was not a fan of) are all incredible 🤩 it IS really such a shame that a lot of people were instantly turned off by the bugs, but nearly a decade later, people are beginning to realise how wrong they truly were 😌 Also, not sure if this is true, but I hear AC code name red (the Japan one) will be the last rpg style AC, the futur ac games being more like Mirage I guess. I wouldn’t be surprised since Mirage was a masterpiece compared to it’s predecessor 😒 They are probably possibly returning to the roots permanently because of how well Mirage did. Man I love Mirage 😂
Odyssey's cutscenes were very good. The fact that melissanthi mahmut is a top-tier actress made the cutscenes feel so natural. Valhalla and it's new engine downgraded the cutscenes to another next level. Unity's still peak tho
Sad to think that Unity was what killed the franchise. If you watch the presentation they did for Syndicate they talk about how the reception for Unity was so poor and it was "like someone saying your kid is ugly" They were very disappointed and learned all the wrong lessons from it, what plagued Unity was the bugs (the story was on the weak side too ngl) but it would have taken them into the right direction.
My favorite cutscene from ac2 is when Ezio gives his life speech and not to do anything but what you believe in. That shit moved me. I'm playing ACU now and I had the scene where that one guy took you into the brotherhood and man was I unimpressed. Like it didn't help I was bullying him. Having the ambient noise play in the background is both hilarious and annoying.
These are literally my top 3 AC games too, Black Flag, Brotherhood and Unity. Edwards speech just sent goosebumps across my skin. The whole scene is so well delivered and the music in the game in general really brings every moment to life. as for Unity, the scene instead has no music at all. Just two friends talking, yet the acting just has me captivated. Arno and Elise were an amazing duo and I wish we got to see more of them and their actors who did such a great job bringing them to life.
Black Flag was the best creation of Assassins Creed in term of executing new ideas to the series. They executed it very well. The game is complete, polished, and very worth to sell. The game mechanic is the best and balance between assassin and pirate life. It's so fun! Unity, in other hand, sadly they rushed its developing and sell it unfinished yet, hence the bugs. But overall, Unity is the peak AC game if it got the support it deserved to get at the time.
Origins deserves a place in the top 3. It has some of the most compelling themes and acting in the series. Saying this as someone whose played ALMOST all of them as they released since the first game on 360.
its weird being not in deep with the mechanic of how these are made but still able to tell. a lot of them before had clear motion capture, the characters were constantly keeping lil idiosyncrasies with real movement, gestures and the like, but this new one clearly has obvious cycled idle animations that break to give a few "life-like" motions and almost jerk back into the idle positions. its sad to see such detail be abandoned, or overlooked.
It's not always mocap necessarily. Been watching some dance animations done by independent animators for a popular online game, and neither of the animators uses mo-cap. While both are good, there is a really perceptible robotic sort of undertone to one, whereas the other feels very *alive* and real. Another example is the prevalence of adult animated digital movies/shorts (porn). Usually very short because a given animator usually works alone, and it's a lot of man hours to make a GOOD animation where the actors look and feel like living people instead of animated action figures. But a talented animator can make something seem mocapped when it wasn't. I suspect a lot of AC1-AC:B was not mocapped. I'm up in the air about revelations. 3 through Origins made heavy use of mocap and I think Odyssey did too. I can't speak for Valhalla as I haven't yet played it, but Mirage definitely doesn't look mocapped.
Unity had the best cinematic here it felt like a real conversation they are not evolving backwards it’s just that after origins they just don’t want to make good cutscenes even if they could
@@mehmetakif3860 Origins might not feel like an AC game but it was still a great game overall. Also the animations and character models were alright in Origins. It was Odyssey where the went full RPG mode with dialogue trees and stuff, thats when things started falling apart.
@@sahibpreetsingh5514 yes you are right bu Origins opened that door. I think Unity and Syndicate the last two games sticked to the roots with improvments
@@mehmetakif3860Nope, Origins is above Rogue, Unity and Syndicate no latter how shiny their animations are. Especially when shiny cutscenes in Unity are enough to fool almost everyone that its story and characters are good lol. And Syndicate? You know who made that game made Odyssey right? Nonsensical story, sick joke characters, stupid grappling hook that made parkour COMPLETELY USELESS because the buildings in Syndicate are too far apart and you can barely jump off buildings.....its an SNL sketch parody of Assassins Creed as much as Odyssey is. Stick to their roots? Next time, tell the damn truth if you actually know what youre talking about rather parroting a stupid monolith lile most AC stans.
Unity looks absolutely incredible, the facial animations are just insane, it's wild how far backwards they have come and what a difference it makes. It changes the tone from serious and filled with charm and tension to goofy and hard to take seriously in an instant.
Most of the current games fail to impress me both in terms of graphics and gameplay. At the start of Ps4/Xbox one generation we got so many good looking games, games that look way too good. Then most of the games in the later part of ps4 gen stopped looking good as these early games. Even a lot of ps5/ series x gen games don't look good compared to these early ps4 gen games [despite having improved graphical assets].
@@MultiKamil97I think your A little misinformed there was a lot of problems with cutscenes when the game released like faces not loading, and people clipping in the cutscene as in random citizens, walking through walls, etc now I love this game but the cutscenes were absolutely hilariously poor at launch and I am glad they fixed it for the most part.
@@samf.s.7731it was a disaster at launch but when i played it like a year or two later it was just fine. That’s the state of the art for AAA nowadays anyway so it’s not really surprising. But it doesn’t mean the game is still as bad as it was on release, that’s what patches are for. And before I get stupid ubisoft shill comments, I fucking hate their launcher, haven’t touched a ubisoft game in like 5 years and absolutely despise their open worlds overloaded with repetitive nonsense. Not to mention the plethora of stealth tailing missions and stuff that nearly drained the fun out of the rest of ac.
Unity was the last true to form, ambitious AC game. It sucks it launched so bad because fundamentally its a great game. Not only are the cutscenes bad in modern AC the animations are so dull and lifeless. They dont give you the feeling of being a well trained assassin with finesse and expertise. Instead all of the combat and parkour animations are flat and lame with no flow or character behind it.
@@Mr_MistahIronic. They tried to with Assassin's creed jade. But got clowned on when gameplay released. And the voices were text to speech. And one of the cutscenes weren't even animated. And now that games development has gone MIA.
Origins practically used the same engine as Odyssey, Valhalla, and Mirage. But, Origins' cutscenes weren't that bad. It started at Odyssey, way downgraded at Valhalla, and no changes at Mirage
Kind of a cherry picked comparison though IMHO. Mirage is a budget game, not a fully flagged AAA one. It's cheaper at release than even AC1 was and it's quite a lot smaller than almost all the AC titles as well. Of course the cut scenes are worse.
@@CheekiTikiThat's right, but I don't think the og comment meant to diss Mirage, it's to diss odyssey and valhalla, the cause of all this downfall (not in sales term tho cus those 2 sold well unfortunately)
@@CheekiTiki Why? Remember, there's almost a 10 year difference between Unity and Mirage. Are you telling me because of budget reasons Ubisoft couldn't bother using their own engine from 10 years ago with new shaders, taxtures and animations to deliver a DECENT graphical game? No, it's because it was supposed to be a DLC to Valhalla which people already were moaning about the length of the story and the impossible number of sidequests, so they decided to make it a stand-alone game instead, because otherwise no one would buy it. And lo and behold, the "fans" love it, because it's the best AC since the new games! Yeah no shit, the old formula wasn't bad, Ubisoft just borked it with their annual release schedule of unpolished buggy games and people were tired of "same shit, different age". If you look at what modders have done with Unity now, it looks friggin amazing compared to Mirage. And apparently there's still a market for "old AC style" so Ubisoft better start cranking up that old Unity engine... There's cash to grab there boys!
@@MartinsRandomVideos That more or less is what I'm telling you. To further this point, take a closer look at the textures, fidelity, and shadows of Mirage, individually, in isolation. They all actually look better than Unity. I mean, of course they do right? It's been 9 years of hardware and engine advancements. However, the cutscenes overall still look way worse. Why? Because everything else that makes a cutscene truly look good, like lighting design, animations, and cinematography all require lots of effort and talent, i.e. money. I'm not trying to excuse how bad Mirage looks, because tbh it looks worse than many AA games. I just think it's silly to compare it to fully fledged AAA games with mocapping, directors, and artists making sure every scene looks beautiful. Also, using this game as proof that "things were better back then" like OP just did is so melodramatic lol, which is why made my other comment in the first place.
@@CheekiTiki I agree, the melodrama is much, but there's a point there. It's just sad that the technology is here to do what Ubisoft tried to do with Unity back in 2014, but isn't willing to invest in now. And seeing there are new AC players that started with these RPG abominations saying this game is the best Ubisoft has done with AC makes me even sadder. Unity was flawed because of a bad launch and sub-par storywriting, but they nailed the environment en animations. Especially with the cutscenes, hence, this video. Also, on a sidenote, people saying the parkour in Mirage is better than Unity should really try Unity first and look up some players who do these flashy vids, showing you How to parkour. It's dumb Ubi didn't add a decent tutorial ingame, because once you invest in it, you actually become so fluent in gliding over those rooftops in Paris that every other AC feels clunky and restricting. :)
There's something about their movement. Everyone up to Kenway felt very natural. Everyone after, there feels like there's too much movement. For Unity, the facial expressions feel too emphasised, and for Mirage, they're both just waggling their arms and heads. In veering away from the slightly exaggerated stuff of older games, making the character more "realistic", they've just made stuff more uncanny.
God damn, my thoughts exactly. This should be a main topic of discussion. These preset animations from RPG engine make me feel like im watching Oblivion characters or mannequins
Unity still looks damn beautiful after all these years. It could have set a benchmark AC game if only it wasn't a buggy mess at launch. It checked all the boxes an AC game should have, and offered a lot more with its side content.
The story was out of place. It wasn't a bad story, in fact I liked the emotional weight of it more than most AC games. But it lacked the consequence of the other games. I kind of think it is similar to AC Revelations in that regard.
Unity is unfinished to this day. The combat system is a janky mess and the parkour is automated, imprecise and sluggish. AC Brotherhood was the peak of AC.
@imamulmalikchowdhury7659 But how is the game overall? Origins was the last one I played. I wasn't a fan of it like so many people were, but if it's better than Origins, then I might play it.
@@Mr.Ditkovich.I really liked it, but if you didn't like Origins then you might not. Skip it unless you really want to get it. It's also much more like the old games so give it a try if you've got 50$ to spare it's better than origins imo, even though I liked that game, actually wait for a sale if you can.
