Three guesses who the title refers to. Two if you’ve read Imalion’s Tale.
New story! Check out Lost Lord, the next episode of the Knights of the Moon story.
Also, this story brings a temporary close to Rylacia and its inhabitants. Writing is still coming along fine, no worries there; I’m taking a break from the world I began with Imalion and his diary in 2011 and am starting an exciting journey with Talmere of Nerida. More info soon!
I did a pre-release post, but now it’s time to ponder the game in all its finally-experiencable glory.
First impression: wow, this is amazing. Everything feels epic and looks beautiful.
A few hours later: this is impressive. And fun. Oh wait, is that level 20 griffon supposed to be circling poor little level 4 me? That’s… disconcerting.
Ultimate realization (days in): can’t leave my computer. Can’t take off my headphones. Can’t even go outside or get food. Must take another witcher contract… and another… and another!
The Witcher 3 wanted to market itself based on the size of the world and the effects of quest choices you make. That would be all good and well, but while the choices and effects are interesting, the world feels super small. Granted, it’s probably bigger than all the worlds of other fantasy games that exist, but I’m a huge sucker for exploration. It’s mildly depressing to look at the map and see that the chunks of the world I can explore are only tiny little snippets of the world map. Seriously! But back to choices and effects. The Witcher 3’s choice system openly demonstrates that Mass Effect (and BioWare in general) has quite a lot of room for improvement. I knew choices could be presented well in games, and CD Projekt Red has stepped boldly in the right direction. It’s refreshing to 1) not be making massive, spontaneous ultimatum choices, and 2) to occasionally not even witness the effects of positive or negative choices until later.
I’m impressed. And possibly bewitched.
The game engine is well-optimized, and patches to improve things keep coming out. Not even sure why! Makes me think back to when I bought Assassin’s Creed Unity. The support chaps told me my computer simply wasn’t good enough. Funny that, because The Witcher 3 (much newer, and definitely prettier) runs like a charm on my rig.
The gameplay is good. Granted, it’s not perfect, but it’s close. Running, riding, hunting, swimming, diving, sailing, all seamlessly joined. The time of day changes. The weather changes. Combat is streamlined (so long as Geralt has figured out that he’s in combat). The world feels diverse and interesting because of the freedom of movement and the interaction. The one main downside to gameplay I’ve noticed so far is fall damage – if you trip over for some reason, don’t be too surprised if your health bar is cut in half.
The music for The Witcher 3 puts a good chunk of other games to shame. As much as I enjoy Jeremy Soule music, I don’t really think that fantasy should be dominated by orchestral music. So The Witcher 3 was a splendid change. Most of the score consists of Slavic-style folky tunes that capture the heart nearly as well as they capture the setting. Battle music is some of the best, but the three crones (no spoilers) are accompanied by the best tune. You’ll know when you hear it. Think dark, dark fairy tale music.
Questing is a real treat in The Witcher 3. There are regular quests that involve talking to people, finding people, killing people, and making choices. Pretty much every game has them. In The Witcher 3, though, we get to watch Geralt’s reaction to these quests. Fetch quests? Geralt doesn’t care much for being a delivery boy. Talking to people? He’s got a hilarious overdose of sarcasm that makes conversation amusing and interesting. Killing people? In style. Making choices? Fun mystery boxes of “what does this button do?” conundrums that make you pay attention. Don’t skip conversation if you want to make intelligent choices. Seriously. Your choice can be as clear as “Mhm”, “Really?”, or “I’ll commit myself to every word you just said and that is my final choice and so much for the other conversation options that would have saved my good friend such-and-such”. Sarcasm aside, I’d list that as a gameplay strength. But those are just the regular quests. In The Witcher 3, you also run into witcher quests – or, more specifically, witcher contracts. These are brillant combinations of hunting and mystery-solving. Geralt is equipped with a marvelous dose of Sherlock Holmes. He has remarkable senses that allow him to pick up details like what kind of liquid has been spilled, what type of claws gouged a wall, or even what kind of blood is at the scene. To accompany these skills, Geralt unashamedly talks to himself. A lot. Good for him, I say. But this sense-and-talk combination makes for interesting puzzle-solving. Geralt starts by talking to witnesses, then moves to investigate the scene, and then (often) follows a trail. Along the way, he spots clues that tell you what you’re going to find, how and where you’re going to find it, and usually also inform you as to how you’re going to need to defeat whatever it is. Hunting quests in this manner are a massive improvement to fetch quests or general kill-the-creature-that-lives-in-the-cave quests. It’s also interesting to learn about each little town and place through the monster(s) that plague the people there – for instance, wraiths appear when people have been cruelly murdered or wronged.
