Thank you so much! I tried really hard to explain why it's not as unreasonable as the people who disagree think, because often they disagree due to making an assumption that doesn't have to be true, that world design is always going to stay like this. One day, world design will change again, and since we KNOW advanced movement gives many players grief, giving them options to simply not have their character ever do certain moves is the only way to make an automated system that tries to interpret player intention feel Fair to play.

Personally I liked the way AC3 did it with safe running (only holding down high profile) to avoid unsafe jumps. Then came along Unity, and all of a sudden climbing couldn't have any risk at all. I remember one instance where I wanted to back eject to a wall that was probably a mere several feet away, but no, the game thought it knew better than me.

@@aurllcooljay I found that a pretty good middle-ground as well. It made sense, all risky actions were basically right on the jump/legs button.

@@aurllcooljay This is why I shake my head so hard when people say that Unity had the best parkour. Unity had the best LOOKING parkour sure, but the system on a technical level is still much too automated. At least for me it is. There's a video where a guy got stuck on a high wall in Unity. He couldn't go up, he couldn't go down, and he couldn't jump off because the game didn't deem it "safe".

@@ink4852 I'm a bit of a weirdo, so I like the challenge of wrangling a notorious system to my will to execute the sexy animations. So I can't disagree when people say that Unity looks the best, but neither can I disagree when people say the system is janky and unpredictable, because both of those feed into my enjoyment of Unity's parkour.

It makes sense tho....u r a warrior not an assassen they hav very hevy wepon and armorr 2 climb n it wud probably get tiring....so wil im med at Ubbisoft dey r going 4 realizm in games nd it iz awes0m3

@@protectbabysif Ezio was able to move perfectly while equipped with heavy weapon and armor of Brutus then why can't a demigod do that?

@@offtheradar1898 tbf that's kinda super unrealistic. But realism in moments like that isn't usually all that fun so that brings us back to the original point. It's hard to feel as powerful as you used to be if your originally great options get dumbed/cut down or made visibly slower.

@@offtheradar1898 He was trolling

You need to make a course on cinematic and concise presentations, you have an amazing gift for it. Your solution is also very indegenious if it is implemented in any capacity during the making of future games and I don't really have anything to add to it, there IS a thing that I am aware of though and am very very annoyed about it, The games till unity, were so inexplicably unique, that I'm unable to find anything that gives me the same experience, maybe slightly similar, but that craving of the assassin fantasy is never fulfilled and I keep going back to the old games and unity, but I don't want to do that and really really want to experience a new world with that powerful feeling of moving through a group of enemies like the wind, silent and unseeable, like a true assassin. Enough of my rant, Good luck for your future vids!!!

Would be nice, wouldn't it? :) I need to improve at video-creation and interacting with a community, though. I don't have any coding or game-design experience, so something like a Community Manager would be the only role even remotely reasonable. That said, CMs get tons of abuse and toxicity, and when I can't just rip someone a new asshole or insta-ban them for making me mad, I probably wouldn't do terribly well 😅 Also, a lot of my favorite people who used to work at Ubisoft don't anymore (particularly a bunch of the CMs), so I'm not sure I'd even want to be there anymore.

Hell yeah! Once it "clicks" and you understand the way things link together, you see it all so differently and your mind _unlocks._ It's sick.

@@LeoKRogue yes bro *exactly!* you start viewing all of it aspects in a entierly different manner, that feeling is so drastically unique in such a way to me, it's something that i constantly have *only* with Assassin's Creed, i love this frenchise so much, and i love your videos so much man

playing it back again shit feels clunky as hell but was good for its time tbh, it continued to improve title after title until AC parkour finally peaked in Unity. Sad they revamped the whole thing when the RPG era started, if they just kept the Unity parkour it'd have been perfect

@@SmoovyNovaFan tend to disagree, Unity’s parkour was pretty and the new moves for parkour down were cool, but ultimately it was way too clunky and unresponsive and unpredictable to be consistently enjoyable. I think that since it was the last AC to have a reasonably high skill ceiling, we tend to give it too much credit

@@chrismildon7512 its the opposite, i just got done binge playing AC1 to Syndicate for nostalgia's sake, its way more easier to make mistake on a game like AC2 or AC1 compared to Unity, which makes sense anyway since they just continued to build upon what they had from the previous game to the next, the mechanics evolved and improved overtime, you couldnt even free run downwards seamlessly till before Unity

Thank you.

I MEAN YEAH. But _evidently_ it's not that simple, hence why we gotta come up with something. x_x

At some point, if truly advanced movement returns, Ubisoft is going to have to address a large playerbase who doesn't want to be frustrated at feeling like their character is out of control. They don't have to do this exact idea, but they will have to do something. They could also just delete all automation and make every action completely manual so the system isn't interpreting player intent and action-reaction is more one to one, but that's an entirely new movement paradigm built from the ground up that would need its own control scheme.

I love it so much, yeah, the difference in how it feels to play before you're used to everything and after is just incredible. You feel like you know these streets and rooftops on an intuitive level. We don't have much interaction with NPCs in Assassin's Creed anymore. Back in the classic era, they were an obstacle that wasn't an enemy, so they had their own kind of interactions you had to keep in mind. It was a clever way to ground you in the era's Society as gameplay, albeit simple.

I believe it. Same thing with Air Assassinates. AC1 leaves more to be discovered than any other game, and that's super cool but a lot of players remain unaware.

