Roderick

Assassin's Creed: Mohawk

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See here for accent changes that occurred after the American War of Independence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English#After_American.E2.80.93British_split.2C_up_to_the_20th_century

So this is before post-vocalic /r/ disappeared in some accents (such as the stereotypical fancy pants English accent), before H-dropping in England, before whine and wine became homophones and before this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapping

Meaning that /t/ sounds were stronger in American English. But the accents had diverged already.

Simulating period accents is probably a bit much for a game like this :P

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Ugh, I just watched the latest promo videos for Ass 3. It made me think how over designed the central assassin character has become. I remember watching the trailer for the first game years ago and being struck by how well the character fitted into the world. Specifically the point at which he slips into a group of monks to evade his perusers. Two took some inspiration from renaissance fashion and applied them in a semi-believable way (I felt it worked well in Venice because the locals seemed to be wearing more outlandish costumes themselves). The new assassin looks like he has no place in the grim setting. I just can't believer he is a product of that time period or that somebody dressed like that could ever be taken seriously. I think the think that really highlighted how cartoonish the character design has become is the embroidered eagle head on the hood. In previous games the eagle design was implied by the shape of the hood, now he just has a picture of a bird on it. The artists seem to be going further down the Dante's Inferno route with each iteration.

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He's half Native American. It would've been historically authentic if he had worn an actual eagle on his head, let alone an embroidered one. Here is a painting from the early 1800s showing an Native American wearing a shirt embroidered just like Connor's. The hood is the most Assassin-esque part of his costume - the rest is based of course on the coats that everyone else is wearing.

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He's half Native American. It would've been historically authentic if he had worn an actual eagle on his head, let alone an embroidered one.

I'm not saying he should have an eagle on his head, I'm saying the design of the hood has become less subtle to the point of looking a bit dumb. That and all the crap he is lugging about.

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I can see what you're saying about the hood's subtle nod to the shape of an eagle being lost, but the character overall looks pretty authentic to the time — if you took the hood away he'd fit in very nicely. But the hood is presumably to prevent identification of the assassin, not to blend in. It'd be cool if he took it off when blending into crowds, as it doesn't really work the same way it did with the AS1 crowds who also had hoods.

I guess the canonical explanation would be that over time the meaning of the uniform became lost and the assassin's continued wearing it simply out of tradition. It's not like tradition overriding common sense doesn't happen in the real world!

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My problem isn't historical. The tedious claims to historical authenticity are almost as bad as genetic time traveling bullshit. I'm not sure how the art team approached the first game but it felt to me that the character was designed for the setting and vise versa. Maybe it is a factor of Ubisoft's enormously fragmented development process but I think the visual cohesion of the first and second games have been abandoned.

The idea that the assassins accountramenss would survive from the first to second game makes sense (I believe it is stated that Ezio's outfit was passed down to him from Altair). I'm not sure how they will explain how the outfit has ended up in 18th century America.

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My problem isn't historical. The tedious claims to historical authenticity are almost as bad as genetic time traveling bullshit. I'm not sure how the art team approached the first game but it felt to me that the character was designed for the setting and vise versa. Maybe it is a factor of Ubisoft's enormously fragmented development process but I think the visual cohesion of the first and second games have been abandoned.

The idea that the assassins accountramenss would survive from the first to second game makes sense (I believe it is stated that Ezio's outfit was passed down to him from Altair). I'm not sure how they will explain how the outfit has ended up in 18th century America.

Well they're all descendants of each other, right? And the Assassins are purported to be a long-standing order, which presumably intends to preserve its traditions to a certain extent. In AS1 there was a whole load of Assassins, it was pretty much their uniform. Then in AS2 I think they'd disintegrated as an order apart from Ezio's dad, although I'm a little fuzzy regarding whether or not other Assassins were meant to exist at that time.

Then in Brotherhood Ezio basically builds up a whole new order of Assassins and makes it a large organisation again, which I guess could be how its traditions and clothing persisted into the AS3 timeline. We know the Assassins as a broad order remained until the present day as that's the whole point of the modern-day sequences, although by this point they've obviously shed the 'look'.

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My problem isn't historical. The tedious claims to historical authenticity are almost as bad as genetic time traveling bullshit. I'm not sure how the art team approached the first game but it felt to me that the character was designed for the setting and vise versa. Maybe it is a factor of Ubisoft's enormously fragmented development process but I think the visual cohesion of the first and second games have been abandoned.

The idea that the assassins accountramenss would survive from the first to second game makes sense (I believe it is stated that Ezio's outfit was passed down to him from Altair). I'm not sure how they will explain how the outfit has ended up in 18th century America.

The only part of the outfit that survived is the eagle shaped hood. Maybe someone wrote down in a book or a letter "assassins wore eagle shaped hoods" and then someone made Connor an eagle shaped hood. That would even explain why it's more obviously eagle shaped than the ones in AC1 and AC2: because they didn't have the ACTUAL original hood to go on, they had to just wing it and they ended up overdoing the eagleness.