Relationships. Ultimately, you could say that The Witcher 3 does relationships like Assassin’s Creed does combat, which is to say that it’s simple enough if you know the buttons. However, it certainly isn’t Mass Effect’s yes-or-no relationship dialogue options. And the fact that you are playing a solid character makes the relationships more meaningful. Shepard was, well… a husk (pun intended) of a character. Geralt certainly isn’t.
The Witcher 3’s scenery is gorgeous. Fantasy at its finest. Ornate tomb carvings. Sprawling, grassy hills. Flocks of sheep, mobs of horses. Roaming giants. Ruins. The textures were done well. And the game’s musical score complemented the setting perfectly. Charming, haunting, old-Scandinavia-esque melodies. Tracks that make perfect companions for traveling, hunting, and doing grim battle. But don’t expect perfection in every way the game looks. For some reason, 95% of Geralt’s armor options more or less completely fail to please the eye. Heavy armor is accompanied by a giant, round wok (yep, a Chinese frying pan) over the character’s belly. Light armor is bulky and has clipping issues with collars. Medium armor has great textures underneath – but is padded with ugly outer jackets that seem to always have the worst possible color combinations. The only chest armor that I have actually loved so far is the first one I ever crafted – the Warrior’s Leather Jacket.
That brings us to crafting. CD Projekt Red boasted that the crafting system would be innovative and interesting; it’s okay, I suppose, but nothing amazingly special. I will say this for it, though – I really appreciate the fact that once you craft a potion or oil, you never have to go scouring the land for ingredients again. Oils have inifinite use (which makes sense, given the amount you would use on a blade in the game). Potions and bombs have charges that replenish when you meditate (although this consumes hard alcohol in your inventory, so you gotta load up your pack like a boozer). Other than that, crafting is average. Find or buy materials, go to a craftsman with sufficient experience, craft or smith the items you have learned about. Swords generally look okay (certainly not as bad as armor), so it’s mostly about picking the best stats. Silver swords have worse skins than steel, but they’re still okay.
In conclusion, The Witcher 3 is a lot of fun. If you love wandering across open landscapes and hunting dangerous monsters, this game is totally for you. It’s certainly for me!
Pros
Cons
A new episode of the Knights of the Moon is up! Something more sinister than poverty threatens Landon and his friends. Any guesses? Feel free to comment, tweet @thesoulshard, or email me at imalion.soulshard@gmail.com.
And make sure you go to the Knights of the Moon page and check out the new story ! Or you can click this link -> The Sentries.
High King Imalion Gildemar, lord of Brucia and protector of its client kingdoms, kneels alone at the foot of his mothers’ graves. On his right is the tomb of his birth mother, Reymala Gildemar. On his left is the tomb of the mother who raised him, Lillian Solayne. He lays petals of autumn begonias, tibouchinas, pansies, and clusters of lavender on each grave, one petal at a time.
To Reymala, the mother I never knew,
She bore me into a world she’d lost
While her lord husband
Was cold and dead.
To Lillian, the mother who was ever true,
Nurtured, cared for and loved me,
Never forsook her adopted son
Up until death.
Both of you made my life my own,
Reymala’s secrets loaned me life,
Lillian died to save me
I owe you both my all.
Imalion makes a slim hole in each gravetop with one finger and plants a single seed in each.
A flower for each of my mothers dear:
An amaranth for royal Reymala;
Royal blood and ornate leaves to sway in gentle wind.
A iris for gentle Lillian,
No child for you but me, and you have my undying love.
Imalion buries the seeds and covers the holes. He kneels a while, humming an old lullaby.
Do you like zombies? I don’t. That doesn’t stop me reading, watching, or listening to the occasional zombie story.
We’re Alive is a solid zombie story. It’s told from a combination of two styles: personal reflection and conversation. Various characters from the story talk about events and setting as they write their various journals, and when action scenes take place, characters are constantly conversing, talking about what is happening, and generally going crazy. It’s done well.
For a fairly small publisher (as far as I can tell), Wayland Productions does a remarkable job with this story. It’s an audio drama that is complete with hundreds of sound effects and dozens of good voice actors. And a half-decent story.
