Text / Emerald embroidered birds
It has been 15 years since the original release of the Assassin's Creed series, but in the past 15 years, the setting of the story has rarely been set in Eastern countries, and only in a work of a genre like Assassin's Creed Chronicles.
But this does not mean that the civilization of the East cannot be explored, on the contrary, its mystery and profundity even have more room for creation.
So this time, Ubisoft decided to focus on the East in the main series, choosing Japan that had never been involved, using the changing Sengoku period as the stage, from the black samurai "Yasuke" and Iga's ninja "Naojiang" two different perspectives, jointly interpreting the history of that turbulent era. And this is also the biggest selling point of this game: players can choose two different combat styles.
A while ago, Game Momentum was fortunate enough to receive an invitation from Ubisoft to participate in the offline trial event. Although there was some turmoil in public opinion about this game before, after about 3 hours of trial play, its quality has changed for me.
This trial is divided into two parts, the beginner's tutorial and the experience of the Harima region.
The beginner's tutorial starts from Yasuke's point of view, and through several successive cutscenes, Yasuke's identity is explained: he is a servant brought in by a Christian missionary. However, Oda Nobunaga saw Yasuke's potential and left him behind and trained him to become a samurai.
Then the camera turns, and the scene of Oda Nobunaga leading an army to attack Iga, at this time, Yasuke is already a powerful samurai who "can defeat a thousand armies with one person", and the official beginner tutorial begins.
The basics are the same as always, so I won't repeat them. Yasuke's tutorial encourages players to use block when facing attacks, and if you block at the right time, you can dispel enemy attacks and deal better damage, which is also in line with the premise that Samurai is good at frontal combat.
In addition, many enemies in this game have armor bars, and if you want to deal damage to enemies more effectively, you need to smash their armor bars first. However, Yasuke has a kick ability, if there is a wall nearby, using the kick will kick the enemy into the wall, ignoring the armor and dealing damage.
The second Yasuke skill that can be used in the trial is to draw a knife and flash it, which can quickly approach and attack enemies at a long distance, and can deal area damage when facing a multiplayer siege, and the visual effects are even more handsome.
It is worth mentioning that as a strong samurai, Yasuke tends to open and close in his attacks, and his movements are relatively rough when executing, and when facing some fragile obstacles (such as wooden doors), Yasuke can even sprint up and smash it directly.
The other protagonist, "Naoe", as a ninja, is more adept at assassinating in secret, which will make the veteran players of the "Assassin's Creed" series feel more familiar in terms of operation. And the assassination action in this work is cleaner and neater than before, and there are not so many elements of performance. However, when fighting head-on, Naojiang was a little powerless, and could only dodge and not block most of the attacks.
In addition, Naojiang naturally has a leap of faith and eagle vision, and can also use a variety of ninja props such as kunai.
Compared with Yasuke, Naojiang's background is not so lucky, her birthplace of Iga is the city that Oda Nobunaga is going to capture this time, but it is obvious that Iga's ninjas are completely defeated by Oda Nobunaga's forces. So, Naojiang's father gave her the Hidden Blade and asked her to go to the ancient tomb on the mountain to retrieve an important item: a small box.
Just like a flag, this kind of development usually doesn't go well, and sure enough, after opening the ancient tomb, Naojiang was not only snatched by the mysterious samurai, but also knocked unconscious, and was later rescued by his father, who was also seriously injured at this time.
After waking up, Naojiang went to the countryside town alone in order to retrieve the box. Although he successfully got the box, he fell into the siege of mysterious enemies after leaving the city. Although his father came to the rescue in time, he was still outnumbered and died tragically under the enemy's sword.
At this point,The LOGO of this work appears,The beginner tutorial part and the background plot end。
In the next trial of the Harima region, I was able to experience the various systems of this game more comprehensively.
First of all, the dual protagonists of this work can be switched by the player, as long as they are not in the combat state, they can be switched at any time in the personal panel.
If you kill too many people with one of these characters and get wanted, you can also avoid wanted by switching roles.