There is, and I think I can identify at least _part_ of why it happened. Combat is the most directly-interactable part of action games that the highest number of players experience and end up talking about. If your combat is bad, people will talk about it a lot more than if your stealth and movement is bad, because the consequences of those two being unwieldy (or the player being unskilled) is that you just end up in combat. Now if the _combat_ is annoying, well, you're always ending up in it, so you start noticing that a lot. It's where players 'wash up' and 'collect,' combat-state is the destination upon which the stealth and movement spits them out if they're not good enough at them, so these players experience it so, so often. After years of complaints that combat is too easy and simple and boring, a lock-and-pivot hitbox system is a reasonable step to take, but what was really crushing is that they de-focused the other two so much, just because a huge amount of players did. Like, where is the integrity? Can you support and back up your creation? The fact that they just gave in and injected all of the focus into combat, simply because "well, lots of players will end up in here anyway," is just... I try not to be cynical but sometimes I wonder if the parkour and stealth received _SO_ little Love exactly BECAUSE they knew they could get away with it by making fighting your way through hordes of enemies feel somewhat decent this time around.

@@LeoKRogue Yeah, I mean there's always a bit of imbalance from game to game. Unity I think had good traversal and stealth, but was lacking in the combat department. Then they just way overcorrected by overhauling the combat system (which would be fine on it's own) while massively simplifying traversal. I think one of the biggest kicks in the teeth was when Valhalla was announced, and a dev's response to backlash about the "Hidden Blade" being the wrong way around was, "He thinks it's so cool of a weapon, why would he want to hide it?" Just like, wow, we haven't been Assassins in a long time lmao

It's rough too, because that reasoning is entirely in line with Eivor's actual character. If they continue to run AC the way they have been, it's like this weird no-win situation for anyone because if they _do_ concede to what we want and make cool Assassin stuff for the sake of cool Assassin stuff, it'll just be flat and ineffectual. It's not _just_ about the iconography and the symbolism, it's about the iconography, rituals and symbolism being present _for a reason._

@@LeoKRogue The biggest thing is always that Assassin *feel*. Like while AC4 is a pretty good game, it doesn't feel as much like I'm playing as an Assassin as it did in something like AC3 or Unity. It's just an odd number of games in the franchise leave you playing as not an Assassin lol, Odyssey probably being the biggest offender of that.

I really, really miss playing as an Assassin man. I feel like I'm being punished for my emotional investment in this world, universe and faction. Like, I like these characters, I like these hyper Reality-Aware god-ninjas. Can I please play as one again? Am I _allowed_ to like Assassins, Ubisoft? Is it a _sin_ to find Assassins _cool_ or something?

I know nothing about this.

Thanks!

Yes. They already have these kinds of granular toggles for some elements, just explode that out and apply it to so much more. Modern Assassin's Creed is, structurally, such a _soul-sucking_ experience that it just leaves you feeling withered if you want any shred of what you loved about these games lovely beginnings and try to put any of your emotions into it to get some of that. It just doesn't work and it feels like instead of improving they get worse every time. Not encouraging.

Used to be that the gameplay was a reflection of the line "nothing is true, everything is permitted". It's not the rules that tell you what you can do, but yourself. You jump off a high wall, you die. You are the one making decisions, and you must live with the consequences, whether glorious or tragic. You kinda lose this with the filter. It's my only gripe.

@@wifparanoid304 I agree but for example some people don’t wanna have to learn assassins creed unity’s stylish clunky parkour to be able to feel like an assassin. I see that side to but id also like to learn something and get good at the game as I play especially if the game is gonna be over 80 hours long.

@@wifparanoid304 I feel _exactly the same._ Movement in the classic games was absolutely reflective of the Assassin's Creed, and the loss of it hurt me more than most people for that reason. The problem is, we've _already_ lost this, though. The filter would _bring it back_ by making it acceptable to the designers to do so. If I believed that we could "just" get complex movement back without a compromise like this, then by all means, that would be better. And, at one point, I used to. However, Ubisoft have had seven years to do that, and they haven't. If anything, they've only stripped out more and more. That's not very encouraging to me in terms of the prospect of bringing back an uncompromising advanced movement system everyone has to contend with. At least with something like this, the players who _want_ it can have it. Right now, no one can. :(

They should just flat out steal the combat from Ghost of Tsushima. That's the kind of reaction/parry combat that fits an assassin game. And people love it. And it has built in difficulty levels and in-game-item modifiers to make it easier/harder. Unity was sort of it, but much simpler and clunkier.

Love it for that, yup yup. I've never had more control and more different things to control than back then. Was a great time.

Also for some reason in AC 3 in particular the game has really terrible detection of platforms, I can consistently make Connor jump into a very very tiny part of a slightly opened window because the game thinks that that is something Connor can jump on which he can't.

Assassin's Creed VR is a thing soon, soooo :)

Thanks Kino. ^__^ This is tricky, because Stealth has had many more identities across Assassin's Creed than movement has, changing slightly with every different protagonist's personality and place in history, as well as sometimes _within the same_ protagonist in the case of AC2/Brotherhood/Revelations. In each of those three games stealth _does_ feel different when played to capacity just because Ezio's kit changes so dramatically, even with simple things like gun-charge speed. For Stealth I think what needs to happen is that the developers decide what the character's persona, toolkit, and environment permits, and lean into that very hard while making it feel good and satisfying if the player adheres to those elements. Stealth is also sadly still technically more advanced than parkour is right now, at least when it works and isn't constantly shattering to pieces in your hands, so not making it hopelessly buggy and then leaning hard on the individuality of the player-character for what gameplay that makes available is, I think, the play.

