You have show nothing about social stealth nor their brand of modal movement!
There is a major difference in having overlap but what about the part that don’t? They don’t disappear because there is some similarity. I can think of prior experiment in those domain, but I refuse to share them if people aren’t capable to point at those part.
I mean superficial analysis is how we get the same repeated crap everytime.
I will certainly have to take a look at this, never heard of it tbh
Of course they’re going to build on top of the previous games… I mean improve on them… add to them to some degree particularly in the presentation. Obviously it was all 2D back then and now is all 3D. For the movement… of course better graphics & animation is just the norm every year when AAA games come out. Then yes add some “coolness” thing. The USP for this game or version of the game.
What I was getting at is it is all just a natural evolution. Mix and match. Then add a tiny dash of a secret ingredient. And it is a great thing that todays games are getting to the point now where some represent 2 or even 3 of those classic arcade games from 30 years ago.
Assassin’s Creed didn’t invent social stealth. I am positive I have played games with that in it long ago. Where you concealed your identity and blended in to a group (in fact I think it was even a hooded group of monk like characters) and walked with them and otherwise blended in with the enemies. And certainly stealth has been around for a long time. Heck even the old Berzerk seems like it had it in it to a degree.
I’d have to dig a bit to pull up the classic games with that in them.
Well heck actually I do remember one Castle Wolfenstein where you can put on an enemy uniform and won’t be recognized and this was a key to successfully playing the game. It seems like you could also collect medals from the enemies and / or found in chests which perhaps increased your perceived rank to the enemies. That game actually had several things in it that are common in games today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJNAXh-LVnk
Basically just saying any one of us can look back 30 years ago and combine pieces of one game with another game and so on and now… 30 years later for most people it would be something “new” perhaps even revolutionary. And perhaps it would be a completely different combination that would result in something extremely unique and exceptionally good. But people just greatly underestimate all of the things that were done long ago in classic games for some reason.
I don’t think people underestimate old games at all, but you can be innovative (ie not revolutionary) by extending what’s been done. For example traversal in AC is doing the same basic function that traditional control, but not having to push button with timing to navigate is not the usual way (zelda 64 had some model movement on that type too with their auto jump), they also adapted level design to be much more complex to what would have been possible with non modal movement, and finally the gameplay use this complexity of geometry and path to shift the focus from executing the path (like in platformer) to strategizing the path, which is also to how you typically approach stealth and introduce verticality at a much higher degree. This is important because most other game stayed at the same level of their ancestor on these point. Similarly social stealth was primed to have much more potential and nuance than line of sight and putting on a costume (I was thinking of hitman who also comes with restriction per costume as to where you ca be), though that’s where my design criticism start as they didn’t do really much to explore that potential. We can acknowledge these in context without having to dismiss them because pac man did chase sequence 20 years ago.
Anyway I’m out 
I too much into defending design
Ha ha! Fair enough. I was mainly just getting at I think this is why some of us don’t “ooh and ahh” over the new games as much as others do. It’s not that there is no appreciation of what the games are doing it’s mainly that given the amount of time between a game that did the basic concept and the new game using that concept today and taking into account how much the other aspects of games have changed during all of that time… well there isn’t all that much difference in how… well yeah exactly what you just said… “though that’s where my design criticism start as they didn’t do really much to explore that potential”.
That’s it in a nutshell. When I hear and see a new game exploring a concept that was explored 30 years ago and I see how much everything else has changed (budget, project duration, graphics quality, amount of content, etc) it’s like the actual gameplay stuff even if they are touting it as a big deal lags greatly behind everything else. As far as the amount of advancement that has been made on the concept compared to the amount of advancement that has been made on everything else.
I think more or less we kind of see it the same way.
I find it very interesting. Your perspective is insightful, to me at least.
Yes I agree @neoshaman you view & talk about things in a very deep insightful way. Makes it very interesting.
Concur.
Hitman games featured stealing clothes and trying to blend in the environment. Acting suspiciously or havinga wrong weapon alerted guards. Hitman Blood Money was released before Assassin’s Creed.
It wasn’t assassin creeds “Press button to blend with the crowd”, though.