@@Mr.Ditkovich. Oi Oi! Origins was at least decent... The story, gameplay and animations still held up with older AC titles, giving it a fresh look to the AC series. If you wanna bash, go bash Oddesey which is a complete downgrade of everything.
The Kenway Saga(AC3-Unity) was the best era of assassin's creed imo, the good-guy bad-guy line was completely blurred in that era, the rooftop conversatuon between Connor and Haytham is one of many reasons why AC3 is my favorite of the franchise.
It's great but I'll always be confused why they went to the trouble to have Shae kill Arno dad.....and then Arno and Shae never meet? Ever? Like cmon. What a waste of a great set up. I wanted old grizzled Connor to help Arno hunt down Shae and his deadly sons
There was something about Black Flag direciton that makes it that good. The cutscenes are actually better directed than Unity (I think Unity is damn fine too).
Unity was on a whole other level. The parkour, graphics, all were perfected on the old code base. Then starting with origins they switched to this new one. Most likely where they stopped using movies as cut scenes, and used the character models again.
@@Epke1174 where did i or the original post say anything about mirage? Take your meds. Do i need to spell it out it doesn't apply to the valhalla dlc that is mirage?
I didn’t really play that much Unity because I was super burned out on the series, but the subtle facial animations were very advanced for the time. There’s so much expressive eye movement, especially.
This is the difference between a game made with a soul by AC's creator (AC Brotherhood), and a game made by corporate interests to make as much money as possible from microtransactions and ignoring what most fans want, a decade after AC's creator (Patrice Desilets) has been fired for wanting a proper narrative and gameplay. And believe me, most fans hate the RPG direction or the new games, otherwise the new games would not have less than half the players of AC3 and AC2, or generally the Desmond Saga.
@@DarkMoon309Oh i dislike Odyssey and Valhalla as much as everyone here. I dont like however, is that Rogue, Unity and Syndicate are considered good when they never were. One thing to call rpg fans sheep, but people who call Rogue, Unity and Syndicate as good game are stuck in denial with their stupid monolith unable to accept those three aforementioned games were never good either. A good game is a good game. And the first four games, Black Flag, Origins and 3 to an extent are good games. And no matter who dares to comment on me with every insult that a typical Rogue, Unity and/or Syndicate stan has already given me, the difference is that i have points to back my claims up and they dont because their points usually devolve to shiny parkour and graphics.
@@memecliparchives2254 rogue is trash, just copy and paste of ac4 all over with an artic setting worse characters, worse story, copying all interesting mechanics from 4. Unity has some great pieces but on the whole is not a good game. Unity's parkour system was a solid foundation, their kill animations also solid and should have been built upon too. The idea of different cosmetics on your character for different outfits was cool with various stat bonuses, but it was tainted by ubisofts micro-transaction greed, the idea is not bad though in a vacuum. Multiplayer was an interesting concept and again could have been built upon. Everything else from unity was bad characters/writing, side quests boring repetitive, way too big world with nothing to do, bugs etc, though all this could be fixed in follow up games. Syndicate was ass, it fucked the parkor system, and did everything bad from unity only worse. If I had to talk about the new games I'd be here all day, all i'll say on them is that they're not true ac games, but they could be serviceable for a different ip. I hate ubisoft.
I played maybe 4 missions in Unity then got bored, I played about 8 missions in Syndicate then got bored, I never played Rogue because it didn't interest me, haven't played Odyssey, Origins, or Valhalla because nothing about them has drawn me in. I stick with Ezio's Trilogy, AC1, and AC Black Flag. ACIII I played in its entirety but it wasn't my favorite.
The Kenway Trilogy (Black Flag, Rogue, and III) will always be my favourite Assassin's Creed games, I find that out of the Assassin's Creed series, these 3 games have aged the best.
You can really tell by how much the heads are moving around. When the facial animation quality is lower they use the head movement to add emphasis. It gets progressively less pronounced from game to game until Unity where all the movement is completely natural, and then Mirage comes in and you have complete bobbleheads, lol
You know, random thought, but it really makes me glad that Pokemon never took this approach. A lot of technologically-limited Japanese games have this issue where they over-animate heads and hands and gesture wildly with blank faces, but Pokemon never really did that. In Pokemon Sun and Moon, they didn't implement much in the way of facial animations for your character, they just stare blankly, which is worth criticizing, but I'm realizing now how much worse it could have been if their heads flailed around like lunatics with their eyes making them look dead inside.
@@memecliparchives2254you can't deny that Unity as a "true" assassin's creed game is beautiful, albeit the bugs and stuff, it has the best parkour, environment, etc. (again, for a true stealthy AC game)
Cant believe how many people ignore the many problems of Unity such as its bland storytelling (great time period with sadly a disinteresting result), the beautiful but shallow and weightless parkour (Arno jumping meters of distance with no inertia) and the floaty combat (the animations have zero flow between them)
Noticed not only in games but also movies/series that dialogue turned more and more into charcters throwing vague concepts and ideals at each other instead of talking like humans with a bond. Its pretty much a competition of who can throw more quotable one liners that mean nothing in the end. Characters have transformed from original/nuanced people talking to one another into tools reading overcomplicated scripts into nothing. And this might be only me personally but I for the life of me cant keep my focus during the excerpt from Mirage in this video, while the others kept my attention like it was nothing, anybody else feel that way?
I've really noticed this in anime (but also other media) although I think it mostly has been like this for some time. It feels more like an exchange of philosophies and ideals instead of natural conversations. It also doesn't help that each person perfectly takes turns back and forth and there is minimal body language to add to the dialogue. Maybe it is a cope but it is one reason I don't particularly like TV/Movies that pride themselves with how "smart" and complex they are. Conversations seem to go this route.
@@Drstrange3000 Oh yea the perfect turns omg 💀Characters really cant interrupt eachother anymore true. But they also seem to just not be allowed to engage with either each other or their environment physically (think Jack Sparrow touching everything or Oberyn Martells body language). Its been a while since I watched anime but i guess that's where it started? I do remember long philosophical talks right before a fight but didnt really mind unlike I do now when its in games or other tv-styles huh. With anime back then it usually was for budget reasons but modern media has no buisness with that excuse lol. Priorities. One theory just came to my mind is that convos take this route because texting has become a second reality to us but its not like we talk to real people like we text them, we couldn't if we tried and that also translated into Media dialogue, because the writers get the chance of finally winning that one argument they lost/had no answer for in rl 💀
@@Diabolics6894 I loved Captain Jack Sparrow. So lively! Anime also seems to closely follow it's Manga roots (sometimes too closely) and that is also why it is like that aside from budget and time. Hmm... Interesting about the texting angle. I think some writers write in what would sound cool instead of writing actual characters that feel real. Like they can't separate themselves from their writing. Watching She-Hulk felt like the producer desperately trying to win that argument they couldn't in real life.
@@Drstrange3000 True about the manga aspect. I remember sometimes being bombarded with information/exposition that I had just read two pages ago like fam dont worry I remember u dont need to tell me every second what the characters motive is otl. Anyways, She-Hulk wasnt the first thing in my mind for that example actually (seemed more like extreme insecurety about the product itself and everything else followed that sentiment) but it still matches that box. Because I never have a problem with writers choosing sides in arguments and using messages but when it's at the expense of literally any and every character involved I'm jumping off that ride. Antagonistic characters in these examples usually turn into strawmen who become brainless shells after ONE BADASS sentence from the main character and I have yet to see this in rl my guy 😂 Like if you want characters to argue put some passion and emotions from both sides in it pls I am ✨deprived✨
As someone who prefers the original games (My favorites being the Ezio collection, Black Flag, Unity, and Origins)(I know not all these are "originals") Mirage's cutscenes actually look ok. Valhalla and ESPECIALLY Odyssey had bad cutscenes though
I think last time we had decent cutscenes was Origins. Maybe Oddyssey. But Valhalla had 3 good cutscenes. The opening one, the one by the fire pit where Basin tell us his story (this one is beautiful) and the last one.
You have to understsnd Bordeaux has a low budget. Those other examples are Montréal if Bordeaux was given that level of budget the cutscenes would be just as good as past games
@@barbarrojaeltemido1904 both of those games are mega huge. I guess they traded high quality cutscenes for the huge world. Bordeaux just couldn't afford it.
I don't care about budget, nobody does. If Ubisoft is saying they are releasing a full-fledged new installment in the series, it's gonna be measured on the same scale as other assassins creed games have been measured. Don't defend them, it's their problem, either they should have announced Mirage as a side game, like AC rogue, or AC jade. So that Mirage can have the advantage of 'low budget' criteria, else they have to feel the heat of 'real assassins creed' fans on this garbage RPG mechanics.
@@TheAziriusShow because it was originally happened to be a dlc, extention of ac Valhalla, which would cost like $10. But Ubisoft went a little greedy, so they decided to make this game as a stand alone game, 'new assassins creed game'. If they are marketing this as a new AC game, fans are gonna judge them on that basis.
I know my oppinion is not that popular, but after playing AC1, I now have this sadness that hovers above me whenever I play an Assassin's Creed game. After the popularity of Ezio's saga, every single new game just feels like a Hollywood action movie. The first game, with all its flaws, told a better story than any of the games that went forward. PS: I like Ezio and his saga. I just feel like the first AC went in a super cool "Thief-esque" direction and then swerved super hard in the opposite direction. You can tell it by how much Altair's story feels grounded in reality.
They need a remaster of Altaïr's AC game. Hell, they need to extend Altaïr's story into 2 more games at least. The only extension we got were The Secret Crusade novel, and the 5 Masyaf memory keys in Revelations.
Origins had amazing cutscenes, and some of the best voice acting in the franchise. Bayek's voice actor was incredible. The problem is they didn't do motion capture for Mirage and it really shows in how robotic the characters are. I love the game, it has a decent story and I love Basim, and the Arabic dub is great, it's a shame it stumbles on this part.
There are a lot of cutscene conversation on Mirage that feels like chatbot made. Like after a character finish talking then the next one will load what they are going to say and resume talking. It doesn't feel like a natural human conversation. There are only few that's passable human conversation on Mirage. I've only played Black Flag and Rogue but overall the conversations is passable as a human conversation compared to majority of the conversations I see for Mirage.