As far as stories go, it is episodic, and therefore has to keep tossing bait to the audience to keep us invested. This appears in several ways: the “zombies” get stronger or smarter, which presents more challenges for the heroes; the vicinity’s supplies wear thin; heroes are kidnapped or get lost; criminals pose ever-increasing threats to the heroes – and each of these elements intensifies gradually, with each tension rotating focus per episode.
Character is a strongpoint for We’re Alive. Each of the heroes is told to keep a journal to both help them stay sane and keep each other informed about things they learn from the changed world. Some of the characters like this idea, others aren’t so interested. All of them do. Their opinions about other people and things are all different in unique and very interesting ways. Some of the characters are called to lead. Others wish they were in charge. Some of them resent the current leadership. All the characters have backstories and “start of the end” stories. Some of the characters are very attached to certain things they salvaged when the world ended. Every voice is different, and not just because there’s a different voice actor reading the script.
The setting is very much zombie-esque. Every corner is tense. Every abandoned car could be a death-trap. Every fuel station is pure horror waiting to happen. The cities are broken. Utilities are minimal if they exist at all. Something I found haunting was that even the water was dangerous. Two of the heroes step onto a boat at one stage. They never try that again.
The audio side of the story exceeded several professional standards. Everything was clear. Sure, some conversations were slurred – but when is conversation ever completely clear? The sounds were crisp, solid, gritty. It felt like everything was recorded specifically for the audio drama. No stock sounds. No Age of Empires owl noises. No Command and Conquer death cries. And the strongest point of the audio was the calls of the… uh… “zombies”. They were haunting. Their baleful howls still echo in the recesses of my mind, and I haven’t heard them for quite a while now. Think of something of a cross between a Jurassic Park tyrannosaurus rex and a wolf. Well, that was the big ones. The smaller ones had slightly different noises.
The “zombies”. They weren’t exactly zombies, which is probably why the subtitle is “a ‘zombie’ story of survival”. Zombies are overdone, so this was neat. Some of them are human in appearance, but from the characters’ descriptions of them and their noises, there are different mutations. My mind pictured an array of mutations: some like dinosaurs, some like wolves, some like people, and more. Definitely more appealing than the standard array of zombies who just need a good coffee to put them straight.
All in all, I highly recommend We’re Alive. It’s a chilling tale, but well worth the haunting. Everything feels fresh, and it’s professionally produced. Keep a good blanket nearby, and maybe leave a lamp on, but definitely have a listen.
Yup. I know I briefly covered Assassin’s Creed Unity in a comment on my Assassin’s Creed post, but now that I’ve played it I feel that it almost falls into a completely different category. Well, okay, just remember that I said almost.
I never thought I’d get Unity. I looked at it, looked at the time period, looked at the price, shrugged it off, walked away. When I was given a high recommendation of it (in a comment on my Assassin’s Creed review), I looked for a sale and grabbed it. Sadly, I’ve quite a bit of trouble with the game.
I downloaded it, ran it, and it very nearly bricked my computer. That was partially my fault; I’d been running a dual-SLI 660ti Nvidia build on its minimum recommended power supply for nearly a year (700W). But it wasn’t just me. I’ve never had a game shut my entire computer down. Not even hard-pressing games like Crysis 3. Assassin’s Creed Unity, on the other hand, took one look at my rig, rubbed its hands together in glee, and blinked my computer into oblivion no less than five times. I’m lucky it survived, actually. Eventually I caved in and grabbed a new, 1050W power supply (at least it leaves more room for later upgrades), and those crashes haven’t happened since. But the game is far from smooth. I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried running the game at max settings. I’ve tried running it at minimum settings. Nothing (apart from anti-aliasing) seems to affect how the game runs – it’s choppy, it’s irresponsive, and it’s constantly flicking my screen around. I’m tech-savvy enough to know that my computer is good enough to run the game. I can out-rig pretty much all my buddies, and yet they don’t get the same issues. Assassin’s Creed Unity is terribly optimized (in other words, the development team probably just gave up on it). What gives me the most kicks is that Unity was released the same day as Assassin’s Creed Rogue – and Rogue runs beautifully on high settings for most gamers. Even high-end computers have massive trouble running Unity. Which is a pity, because of the next paragraph.