Yes, this is correct. AC did recombine existing elements and improved on them slightly. I just didn’t see it as a big or “groundbreaking” step. It was one step in gradual improvement. Not something on the level of first half-life, first doom, etc.
Thanks for the appreciation! I never know when I go too far, sometimes I feel like I’m needlessly opinionated around details people don’t care about
@GarBenjamin don’t forget splinter cell which more or less died after AC came out
That’s interesting. Are you saying AC actually caused the death of SC? That’s pretty major considering the huge popularity of the SC games at least at one time. But SC wasn’t something I got into. I didn’t realize it was dead and thought they were still making them every few years or so.
Splinter Cell was ruined more by bad decisions that forced it into more of a combat role than a stealth role than it was by AC. It was marred by a string of mediocre releases that would cause any AAA series to suffer.
Ah well that makes perfect sense. Because yes I remember the games focus heavily on stealth. If they changed the core focus away from stealth to more of a military shooter or other combat heavy focus that would definitely be targeting a different audience.
Yeah, it started with Conviction, which dropped a LOT of the stealth elements. Conviction itself was kind of a mess (though critically well received and a good seller) as it got delayed for a good like… 3 years, I think?
yeah later SC’s were bad because of the loss of the stealth focus, but it kinda does look like that AC is like a mix of Prince and Persia, SC and a little bit of ubisofts open world obsession.
AC started the open world obsession of UBI and all its (tower) tropes, it was also started as a prince of persia, they disobeyed during development to make AC, the director ended being fired. Also until AC ubi had trouble having a franchise success beyond the number 3. AC kind of thrive based on all the disobedience they did to create a winning formula, most notably they have a clear concept with generic enough element to be decline in any settings, for example the hood and hidden blade, the eagle metaphor, the leap of faith, rooftop chase, historical world tourism, they have all the basis of a good pulp, enough stable elements you can easily decline. Just look at how easy it is to fan to project these elements in other universe while keeping the identity. Yet they still found way to fatigue such a good concept, by AC 3 fatigue start to kick in, and they had already fatigue the ezio story arcs in 3 spin off, after that the series started to have decline prestige. Similarly their first farcry peaked at 3 sequels (farcry 4, the n1 being crytek). All their games sales and prestige seems to peak at 3, the first game is a rough gem, the second perfect the base, the third is more of the same and anything beyond have no idea what they want to do … It’s funny to contrast splinter cell to metal gear, as an example, whose prestige only get better other time (along with sales).
No kidding? I certainly didn’t know this… didn’t know it actually started out as a Prince of Persia game. But I can easily see heavy Prince of Persia (even compared to the classic from long ago) influence in the game.
Gotta love those small-minded people, eh? It was more important for the director to follow orders than it was to make a great and very profitable game (I know the original AC was very well received by gamers). It’s a very sad thing but the way it goes so often. But at the same time that is a perfect motivation for such a person to strike out on their own and have their own business. Basically that kind of behavior is the mark of an entrepreneur.
This isn’t true. Splinter Cell Blacklist came out in 2014 and is the second best game in the series (after Chaos Theory of course). There are rumors that another is on the way, to be voiced by Ironside again.
Conviction was originally a completely different game. Sam was homeless, bearded…they eventually brought him back around to a more traditional design, but the gameplay is definitely very, very different from a traditional stealth game. You can’t knock out enemies. The game frquently places you in situations designed to be “fought” out of. The focus was placed on “Mark and Execute,” a technique designed to kill people. I think you could legitimately say that it “isn’t a Splinter Cell game.”
But Blacklist changed all of that. Blacklist has some of the best gameplay in the series. And for the first time, actual ghosting–ghosting means moving through a level without interacting with enemies at all, not simply knocking them out–is a viable path.
AC 4 was a jolt of life for the series, but largely I think you’re right. More recently part of the problem is that the tech hasn’t been stable. AC Unity is the key example of course, with its missing faces on release, and to this day getting 60 fps is a challenge.
AC Syndicate is actually a good game, but the damage was already done with Unity.
You mention that Metal Gear’s prestige only gets better over time, but that isn’t necessarily the case. MGS 2 is largely regarded as the best in the series, and many fans saw MGS V as an enormous departure for the series (for good reason), though how much of that is due to the intentions of Kojima and how much is due to the rushed nature of the game is up for debate.