@@XDLugiaYep, only has shiny parkour and black box missions. All of it, are tied into its downright terrible story, characters, bloated side content (seriously open the map in the main menu its littered icons when youre sbout to take the first mission of the game)
This is the transition between motion capture and real actors to a cheap and easy money grab. Edit: Actually, the newer animations probaply done by hand and they have a range of animations they can use. With some special motions that need much more effort, like jumping. The old ones are motion captured and feel much more natural and you can even see, these animations have a higher frame rate (?). They don't feel as chopy.
MIrage cutscenes look like cutscenes from ~12 year old games, even older. no facial expressions, bad lightning, boring dialouge, not much details, robotic movement. It s*cks badly.
![CAMPปลิ้น | EP.82[1/2] แก๊ง 3 สาวเพื่อนซี้บุก CAMPปลิ้นครั้งนี้ห้ามเสียอาการ](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_6WUjXHe1TM/mqdefault.jpg)
As people have pointed out cinematography and animations have gotten a lot worse over the years but I want to point out one more other thing.The dialogues are much more generic in recent titles making them feel imapctless.Older titles had a much more playful and weighty script and conversations felt natural
Dialogues play a very important role.
In rockstar games, we can see the quality of work they do with everything including dialogues during gameplay and cutscenes.
"Oh nooo the templars corrupted the goverment...again...i must take them out stealthily while you all wait for my call"
Thats the whole script for ya lol
who the hell were writing for their scripts anyway?
Chat GPT has entered the chat
@@Stillbraixentho thats the whole series tbf
Old: we as a team need to figure out the dynamics between these characters so we can write meaningful relationships
New: okay chatgpt “assassins fighting and people disagreeing.”
Best comment yet.
Uniity literally had THE BEST cut scenes out of all the Ac games.. The animations and camera angles were on point especially the facial animations and the character movement was so realistic.. Unity could've been the game changer for the Assassin's Creed franchise if it wasn't for their decision to switch it up to RPG typa shit..
Big studios pressure developers to make more profit-friendly content, pay to play, micro transactions, level grinding for stretched out gameplay-hours… and of course sacrificing story, creativity and even whole play-styles to make whatever’s cheap, popular, and profitable..
And after only several tries, you get total garbage, big gane studios are literally bankrupting themselves by trying to squeeze every last portion of a penny out of these developers.. just look at what happened with the metal gear franchise because Konami’s lust for micro transactions, literally abandoning huge titles like silent hill and castlevania as well, because it’s not as “profitable” as mobile soccer games & pachinko machines..
will we ever get games As good as The Arkham Trilogy or AC Unity? Probably not from big studios but luckily there is dev teams out there still crushing it, I loved horizon Zero Dawn, Kojima first solo project Death Stranding was a MASTERPIECE just story rpg porn lol I hope that we as fans and players decide to do our part and not buy garbage, let these failing companies die and learn the hard way that you don’t squeeze us for cash on top of having shit product.. if it’s not top quality, we won’t buy. Then all that will survive and be left is the dev teams who love video games and love players..
Big studios have no love for us and we certainly don’t move them back… literally last option some of them have now is a totally faithful next gen remakes of their most valuable and beloved franchises.. metal gear delta for example, better be untouched story & dialogue and polished perfect visuals..
Weird, the company that believed it no longer needed AAA games and legendary games developers, now suddenly felt that their best financial move was to make a highly anticipated AAA remake of their most successful entry in a series hailed as the genre defining creations of a true master storyteller… who they overworked, alienated and fired back when he was in his prime..
Smart business.. that’s big money talk
They had to change It,because of the fan base compaining about the fact that the games were being repetitive.
I hear this complaint a lot that rpg isn’t liked.. it however completely outsells all the “earlier” titles, AC odyssey still generally sits in the top 10 most sold during sales or certain periods on every platform.
Valhalla was also a top seller doing even better, which I personally found to be a very boring game but whatever.
Aka all these people saying “let it go back to its roots”, well they are all full of sh*t, a minority clearly, especially considering how badly mirage is selling so far. (Plus all the other gripes relating to that game specifically)
The one in Japan coming out, AC ..red? Watch that outsell everything, yet it’s rpg styled most likely.
@@DikkieDikism That makes me sad :(
It's so stupid, I haven't had interest in any AC game past Unity. they could've gone RPG route while still retaining that AC gameplay and feel but nah they just made generic RPG with Assassin's slapped on it.
Mirage is not a step back to true AC formula, it's the same RPG formula with reskin to make it look like Assassin's Creed 1. no wonder the game isn't selling, it looks boring as shit.
AC1, a game from 2007 has more challenging and fun combat than Mirage. I never got bored of Combat in that game and I get bored quickly.@@DikkieDikism
The cutscenes used to feel real, they reeled you in into the world as if you were part of everything and the conversation revolved around you, but now not so much
That's what you think?
The 2 major things I've noticed with Mirage is the flat lighting and puppet mouth movements that really make it feel like you're playing a 360/PS3 (or early last gen) game at times. Especially if you compare to Unity, the lighting/shadows and mouth movements are so crisp
Sly Cooper from the ps2 era had more emotions than anything post unity.
Facts.
The Brotherhood through to Rogue animations were PEAK.
After that, it all just went backwards.
No. Until Origins it was fine. Origins - Shadows garbage.
@@guney2998 yeah sure.
I geuss London and Paris had some emotionless seem to it, which seemed like a lack of facial animations, but you're right.
I love AC 1 cutscenes, easily still the best. The fact you can move in them and change the camera angles. Made it all feel so much more real. Should have kept that style for none action oriented cutscenes.
Ubisoft, Activision, EA…People used to love them. They said they were actually beloved, in ancient times.
Now they are only a shadow of their former self.
We were fucking robbed when Elise died 😭
We were so unfairly cruel at AC Unity at its times...
Now, to be fair, the key moments in Origins & Odyssey (don't really remember Valhalla) where the cutscenes (pre rendered or not) were using mocap look great. Somehow still a bit lifeless but you can tell they're real, human, captured movements. Sure there are the AI generated ones for side quests that aren't important (where you can revolve the camera around randomly), but still more something than nothing in the older games where the quest givers talk but the camera doesn't change at all.
But in Mirage, dunno how but even the mocap ones are lifeless. Like they forgot to put face tracking so the characters' emotion is nowhere to be seen. But the biggest let down for me is Basim's VA being as flat as an ironing board. Carlo Rota did a fantastic job in Valhalla, Lee Madjoub is a menace to voice acting.
They definitely evolving! Characters now can speak with closed mouths
Man are we back in 1998? MGS used to have that and you had to use your imagination
@@falconeshieldno MGS was just ahead of its time
If there’s one thing I feel Unity can’t ever be topped at is it’s clothing textures, MY GOD THEYRE GORGEOUS.
Makes you wonder why tf we can’t as a society make those clothes the norm
@@seanslaysean7097 Fr, bring back Victorian Style clothing
And hair, i really like texture, the colour and the movement. Though syndicate was really good at both clothing and hair too
True. Every legacy outfit has never look as good as they do in unity, not even close.
@@seanslaysean7097maybe because they are too sophisticated to be produced by children in Bangladesh to be sold here for 5$ a shirt
the switch from Black Flag to Unity is insane, it's nuts that they only came out a year apart
eeeeeeh, lets not forget that the release version of Unity was SOOOOO Bad, that Ubisoft even had to give away full games at the time to unity buyers to make up for it (many got Watch dogs that way). The quality at releasetime was horrendous.
@@mermidion7552I think he's referring to the visuals.
@@maximtcaciuc2904 visuals, sure. I certainly was an upgrage. Release wise, well... AC:Unity and Cyberpunk 2077 would be indistinguishable due to the amount of bugs in both of them.
@@maximtcaciuc2904 funny so do i, 8among other things) . i am pretty sure if you google it you can still find images from unity where the people were missing facing ,just floating eyeballs and teeth.
@petrpinc7695 I mean after the patches it was amazing.
I remember playing AC Unity thinking ''Oh my god this is so awesome! Is this what video games are going to look like from now on?'' And the answer is no, no they did not.
Demons souls ps5 rachet and clank horizon fw looks leaps better then unity
@@megaflare204 no one asked. And we're talking about third party games not exclusives.
@@LadyOfTheEditshow are exclusives not AAA
@@LadyOfTheEditsExclusives are AAA games.
@@paulustrucenus Fine. Third party games. There. Happy?
Notice how Unity cuts to Elise WHILE Arno is the one talking, letting us watch her expression soften and see how she feels about who he was and who he's become. That's called making a creative decision, and placing trust in the animators. Beyond the performance, it's a camera choice that lets the player in on deeper character development. Let me tell you, that when you feel that trust and responsibility as an artist, you do better work as well. The other entries have some good animation (exceptoion: Mirage seemed to forget that blocking exists and characters move while they talk), but they simply cut to whoever is talking, shot, reverse, reverse, on and on. And the animation feels like an amateur stage play in response to an uninspired approach to showcasing it.
Probably cause mirage is made by amateurs, most triple a companies outsource the work now, just look at the credits of starfield.
this is the most braindead comment I've read in the last several days @@jayjayx5x1
@@jayjayx5x1 No my friend - Mirage was made by a much, much smaller team than other AC games. With much smaller budget too.
@@Czejenesku bruh…. That is literally what I said….
Ubisoft got smaller companies to do the work.
Just like starfield did, and just like most triple A games do, because they know people will still buy it, despite being shit.
@@jayjayx5x1 It was made by Ubisoft Bourdeaux. Its wasnt outsourced. While a smaller studio its devs were working on AC games since Origins. Studio itself was created as a new UBI branch to during Valhalla, they made all DLCs for it.
There is also another reason why it looks like this - UBI needs money, badly. They are probably at the worst state from all big companies. Hence Mirage wasnt allowed to cook for more.
We really shouldnt grind on this game so much. Yes, its janky at places, but its also the best stealth game UBI made in years (on hard dif.). They need to know thats the way to go with the series.
I think devs did an awesome job within the circumstances. I havent so much fun being an assassin since, well, Unity (talking about being an actual assassin)
People are mainly talking about the graphics, and it's understandable. Unity holds up amazingly for a game that is nearly a decade old. But I've also noticed that the cinematography has also taken a massive hit. In some of the old games it's really dynamic, like you're watching a movie. In Mirage it just looks really uninspired, flat and lifeless.
Mirage was made by a much, much smaller team than other AC games. And with much lower budget. Thats the reason.
@@Czejenesku Isnt it a spin off as well? Not even supposed to be a major game. I just started it tbh, and it looks like its gonna be quite short compared to the last few
@@emilycanfield2634 no, a spinoff would be way diff from mirage
@@Czejenesku 400 people worked on Brotherhood, it took one year to make it. 600 people worked on ac mirage and it took 2 years to make. Do you see the big difference between the 2?