I've always enjoyed the art design in the Assassin's Creed games and AC3 looks like it's going to be beautiful too. I don't really feel like the aesthetic has been diluted: it just looks like it has been updated for 18th century America. Some dilution happened in Brotherhood and Revelations (and even in AC2) just by the nature of all the crazy Renaissance stuff they added, so if anything AC3 feels toned down.

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Presumably by the same path his genes did?

EDIT: Let's all post at once, why don't we?

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I'm beginning to thing that maybe the problem I have is with the really stupid conspiracy stuff that justifies the aesthetic continuity. You are right, I am wrong, the series is dumb.

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For most of history it would have made more sense for him to just wear some kind of hat that hides his face. I always thought he didn't fit in at all in the 16th C era stuff either. Not that I have played any of the games.

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I think they've kept pretty true to the visual style of the original game. All 3 outfits look very consistent to me. Also seems like the game is focusing more on woods exploration and less on towns (judging from the trailers), so it also seems like it's going to be less of an issue that he doesn't blend in as well with crowds.

What really bothers me is how incredibly violent all these trailers are. Maybe the other games' trailers were just as violent and I'm just not remembering, but the other games certainly didn't encourage you to go after guards en masse. The point should be about silent assassination but everything thus far in Ass3's marketing has been of epic gorefest proportions. Watching guards get stabbed repeatedly in the eye sockets kind of turns me off the whole thing.

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The violence in the previous games was more styalised. I think one and two did a good job of implying a lot of the nastiness while remaining tasteful with good sound design, dance like choreography and pretty arcs of blood. Three appears to be more explicit and sadistic. The combat has become a lot easier and less methodical over the years and I'm not comfortable that my character will now automatically do despicable things. This discomfort will likely be amplified by the plot moralising and justifying murder.

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The violence in the previous games was more styalised. I think one and two did a good job of implying a lot of the nastiness while remaining tasteful with good sound design, dance like choreography and pretty arcs of blood. Three appears to be more explicit and sadistic. The combat has become a lot easier and less methodical over the years and I'm not comfortable that my character will now automatically do despicable things. This discomfort will likely be amplified by the plot moralising and justifying murder.

I think it's fairly safe to say that a game about an assassin is going to make at least a few inroads into justifying murder, yes.

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I think it's fairly safe to say that a game about an assassin is going to make at least a few inroads into justifying murder, yes.

That is fine, but a lot of weight is placed on a few specific assassinations. There is no mention of the hundreds of guards you eviscerate. The series sense of morality is very skewed.

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For the most part, they aren't stealth games. Being sneaky was a design goal originally, but it didn't really pan out.

Throughout the series to date it has become more viable to get through big sections without alerting anyone to your presence, but it still is not a very central concept.

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I pretty much never killed guards in AC Brotherhood (last one I played) except when it was in closed gameplay sections. It's certainly not a pure stealth game by any stretch but being able to be escape notice is usually not hard. Throw some change down, climb some roofs, blend with the crowd, hire prostitutes or thugs, all tools made easily available by the designers.

I'm sure all that will be available in AC3. It's just all the marketing being super violent that's turning me off. I think it's an effort to appeal to a broader base to have trailers that focus on the violent aspects of games that may also have a relatively non-violent route (see Hitman and Dishonored marketing).

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The stealth stuff is pretty well hidden - it seems like you have to kill 80 guys to get to your target and 80 to get away, but I'm pretty sure almost all the assassinations can be completed without killing anyone other than the target. And of course in the large fights, you can always use unarmed counters to disarm your enemies rather than killing them.

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Good news everyone!

(also the video below the article looks sweet)

Yay! Desmond is just annoying. My Guess is: The whole aliens and other world thing is some ancient plot to get people to activate some kind of human race ending fuckery, so the real aliens can come and colonize the world. Nee 2012 end of the world stuff, yay conspiracies! Plus you continue the series and get rid of Desmond in one fell swoop.

Regardless, while the promises made for this game (more stealthy, more polish, more open worldy goodness) all sound excellent I'm still going to wait for reviews. I've got other games to play and Brotherhood was disappointing.

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Yay! Desmond is just annoying. My Guess is: The whole aliens and other world thing is some ancient plot to get people to activate some kind of human race ending fuckery, so the real aliens can come and colonize the world. Nee 2012 end of the world stuff, yay conspiracies! Plus you continue the series and get rid of Desmond in one fell swoop.

You say that, but I have it on good authority that the story arc of Assassin's Creed III is in fact a metaphor for success in the cut-throat Parisian fashion industry, inspired by dinner party tales told to Ubisoft Chief Pigeon Yves Guillemot during many a late night soirée overlooking the City of Light itself.

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