As an old fan of the series and someone who has not enjoyed the new RPG direction as much as others, I’m personally scared for the future of AC. I worry about the long term stability of the open-world looter RPG fad that’s engrossed the industry and Ubisoft along with how many old die-hard fans of the series are flocking away from what it’s becoming. I was personally looking forward to the rumors of a game set in Ancient Rome, hoping it’d find a way to meaningfully tie together this little arc in the “Layla Saga”, but now it appears that won’t be happening, in favor of a Vikings Assassin’s Creed title which has long been a fear of mine. However, over the past few months, since this leak broke, after much thought, speculation, and time reading rumors, I’ve become cautiously optimistic about it, and want to discuss why Kingdom/ Ragnarok could be good or could be another nail in the coffin for old fans.
GREATNESS
On the topic of the setting’s potential, I want to discuss the historical setting itself. When we hear Vikings we generally think about Scandinavia, but most rumors and logical guessing place us in one of 2 historical periods for the Viking Age; the raids of the Great Heathen Army or the Norman Conquest by William the Conqueror. We can safely assume these settings due to a poll by Ubisoft explicitly asking about which settings we’d like to see in the future and these two appearing. The Great Heathen Army was an army of Vikings (largely Swedes and Danes from my understanding) who went to conquer England as an act of vengeance following the leaders’ father’s death (Ragnar Lothbok) at the hands of Northumbrian King Aella. Ragnar himself is an interesting character being pseudo-historical for sure, and most famous for what was likely his Siege of Paris in 845ce. The map itself would likely be Scandinavia and Great Britain where we could see the Viking world in the east and English Kingdoms at war in the west. There’s a good number of historical characters to choose from as well in this region, including King Alfred, his son Edward, and the Viking sons of Ragnar including Bjorn Ironside. The story could easily stretch from 845 when Ragnar besieged Paris through the death of Ragnar, unification against the English, establishment of Danelaw under Alfred, the expansions after Guthrum’s death, and brief civil war in England following Alfred’s death between his son Edward and nephew Aethlwold until about 911 when Rollo the Viking became the first Duke of Normandy under Charles the Simple, successor of Charles the Fat and Charles the Bald. Having northern France and Germany would not be out of the question, or could even be extended to a DLC. Based on the current trend, we would definitely expect a DLC to the 9 realms.
Alternatively, the invasion of William could also work well. We could even start off earlier around 1016ce when Cnut the Great rose to power, help deal with conflicts between the Scandinavian kingdoms before the finale in 1066 between Cnut’s relative and king of England Harold Godwinson, King of Norway and claimant to the Danish and English throne Harald Hadrada, and Norman claimant to the English throne and great-grandson of Rollo, William the Conqueror.
Both settings have amazing potential for historical events, characters, and locations that can all make sense with a Viking assassin’s perspective. We also know from the last descendant books that there were Viking assassins by the late 10th century, which means we could potentially see the origins of Viking assassins if we follow the events after Ragnar’s death.
The team I think that would be best to bring this gritty world to life would be Ashraf Ismail and the Origins team. Despite its many flaws, Origins did the world design very well, and I’d love to see the same finesse brought to Medieval Scandinavia and England. Luckily, it seems very likely that Ashraf will be heading this title. He was just promoted to Creative Director from Game Director after Origins. The previous Creative Director for Origins and Black Flag was Jean Guesdon who recently announced his departure from AC and that his newest project he’s been heading will not be the next title. Sofia was rumored to be developing a title in Rome, which now seems to be incorrect or have been canceled based on other rumors. A brand new large title would be quite an undertaking for the small studio who, despite Rogue, has mainly done assistance and DLC (and pretty well). The Quebec team most likely is not the team leading it either, as they’ve been distracted by Odyssey updates and now Gods and Monsters. Mike Laidlaw has recently joined Ubisoft Quebec (he’s an award-winning writer of Dragon Age (among a few other games)) and said he’s recently stated he’s working on something new and innovative. It’s possible it’s a new AC, or it could be a new IP that Ubisoft seems to be trying to experiment with. It does seem most likely, though, that Ashraf is the creative director due to previous statements where he’s said he really wants to do a Viking AC and experience as a game director with a cross-gen title (Black Flag).
Many hardcore fans of the older series may be quick to judge Ashraf, who’s had a large name attached to Black Flag and Origins; while fair for many gameplay design choices such as lack of social stealth would be unjust for poor lore representation in origins. If anything, Ashraf as Creative Director gives him more power to help make sure lore issues aren’t as severe as some games. Ashraf does repeatedly say that he and his team understand the lore, and while many people may be apprehensive, I do believe this to be true after u/englishbutter’s post about order v chaos where he does draw the line in the sand that Assassins do not represent chaos. He does seem to understand the lore more than other teams, and if anyone could fix the current issues, I’d believe it’d be him. This goes double if he can get Darby back onto the team, who since 2018 has been working on an unannounced project at Montreal as Narrative Director.