Unity was amazing. Both gameplay and cutscenes. Like a movie
Thank god someone has talked about it. I totally agree with you.
Yeah. Also ac mirage voice act look like an AI
We have the same profile pic
One word: Budget.
The budget for Mirage was way lower than most of the previous games. It started as a DLC but it became larger than they were expecting so it became a game of its own, but with a smaller budget. I agree that Basim's voice actor sounds kinda dull, and some character movements like simple hand gestures could be better, but it lacks some scenes with more movement in the studio IMO. Many scenes are filmed inside a single room while having a conversation without much movement wich looks kinda boring, but because of a lower budget that wasn't always possible.
@@nosferatu7611no
@@mike_gusta2994 its not just a mirage problem. Everything since origins has had this issue. Its not budget its laziness.
It was around AC: Odyssey that Ubi started using algorithms to assign preset emotions during cutscenes and procedurally generate a few dialogue lines for the endless notice board quests.
In the older games it was all hand crafted, quality over quantity.
This whole console generation has been a downfall in AAA games design across all platforms and genres. Video games are becoming more and more "generated", be it with some algorithm or with AI, rather than hand-crafted. I am also seeing video games being designed more lazily, such as copy/paste padding content in open world games to make them "last" hundreds of hours. We need a renaissance!
@@richardhambel648At this point the only way forward in AAA will be to improve AI so that the generated content will be ever more interesting and meaningful.
If you want a renaissance, turn away from AAA games and studios and play indie games.
I feel like it downgraded quite a bit in side missions in Origins
To be fair, sidemissions in AC2 for example were letters in pidgeon coops.
CHATgpt wasn't around to generate that, fetch quests for decades had generic dialogue lines.
ubisoft really needs to do mocaps again
The facial animations need to be much better too, but they're too lazy to do that. I think they used real models or actors' faces for the main characters in the games prior to Origins.
@@Mr.Ditkovich.the cutscenes that do use motion capture look great in these games but they only save those for special moments. They're also not given enough time to mocap every scene which leads to the npc cutscenes we all know and hate. Another reason is that odyssey and Valhalla are so massive that they really can't make every cutscene look good, and mirage had an extremely limited budget plus the fact that they were limited by Valhalla's engine. I'm not trying to defend it, but these are the reasons that I think causes cutscenes to look so bad. They could also be lazy😅
@@Mr.Ditkovich. Fr they took out the basic layout from origins
@@Mr.Ditkovich. Its either that they're too lazy or they're bleeding too much money to afford it lol
If they skipped mocaps on such a small game there is no hope 😂
The cutscenes in Mirage feel like the earlier Telltale games, completely robotic and lifeless because of the preset animations and the fact they only walk from point A to B. It literally feels like you could be given a dialogue option at any moment but you don't. Assassin's Creed Origins had cool cinematic mo-capped cutscenes that were similar to earlier Assassin's Creed games, Odyssey had a few mo-capped cutscenes, but in Mirage, everything feels like it's made with the Sims.
I mean the game was supposed to be a dlc for valhalla after all, and im guessing the budget for this game wasnt huge
That's because they fired most of the team that worked on previous games.
Recently over 40 were fired before Mirage came out and already announced about every dialogue being done by Ai.
All they need is just one helper on it.
Even animations are done by ai since from wd Legion.
Remember lifeless robotic emotions in Hogwarts Legacy dialogues?
Done by ai animations.
Ubi doomed themselves over 7 years ago.
@@SeriousDragonify yeah you Gotta show a source for all this shit lol
@@void7837 This shit really is getting old, the idea for it was to be a dlc for Valhalla, but since almost two years the game was developed from 0 as a standalone game. This is no excuse for obi shits laziness, they are one of the most wealthiest studios, and Ubisoft Anvil is a powerful engine, saying the game as shit mechanics because it is Valhallas engine is complete crap as a game dev point of view, they simply made an half assed product, they had more than time to deliver something good. However such like EA, Activision, game freak they know their sheeps. They just need to tell people some sweet little lies and everybody gets hyped up, then use some TH-camrs like jo raptor and use them to bait their audience. Do you want to look at some games that where "dlc" look at halo dost, new vegas, vice city, far cry blood dragon (ironic), or heck dlc that are twice the man: blood and wine, new vegas dlc, cyberpunk dlc, dark souls 3 dlc, the list goes one.
@@void7837" Ubisoft is Developing Ai Ghostwriter"
- I don't trust the assassins.
-**removes hood** Do you trust me?
Goddamn, I forgot how much this game broke my heart.
Unity is so gold ❤
I really wish it got more time to cook. The parkour still feels a bit floaty, the multiplayer was crappy, and the narrative gets really rushed towards the end, not to mention all the bugs it had at launch and still has. Looking at the DLC’s quality though, man, it could’ve been up there with some of my favorite games if it had just gotten a couple more years in the oven.
@@peanutbutter6720 I think the points you mentioned are fine, but that's just my opinion. The problem was the bugs.
Now that I think about it, not many assassins had happy endings. Elise dies, Connor's people were eventually evicted, Altair died alone, Edward was murdered and his son became a Templar not to mention Caroline passed away while he was not home. The only one who got a decent ending was Ezio and maybe the Frye twins.
@@Walker733 I prefer never thinking about what happens after the games.
That transition between Unity and Mirage is evil 🤣💀
I can't believe people are defending this game.
@@jamesgordon9825 they really need to do a remaster 🤦🏾♂️
@@mwakaa6907 A remaster of unity or mirage?
@@StickzDev of unity
@@mwakaa6907Honestly it doesn't need a remaster since it looks better than games nowadays
out of nowhere, basim starts using his telepathic powers to talk to nehal. He really is a powerful assassin
If you complete the main story, this wouldn't seem out of place 😏
A bug, I didn't have it. He talked normally for me.
He Loki... what else did ya expect 😂?
@@Zeegoku1007 expected more effort from Ubisoft, not excuse for laziness.
@@goodmoney2998 Plenty of people do. So don't just say what u feel in terms of facts 😂
Edward Kenway’s part is one of the best acted characters in video game history. Brilliantly written and performed, in fact that whole game is like a movie.
I remember finishing the game when I was 14.
I felt something deep, so heart shattering yet cozy. I stood there, unable to cry and in shock.
As an adult, I realize it was a bad decision to let my kid self play it, but at the same time it's not a memory I wish to lose.
@@yawarapuyurak3271 Love this comment man. I genuinely remember the end scene with Haytham and feeling like I’d literally lived Edward’s life. He loses all of his friends, finds himself, realises the thing he’s chased his whole life doesn’t complete him, tries to do good but brings destruction to everyone around him.
The arc is crazy, and dare I say it, my favourite of the series (don’t kill me Ezio fans)
Because the character was using motion capture of actual theatre actors, especially Edward Kenway's, who was played & voiced by Matt Ryan a.k.a John Constantine.
Edward is one of the most compelling characters in Ubisoft history because, like Ezio, he starts the game as a complete jerk and doesn’t improve himself until he loses everything he loves.
Blackbeard as well, one of my most favorite written and acted characters in all of media
The cutscenes in previous games just felt alot more weighty, like your really watching two characters with different personalities interact, mirage and other recent titles seem to have missed that
Beautifully said.
I disagree. Origins and Odyssey had gorgeous cutscenes. Valhalla started this trend. I think Mirage is a transitional game, next ones will have a new engine - hopefully!
@@metodoinstinto Fair enough, I think Valhalla was where things hit a trough for sure. But absolutely, if they build upon mirage and with a new engine it could be great
@@metodoinstintoOrigins did most of the time, Odyssey absolutely did not, 80% of that games cutscenes were pre rendered models on a track, most of that is due to the scale of the game and the dialogue options.
@@epicologyfr6177 You are forgetting about the romances, when Kassandra/Alexios loses their spouse, the game ending and many other things.
Constantly reminded that Unity was ahead of its time in both the gaming industry and within the franchise itself
Pretty sure Frostbite was ahead of its time well before Unity. Frostbite 2 and what EA did with it back in the day with the Battlefield games and others is still talked about today.
Ahead of its completion date, too. We will never lose the meme faces.
@@robertbeisert3315 Or the 6.7 GB patch. 😂
You're right it had a terrible broken release followed by years later gaining a following based on nostalgia. I'm sure in a few years it will be odyssey or valhallas turn.
Unity ran like shit for me despite having been able to run black flag 60fps no problems, all the NPCs were doing some weird bon jovi hair spin thing as well, game was a disaster and the end of a legendary franchise.
The transition from Unity to mirage is utterly mind blowing
Edit: Holy shrimp the thumbs up digits are huge, thank you everyone.
Even the lighting, how does a nearly decade old game look better than the newest instalment?
Unity was insane for it's time period and this is pathetic for its time period
Even Syndicate was a downgrade compared to Unity. Unity was the peak of the series in many ways, and it immediately started going downhill after.
not even the lip movements are right. I've seen dubs with more matching facial animations, damn.
@@Box0rzeven if syndicate was a downgrade both unity and syndicate was super solid in term of graphics and art style tbh how the hell a 2014 game looks better than a 2023 one with all this new technology we have like ue 5 mind blowing 😂
Unity cutscenes are just on another level! Almost 10 years after release, and they still are holding up!
It's funny people praise unity now when at release it was absolutely hated
@@pineappleoverlord9k462Sounds similar to Cyberpunk 😂
@@artemkoropotkin3047yeah except cyberpunk is good asf now, unity is still a shitshow
@@b4bnik unity is probably the best ac game gameplay wise. idk what you're on about. it's not even buggy anymore
@@b4bnikthere's something I don't like about cyberpunk's atmosphere, the graphics are good but like the theme of the place is a stereotypical 90s-00s future movies, which I hate tbh, mostly the style, they just add robotic shit everywhere arm, legs, etc... like it does not look clean, the people does not look clean they look like random scraps put together.
In all of the other cutscenes you can pick up on what’s happening even if you’ve never played the game, there is emotion, meanwhile in mirage I literally had zero idea what they were saying and now am confused
@No-you-are-wrong-stop-LARPing what does that have to do with the subject
@No-you-are-wrong-stop-LARPing dude is saying ubisoft's "woke and left wing" when they have sexual harrasment cases and sexism in their company ???? you do realise that if a company had any hint of leftist values, they would give a sh1t about their workers and protect them from dangerous workplaces wherer they could be harassed ? stop going on 4chan/reddit it's rotting your brain with alt right stupidity
I'm the guy you're talking about. I noticed the same thing. It's the difference between character writing and naked exposition. Also, the calibre of voice actor.