@@LeoKRogue I definitely agree for the most part. Stealth in this series feels the most immersive when it’s an extension of the player-character: For Altair, it’s the anachronism of the Assassins in using what Bellec refers to as “the Levantine Approach”, which consists of using disguises and the environment to position yourself to publicly, brutally, and ruthlessly slaughter a target to make a political statement. For Ezio, it’s making use of a much more reserved approach introduced by Altaïr, using technologically advanced tools to outwit his enemies using mundane infrastructure in urban environments, and his growing skill as he ages. For Connor, it’s using his experience (and deep connection) with the to isolate, ambush and kill where enemies least expect it, often striking silently from the trees or a bush before exploding into violent carnage. And I can go on but you get the idea. Where I believe people really disagree though is what the core fantasy should be. I believe AC should be closer to what I mentioned Ezio was, using infrastructure and urban environments to outsmart, manipulate, isolate, and kill your targets. Others still prefer the more streamlined approach that favors traditional stealth and crouching like Unity. And many others enjoy the current core fantasy which entirely devalues social stealth in favor of more simplified traditional stealth with RPG elements. When people disagree on what the very fabric of a game’s intended design should be, it’s very difficult to reconcile. Even beyond mechanics, I think that’s the major cause of the rifting in this community.

If stealth continues to lean on the personality and options available to each character, and Assassin's Creed continues to feature a diversity of protagonists across nations and history, then eventually everyone will cycle through various types of stealth they enjoy most, multiple times over the years. The issue is that right now, they're not _really_ leaning on a diversity of playstyles, and the types of stealth being featured are _the same_ across three whole protagonists, which is _INSANE_ considering Ezio who was just one, had variations in his all to himself. _Some_ Assassins will lean more on using infrastructure, because that's what they have access to due to their upbringing, or training, or resources. _Some_ Assassins _won't_ do that and may be forced to take advantage of more 'traditional' stealth concepts. As long as every player-character feels solid and reliable and the game isn't struggling to not dump its innards in front of me, I'm pretty happy to play the different kinds of stealth that the series may make available.

@@LeoKRogue Yes, I think that’s fair. Thanks for talking with me Leo!

@@kinography9085 Thanks for being here. I love all you Sneaky guys. ^_^

Thank you! English is also my second language and I remember learning by reading subtitles on every TV show I watched 😅

In truth, Ubisoft is the monster and they fuck us _all_ by making us fight each other. Pitchforks and torches until we get a good game, dammit! jk jk (mostly)

It has been. Ravensthorpe doesn't feel like as much of a mechanic and meaningful system as Monteriggioni and the Jackdaw did, and there's not much to do there barring returning at the end of every arc and once in a blue moon to upgrade a weapon or something. I was actually a bit let down by it, I thought it would have a bigger, more important presence in the game. Eivor Varinsdottir's entire raison d'etre is to provide a home for her people, yet in the end I didn't feel a strong emotional connection to Ravensthorpe.

@@LeoKRogue You are bang on there. I feel more attached to Masyaf even. I hope AC returns to form soon. I would love to see the quests get better. Recently got back into Runescape again and a point and click game from 20 years ago does better quests than most new games. The open world in AC feels so empty most of the time now. One free way to get people loving the games again would be stuff like sea shanties. Cool to see a reply from you :) Have a good day

Movement is definitely about both vertical and horizontal, and they make each other stronger. Moving horizontally efficiently lets you climb tall structures much faster, and being high up lets you move horizontally faster because you're ignoring / walking on top of walls that would block you at street level. And of course there's all the useful ways to move forward and side-to-side no matter where you are, on the ground, on the roofs, or in between (the sides of buildings). Have you seen Jcers' recent parkour evolution video? It's the best one I've seen. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iaeerbicttm7cZc.html

@@LeoKRogue the first game was the most frustrating to me trying to run away from guards and having Altair climb so slow and I’d always get knocked off. I saw your 2019 steam and I was blown away from watching you side and back eject not to mention vaulting

Yup! :D

Oh and also, I want more social stealth, and more parkour stealth. Any game that has a stealth button is bad at stealth

I definitely think trying to turn Assassin's Creed into a more 'general' stealth game was a mistake, since it already had unique strengths that were eventually dropped. Crouching can be useful, but it's heartbreaking when that's all we _get_ nowadays.

Aww nooo hahahaha I'm so sorry T__T I feel you though

Origins is so much better than AC1. AC1 is one of the worst games I have ever played in the 600+ games I've played in my life. It's so boring and repetitive, every given opportunity it wastes my time. The investigations aren't fun, just boring, the combat is awful, it's easy and not fun, especially considering how easily the dumbass guards are provoked, I have to constantly fight them because the chases are even worse.

Thanks so much, please share it around if you found it interesting or worth thinking about.

