 What's up everybody? I'm The Hook. And I'm The Blade. And I'm The Elegant Design. And together we're... You Know. Welcome to the White Hook Wolfcast, a show about all things River Raids. I'm your host Lawson, joined by your host Tim, as well as the elegant design herself, White Wolf Whispers. Hello, hello, hello. Just to get this out of the way, Tim, is there anything you need to tell us about home fries? Like how you've eaten so many home fries? Don't do any more than four potatoes at once. I learned this the hard way. How many days in a row have you just been eating home fries? I think this is day four. It's just breakfast, lunch, and dinner and snack and midnight snacks. Yeah, I eat a home-fried granola bar for my snack. No, I've usually been making eight potatoes a day. So four when I wake up and four before I go to bed. That's a lot of potato. It's just kind of... I don't know. I've been on a home fry kick. Whenever I found the perfect method for a quesadilla, I couldn't stop making quesadillas. It's just, I don't know. And so now I just can't stop making home fries until I ultimately get bored of them. I think all of us out there listening to this can relate to that experience of eating eight potatoes per day. What's less exciting is just before recording, I dunked one half of my earbuds into my drink. And I'm super worried that I'm gonna get fucking electrocuted in the middle of recording. You gotta keep your earbuds in your ears where they belong, my guy. If we hear you just shout all of a sudden, we'll keep going, don't worry. We'll call 911, but we'll keep recording. So we'll make sure we're safe. Yeah, that works. Yeah, don't worry. You're not going to get electrocuted. I don't think there's enough current flowing through a pair of earbuds to shock somebody. I think you'd be all right. I might be talking about my ass. Any electricians out there, feel free to comment. But I do feel like I know a bit about the subject just because I spent my entire childhood being deathly afraid of electrocution. I don't know why. It was my main fear. My parents had bought me when I was like, I was like three. They bought me this really badass, wall-mounted, multi-disk CD player. It had like LED lights on it. It looked fucking cool. And it was purely for me to like listen to KIDSBOP with. And like I could put a different KIDSBOP CD in each of the slots. Any slot? Hotswap KIDSBOP. It would be great. So you had KIDSBOP 3, 4, 5, 6 all night ready to go? Yeah, 100%. And I started, like I just, I started reading the manual that came with the CD thing. And there was, there was like a warning on the first page that said like, you know, it's like your standard warning of like, don't get it wet. Like don't drop it in the bathtub. Don't put it in your mouth. You'll get electrocuted. And I was overcome with fear immediately that like, I would just be sleeping and like it would start raining. And the presence of water in the adjacent to my house. Are you sleeping outside? No. I was sure that the CD player was going to like shock me to death in my sleep. It's, it's funny how much, how much just real estate in your, in your home and how much technology goes into, used to go into just playing CDs. And that technology is completely obsolete now. It's incredible. No, my parents were upset though, because that thing was not cheap. And I was too afraid to even have it in my room anymore. So they had to get rid of it. They just put it in their car. I think they just sold it. I don't remember. But I've never lived that down. They're still upset about it. I bet it'd be pretty dope if you could play the Tron soundtrack on one of those things. I have it on vinyl. I can do that now. The Tron sound track. Oh vinyl. You get lots of really cool things on vinyl. Vinyls overrated. I, I like vinyl just as like a collector thing. I don't even have a record player. A collector. Exactly. I don't have to play any of my vinyls. I just, those like shitty $30 record players that you can buy with that are like half suitcase, half record player. They're not like, they're not going to work properly. You need like a really expensive one for it to actually hear the difference. I feel like, I don't know, maybe not. Well, yeah, it's the, it's the needle. You need a really good needle. Gotta have a good needle. Don't we all? Speaking of good needles, and by that I mean not related to this at all. I got, I had to, I feel like I need to update you guys on something real quick. This is just going to be something I wanted to talk about real quick on the show. Okay. I went to the doctor and I got some tests done and right before we started recording this, I got a call from my doctor and he said, listen Lawson, I have bad news. You have unspent sink points. That is so funny. I honestly thought like I was like for a second I was like, wait, I thought we're talking about river raids. What the fuck is, what are you talking about Lawson? Did you get some bad news? I thought that too. Lawson, are you going to be sick for another two months? Dude, I'm maybe, I don't know. I just know that I have unspent sink points and there's nothing they can do about it. That's funny because a lot of times I'll see it on the screen as unsink spent points and I'll say it backwards every single time. Unsink spent points. That'd be a worse score to get from my doctor, I think. Well, it's not, it's just like, it's just like Valhalla. You have all those stupid mastery points or your, your skill level points, just hanging up there on the screen all the time. Just chilling in the fucking upper right hand corner for no reason. God damn. It's like, I know how many skill points I have. No, I have them. I'm not about to spend them, so fuck away. But I mean, the Unity one's more offensive because it'll give you that pop-up even when you don't have enough sink points to spend them on anything. To spend it on anything, yeah. I have two fucking sink points. I can't buy anything with that. Exactly. It's like, why is this here? But yeah, I did, I did want to mention River Raids. Wolfie, have you done, have you done any River Raids? Yeah, I have completed the first two maps. Oh, wow. I've got most