Lots of people seem to be noticing it.
I noticed in my playthrough that everyone moved and talked like robots, but it really is a striking difference when you consider Unity is almost a decade old. This seems to have started in Odyssey, and I’ve been playing AC2 the last few days for the first time in probably 10 years, and everyone moves and talks like a normal person would, when they’re standing around it looks natural, not like you’re hovering over a character select in a fighting game.
Its cause they're getting lazy ibswear there was scene in valhall that looked way better like when you meet king Alfred it looked so real idk whats happening but also when its a gameplay cutscen or áreas cutscene it gets darker😊
Lmao odyssey has incredible animations for conversations. The conversations in Odyssey are dynamic. They change based on your input. And there's hundreds and hundreds of quests and NPCs with multiple dialogue options and multiple story paths.
It is not remotely compare that to a completely linear cutscene
@@bobdylan1968much rather have mocapped cutscenes without dialogue options
Ubisoft killed AC when they left the stealth based assassin gameplay and made an open world RPG instead.
It sounds as if they animated the cutscene and didn't let the voice actors watch it before recording their lines.
It sounds stiff like I'm in the recording booth with them
It’s not the visuals that’s the main problem in the new generation ac games, It’s the cinematography. 90% of the time it feels like the same cutscene with different backgrounds and words. They have moments of awesomeness, but they’re so few of them spread across hours of boring dialogue
Well it's not that big of a deal right?
Dude AC Mirage looks like they practicing their ventriloquism
@@assassin8636it is, a huge one
so does unity... @@HiThere-ig5iz
Cut scene from ac odyssey (not sure if i have to include origins) to mirage. I hate the stance that characters stand and hug their chest so much. Compare to old AC and we can see it's so much downgrade. In AC mirage that was great that dialogue is less chit-chat but the stance is still unacceptable.
It’s not shown here but I think Syndicate was amazing with its cutscenes. The characters talking made me really get into them. Evie and Jacob’s sibling banter and arguments, Starrick’s menacing demeanor that lost its calm control as you took over more and more of London, and the fun yet still authentic feeling feel so threatening. And the cinematography was on point with showcasing each character and the tone of the scene. Idk, I just really liked Syndicate’s characters and cutscenes. It’s my personal favorite despite all of its flaws and as the last game of the OG AC design, it’s always a shame they didn’t expand on the good they had with it. But that can be said for all the other ones too.
Syndicate was made together with Unity, lot of tech and assets were similar. The drop started with the RPGs, Odyssey especialy, as they started to drop motion capture in favour of automatic animations (which is commor for RPGs, Mocaping every line of dialogue would be really expensive I imagine). In Mirage, they didnt return to the professional mocap cinematography, for reasons unknown.
I knew I wasn't crazy. I could swear old cutscenes were so much better
I know right I’ve been wondering about these previous games have better cutscenes than odyssey and Valhalla. Mirage came close for decent cutscenes.
Remember, it's not "Nostalgia" if things just happen to be made well.
Old cutscenes used mocap, new ones doesn't. That's why the facial and body movements are so stiff. If I'm not mistaken, Origins was pretty much the last one to use proper mocap.
It’s really fitting that the series all about the past has recently delved into PS2 levels of animation
That's an insult to PS2 games.
I'm pretty sure Spyro on the ps1 displayed more emotion. So saying that insults ps2 games immensely lol
Wow… those cutscenes are like watching a movie. The sheer quality of animation, lighting, and that detail in the models, never realised just how good it actually looked. The voice acting is also so realistic and brilliantly done… I should really go replay Unity after all these years.
I never finished Unity. I really liked the game imo it could’ve been the best assassins creed but it was plagued with bugs. This made me want to go give it another go. 9 years later….
@@2inches2hardit's sooo good. i didn't play it on initial release but decided to give it a try on PS5 through PS Extra. Chef's kiss! Idk what the fuck is going on for real for real in the story but the gameplay and world is spectacular. Def my favorite AC game now. 10/10: will make you feel like an Assassin.
The acting is pretty good, despite the criticism on the story, It's emotional enough when you don't think too hard
@@2inches2hardDid you play it around launch? Those bugs ended up getting ironed out and it became a much better game because of it.
I remember when everyone was complaining about Unity. If only we knew what we had...
From a directing standpoint the characters are moving (blocking) and internalising what they are going to say before saying it, making them feel more believable because people do that, the lack of music in the dialogue exchanges seemed to support the player to be more focused in the moment, therefore more immersed. and the actors deliver their lines authentically, and the writing is alot more efficient and interesting, with arguments, differences of opinions and conclusive statements about what they just talked about, along with some neat subtext like the first scene where the character mentions that he intends to write a book about the protagonist, he responds "if you do, make it short" says alot about him with very little words.
I guess you're right
The amount of times (I think it started in odyssey) i have seen the 2 common animations in cutscenes being the one where characters cross their arms or when they place their hands on the sides of their hips have appeared so much that I've lost count how much they've been reused
Oof I have ptsd from all those awful animations
Oof I have ptsd from all those awful animations
Edit: TH-cam STOP DOUBLING MY COMMENTS PLEASE, ONE IS ENOUGH
You forgot the one where they aggressively hold out their arms
Oof I have ptsd from all those aweful animations.
i played the whole ass game and havent even realised dat ☠
That black flag quote is goated. Probably the best in the series imo…
I still can't believe how well written that game is, every spoken line is absolutely superb
The Kenway saga is full of goated quotes, Connor’s speech is another one
same here, best game next to Unity
So is Shay's @@TheWarchiefZekeJaeger
Yeah, but AC games were always been awful.
2nd, Brotherhood and Revelations had too many tutorials instead of being an assassin games that you figure out on your own.
I still can't believe how brainlets are so empty in the skull when they're looking for help in KC Deliverance and Okami.
Both games don't have tutorials and how to find.
Both are games to use your knowledge of finding by yourself and completing the games to the end.
Black flag was just so insanely good, every other assasins creed couldn’t compare. The plot was just so amazing and took you for a spin, they had fun dynamic scenes, amazing voice actors and animations…
Not one thing was holding it back.
I hear you, and I agree, but, counterpoint:
ship stealth missions
@@cubandictator4063they had a learning curve but I didn’t mind them too much
@@cubandictator4063 I liked them 😢
Yes, the islands felt very true to style it made me miss the Caribbean for sure
@@Zack-bl2gg
I have another counter-point;
The "real life" Abstergo plotline *outside* of the Animus.
That shit has been utter garbage since Desmond died. And I didn't even have strong feelings for or against Desmond, but there's no denying that even if the plot is going to be shit, it's still better to have an *actual character* interacting with the bullshit "real world" plotline, than just having an empty husk walking around a boring building with barely anything to interact with.
If they had given the player character a face, voice actor, and personality, there'd at least be a *potential* enjoyment factor to be had during those segments.
I know the game is 9 years old by now (christ almighty, time flies when you're not having fun) but SOMEHOW, Unitiy's visuals still got me like 'damn this looks good'. there's just something about how the game looks
unity was made on the assumption that consoles would be more powerful than they actually were. If you think about it no game on ps4 has looked better than infamous second sun and the order 1886 even those were early titles, hardware does not become magically better 5 year after release. Unity looks just as good as any other game released now because graphics and hardware has not improved much since when they designed the game for powerful pcs and ported it to weaker consoles.
Its not just the graphics, its art design. It had a unique charm to it. Really nailed the atmosphere. Shame the story itself didnt deliver. Could have been a great game
@@arkgaharandan5881 but they did re-release the PS4 with 4k and xbox with updated hardware. But honestly screw that, they need to make games fun and couch co-opy again
I remember in Unity when a mission was about to start, Arno had the area analised. So after he had a zoomed in image to his face and he looked so real. Now in mirage it's always these static distant angles with lifeless expressions.
Schrodinger's Assassin's Creed; Choosing between a game made in 2014 that feels like it was made in 2023, or choosing a game made in 2023 that looks like it was made in 2014.
AC Unity was the peak of what the engine could deliver, sadly held back by the old-gen hardware... The cinematics, the highly detailed interiors, the fluent parkour... That game still is a gem
It sucks because I can't get into it due to the LOD/Draw Distance issues. The game looks so ugly because of it.
Looks really really good on PC. But it's super demanding for the time, and even now
I'm very critic of every AC after Revelations, but I enjoyed Unity a lot despite its notorious flaws. Not a game I would disparage.
Still, very strange game in many aspects. Like, I could run the game in a mid specs desktop PC without much issues. It really needed some extra polishing before release.
No its not a gen..its garbage
@@baguettelauncher8839 i know, I was a hero to finish it..
My favorite will always be Black Flag because of the pirate era but Unity has a special place in my heart. Nearly everything about was beautiful (minus the ending but that can be debatable). You can truly feel the passion behind it.
It was my favorite until the ending. I haven't been able to bring myself to play it ever since.
I feel Black Flag has the best single story of any game in the franchise (I say single because Ezio's story spanned over three games, and they're really meant to be taken as parts of a whole).
man you guys really look at that game with rose-colored glasses. i started playing it again and besides the parkour its really not that great.
This is depresaing. I noticed a degradation in cutscene quality years ago when more and more games implemented RPG mechanics. Gamers didnt care about stories as much as they wanted very long games. The industry seemed to take less care on cutscenes and animation to meet demands of bigger games with RPG elements.
Its pathetic because The witcher 3(2015) had decent facial animation considering it wasn't mocap. Yet how many years later and AC Mirage has more uncanny faces than Fallout New Vegas
The hilarious thing is, I've never met someone in my life who wanted RPG elements in a non RPG game, yet they keep doing it even when it's not even remotely necessary. Look at Wolfestein Youngblood: totally unecessary RPG mechanics with beautiful enviroments but with very little variety and practically non-existent plot and character development. Who asked? Not a single soul.
@@sibusiso2841hated how true this is
@@sibusiso2841That's because animation is done by humans, there's plenty reused animations in other scenes.
Mass Effect trilogy has the same.
Only difference is these robotic animations are done by ai.
Even lifeless facial animations in Hogwarts Legacy is done by ai.
TW3 and ME trilogy were done manually for years.
Ubisoft became way lazier that they even use ai dialogues as well.
This is why they sound robotic and off.
@@sibusiso2841 Looking back, The Witcher 3 animation and cutscenes were good for being an RPG and the scale it had. It would be impressive if most of it wasn't mocapped.