In addition, this game has canceled the "pet eagle eye" that has been used all along, and we now need to find a suitable position to observe the surrounding environment, and the observed targets will be displayed with different colored light points, of which the blue one is the main target, and these light points can be seen even through obstacles.
The old tradition of the "overlook" has not been abolished, it is still the best place to overlook the surrounding scenery and take on the function of fast travel.
However, after looking at the viewpoint and observing the surroundings at the same time, a familiar feeling came to my face, and those "question mark" locations that had not been shown on the map before appeared one after another.
But you can't say that these places are all must-go, because they may just be attractions such as shrines, and whether you go or not will not affect the main quest, and it is all a tour.
Speaking of which, this game has done a more thorough job of hiding mission points, and they even hide the exact target location, so that your task bar only shows the approximate location and location keywords. This is another big change in the game, and one of the selling points.
The team wanted to encourage players to explore on their own in this way, but the first time I saw the quest, I was a little confused.
Of course, if you don't want to explore on your own, it's okay, because we still have "spies" to use.
As long as you send spies, you can find specific target points faster and more directly, and if the target range is too broad, you can also send multiple spies to expand the search area.
It should be noted that the spy is actually a one-time consumable and will not be replenished by itself under normal circumstances. It can only be restored through the change of seasons, or by actively going to the Hideout. Hideouts need to be unlocked with currency, which can also be used to travel quickly.
On top of that, the hideout also has a lot of other features, not only a warehouse, but also the ability to manage allies, level them up, and add helpers to the battle.
Or check out the contract panel to pick up side quests and get paid to build further hideouts or upgrade gear.
In addition, the weapon system is also very rich, not only katana, naginata and other common cold weapons, but also "iron cannon", which was a popular hot weapon at the time.
Like the previous game, this game also has a skill tree system, but due to the large number of weapons, each weapon is assigned a separate skill tree, and it seems that players need to consider how to allocate skill points.
Overall,The trial part is still quite rich.,And the combat difficulty of this work is higher than before.,If you test it like the "mythical trilogy","Press the left button and don't let go + the skill press together" mentality to play,It's easy to lose sync.。
In frontal combat, the enemy often swarms up, if it is better to use Yasuke, at least the blood is thicker, most of the attacks can be blocked, and the fight is back and forth, and the recklessness is over; But there were several times when I used Naojiang, and I was accidentally forced into a frontal battle because of the plot, and the end was very miserable, and I even lost synchronization three or four times in the same battle, which made me a little suspicious of life.
However, Yasuke also has uncomfortable uses, especially in small space battles (such as the castle tower attic), due to Yasuke's large size, the perspective during the battle is very uncomfortable, and there is a sense of depression that cannot be released. Perhaps players still need to think about which character can be more comfortable to play according to the next task.
Oh yes,There's another content that everyone cares about:The cat in this work can still be touched.。
The Assassin's Creed IP has been around for years, and we're all desperate for something new to come out that is different from the "canned" stuff of the past. Although the trial was not very long, you could still intuitively feel that they were trying to change. This is a good sign, and I hope that Assassin's Creed: Shadow will be able to polish the operational experience and fix bugs during the period of postponement, and finally present players with a new era of Assassin's Creed.
After the demo, we also interviewed Tu Yang, the game producer of Ubisoft's Chengdu studio, and Zhu Bijia, assistant game director, who participated in the development of the game, and the following are the main questions and answers of the interview:
Q: Did you encounter any problems in creating a Japanese-style scene?
A: We want to respect and restore Japanese culture and history as much as possible, so we do a lot of historical research. We're a co-op studio, and the Quebec side is responsible for the overall direction, and they're going to have very professional historical support on their side, and what we're doing is going to be reviewed by a dedicated historian.
In the process of doing this, for example, when we are developing a scene, there may be inaccurate information we find, or the content we make is slightly different from the historical reference materials, then the Quebec experts will make some suggestions after reading it, and then we will modify our design according to the historical situation. And our design will also have a big point, if we want to completely restore, in fact, it is not very difficult, but we need to serve the gameplay in the process of restoration, such as the size should not be too large, etc., some design trade-offs in the middle are a difficult problem that we need to pay attention to.