Paris is pretty. I liked Rome and Venice and Jerusalem more, but Paris is definitely pretty.
The biggest pro for me about Assassin’s Creed Unity is its co-op element. Without that, I doubt it would have gotten as much attention. In fact, it would have fallen out of the sky at launch without co-op (see all other paragraphs). I suppose it goes without saying that I love co-op gameplay. And this is the only co-op Assassin’s Creed game. That’s right. Ubisoft broke its only co-op AC game. I’ve struggled through hours of trying various tweaks, guides, reviews, and more to get the game working. Why? Because I just want to get it to function on my computer. I have gotten a few hours of semi-functional-but-mostly-epileptic gameplay with my friend, and it’s super fun. The co-op, not the epilepsy. The problem is, I can’t seriously play the game with that kind of performance. The number of times I’ve tried to shoot a sharpshooter who is aiming at my buddy and somehow had the screen completely reverse (resulting in me shooting some random object – or civilian) is through the roof. That’s bad for teamwork. The amount of instances I’ve tried to stop my character from lagging into hugging a wall when I’m trying to run either away (which results in my death) or to save my friend (which results in his death) is unbelievable. But when it comes down to the basics of Assassin’s Creed in co-op, it’s a lot of fun to walk and jump around a city in unison. If only it wasn’t threatening to give me epilepsy every five seconds.
Story-wise, Unity is just another Ubisoft Assassin’s Creed game. The character is traumatized from a young age, he wants revenge, he grows up and turns into a killer. He kills people, questions people, etc. We’ve seen it before, and we’ve played it in games that run faster than twenty frames per second. It’s not a bad story, mind you; it’s just that Assassin’s Creed hasn’t tried anything new (until Rogue, but that’s quite literally another story). I haven’t gotten very far into the game, unfortunately, because I’m not a big fan of epilepsy (see above).
Assassin’s Creed Unity is different to all the other AC games. It plays slower. A lot slower. The combat feels less arcade, but is also less realistic. Sure, it’s harder to fight the guards. They can block, stun, drop grenades, and generally do anything we can do. And yet it’s not actually an improvement. In the older Assassin’s Creed games, if someone tried shooting you, you could move behind his buddies to break line-of-fire. In some of those games, holding enemies in front of you was an actual button-press counter to ranged attacks. In Unity, they just ignore their buddies and fire through them to stagger and severely wound you. I don’t care if this is some kind of compensation for player latency (due to co-op gameplay) – this is just poor game design. We can’t fire through civilians (or non-civilians) to hit shooters, so why can they fire through their mates to kill us? Also, even though the old “kill streak” combat option was removed from Unity, the combat still very much goes like this: watch for an attack and hit the parry button. And again. And again. And again. Apart from avoiding pistol shots, this works fantastically and flawlessly. If the combat was to be more challenging, why not allow multiple enemies to attack the character at once? That would present both more challenge and a more realistic feel. Overwhelming numbers means exactly that. Even in a ten-man battle we only have to deflect one at a time in this game. Except for that one shooter who is standing behind a mob of five of his allies and hitting us flawlessly every time.
Assassin’s Creed Unity needs a team to work on it. It’s not finished. It’s still about as functional as a beta release. It needs people to continue on it and make it work. After that’s happened, I’d like to play it.
Pros
Cons
Question: why, in France, does everyone have a strong British accent? I don’t think I’ve encountered a single character with a convincing French accent yet, and – although my sessions have been sporadic – that’s a lot of gameplay.
Thepenofjoel. Succinct. Short. Meaningful. It combines the ideas of “pen name” and “writing” and “written by” into a single, easy-to-remember nickname. It is the pen-name of a writer buddy of mine. (Oh, but don’t let anyone know that I suggested that name to him, k? That would be telling.)
Personal achievements aside, Joel is a great writer with a keen eye for story. He does structural editing for Legends of Eisenwald (otherwise the game would be doomed), writes Daniel Roth mystery books (starting off with A Final Portrait), hosts The Morning Bell‘s podcast for emerging writers, and publishes intelligent, thought-out video criticisms of well-known computer game stories on his YouTube channel, thepenofjoel.
Seriously, check him out. Or, better yet, send him a question on his ask.fm page – he monitors it regularly, so go ahead!
If you want someone completely fluent in writing gobbledygook with a keen eye for the little things about stories that truly matter, Joel is your man. And he’s approachable, too. Let me demonstrate: Joel, what started you out on your writing career?