@@LeoKRogue sure , and I don't mean to sound cringey or anything but I genuinely think your videos are pretty amazing , and your passion for the things you love is endlessly commendable , a verry special and rare thing , I feel This is probably the only time you are going to hear me say somenting like this , I don't usually do this , but yea , this is cool

Thank you. It's not cringe, it's much appreciated. I want to make it feel safe for people to express how they feel about my creative work, since it encourages me and it ends with people getting more videos to watch, which I'm sure is a nice little bonus. :)

I hope you did. :)

Oh I did and I am very into your idea of allowing the player to choose what kind of parkour freedoms they want. It’s seems like a good compromise for such a split community and i think it would be cool to see some game design that rewards you for getting places that are really hard to reach through advanced movement

I like this idea too because world-design and optional collectibles could incentivize a new player dipping their toes into learning if they really, really want a piece of loot for example. And because Parkour Filters are a diegetic part of the in-game universe and lore in this case, whoever your Present Day character is can just flick the different filters on or off in order to get things done in the simulation. If Present Day were playable and had parkour in it, by the time you get to the end of the game, chances are you've learned at least a little something, and whatever mission you play to finish the game might have a straight-forward route or a harder but more rewarding parkour-route that requires the use of advanced techs.

Thank you Pint. Want me to be honest? I'm right there with you. I'm not excited for Assassin's Creed's future at all. There aren't really any gameplay videos of it on my channel for months now. I like talking about it more than I like playing it so that's what I'm doing. The older games still slap though.

Haha, thank you so much! That makes me happy. :D

Thanks! I feel the same, it was an implication through the rest of the video, but I had to say it out loud at the end just to make sure it was clearer. Ultimately, new players don't like classic parkour because they don't think it's fluid. Classic players don't like new parkour because we don't think _that's_ fluid. I tried to provide a basic concept for something that could accommodate both. It does suck that all the time we put into improving at the series for a while was seemingly disregarded by Ubisoft in recent entries, basically discarding 'legacy-skill' as I called it. Really wish they wouldn't have done that, but it is what it is xD

@@LeoKRogue I totally agree. Also I appreciate how active are with responding to comments! Means more than you might think!

One can only hope. x__x

Thank you. I might drop in at some point, not sure when. I'm doing okayish. ^_^

@@LeoKRogue oh i also stopped using discord a while ago. Was good times tho, chatting about stealth and ac games all day. Even tho I dont really make time for it anymore, I do still love the genre.

That's a really sick idea and one I would personally love. I doubt Ubisoft would tie it to endings, because that's a little exclusionary and I know from their development practices that they don't like doing that kind of thing. It leads to the art being unable to explore certain ideas, which sucks, but I get it. I do feel that having certain moments only be possible if you think to do them throughout the story and have the right movement scheme is really, really cool though.

World design absolutely plays a large hand in it. I use this example time and again because it's the easiest to convey, but imagine AC2's movement system in Valhalla's world, or Valhalla's movement in AC2's. It wouldn't work at all, right? The mechanics the player has access to and the world they inhabit must resonate with each other.

Hope you had a decent day at work and that you slept well Ivan!

@@LeoKRogue ❤️

Good call! I've never played Skate 3 so this is a great example to have in my pocket.

That's a very smart point that isn't considered too often, you're right. What doesn't go up won't come down, after all.

You should play Elden Ring! It's the easiest one, and you can play a Mage more easily than in any of the previous ones. I highly recommend it, even for complete beginners. I appreciate your comment too, but alas, we know Ubisoft are like the anti-FROMSOFTWARE lol. They'll probably never do anything that might potentially exclude even the smallest amount of people.

@@LeoKRogue I DID play Elden Ring... Facing Endbosses atm ;) ... And yes, as a Mage... ^^ No, Ubi will never do such a thing like FROM... As you said, playerbase is too big now and pays too much... We will see what they're going to cook up :)

Thanks for watching and commenting. ^_^ I'd really like to see that yeah, as a stop-gap measure until movement is revamped to not be so automation-heavy in the first place, at which point these kind of toggles shouldn't be as necessary anymore.

@@LeoKRogue maybe something like this would also get the general audience to experiment with parkour have it become a core part of ac’s identity again

Thank you for watching, Rebecca. ^_^ I do think every movement system has its points of distinction and as you say there's _something_ to enjoy about all of them, but yeah, putting more choice in the player's hand, at least until they completely shift away from automation based movement would be a decent step to make everyone have a better time.

Conceptually, I really like the Mastery Challenges in Valhalla for challenging post launch content, but the game's mechanics are such a mess, sometimes even now, that I've repeatedly seen the best Assassin's Creed players I know fail repeatedly due to bugs or strange interactions when the mechanics are pushed to their limit, as they are in those challenges. At the end of it all they weren't even satisfied because it was such a miserable experience, just happy it was over. I want rankings and leaderboards but if the core gameplay isn't smooth and reliable enough to make that feel good to play, it just can't happen and players won't want to put in the time.

I appreciate that. :)

I've ranked them in terms of stealth, and that's good enough for me. ^__^ kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mbxni9yT3t3Vg5c.html

Thank you Soter. I'm not sure if or when I'll do something like that again, I'm currently very excited and focused on my present endeavors, which I hope people will enjoy. ^_^

Thank you. ^_^

@@LeoKRogue ofc

Yeah, what's really fun is, this video was made one year ago when we didn't even _have_ that many different games doing this stuff. By now, we're seeing so, so many other games releasing with these types of features, so the longer time goes on, the better this video ages.

