For story-driven experiences, these games are absolutely massive and the time investment they demand in order to actually get to the end game content is huge.Ĭompletion rates for these sorts of games – for games in general, but especially for very long open world sandboxes – are extremely low.
#FIRESIDE THEATER 2020 SEASON SERIES#
Generally, the mainline entries in the series have a minimum intro-to-credits time investment of around 50-80 hours and fully completing all of the side content often doubles that figure in terms of the total time invested. And when it comes to this point about fixing the game’s problems in the back half, genre matters quite a lot.įor those who are largely unfamiliar with the series, modern Assassin’s Creed games are designed as expansive, open-world sandboxes with very long playtimes (this is typically offered as a feature – a lot of game for your gaming dollar, euro, or what have you). But that in turn means we also should talk about genre and the limitations it places on the product. And I think that is entirely fair: these games are cultural products, just like a film or a novel, and they deserve both the respect and the scrutiny that comes with that. Now the premise of the original post was subjecting AC:Valhalla to the sort of analysis I’d use with a historical text or a piece of modern art of literature. It comes down to this: first, Assassin’s Creed games are very long second (and as a consequence of the first), few players actually finish most of the game’s content third, Ubisoft’s creative teams are very much aware of these two facts and indeed actively mobilize them as features of the game in how they are framed and marketed. At the same time, there is something – I don’t want to say disingenuous, because he is open about this – perhaps discordant with this response, given how the Assassin’s Creed games are structured. We set up much the same idea in the final act of our game.- Darby McDevitt November 20, 2020Īnd I don’t want to sell him short here at all he admits that there is something of a weakness to this approach. Historically it took some time for Aelfred to get wise to exactly how the Danes operated - the shape of their convictions, the form of their beliefs - but when he did, he decimated them. He makes some good points but also acknowledges some of the – necessary from his point of view – weaknesses of the story.īut I want to talk in more depth about one argument he made which bothered me a bit more, which was that the game made up for the unfortunate content of the early sections with much later portions of the game and its ending:
It apparently achieved enough visibility that Darby McDevitt, the narrative director for the game and lead writer on multiple Assassin’s Creed titles, made a point of popping in on twitter to offer his own discussion and defenses to the claims being made. “ Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications” certainly struck a cord it has by far the single most first-day views of anything I have posted here and the second highest view count of anything on the site. One might almost term it some kind of omen…įor this week’s musing, I want to return to last week’s discussion just briefly (this is going to be a relatively short musing, but I hope the recommendations will make up for it). I am rapidly running out of Fireside Chat photos (fortunately fireplace weather is just around the corner) so instead, here is a picture of my AC:Valhalla Eivor snuggling a cat. It’s been long in coming – I am striking here while the iron is ice cold – but I wanted to make sure I had my details straight. Instead, next week (hopefully!) we’re going to dive in to the last A Song of Ice and Fire/ A Game of Thrones topic I wanted to treat in depth: the Dothraki. I had planned to start “Textiles, How Did They Make It?” next, but I want to do a bit more reading on some of the initial stages of textile production (that is, the production of raw flax and wool) and I simply haven’t had the time. A bit of a change-up in terms of the coming attractions.
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