That’s the second Knights of the Moon episode up! Check out The Lashed Door and let me know what you think. You can also find it through the Knights of the Moon page.
Mass Effect. There’s an awful lot that can be said, some things that oughtn’t be said, and a few things that don’t need to be said. I’ll take the series as a whole rather than focusing on one game at a time.
First impression: wow, this is amazing. Everything feels smooth and epic.
A few story choices later: this sucks. Everything feels locked in and alienated from us.
Sober realization (days in): hmm, that was okay. The game was not terrible overall; bad design choices stopped the game from achieving true greatness, but they didn’t completely destroy it.
Mass Effect tried to market itself based on narrative choice (freedom to design your own story) and a personalised character. Well, if freedom means a choose-your-own-adventure book (the kind where every choice we make you ends up with our character in a trap or eaten by wolves), sure. The only choices we can actually make are ones like:
You get the point. The choices are ultimately rigged, and not in “this could work out either way” kinds of ways, either – in blatant, “we know both choices are really bad, but to continue the game we have to choose one” kinds of ways. There are some choices in the game (such as inadvertantly rescuing a famous admiral) that allow us to open up more intelligent options when we make bigger choices, but saving the admiral meant sacrificing Group F to save him anyways. Same problem.
Also, the choices are all made during cut-scenes. In other words, if a cut-scene comes up, we know there’s going to be a choice. We don’t know anything about what the choice will entail or involve, but we know we will have to make one.
On the lines of a story sold based on narrative, the whole thing is a (spoiler) world-is-ending tale. Never been there before. And this one was even worse, because it made very little sense and completely took all meaning out of the choices and gameplay we had gone through. Come on, BioWare, did you just give up on the story? Why else would you implement an all-powerful, unrelated character who simply states that you made a bad game?
Did I start out hard? Yep. BioWare has such a grip on the market that starting out hard is necessary. And it’s not going to get a whole lot easier yet.
The gameplay was, well… amusing. If there’s one thing I’ve complained a lot about in Mass Effect, it’s the fact that combat was a glorified version of whack-a-mole. You heard me. We sit behind a bench, wait for the gunfire to calm down a little, stand up, wait for them to pop their heads up, spray a round, and drop back behind our shelter. This is 60% of the game. Oh yeah, and our guns create their own ammo, but somehow (in Mass Effect 2 and 3) they run out of it. BioWare liked to explain it by saying that we actually have to replace the heat pack in our guns, and we collect heat packs to replenish ammo, but hey – what if we only fire one bullet every ten minutes? How are our guns heating up so badly? I’m not against the idea of having players try options other than guns, but in whack-a-mole combat, melee fighting is completely out of the picture. Seriously. Also, the movement limitations were sad. Mass Effect played out in a beautiful sci-fi setting, but all we can do is kind of walk, kind of sprint, and kind of dodge. No jumping, no extra pathing (unless it was scripted), no swimming through void in zero gravity. Mass Effect 1 had an issue with repetitive planet surface scenarios (land, drive, drive, drive, get out, clean up enemies), but rather than improve on this element, Mass Effect 2 and 3 completely removed it. We could scan the planets, but that was it. No beautiful landscape view, just a planet on a screen.
Relationships. This was almost the only reason Mass Effect was rated M, and yet it was brutally mechanical. A relationship is so much more than just following someone around with your tongue out until they turn around and say “let’s do it”. The relationships in this game reminded me of Harvest Moon DS. Just find the flower the girl of your dreams enjoys most (or, if you want to save money, a trinket from the mines you can dig up on the top level) and keep handing stacks and stacks of them to her until she starts blushing. Fantastic representation of reality. Works every time. Oh, but then you have to go save lots of pixies (by a lot, I mean more than a hundred) one at a time before you can proceed. Mass Effect made relationships a lot simpler. Just keep clicking the dialogue option that says “I want you”. Takes about three conversations.
Yep, that was harsh. But Mass Effect wasn’t all bad.
The scenery in Mass Effect was gorgeous. Much of the game was set on planet surfaces, where we got to see aliens, awesome panoramas, spaceshipwrecks, secret labs, ruined monasteries, and much more. It was (as I already said) gorgeous. The textures were done well. The game’s musical score complemented the setting perfectly. Haunting, beautiful melodies. Sci-fi electronic tracks. Songs that seemed to complement the very stars in the sky. But was it too little too late?