One thing I hate that seems to be extremely common in modern games with in engine cutscenes is shot reverse-shot camera angles. They feel so dull and boring, and it doesn't seem like it would be so hard to put in some wide angle shots and cinematic shots.
Maybe you're just complaining about it but that's your opinion I guess
I mean what shot reverse shot? Like I don't think it's a big deal
@@assassin8636 I'm guessing you disagree with my opinion but your complete lack of any sentence structure at all is making it very hard to tell. And if you don't even know what I'm talking about in the first place then why give your opinion?
They probably replaced handcrafted directing with algorithm so they can pump out the product quicker. That's why the framing looks so stale.
Hearing Edward's realization about what the destruction his path had caused to his friends and family is so palpable. It genuinely makes me want a sequel with him after Black Flag even though we have the tie-in novel. I also hope for a Haytham game in the near future.
There's so much more story to tell with most characters in the series. Arno discovered part of the Rosetta Stone, Connor helped establish early America and Syndicate's ENTIRE narrative hinges on an artifact Edward brought back to England
@@lowestpoly64wait, what was that last part?
Unity graphics so good the transition was shocking.
Same thing with Origins though.
God when Ubisoft does that stupid accent, it's so insanely annoying.
I absolutely hated Odyssey for it and apparently they have the same stupid accent in Mirage
@@yipperdeyip an accent is fine however mirage combat system is designed by robots but the stealth is pretty good
@@EditHandIe
The absolute dogshit tryhard inclusive accent is so garbage, it makes me unreasonably angry.
Top that off with bland voice acting and an even worse script
@@samf.s.7731it doesnt matter, mirage cutscenes look like blender animations. Even 7 years ago unity was better.
Creative and talented people still exist and still make games. They just usually are not diverse enough to get hired by Ubisoft.
I even understand these shitty cutscenes in a huge game full of quests like Odyssey. You can't make cool mocaps and cutscenes all the time. But a short game like Mirage? What the fuck?
Like, Origins' cutscenes were better than this.
True, but Mirage was extremely limited by what came before so I believe they didn't have the time nor money to make it look as good as something like Origins.
@@Malte_Lorentzi that's not an excuse. If you don't have enough money or time to release something that is meant to be made with passion (marketing for Mirage heavily implies it's a passion project), well, don't release it. Ask for more resources from the start (I know other studios work on AC: Red and Hexe, and probably something else), explaining team's vision to bosses
@@mannycalavera9328 I see what you mean and I do agree with you to some extent, but I believe that they did all they could to make this as good as possible and it's clearly made with passion even though it's flawed. I even think it was bordeaux who asked the higher ups if they were able to make this a full game. While I do think a "back to the roots" experience should have been made from the ground up I still can't believe they made a game this close to the originals with Valhalla's toolset. They clearly did all they could with what they had to work with, and they probably just really wanted to make this game. I guess the marketing gave people unrealistic but justified expectations Which is both the communities and Ubisoft fault.
@@Malte_Lorentzi good points! Thank you
or release it at a lower price@@mannycalavera9328
Damn Unity had such beautiful cinematic scenes, the world was perfect and the parkour was so fun. If it would have come out today (without the bugs at launch) it would have been such an epic experience and easily a 9/10. I love that game but the story was a bit flat/boring.
The story? Bro I fucking cried as Elise died (was that her name?) and the beginning was the first one since AC2 to totally hook me.
@@oIJustForFunIo right totally forgot about that. Rip :'(
Parkour wasnt fun it was just pretty if you went from black flag to unity you will be hate the feeling of it. It feels like you dont have enough control over it and its pretty clunky too
@@holycrusader8738 what no way?! The animation of Arno jumping down and doing a spin while doing it was so cool and satisfying. I miss the old parkour the animation of the new games just look awkward and feel like shit. I don't understand why they don't just reuse Unity animations.
@@oIJustForFunIoBwahahahaha, imagine having sympathy for a manipulative lying jerkface like Elise and an incel simp like Arno Dorian.
2:10 That coffee steam has abandoned the mothership
It's the RPG formula, once they decided to go there with Odyssey, and Vahalla especially, THAT, is where the cinematics started becoming " bad ". If you're used to RPG games then you already know those kind of cinematics.
At least odyssey's vo was kinda good, sometimes even funny and entertaining. But valhalla and mirage are just plain BAD.
@@razumovskyiyou call odyssey's vo good but Valhalla's and mirage's bad, strange, Look I'm not saying you're wrong because it's your opinion after all. But to me most side characters have quite terrible voice acting in all three games and I can only think of like 5 characters in Odyssey with competent vo, That being said Odyssey is a straight up comedy.
Nah. That's plain laziness from Ubisoft. To prove you wrong about Valhalla, go watch the cutscene with Basim and Evior. It's the only amazing cinematic cutscene in the whole game, it really showcased how lazy Ubisoft is.
@Juangg55Personally, I never got the bugs from Unity. It was my first AC game too! Besides for the story, which I admit is very mediocre, the graphics, parkour, combat, *THE SOUNDTRACK* historical accuracy (minus the disguise ability which I was not a fan of) are all incredible 🤩 it IS really such a shame that a lot of people were instantly turned off by the bugs, but nearly a decade later, people are beginning to realise how wrong they truly were 😌 Also, not sure if this is true, but I hear AC code name red (the Japan one) will be the last rpg style AC, the futur ac games being more like Mirage I guess. I wouldn’t be surprised since Mirage was a masterpiece compared to it’s predecessor 😒 They are probably possibly returning to the roots permanently because of how well Mirage did. Man I love Mirage 😂
Odyssey's cutscenes were very good. The fact that melissanthi mahmut is a top-tier actress made the cutscenes feel so natural. Valhalla and it's new engine downgraded the cutscenes to another next level. Unity's still peak tho
Glad to see Unity getting some love. It snuck its way to being my favorite over a couple play throughs. Breathtaking craft!
u talking like it aint half the fanbases favorite ac game.
Sad to think that Unity was what killed the franchise. If you watch the presentation they did for Syndicate they talk about how the reception for Unity was so poor and it was "like someone saying your kid is ugly"
They were very disappointed and learned all the wrong lessons from it, what plagued Unity was the bugs (the story was on the weak side too ngl) but it would have taken them into the right direction.
@@azahel542 The story was definitely mediocre at best, but without the bugs almost everything about it was great (except the horrible armour system)
Shame Arno only got one game, he deserved at least a trilogy comparable to the Kenway arcs
@@fredgamer5142 what're you on about? like 90% of the fans will say AC black flag lmao
My favorite cutscene from ac2 is when Ezio gives his life speech and not to do anything but what you believe in. That shit moved me.
I'm playing ACU now and I had the scene where that one guy took you into the brotherhood and man was I unimpressed. Like it didn't help I was bullying him. Having the ambient noise play in the background is both hilarious and annoying.
These are literally my top 3 AC games too, Black Flag, Brotherhood and Unity.
Edwards speech just sent goosebumps across my skin. The whole scene is so well delivered and the music in the game in general really brings every moment to life.
as for Unity, the scene instead has no music at all. Just two friends talking, yet the acting just has me captivated. Arno and Elise were an amazing duo and I wish we got to see more of them and their actors who did such a great job bringing them to life.
same
Imagine calling Arno and Elise good characters......
Black Flag was the best creation of Assassins Creed in term of executing new ideas to the series. They executed it very well. The game is complete, polished, and very worth to sell. The game mechanic is the best and balance between assassin and pirate life. It's so fun!
Unity, in other hand, sadly they rushed its developing and sell it unfinished yet, hence the bugs. But overall, Unity is the peak AC game if it got the support it deserved to get at the time.
Origins deserves a place in the top 3. It has some of the most compelling themes and acting in the series. Saying this as someone whose played ALMOST all of them as they released since the first game on 360.
@@memecliparchives2254honestly. Unity was good but by god was its story drivel and it’s characters shallow and clunky.
its weird being not in deep with the mechanic of how these are made but still able to tell. a lot of them before had clear motion capture, the characters were constantly keeping lil idiosyncrasies with real movement, gestures and the like, but this new one clearly has obvious cycled idle animations that break to give a few "life-like" motions and almost jerk back into the idle positions. its sad to see such detail be abandoned, or overlooked.
Also there's the lighting. In particular Unity's colors really pop because of it. Everything in Mirage just looks really dull and washed out.
It's not always mocap necessarily. Been watching some dance animations done by independent animators for a popular online game, and neither of the animators uses mo-cap. While both are good, there is a really perceptible robotic sort of undertone to one, whereas the other feels very *alive* and real.
Another example is the prevalence of adult animated digital movies/shorts (porn). Usually very short because a given animator usually works alone, and it's a lot of man hours to make a GOOD animation where the actors look and feel like living people instead of animated action figures. But a talented animator can make something seem mocapped when it wasn't. I suspect a lot of AC1-AC:B was not mocapped. I'm up in the air about revelations. 3 through Origins made heavy use of mocap and I think Odyssey did too. I can't speak for Valhalla as I haven't yet played it, but Mirage definitely doesn't look mocapped.
That cutscene in black flag made me love Edward. He really had some beautiful development
How Unity looks so much better than a sequel out 9 years later is mind-boggling.
Unity had the best cinematic here it felt like a real conversation they are not evolving backwards it’s just that after origins they just don’t want to make good cutscenes even if they could
Imo with Origins serie went backwards all the way
@@mehmetakif3860 Origins might not feel like an AC game but it was still a great game overall. Also the animations and character models were alright in Origins. It was Odyssey where the went full RPG mode with dialogue trees and stuff, thats when things started falling apart.
@@sahibpreetsingh5514 yes you are right bu Origins opened that door. I think Unity and Syndicate the last two games sticked to the roots with improvments
@@mehmetakif3860Nope, Origins is above Rogue, Unity and Syndicate no latter how shiny their animations are.
Especially when shiny cutscenes in Unity are enough to fool almost everyone that its story and characters are good lol.
And Syndicate? You know who made that game made Odyssey right? Nonsensical story, sick joke characters, stupid grappling hook that made parkour COMPLETELY USELESS because the buildings in Syndicate are too far apart and you can barely jump off buildings.....its an SNL sketch parody of Assassins Creed as much as Odyssey is.
Stick to their roots? Next time, tell the damn truth if you actually know what youre talking about rather parroting a stupid monolith lile most AC stans.
It’s a bit unfair to say that, since they were limited by technology of their time
Unity looks absolutely incredible, the facial animations are just insane, it's wild how far backwards they have come and what a difference it makes. It changes the tone from serious and filled with charm and tension to goofy and hard to take seriously in an instant.