all of the Black Flag stuff, of course. Yeah, I've got the last map to finish up. I pretty much couldn't do it for very long. I did a bit of it. I did a couple runs, and I was like, oh yeah, this is just the whole, this is it. This is all there's going to be. I grabbed the Jackdaw shields or whatever. I grabbed the sail, but that's, yeah, can't do it. It's too, it's too shitty. Tim, do you remember when we were talking about like, hey, wouldn't it be great if when you're doing these Raids in the game, in the base game in England? Well, in Eastern England, whatever the fuck, Noah. We were talking about how if there was any sort of gameplay element of having to keep your crew protected or they die, but it doesn't matter because you can just, there are no bodies and there's no crew management. There was no gameplay system. It was just a place where you go and you do combat. And then you do things, right? So they said, what if we actually did implement a system that added gameplay to that experience? And so you have like a crew of eight yoms viking, that they have health bars, they can die in battle and be retired. You can loot things that you can use to like customize your shit. What if we actually made that a form of gameplay, and then we relegated it to a completely external mode of gameplay separate from the actual main world, where you have to like build a special building in your hut, and then go on river raids through different rivers in Western England, and it's completely extraneous. And all that you'll get for wasting your time on this is like, I don't know, I think there's an armor set. I think that's it. A little bit of supplies. A little bit of supplies. And now a whole external marketplace for shit through that building that you can only get the resources for by doing river raids. So it's kind of like a tiny mobile game has been affixed to the thigh of Assassin's Creed Valhalla surgically, and it's just there now being awful. Yeah, it has nothing to do with the story. It's absolutely nothing to do with the story. And I don't even use them. I'll go to a location. I'll go to a place. I'll leave my boys on board the ship. Yeah. I'll run in, I'll run in, kill everybody myself. And then, and only then, when everybody is dead. Yeah. Then I'll sound the horn, bring everybody in so I can finish looting, and then I'm done. Going on to the next place. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds pretty awful. It's pretty dog shit. It's kind of repetitive. It was kind of fun at first, but yeah, it's a little repetitive. You describe it like when I just hear river raids, and like when you first were describing it, I was kind of like, wow, interesting. So anyone that buys this game post river raids are now going to have raids on the waterways in which you take to get to different locations. That's not even what it is. It's just it's. No. Okay. It feels weirdly redundant to me on the level that like river raids are something you can do in the base game that exists in the world and have since launch. But now there is a river raids mode that has its own map, its own currency, its own gameplay systems. So am I doing a river raid or am I doing a river raid? You know what I mean? Like what's going on? It's pretty fucked up. Valhalla keeps getting worse. But we are not here to talk about Valhalla. We're here to talk about unspent sink points. Yes. First question for both of you. Unity, love it or hate it? Love it. Hate it. I'm somewhere in the middle, but I'm leaning towards hate it. I'm somewhere in the middle though. I kind of, I'm mixed. You love it, Wolfie? I do. I do. I very much do. Where does it compare? I know Black Flag is your favorite, but where does Unity stack up? In my ranking, it's around three or four. What's between Black Flag and Unity? Brotherhood and possibly revelations. Revelations and Unity kind of flip-flop back and forth. I'm good with the revelations, but Brotherhood being there, what is happening? People love Brotherhood, man. For like, it's like mass hysteria. How do so many people just love Brotherhood without realizing that it's not that great? If I had to guess, I'd say it's technically the most, it's like AC2 but more polished, so if you love that gameplay style, you like the polish. It's just I can't get past the redundant storyline and the sameness of it. Every year, people do a thread or a video about how Brotherhood is this masterpiece in the series and it's like, when are people gonna discover that it isn't? One day. One day we'll have our reckoning, Timothy. We'll show the non-believers. Let me ask you this. Do you love this game despite its flaws, or do you think it is not flawed? Oh, it's definitely flawed. It's definitely flawed. Yeah, it has a lot of control issues. It has a lot of, Arno is very sticky. He's very, he sticks to everything. He's like Spider-Man. Yeah, and snipers, they can see through walls. It has a lot of jank, it has a lot of wonkiness, but there's a lot of other things that I can look past all that. Gotcha. I kind of, I feel where you're coming from because for, I would say like the first half of the game as I was playing it on this playthrough, which was my first time playing through it from the beginning with a new save file all the way through because I, after the first time I played it, every other replay I've done, which there have been like two or three maybe, has just been going through the memories, like in the tracker, which is a little bit different. Yeah, because you don't get all the cut scenes when you do it that way. Yeah, and you, yeah, you don't have to deal with like the economy or the customization so much if you do it that way too. Which has its positives. But I felt like for the first half of playing this game, like I was, like the game was janky, but I felt all of a sudden for the first time in my life that I was like speaking the language of the jank. I was speaking jank fluently while playing Unity. Like I just knew where it was gonna be. I expected it. I could deal with it. I could predict it and work around it. You knew how to control it. Yeah, and it just felt like, okay, this is, this is not bad. This is pretty good. But