In conclusion, Mass Effect was beautiful. But while aesthetics alone may suit drawings or movies, a game needs much, much more. The cultures and characters you encounter make for an interesting game. The story and gameplay strip that away a little bit, but if you are looking for a game purely because you love sci-fi settings and music, definitely go for it. If you are hunting for intuitive gameplay and love a good story, don’t play it.
Overall layout of the game:
60%: whack-a-mole
30%: spontaneous, genocidal choices
5%: robotic, Harvest Moon relationships
5%: other (galaxy map travel, upgrading weapons, complaining about lack of ammo)
Pros
Cons
Assassin’s Creed started off with a punch – it sent our computers reeling. Not in the same way as Crysis or The Witcher 2 did, perhaps, but the punch was felt nevertheless. It also was somewhat mind-boggling in the way that it gave us a strong sense of freedom. Run, jump, climb, fight, escape, explore. Rinse and repeat.
Of course, the (first) game got its name for a reason: we played an assassin. And he broke the creed. I’m not quite sure why the name stuck to the whole series (it could have been Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s Journey, Assassin’s Revenge, Assassin’s Revelations, etc), because the sequels have few ties to the creed idea, but it’s not a bad name.
The first game struck me as quite brillant. This was because I was exploring some beautiful, old, real-world cities and towns during an era that I enjoyed. I jumped roof-to-roof in Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus, hiding from annoyed guards and being, simultaneously, a gentleman and a nuisance. The second game got me dunked in rivers a lot (who decided that jumping from roof to roof in Venice was a good idea?) but was a lot of fun anyhow. And it introduced an entirely new concept to the game series – a likeable character! This game was sequelled brilliantly in Rome, and then Constantinople, with the same character. Ezio Auditore, a young nobleman with a romantic heart and a dangerous sword. But then the series took several turns for the worse in Assassin’s Creed III. Navigating slanted roofs was tricky, but running from tree branch to tree branch and across trunks laid out in perfect lines was more sigh-worthy than fun. The game also forced you to endure unforgiving mini-games. But worst of all, the character was hopeless. Why would anyone want to assist the survival – and success – of an aggressive, angry bully? Especially after having played three consecutive games from the perspective of a hopeless romantic! Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag was a fresh breeze after that. The game series goes on, but (other than Shadow of Mordor, which was made by a different developer but feels like exactly the same game) I haven’t invested in further titles. (Update – Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag is a combination of Sid Meier’s Pirates (curious, but I already played 50+ hours of that game and got mostly over it) and semi-functional button combinations (“block” and “use” don’t belong together). But sea travel is quite pretty.)
The gameplay in Assassin’s Creed is fresh and fluid at first, but after a few hours it begins to feel the same. We walk around, we surprise some guards, we run up a wall, we hide, we rinse and repeat. Doesn’t matter which city we do it in. Doesn’t matter what people around us are wearing. We find some more variety when Ubisoft added mini-games and (semi-)dynamic events such as jumping challenges, tower defense games, or random pickpockets, but these did little to enhance the experience. Assassin’s Creed (to its credit) added ship combat, which – while amusing and new – was more challenging than it should have been for scripted gameplay. But there were also terrible additions, such as a static battlefield command mini-game (with a horrifying interface).
The main underlying story behind the Assassin’s Creed gameplay is one jumbo conspiracy theory. That’s kind of cool. Mostly. We’ve watched enough conspiracy theory movies to know that it’s fun to watch all kinds of events and historical facts turn into big clues left by conspirators and their opposition. If only we saw more of it, though. Assassin’s Creed wavers between giving us several historical stories and one modern story, and tries to tie them all together. Apart from some minor connections, the ties seem to be somewhat unnecessary (until Desmond starts seeing assassin memories without using the animus). In some ways I wish it would just make up its mind and give us more modern story or more historical story. At least that way we would get to do and see more in the modern setting (which we see and learn very little of) or encounter less interruptions in the ancient setting.
Nevertheless, the first five PC titles in the Assassin’s Creed series are worth the time.
Pros
Cons
Disclaimer: I have not played every single Assassin’s Creed game that exists. There’s an awful lot of handheld console versions (and when I tried one it almost completely failed to convince me that it was in any way related to the smooth-and-playable PC games).
The Soulshard Chronicles 