Based on a recent Q&A from the head of content of AC, Aymar, we hear that the teams have a lot of control to decide on game settings and features. Despite Ubisoft insisting during the leadup to Odyssey that it was inevitable, it feels like some back peddling will occur for the next title due to Odyssey backlash. Be actual assassins with a hidden blade is very likely for sure, but there are bigger issues with Origins and Odyssey such as removal of AC Identity, social stealth, art motifs, the repetitive PoI and leveling systems to name a few. I do think if any team could fix these issues, it’d be Montreal though.
Aymar also had made mention that lore points seem to be handled by individual teams now rather than largely going through him. With the re-re-release of Liberation which has a very important ending in relation to Eve, Origins reference to the incoming end times and node, and Odyssey making reference to the end times (via Berg at the end of Atlantis) and Kassandra begging for all PoE to be destroyed, we may start to see a culmination of plotlines in Kingdom/Ragnarok. It would make a lot of sense that at the dawn of Ragnarok, which can only occur because of Desmond’s sacrifice, Eve must be the one to use the staff or probably Mjolnir to stop it from happening; with the intention that Layla was going to be Eve per Alethia’s calculations, which may be wrong. Another interesting direction could have us play as the actual Eve, an assassin who now is defying a power-mad Layla who seized control with the staff. There are many possible routes for the modern day to take, despite the current issues with it.
SORROW
Unfortunately, the positive potential does not outweigh the negative. While Vikings have a great amount of history to be based on, the largest Viking town was Hedeby with 1000 people. Vikings are stereotypically known for large raids, and not being stealthy. Naval gameplay similar to Odyssey will likely return too, despite Vikings very rarely engaging in naval battle. Viking settlements were also typically low with wide streets, hurting parkour opportunities. While London and York were larger, the latter only had 15000 people around 900ce, with the former only around 5000 (and was largely repopulated due to Vikings). While these cities were definitely denser with narrow streets and taller buildings, most towns maintained those wide roads and low buildings.
With the setting and culture so based on warfare with few population centers to have social stealth, there seems to be a good chance Kingdom will not fix the problems we see in the so-called “Warrior’s Creed”. Especially since Ashraf and Montreal were the ones who introduced many of the issues, regardless of intent. If anything, some issues may be made worse by the widely rumored full co-op gameplay, which I speculate will end up being Borderlands in a medieval setting.
Co-op and multiplayer has always been a mixed bag for AC. The multiplayer felt tacked on to most players, and co-op was a bit half baked, and quickly abandoned by most players in Unity. Ubisoft wants to create an environment where players can keep coming back for hundreds of hours and have social and competitive experiences with friends. Making Ragnarok a borderlands style class-based fully co-op RPG could fill many of those holes. It now becomes a social hub, with reasons to replay as new classes, to retain player base between updates that increase monetization. Borderlands 2 is 7 years old and still has an active player base. It makes sense to chase after this. The game is being developed over the course of 3 years, and already has most tools ready. Origins revamped combat and created an AI that creates the world for the designers where they only need to make the PoI. Odyssey used that, expanded on it in a few ways and created a new AI to do all facial animations on the fly, meaning more quests were able to be voice acted and created. If Ragnarok keeps the core gameplay the same, they can easily focus a large amount of the development time on the networking for co-op, as would be needed. (inb4 anyone thinks this isn’t feasible because Origins took 4 years, the first 2 years of Origins was tools development. With that out of the way for this cross-gen title, we can definitely get a large scale title in 3 years).
That does mean we could see a continuation of the poor Odyssey animations, and very heavily criticized scaling, leveling, and upgrade system that promotes shady microtransactions. These systems encourage boring and repetitive locations/ PoI like copy pasted bandit camps. While I understand many people enjoy the amount of content, it ends up becoming padded and filler distorts the core gameplay loop, hampers exploration, and ends up being used to exploit players for MTX, an issue made worse in odyssey. This is quantity over quality, pure and simple, and many players have expressed feeling burnt out by Odyssey - a game they’re meant to be playing for fun and relaxation… Odyssey shows us that too much content can be detrimental to the quality of the title, and failure to fix this and the adjacent problems may hurt sales for the many fans tired from Odyssey. The world will assuredly look great, but what fills the world may feel empty and hollow.
TL;DR:
Assassin’s Creed Kingdom/ Ragnarok has potential to be great, with a rich historical era and a solid team, it could fix many issues critics of the new formula have, but it could also double down on them and make them worse. While it is too far off to say, for now, we can at least be relatively sure the world design will be fantastic, and can all rest easy knowing that until new information is finally revealed.
Submitted August 28, 2019 at 12:24PM by nstav13 https://ift.tt/2KZVhNt
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