Q: As we all know, the political situation in Japan during the Warring States period was very complicated, how do you express the complexity of historical events in this work? Will there be interpretations from different camp perspectives?
A: Actually, I just talked about some of our research and sophistication in the development process, as for the factions, because the Warring States period was the most complicated, and there were various warlord camps fighting each other. Because the timeline of the game is set when Oda Nobunaga is basically about to unify the whole of Japan, most of the war is almost over, and more of it is the unification of the scene, and at this time there will be some resistance of various small hostile forces, etc., and then the player will be involved in the conspiracy. At that time, our important characters were Oda Nobunaga and Akechi Mitsuhide, and Akechi Mitsuhide would have some behaviors later, which would have a relatively large impact on the player, the entire plot and even the entire history.
However, players will not actually join a certain faction, but you can experience it when you play, for example, Naojiang is the ninja of Iga, she represents the part of the Iga ninja that was wiped out by Nobunaga's army or suffered great losses, and the player will participate in the entire historical story from her perspective; And Yasuke is a very central person around Nobunaga, and the player can also see the story from his point of view, and there will be some conflicts and contradictions between them, as well as different developments.
Q: Will there be a return to the world dynamic design like Assassin's Creed: Odyssey in which the leader assassinates the leader and triggers the war of Nations?
A: We don't have a national battle system like Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, but we can still expect different factions. Because as I mentioned earlier, we actually have different factions in each region, and different factions have a sense of strength and weakness, that is, after you solve some strongholds, or complete some regional problems, some factions will become stronger or weaker, and it will affect dynamically. If a faction is stronger, then the difficulty of some areas under its jurisdiction will increase, and there will probably be such a dynamic change.
Q: Is the progression of this game quest-driven or a "regional story" like Assassin's Creed: Valhalla?
A: Let's talk a little bit about that. In fact, we have added a "target task version" for this work, and then when you advance in the main story, you can choose the process of advancement yourself. For example, if I want to find this first, or explore it first, this aspect is largely controlled by the player himself, rather than exactly completing them in the order of the main quests, and I think this is the biggest change we have made in terms of production, compared to the previous game.
Q: Will this game change the "canned taste" of Ubisoft's open-world titles?
A: As I mentioned earlier, we pay more attention to the player's self-exploration, which is the most special and the biggest change from the previous one. We think that "canned taste" may be more about the repetitiveness of a piece of content, or a feeling that the open world is relatively empty, but this generation of us has better allowed players to control themselves through free exploration, without being controlled by the process recommended by the game.
The second is that in the process of exploring, players will also find all kinds of small surprises, and we also use a variety of them, whether it is the main story of the task version system, or let players track by themselves, or through some small tasks and small gameplay, constantly enrich the content of the whole game, and there will be no boring and repetitive filling.
Q: During the trial just now, I felt that the combat difficulty of this game had increased a lot, right?
A: Yes, the combat system of this game has been upgraded, whether it is whether we strengthen the infiltration or we strengthen the frontal combat, this is also a big innovation in this work. Yasuke is definitely stronger and simpler in head-on combat, and there will be more options when encountering enemies.
Moreover, Yasuke's own attack is relatively strong and durable, and his skills and attack methods are easier to solve the enemy; If you play Nao, the head-on fight will be more difficult, requiring you to dodge attacks more precisely, and some attacks will be more difficult to dodge. Besides, Naojiang is not like Yasuke, who can defend all the time, she can only seize the opportunity to defend accurately, which will be more difficult. However, Naojiang is also more flexible and moves quickly, so you can better deal with enemies, which will provide players with different and rich strategic options.
Q: I also noticed that there are some branches of choice in this game, will this affect the plot later?
A: It has a certain impact. For example, some NPCs may help you or not, and subsequent tasks will also have different directions. Another example is the ally system, allies also need to do quests to recruit, but if you don't choose the right options, maybe some allies you can't recruit, or some allies will die later, but our main story is still the same ending after all, and it won't be different.