@@samf.s.7731Yep, this channel is perpetuating the lying habits of Unity stans.
@@samf.s.7731Animations were the same at release as they are now. Unity had problems with gameplay and performance, not with cutscenes.
Most of the current games fail to impress me both in terms of graphics and gameplay.
At the start of Ps4/Xbox one generation we got so many good looking games, games that look way too good. Then most of the games in the later part of ps4 gen stopped looking good as these early games. Even a lot of ps5/ series x gen games don't look good compared to these early ps4 gen games [despite having improved graphical assets].
@@MultiKamil97I think your A little misinformed there was a lot of problems with cutscenes when the game released like faces not loading, and people clipping in the cutscene as in random citizens, walking through walls, etc now I love this game but the cutscenes were absolutely hilariously poor at launch and I am glad they fixed it for the most part.
@@samf.s.7731it was a disaster at launch but when i played it like a year or two later it was just fine. That’s the state of the art for AAA nowadays anyway so it’s not really surprising. But it doesn’t mean the game is still as bad as it was on release, that’s what patches are for.
And before I get stupid ubisoft shill comments, I fucking hate their launcher, haven’t touched a ubisoft game in like 5 years and absolutely despise their open worlds overloaded with repetitive nonsense. Not to mention the plethora of stealth tailing missions and stuff that nearly drained the fun out of the rest of ac.
Man, the writing really took a hit. It’s been a decade at I still remember that conversation on the roof in Rome nearly word for word.
Not just the gameplay went back its roots, also the graphics and animations
the roots are still better 💀
@@JohnKenny-q9d😂
@@JohnKenny-q9dthen this current one may be in the middle 😅
@@JohnKenny-q9d nostalgia really making youse blind af, saying ac 1 2 or 3 looked even remotely good as mirage is just dumb af
nah they went back to the seeds
Unity was the last true to form, ambitious AC game. It sucks it launched so bad because fundamentally its a great game. Not only are the cutscenes bad in modern AC the animations are so dull and lifeless. They dont give you the feeling of being a well trained assassin with finesse and expertise. Instead all of the combat and parkour animations are flat and lame with no flow or character behind it.
Assassin's Creed has turned into a mobile game
@@Mr_MistahIronic. They tried to with Assassin's creed jade. But got clowned on when gameplay released. And the voices were text to speech. And one of the cutscenes weren't even animated. And now that games development has gone MIA.
The black flag is just so simple but masterful.
Imagine if it’s remastered with all the latest engines,
Origins practically used the same engine as Odyssey, Valhalla, and Mirage. But, Origins' cutscenes weren't that bad. It started at Odyssey, way downgraded at Valhalla, and no changes at Mirage
Finally, someone with a brain that isnt thinking in a stupid monolith.
Exactly!
that's spot on
Origins had easily the best cutscene in the franchise, the atmosphere was brilliant, how they went from Origins to Odyssey is criminal
Even the voice acting took a huge drop in quality compare bayek voice acting to basim its like going from Leonardo Dicaprio to dhar mann
When someone says it's just nostalgia, show them this to prove things were better back then.
Kind of a cherry picked comparison though IMHO. Mirage is a budget game, not a fully flagged AAA one. It's cheaper at release than even AC1 was and it's quite a lot smaller than almost all the AC titles as well. Of course the cut scenes are worse.
@@CheekiTikiThat's right, but I don't think the og comment meant to diss Mirage, it's to diss odyssey and valhalla, the cause of all this downfall (not in sales term tho cus those 2 sold well unfortunately)
@@CheekiTiki Why? Remember, there's almost a 10 year difference between Unity and Mirage. Are you telling me because of budget reasons Ubisoft couldn't bother using their own engine from 10 years ago with new shaders, taxtures and animations to deliver a DECENT graphical game?
No, it's because it was supposed to be a DLC to Valhalla which people already were moaning about the length of the story and the impossible number of sidequests, so they decided to make it a stand-alone game instead, because otherwise no one would buy it. And lo and behold, the "fans" love it, because it's the best AC since the new games! Yeah no shit, the old formula wasn't bad, Ubisoft just borked it with their annual release schedule of unpolished buggy games and people were tired of "same shit, different age". If you look at what modders have done with Unity now, it looks friggin amazing compared to Mirage. And apparently there's still a market for "old AC style" so Ubisoft better start cranking up that old Unity engine... There's cash to grab there boys!
@@MartinsRandomVideos That more or less is what I'm telling you.
To further this point, take a closer look at the textures, fidelity, and shadows of Mirage, individually, in isolation. They all actually look better than Unity. I mean, of course they do right? It's been 9 years of hardware and engine advancements. However, the cutscenes overall still look way worse. Why? Because everything else that makes a cutscene truly look good, like lighting design, animations, and cinematography all require lots of effort and talent, i.e. money.
I'm not trying to excuse how bad Mirage looks, because tbh it looks worse than many AA games. I just think it's silly to compare it to fully fledged AAA games with mocapping, directors, and artists making sure every scene looks beautiful.
Also, using this game as proof that "things were better back then" like OP just did is so melodramatic lol, which is why made my other comment in the first place.
@@CheekiTiki I agree, the melodrama is much, but there's a point there. It's just sad that the technology is here to do what Ubisoft tried to do with Unity back in 2014, but isn't willing to invest in now. And seeing there are new AC players that started with these RPG abominations saying this game is the best Ubisoft has done with AC makes me even sadder.
Unity was flawed because of a bad launch and sub-par storywriting, but they nailed the environment en animations. Especially with the cutscenes, hence, this video.
Also, on a sidenote, people saying the parkour in Mirage is better than Unity should really try Unity first and look up some players who do these flashy vids, showing you How to parkour. It's dumb Ubi didn't add a decent tutorial ingame, because once you invest in it, you actually become so fluent in gliding over those rooftops in Paris that every other AC feels clunky and restricting. :)
There's something about their movement. Everyone up to Kenway felt very natural. Everyone after, there feels like there's too much movement. For Unity, the facial expressions feel too emphasised, and for Mirage, they're both just waggling their arms and heads.
In veering away from the slightly exaggerated stuff of older games, making the character more "realistic", they've just made stuff more uncanny.
God damn, my thoughts exactly. This should be a main topic of discussion. These preset animations from RPG engine make me feel like im watching Oblivion characters or mannequins
Unity still looks damn beautiful after all these years. It could have set a benchmark AC game if only it wasn't a buggy mess at launch. It checked all the boxes an AC game should have, and offered a lot more with its side content.
The story was out of place. It wasn't a bad story, in fact I liked the emotional weight of it more than most AC games. But it lacked the consequence of the other games. I kind of think it is similar to AC Revelations in that regard.
@@TheGavraelIts just terrible, lets be clear.
@@memecliparchives2254
It really isn't though, but that's my opinion. You think whatever you like
Unity is unfinished to this day.
The combat system is a janky mess and the parkour is automated, imprecise and sluggish.
AC Brotherhood was the peak of AC.
@@Pedro_Le_Chef
Debatable but everyone has their opinions
3:23 impressive, he has an isu artefact that enables telepathy
Didn't they say the game is not RPG, then why did they use the same typical cutscenes and facial animations from RPG games?!
it doesnt have the rpg system, but it bases on the engine from valhalla. That's why
@imamulmalikchowdhury7659 But how is the game overall? Origins was the last one I played. I wasn't a fan of it like so many people were, but if it's better than Origins, then I might play it.
@@Mr.Ditkovich.I really liked it, but if you didn't like Origins then you might not. Skip it unless you really want to get it. It's also much more like the old games so give it a try if you've got 50$ to spare it's better than origins imo, even though I liked that game, actually wait for a sale if you can.
@@Mr.Ditkovich. Oi Oi! Origins was at least decent... The story, gameplay and animations still held up with older AC titles, giving it a fresh look to the AC series. If you wanna bash, go bash Oddesey which is a complete downgrade of everything.
The Kenway Saga(AC3-Unity) was the best era of assassin's creed imo, the good-guy bad-guy line was completely blurred in that era, the rooftop conversatuon between Connor and Haytham is one of many reasons why AC3 is my favorite of the franchise.
exactly
Ac2- Syndicate for me.
It's great but I'll always be confused why they went to the trouble to have Shae kill Arno dad.....and then Arno and Shae never meet? Ever? Like cmon. What a waste of a great set up. I wanted old grizzled Connor to help Arno hunt down Shae and his deadly sons
I'm pretty sure Kenway saga only consists of AC3, Black Flag and Rogue. Not Unity.
@@Commander_Shepard.yes unity and syndicate are initiate saga
I used to be emotionally invested in these games and now I just want to hurry up and finish.
AC Mirage looks like its on POTATO settings compared to other AC games in the video.
In my opinion Black Flag had the most captivating cutscene.
Trust me. I had my settings at Ultra High with the latest technology but still Mirage cutscene graphics are ugly as hell
There was something about Black Flag direciton that makes it that good. The cutscenes are actually better directed than Unity (I think Unity is damn fine too).
Holy cow unity had some high quality cutscenes
The writing quality also nose-dived.
Unity was on a whole other level. The parkour, graphics, all were perfected on the old code base. Then starting with origins they switched to this new one. Most likely where they stopped using movies as cut scenes, and used the character models again.
yes, they sacrificed mo-cap cutscenes for a huge open world and dialogue options with a few big well made cutscenes in between.
mirage isn't that big lol@@Myhaay
@@Epke1174 where did i or the original post say anything about mirage? Take your meds. Do i need to spell it out it doesn't apply to the valhalla dlc that is mirage?
AC Unity is almost 10 years since released but still has one of the best graphics in any video game.
1:53 There is an audible splat from the drop in dialogue quality.
I didn’t really play that much Unity because I was super burned out on the series, but the subtle facial animations were very advanced for the time. There’s so much expressive eye movement, especially.
Yeah, that motion capture was next level. It's a shame the series has regressed since then.
Unity came out undercooked and at the worst time for your average gamesman. I didn't even realize how well DONE it was.
This is the difference between a game made with a soul by AC's creator (AC Brotherhood), and a game made by corporate interests to make as much money as possible from microtransactions and ignoring what most fans want, a decade after AC's creator (Patrice Desilets) has been fired for wanting a proper narrative and gameplay.
And believe me, most fans hate the RPG direction or the new games, otherwise the new games would not have less than half the players of AC3 and AC2, or generally the Desmond Saga.