I'm really glad my thoughts can be a bit of comfort or resonance sometimes. I've also been fifty-fifty on movement in Mirage. On the one hand I recognize that Bordeaux's Mirage is a project with very short turn-around, team-size and dev time compared to major AC titles -- and they're not even selling it for full price. With the context under which it was made, I can grasp there's not a lot _this specific_ team could have done beyond what they have, that's totally fair. I'm still let down, but I get it. On the other hand it definitely sucks that this is meant to be evocative of Assassin's Creed's classic essence, and a major part of that will still be largely absent; fun movement with a bit of player-accountability. What I'm much more upset about, and what the bigger thing for me is that all of Assassin's Creed as a whole constantly failing to iterate on movement just sucks. That _is_ a mistake, that _is absolutely_ a failure or at least a recurring bad decision. A major, full-price game like Red, feels like it has no excuse. A game like Hexe, even moreso, since Hexe is no longer working off the Origins framework but is something brand new. They can do it, they just have to care.

@@LeoKRogue thanks for continuing to reply a year in, appreciate you alot. Kinda wish we could just have some cool true AC games like for Mirage and Red (even use the varying level of input you mentioned) then have spin offs like odyssey and valhalla where they can do whatever the hell the want with loose connections, cameos etc. Feels really weird when Mirage is like the spin off of Valhalla, but is more AC themed than it, but still doesn't get some of the most fan wanted systems properly returned. I don't know how to properly articulate the frustration except that it's feeling a little backwards atm. I appreciate Bordeaux's efforts though, and will treat Mirage as an Origins sequel with better environment. Hopefully we can find at least find a few cool ways to use some skill in movement. The city does look pretty great

That's fun to see, because "Origins sequel with better environment" is exactly how I see it myself. ^_^

I Forget to tell do not put unity before rogue because the animations of acrobatic things is still good but it’s sadly not so fast , fluid and energetic just like the ancients AC( I mean AC 1 to rogue but not unity) . Sorry for the fans who like unity but with an objective and a subjective opinion the parkour is not very good but there is some good ideas about the animations when Arno do some good stuff when he climb some homes and monuments. This is just some facts and have some fun if some people like this game

You understand me very well, I feel many similar things. AC1-Rogue are all very good, I just think AC1-Rev are truly legendary in my heart. ^_^

Yup yup. Everything in this video is basically a band-aid to a permanent issue that will last as long as excessive automation continues, but at least this way people can be more comfortable while Ubisoft works on a more comprehensive solution. The only _real_ way to "fix" parkour is to create an entirely new system that goes back to the drawing board of AC1's core concepts and re-forges them while throwing out lots of the automation and not adding _more_ automation over the years like what's happened with the series today.

Definitely my own experience as well. It felt really fun to get better at it and feel more in control as I kept improving. It also made it so in the moments the system DID actually screw up and misinterpreted the player's intent, we had ways to "force" certain jumps or movements and basically manually correct or compensate. Now if you're stuck on a wall, or fall off of something, there's no action you can do or decision you can make out of that, which tends to feel bad.

@@LeoKRogue Exactly. And I'm starting to see more comments of people who had the experience too of playing through the games originally just doing the basic parkour stuff of more or less following the obvious paths up and down and across buildings only later discovering years later, from youtube videos or whatever, all the cool ejects and cancel jumps you can chain together to not only get around faster but look better doing it (not to mention confuse the heck out of the guards if they're chasing you). I'm playing through the Ezio games again right now and damn it's so much fun getting around with a better understanding of the parkour in this older games. It's a challenge in and of itself, a like a full third of the game I never played. I think the problem is the old games never really requires the players to do any of the more advanced parkour, they pretty much just leave you to figure it out and a lot of people never realized it was there. This oversit sadly, I think lead to them dumbing down parkour over time to the point now it's just pretty much a basic climbing mechanic with some animations thrown in.

AC has always had awful tutorials.

Thank you Tandy. :)

I _do_ find it very mind-boggling that progression is such a core part of the modern Assassin's Creed experience, and it's a _satisfying_ part that I genuinely enjoy for the most part, but movement and navigation are simply _not a part_ of that progression system, neither in Origins, nor Odyssey, nor Valhalla. It's just _weird,_ like you'd think there would be _something_ related to parkour in some skill tree or gear somewhere, but nope. What you start the game with is exactly how you'll be moving by the end.

@@LeoKRogue Yeah so sad:(

Unity but with full cancels on every move would've basically been the first mod I'd push to see made, if modding support was possible in the series. I'd slap that on and _never_ look back.

Me too, I miss having access to all my actions and not having to pray to the Automation-Gods that my character 'wants' to eject or drop when I tell them to.

Yes, yes, yes! Exactly. If it weren't for helpful people way back in the day, even I wouldn't have known how to do most of the useful techniques that helped me feel in control, and then helped me teach that control to others in the future. AC's tutorials have always been pretty awful.

Thank you for listening. ^_^

Good man.

@@LeoKRogue you like cheese?

@@smeep6846 I find cheese is often very effective.

@@LeoKRogue :)

That was exactly my goal when conceptualizing it, yeah! I thought about, how can I make it so beginners aren't frustrated but they can still grow if they see something that's inspiring.

Thank you. It's a part of these games I've always found really fun and unique to them, there's nothing else quite like it in the rest of the industry, unless you want to go first-person but then that's not the same. I really want to have that greater depth and fluidity we used to have.

@@LeoKRogue You’re welcome and same honestly, a good franchise like this always needs a good parkour system.

You bring up a very good point, which for the sake of this discussion I just didn't put in my video, but you're right. None of this matters unless they WANT it. I've said this before but Ubisoft are not as inept as we sometimes like to meme about. They CAN make a game that features the kind of depth we crave. They just don't want to.