I am surprised those " newer fans" havent bashed on this comment yet lol. Man those blind sheep who love the RPG direction are just the worst
@@DarkMoon309Oh i dislike Odyssey and Valhalla as much as everyone here. I dont like however, is that Rogue, Unity and Syndicate are considered good when they never were.
One thing to call rpg fans sheep, but people who call Rogue, Unity and Syndicate as good game are stuck in denial with their stupid monolith unable to accept those three aforementioned games were never good either.
A good game is a good game. And the first four games, Black Flag, Origins and 3 to an extent are good games.
And no matter who dares to comment on me with every insult that a typical Rogue, Unity and/or Syndicate stan has already given me, the difference is that i have points to back my claims up and they dont because their points usually devolve to shiny parkour and graphics.
@@memecliparchives2254 rogue is trash, just copy and paste of ac4 all over with an artic setting worse characters, worse story, copying all interesting mechanics from 4. Unity has some great pieces but on the whole is not a good game. Unity's parkour system was a solid foundation, their kill animations also solid and should have been built upon too. The idea of different cosmetics on your character for different outfits was cool with various stat bonuses, but it was tainted by ubisofts micro-transaction greed, the idea is not bad though in a vacuum. Multiplayer was an interesting concept and again could have been built upon. Everything else from unity was bad characters/writing, side quests boring repetitive, way too big world with nothing to do, bugs etc, though all this could be fixed in follow up games. Syndicate was ass, it fucked the parkor system, and did everything bad from unity only worse. If I had to talk about the new games I'd be here all day, all i'll say on them is that they're not true ac games, but they could be serviceable for a different ip. I hate ubisoft.
I played maybe 4 missions in Unity then got bored, I played about 8 missions in Syndicate then got bored, I never played Rogue because it didn't interest me, haven't played Odyssey, Origins, or Valhalla because nothing about them has drawn me in. I stick with Ezio's Trilogy, AC1, and AC Black Flag. ACIII I played in its entirety but it wasn't my favorite.
The Kenway Trilogy (Black Flag, Rogue, and III) will always be my favourite Assassin's Creed games, I find that out of the Assassin's Creed series, these 3 games have aged the best.
You can really tell by how much the heads are moving around. When the facial animation quality is lower they use the head movement to add emphasis. It gets progressively less pronounced from game to game until Unity where all the movement is completely natural, and then Mirage comes in and you have complete bobbleheads, lol
You know, random thought, but it really makes me glad that Pokemon never took this approach. A lot of technologically-limited Japanese games have this issue where they over-animate heads and hands and gesture wildly with blank faces, but Pokemon never really did that. In Pokemon Sun and Moon, they didn't implement much in the way of facial animations for your character, they just stare blankly, which is worth criticizing, but I'm realizing now how much worse it could have been if their heads flailed around like lunatics with their eyes making them look dead inside.
I’ve always hated how they downgraded the cutscenes. The cutscenes were one of my favorite parts of the series
1:19 Gods, that hits harder than it should... That whole imperfect story was one of, if not the most beautiful in the series.
That and the whole scene of Blackbeards death.
@@J8den "In a world without gold, we could have been heroes!"
_- Blackbeard_
Unity visuals are on another level, all the other games look like ps2 in comparision
Man Unity was when the series was at its peak. Shame hardware limitations butchered the game.
Are people really making excuses for its launch state now?😂
@@memecliparchives2254you can't deny that Unity as a "true" assassin's creed game is beautiful, albeit the bugs and stuff, it has the best parkour, environment, etc. (again, for a true stealthy AC game)
qwertyu991Story and characters are still terrible. No patch can ever fix that.
@@memecliparchives2254Not true btw. Unity story is not bad,it's not good,it's fine. Definetly better than Mirage😂
Cant believe how many people ignore the many problems of Unity such as its bland storytelling (great time period with sadly a disinteresting result), the beautiful but shallow and weightless parkour (Arno jumping meters of distance with no inertia) and the floaty combat (the animations have zero flow between them)
Modern Ubisoft is a disgrace
The graphics and cinematography of Unity is incredible for 2014. Not even todays games looks this game.
Cough.... cough....Starfield.
oh no you coughed out shit
Noticed not only in games but also movies/series that dialogue turned more and more into charcters throwing vague concepts and ideals at each other instead of talking like humans with a bond. Its pretty much a competition of who can throw more quotable one liners that mean nothing in the end. Characters have transformed from original/nuanced people talking to one another into tools reading overcomplicated scripts into nothing.
And this might be only me personally but I for the life of me cant keep my focus during the excerpt from Mirage in this video, while the others kept my attention like it was nothing, anybody else feel that way?
I've really noticed this in anime (but also other media) although I think it mostly has been like this for some time. It feels more like an exchange of philosophies and ideals instead of natural conversations. It also doesn't help that each person perfectly takes turns back and forth and there is minimal body language to add to the dialogue. Maybe it is a cope but it is one reason I don't particularly like TV/Movies that pride themselves with how "smart" and complex they are. Conversations seem to go this route.
@@Drstrange3000 Oh yea the perfect turns omg 💀Characters really cant interrupt eachother anymore true. But they also seem to just not be allowed to engage with either each other or their environment physically (think Jack Sparrow touching everything or Oberyn Martells body language). Its been a while since I watched anime but i guess that's where it started? I do remember long philosophical talks right before a fight but didnt really mind unlike I do now when its in games or other tv-styles huh. With anime back then it usually was for budget reasons but modern media has no buisness with that excuse lol. Priorities.
One theory just came to my mind is that convos take this route because texting has become a second reality to us but its not like we talk to real people like we text them, we couldn't if we tried and that also translated into Media dialogue, because the writers get the chance of finally winning that one argument they lost/had no answer for in rl 💀
@@Diabolics6894 I loved Captain Jack Sparrow. So lively!
Anime also seems to closely follow it's Manga roots (sometimes too closely) and that is also why it is like that aside from budget and time.
Hmm... Interesting about the texting angle. I think some writers write in what would sound cool instead of writing actual characters that feel real. Like they can't separate themselves from their writing. Watching She-Hulk felt like the producer desperately trying to win that argument they couldn't in real life.
@@Drstrange3000 True about the manga aspect. I remember sometimes being bombarded with information/exposition that I had just read two pages ago like fam dont worry I remember u dont need to tell me every second what the characters motive is otl.
Anyways, She-Hulk wasnt the first thing in my mind for that example actually (seemed more like extreme insecurety about the product itself and everything else followed that sentiment) but it still matches that box. Because I never have a problem with writers choosing sides in arguments and using messages but when it's at the expense of literally any and every character involved I'm jumping off that ride. Antagonistic characters in these examples usually turn into strawmen who become brainless shells after ONE BADASS sentence from the main character and I have yet to see this in rl my guy 😂 Like if you want characters to argue put some passion and emotions from both sides in it pls I am ✨deprived✨
As someone who prefers the original games (My favorites being the Ezio collection, Black Flag, Unity, and Origins)(I know not all these are "originals") Mirage's cutscenes actually look ok. Valhalla and ESPECIALLY Odyssey had bad cutscenes though
Lower budget
I think last time we had decent cutscenes was Origins. Maybe Oddyssey. But Valhalla had 3 good cutscenes. The opening one, the one by the fire pit where Basin tell us his story (this one is beautiful) and the last one.
You have to understsnd Bordeaux has a low budget. Those other examples are Montréal if Bordeaux was given that level of budget the cutscenes would be just as good as past games
They didn't show Odyssey or Valhalla and most of the cutscenes suffer from the same problem
@@barbarrojaeltemido1904 both of those games are mega huge. I guess they traded high quality cutscenes for the huge world.
Bordeaux just couldn't afford it.
I don't care about budget, nobody does. If Ubisoft is saying they are releasing a full-fledged new installment in the series, it's gonna be measured on the same scale as other assassins creed games have been measured. Don't defend them, it's their problem, either they should have announced Mirage as a side game, like AC rogue, or AC jade. So that Mirage can have the advantage of 'low budget' criteria, else they have to feel the heat of 'real assassins creed' fans on this garbage RPG mechanics.
@@onlyformotovlog It didn't release at full price either. Take that into account.
@@TheAziriusShow because it was originally happened to be a dlc, extention of ac Valhalla, which would cost like $10. But Ubisoft went a little greedy, so they decided to make this game as a stand alone game, 'new assassins creed game'. If they are marketing this as a new AC game, fans are gonna judge them on that basis.
I know my oppinion is not that popular, but after playing AC1, I now have this sadness that hovers above me whenever I play an Assassin's Creed game.
After the popularity of Ezio's saga, every single new game just feels like a Hollywood action movie.
The first game, with all its flaws, told a better story than any of the games that went forward.
PS: I like Ezio and his saga. I just feel like the first AC went in a super cool "Thief-esque" direction and then swerved super hard in the opposite direction.
You can tell it by how much Altair's story feels grounded in reality.
They need a remaster of Altaïr's AC game. Hell, they need to extend Altaïr's story into 2 more games at least. The only extension we got were The Secret Crusade novel, and the 5 Masyaf memory keys in Revelations.
Origins had amazing cutscenes, and some of the best voice acting in the franchise. Bayek's voice actor was incredible. The problem is they didn't do motion capture for Mirage and it really shows in how robotic the characters are. I love the game, it has a decent story and I love Basim, and the Arabic dub is great, it's a shame it stumbles on this part.
Agreed. Bayek's voice actor did an amazing job.
There are a lot of cutscene conversation on Mirage that feels like chatbot made. Like after a character finish talking then the next one will load what they are going to say and resume talking. It doesn't feel like a natural human conversation. There are only few that's passable human conversation on Mirage.
I've only played Black Flag and Rogue but overall the conversations is passable as a human conversation compared to majority of the conversations I see for Mirage.
Unity still looks gorgeous. Time to play again
It looks absolutely stunning, but the game itself is very mediocre.
@@XDLugiaYep, only has shiny parkour and black box missions. All of it, are tied into its downright terrible story, characters, bloated side content (seriously open the map in the main menu its littered icons when youre sbout to take the first mission of the game)
This is the transition between motion capture and real actors to a cheap and easy money grab.
Edit: Actually, the newer animations probaply done by hand and they have a range of animations they can use. With some special motions that need much more effort, like jumping. The old ones are motion captured and feel much more natural and you can even see, these animations have a higher frame rate (?). They don't feel as chopy.
MIrage cutscenes look like cutscenes from ~12 year old games, even older. no facial expressions, bad lightning, boring dialouge, not much details, robotic movement. It s*cks badly.