@N7Andy “It needs to be brought to their attention”/their vision not being broad enough = same thing. You just used different words. The overall point is the same, there’s no way they’ll ever think of a parkour filter without videos like this, with filters they introduced in Valhalla, they only modified the most basic aspect - difficulty. How difficult stealth, combat etc are. Parkour filtering isn’t about making parkour more or less difficult, it’s about two different playstyles whose mechanics need to be consistent in the same world they created. In my opinion they’re too lazy to do that.

You get me.

I would try very hard to stick with AC2, or if that really doesn't work, do Brotherhood. Brotherhood has really fast-paced, fluid combat (though, very easy and not challenging, it's only focused on flow and looking cool) and is all set in a huge city so parkour involves a lot of varying environmental opportunities.

well you can think of it this way. Imagine if Capcom removes the ability for you to jump cancel and string different combos and moves in DMC. that's what i feel with the newer AC's parkour system. basically turning the game into a dumbed down version of its former self, like DMC2 did to the DMC franchise lmao

@@m3rl1on That is actually a comparison that is easy to understand for me XD I cannot imagine for the life of me if I couldn't do all my usual combo strings. Then I am praying that Mirage is going to fix it.

​@@m3rl1on exactly how I feel with modern GOW games

Modern Templars would be way cooler and scarier than that, is the only thing I've got xD

Thanks Jacopo! I appreciate that a lot. :D And yeah, you're right, there are parts of new Assassin's Creed that I do really enjoy. If I didn't like _anything_ about them, then I simply wouldn't care. It's because I see the potential and the good qualities that motivates me to think how it could be even better.

@@LeoKRogue i totally agree. Hope to meet you One day, irl or online. You are the G.O.A.T.

Thanks! My goal with this video was to discuss a potential improvement to current parkour in the most plausible way possible that wouldn't burn any particular group of players, until Ubi creates a less automated system that doesn't need these considerations anymore. It is true that mechanics and environment both define each other's existence, and something more needed to be done to up our interactivity with flatter ground and wider streets. Alas.

Assassin's Creed could've _always_ worked as an RPG, if it had been done in a manner befitting and conscientious of it. They had three opportunities and somehow managed to bolt the most arduous chaff that the role-playing genre itself often carves away in _all three of them. How._

The problem isn't that it's in RPG the problem is how they choose to implement the RPG aspects of the game.

@@LeoKRogue lol ikr?

Indeed. I really enjoyed having a lot of ownership over my actions and having more actions I can do.

Even the most basic kind of Assassin's Creed parkour is pretty difficult to make feel smooth on a technological level, but maybe in time, and with new engines like Unreal 5, we may see some interesting results. It took Ubisoft years of prototyping and dev to figure out how to even do AC1's climbing if I remember correctly, and they're not poor by any means, even back then. For indies to not get it done sort of makes sense in that light, if you need so much know how and resources just to make a basic version of it seem playable at all but yeah, these kind of questions of feasibility really make me intrigued by Unreal 5 and what it can offer.

Really like this idea.

You gotta play Dying Light 2 if you love Mirror's Edge. :D One of my faves.

@@LeoKRogue I watched videos for that one. Nice action but I'm scared. XD

@@ilovebiscuits7771 It's not actually that scary most of the time, it's just a cool story with a light zombie skin. I think you'd really enjoy it. ^_^

@@LeoKRogue Idk..I watched some and getting chased by zombies made me feel anxious for the player. haha btw, did you play Code Vein?

@@ilovebiscuits7771 I did! I really enjoy BANDAI NAMCO's RPGs, and Code Vein is what made me excited for Scarlet Nexus. Not the same kind of game by any means, but amazing nonetheless.

A happy medium is what we're trying to achieve, yeah. Letting players choose their own level of complexity or assistance is ideal. Basic Classic Movement Guide kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g76imsJkxJmqcnU.html Ezio Trilogy Parkour Down Guide kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fLOJm7qHxsWYZmg.html

Yup, a good start I think. Notably, AC3 also takes place in natural environments in addition to cities so it's the closest in setting to what the new games are doing. Another good reason to draw inspiration from it.

Yes indeed, and to some extent they already do this, just with non-movement related things like Combat/Stealth/Navigation Difficulty, among a bunch of others. The default settings are pretty simple, but any player can tinker with and make more granular changes in whatever direction they want. For everything except movement, of course. Hehehe, as for September... Man. I don't know xD We'll see what happens but I find it hard to hope :P

I've recently been pondering similar ideas. In my heart I really hope, and want that to be true, but on the other side of the coin I also have the awareness that the majority of players who purchase Assassin's Creed games don't even go online, look up KZfaq videos, watch gaming streams, or anything like that. It may be hard to believe but the average player of videogames nowadays is someone who doesn't interact or engage with them on a "community" level, and the people who do, like you and me are actually a rare sub-set of that much-bigger group. By definition, players who view or create content around a game or engage with its community are considered "hardcore" by publishers. That's a concept that haunts me...

Thank you for your wonderful comment, and for expressing your deepened appreciation for the series. There's definitely some truly special things in these games, I'm glad I could give you a small helping hand in feeling how cool they are for yourself.

:[

Thanks! I do feel similarly. I never had an issue with Assassin's Creed being an RPG, conceptually. It's HOW they did it and all the things they chose NOT to do that are awful.

I have to.

That seems very advanced compared to my idea, but it could maybe be achieved through how strict the filter intensity is.

I think so too, whatever movement they design doesn't even have to look anything like we've seen before either, actually. But as long as they're using an automated system, they can either give players depth or comfort, and they have to pick one or the other unless they let the players pick for themselves.

Maybe just enabling it by default would work too

Enabling it by default would probably be Recommended yeah, a lot of games start out with options that are labeled in that kind of way, or a tooltip that says "This is only recommended for players who are confident with X or Y."

There's definitely something cool about that, over thousands of situations you get a great feel for the system if you're willing to bear a little frustration and have an open mind. If I were just looking out for myself and what I want, I'd just say axe everything and give me AC1-Rev movement again or scrap even that and create a completely manual input system for even greater control than THAT. This is just me trying to achieve some kind of reasonable compromise that works decently for everyone as a temporary solution until Ubi gets their shit together.

Was it? :)

@@LeoKRogue It certainly was! The part about players not wanting to invest heavily into one game really resonated, because I do this all the time too. And this may heavily contribute against my argument here but bear with me xD. When you said you can't force players to learn a more complex system, I totally get it, since if the devs do so they risk a lot of people checking out. E.g, DOOM: Eternal took a very firm stance on making itself extremely mechanically complex, and a lot of people got put off. It punished you for refusing to learn and in a way it did force systems on you. However you can still be highly expressive and unique in your playstyle! And that's what I love about AC in the same way. The parkour like you said was always engaging; on your feet thinking, 'fail states (fall damage, broken flow, desync) and expression of the power fantasy. Like you said it made you think! When a player is thinking they're engaged, when they're not they become bored. I just think the new ac games are making players think about the wrong things. Pipe Dream mode: I think the ac devs really need to take a firm stance on what the game is. I really don't want these 80 hour games that feel like AI generations anymore. We need a skilled, engaging ASSASSIN game that demands your investment. A system that makes it clear that you are a lethal ghost,but with a lot of room for experimentation and expression, but never losing sight of what it is. So yea vid was mad, as always beautifully spoken and edited.

@@gUwU47 I agree with you on them needing to take a firm stance. I feel like Ubisoft wants to have their cake and eat it too, which just ends up feeling horrible for the players caught in the middle. They've never actually decided _WHAT_ Assassin's Creed _IS,_ which leads players to getting attached to the era of Assassin's Creed they first played or first fell in love with. See tribalism between Unity fanboys, AC1-Rev chads and the RPG kids. Even I'm doing it in this comment - but I've always been honest. ;]

@@LeoKRogue I'm with you 150% on that. AC1-Rev (+AC3 :D) GIGACHADS 😎😎😎

@@gUwU47 The Kenways were pretty good, yeah. Some smart decisions there, and deeper than people typically realize, even me a while ago.

If you can decide which aspects to have filtered out, sure. You can set it to be that "heavy." Otherwise that doesn't solve the main issue which is players lacking freedom or the granularity to decide how MUCH responsibility over their movement they want.

@@LeoKRogue fair

Mirage was a small project and likely limited in what it was allowed to do. They had to get it out pretty quickly and I heard it needed to reuse quite a lot of what was on hand, which makes its final state make sense to me. "Going back to the roots" unfortunately didn't seem to manifest with movement, which is definitely a shame since the stealth feels better than it had in years. Dying Light 2 is a great example I'm always happy to see brought up as well. The way it handles parkour after its updates has been really appreciated and it doesn't come at the cost of any player's experience. I hope they take some good lessons from it.

I hope I could entertain you for a short time. ^_^ That's good enough for me!

Yeah, being able to change whenever you want is ideal.

I should do that too.

Yes. I want to be able to move freely. The reason I'm not allowed to is that if they let me, then _other_ players _might_ accidentally hurt themselves because they pressed the wrong button at the wrong time. So why can't _those_ players have their simple, safe movement, and we can have our awesome, risky and tactical movement? Everyone's happy.

@@LeoKRogue exactly i think its the higher ups and business suits that tell the developers to change things to cater to a certain demographic of players and time restrictions that wouldnt allow for improvement on the system,this is speculation tho but i feel the developers care for these things but simply cant due to limitations from the higher ups. Idk but hopefully thats the case.

A great number of the devs _do_ care, yeah. I think that, among other more serious reasons, is part of why _so_ many senior or well-known developers and ComDevs that were on Assassin's Creed straight-up left Ubisoft recently to work elsewhere. People are jumping ship, working on that brand must _really_ freaking suck from certain perspectives.

You can never truly turn it off, ALL players would still experience a mandatory baseline of the system otherwise there is simply no video game. Other games already do things like this and work perfectly fine, with occasions of Assist players eventually growing hungry for the more rich experience and delving deeper into the system's complexity because they were welcome to experience the basic fun behind it before adding on more components. Players feeling like they can enjoy a game and then after already beginning to love it reaching for more interesting mechanics on their own terms would even likely boost completion numbers which you briefly talk about. What do you think is a better, more realistic idea for Ubisoft to do that would bring back advanced movement for us to enjoy? Something you can see them greenlighting and funding? Besides, what you're describing is literally the way the games are right now. What I'm describing is at least adding another layer of opt in depth on top of that.

Upon reviewing this comment and the video I have changed my view and I now agree that this type of system is the best compromise possible and, if ubisoft ever pursues parkour again, the best way for ac to move forward. The concern in my original comment was more related to a question of game design, namely how do you make a player engage with your systems. An analogy to this situation is DMC5 and its assist option. Like you say the assist option allows players to get into the game when they are less familiar with the mechanics and later engage with the full system, or play the game as a classical hack and slash. The thing is, DMC5 is based upon its combat. You are always inclined to get better at it. In ac though, parkour whilst a major part if the game can be completely ignored. This is fine. People can play how they want and how they are comfortable with, but the question is why would ubisoft invest time into a mechanic people dont use. By the way this isn't me saying I think this is likely or would happen as a result of an assist system, (I personally think ubisoft will re-implement parlour in the near future) but it does raise another question. Would it not be better for newer and returning players to have guides to advanced parkour? Ac has had things like this but they have never been fully developed fully. These guides would make the system present to each player that sees it, and seeing cool shit in these guides could incentivise people to try to imitate it. Essentially, have these guides on KZfaq be an actual part of the game. To me, Assassin's Creed is as much about parkour as it is about combat or Assassins. The next step for these games isnt reducing the game's legacy to accommodate for a new one but instead to build on what came before, like you said in the video when talking about combat stealth and parkour. And I feel for this to happen they all have to be represented equally as much by the game itself as its mechanics.

@@Greetanate One solution to things like this is to make movement an integral part of the game, which might be easier than we first admit just because humans are 3D lifeforms, so movement is integral to basically all of our activities, including action games. There's nothing more motivating than _needing_ to get from point A to point B because otherwise you literally don't get to play at all. No matter how good you are at sneaking (which requires movement) or combat, you don't get to do any of that until you reach an objective or area that features them. Which necessarily entails movement. Then, the task of the designers is to make _spaces_ interesting to move through, with a variety of micro-challenges along the way. Someone who is doing an action repeatedly emotionally benefits from getting better at it so the experience is smoother or more interesting for them, so I _do_ think players will eventually pursue it of their own volition. The ones that don't, wouldn't have no matter _how_ many guides you put in front of them. I know this because I am a guide-maker, and it's a simple truth that some people just don't care. :[ On advanced movement guides being part of the games; _YES._ Games having better internal documentation is one of the best ways to put the power to learn in a player's hands, so I've ALWAYS had a bone to pick with Ubisoft for how poor their tutorials and in-game mechanics descriptions always are, compared to a lot of other games. They're not strictly "bad" for just getting into the game and managing your way through a normal playthrough, but they rarely actually mention or clue players in to potential intricacies, it's just the basics.

@@LeoKRogue thanks for the replies and being willing to discuss things :)

@@Greetanate And thank you! ^_^

Can you elaborate a little further, I'm not sure exactly what you're commenting on but I want to grasp it better because it sounds really interesting. I do vibe with the 'organic' and immersive way a lot of us were pushed into learning AC's movement systems as a result of just, _playing_ the games in order from AC1 and forward, though. There was a parallel there between Player and Desmond, where each would stack knowledge and skills from the Assassin you'd _just_ Synced with and be still armed with that muscle-memory when you moved onto the next one.

@@LeoKRogue I think they're saying that the older games allowed you to make and recover from mistakes and they liked that because it lent to a sense of immersion. In hitman, when you mess up the game isn't literally over but it is sort of conceptually over. In OG AC when you mess up there's quick consequences but then you recover and get back to it.

@@trashee973 im not really sure about what im saying either lol, but thats pretty much it. playing hitman made me feel like i was in a cage, i was forced to either play the "hardcore" way and spend many days repeating the same level to practice and get information to complete the assassination challenges, or i focused only on the opportunities, and the game handed everything to me. it felt mechanic, lacked immersion, and if i got detected i was forced to reset. i never had that moment where you go "woah thats cool" playing hitman. parkour on earlier AC games was different. you feel like a new assassin, jumping from rooftop to rooftop for the first time. exploring the map this way was very exciting. you gain experience on tombs and optional challenges that improve your parkour, but if you failed, most of the times you would simply loose time or fight some enemies instead of dying or having to reset. mistakes had consequences that kept the gameplay flow going. completing a tomb very fast because of your skills felt good, and grabbing a ledge after a fall that you thought meant certain death felt very good too. it felt alive, dynamic, you could adapt to changes like an assassin would.

Playing Unity with randoms can occasionally reveal the same with regard to stealth, too. ^_^ How many times have you been exposed by some matchmaking partner who just runs in, completely impatient?

Lovely.

It's such a noticeable difference, right? And it makes sense: when you're falling through the air, the only control you have over your character is their grab direction. You want to always be in control of your character, so you should never refuse to use that ability if you need it.

In theory, yeah!

Yep. Knowing how to move the way you want makes such a huge difference in how fun it is to play.

Yeah, they both do a different thing really well. The 2017-2022 era leans hard on accessibility and ease-of-use as its claim to fame, but I find myself thinking that while they're great for general moving around without thinking about it much, they're harder to control in the moments you need it most, like when you need to precisely and quickly get to a very specific spot under time-pressure. Because of that they're ironically less accessible to me, personally.

@@LeoKRogue that’s true, control is a huge factor as well. Which, if you asked me, unity is lacking a little bit.

I would love that, for sure. Who knows what's going through their head right now though, I'm not sure I've seen a game discard one of the things it was famous for so readily before.

Yup, exactly the kind of idea I'm talking about! :D

I'd like that. That's basically the ideal, everyone can agree that Unity's animations look quite beautiful, while AC1-Rev's input-response is the fastest in the entire series. Combine the two to the best degree possible, and it'd probably make for something really enjoyable to both see for the first time, _and_ get better at over many hours of gameplay.