as the game goes on, it just gets progressively jankier. The mission designs hold together like less well over time. And that second half is full of moments where I was like experiencing that classic Unity frustration of wanting to throw my controller out the damn window. So, so I get where you're coming from. I hear you, I hear you. Yeah. Tim, how was this playthrough compared to, to some of your previous ones, if you've had any? Well, I haven't, this is my first time playing it through since launch. Yeah. So I played it when it came out. And then I was, that was it. I was satisfied. Didn't want to do it again. So this is my second playthrough from beginning to end. I couldn't wait for it to end. It was pretty much like my experience with AC3. Like, I just could not wait. Like I played more of it so that I could not, it would mean less days of having to play it. Well, here's the thing. There's a lot about Unity that I want to like. And there's a lot about Arno. Like to me, Arno is like, I don't know. It feels like the Assassin's Creed character that like should be my favorite. And I feel like they dropped the ball, but there's so much about Arno that I do really like, but there's equally amount of things I don't like. And so ultimately like, I don't like Arno. And I don't, he doesn't, he doesn't pop up even on my top five of AC characters. And there's a lot about just like conceptually. And it's like, I don't even think he's like, I know a lot of the like criticism early on was that like, oh, he's just an Ezio clone. I don't think so. No, no. I've never thought that either. There's nothing, like sure. He's a young brash kid pretty much, and he's like getting himself into trouble, but that's it. Like he's not Ezio. And honestly, going through this playthrough, okay, up until the title sequence, I think the Unity intro, up until when you start the game, you hit the Helix thing, and then up into the title sequence is pretty great. Ultimately. I disagree. I'm not even saying that like, I love the like two dead dad shit or whatever. I'm just saying like, Yeah. There's something about the tone that seems to be like hitting its mark, but I don't want to get too far away from Arno specifically, I guess, but when I was playing this and I was seeing the Templar Codex and he was putting it in the ground and everything, there was just something about the tone of this game that at this very moment, it's perfect. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's unmatched. It didn't stick throughout, which kind of speaks to how this game is kind of like, kind of feels like on a story level, like a Frankenstein Assassin's Creed experience, because there's just so much, it just feels like stitched together body parts. Wolfie, how do you feel about Arno? I adore Arno. I don't know if it's just because he needs a lot of help and I find myself wanting to help him. He has abandonment issues and I just want to give him a hug, tell him it's going to be okay. As Dan Janot said, I mean, Arno's damaged goods. Yeah. We're hitting on something that I really noticed about Arno in this playthrough. I liked Arno considerably less on this playthrough than I ever have in the past. Mainly because I feel like he's not a very active protagonist and typically in a story, like, well, let's compare it to say Ezio. Once Ezio puts on the assassin outfit, he's in control of the narrative, at least as far as we, the audience are concerned. Of course, there is the later reveal that like, all of his friends were helping him out, part of the assassins, but that doesn't really take away from his agency. He puts the suit on, he learns how to do things, he carries out the assassinations. They're all very deliberate choices that he's making. And Arno, to an extent, yes, he's making choices, usually in many cases, as we know, they're against what the Brotherhood wants him to do. But it always feels like he's just pursuing the last lead that he's received without ever really questioning any of the information he gets or making choices on any line of logic, other than what's going to get me to avenging Delacere. Right. He's not putting the pieces together himself. Yeah. He just stumbles upon a piece of the puzzle and he's like, well, I guess I'm going to go kill this guy. There are scenes where he talks to the Brotherhood and they're like, well, this is what you should do, Arno. And he's like, okay. And then he leaves and he goes, has coffee with Elise. And Elise is like, actually, this is what you should do, Arno. And he's like, well, okay. And I just never feel like I'm doing what Arno wants to do. I feel like I'm doing what other people want Arno to do. And there's never a moment in the story where he clicks into being active and shaping the narrative as opposed to just reacting to it. And that just feels like bad writing to me. I agree. Yeah, very much. He's just like Marquis de Sade. He's like, well, hey, you should go here and do this. And he's like, all right, I guess. All right, I guess. All right, I guess. All right. And then, you know, it's like, and it's like, it's a symptom of, I think, a bigger problem too, where I would like to pose this argument. Okay. Here's my here's my hot Arno take. Are you ready? Arno is not a character. Arno is not a character. Arno is a plot device. I think that every single thing Arno ever says or does has is so transparently for the sake of moving the plot in a particular direction that he never has like the very base elements that make someone a character, in my opinion. Like you have to have a consistent, you know, motivation. You have to have a consistent ideological framework. You have to typically have certain assumptions about the world that stay the same or that are challenged or changed by the narrative. I just don't think Arno is any more of a character than any of the like one note motherfuckers on the Brotherhood Council. He's just not, he's not a character. I don't know if anyone's a character in this story, except maybe Elise. You're touching on something that I think is the biggest problem with Unity. And it's that Arno, the expectation out of a Assassin Templar love story is not that they are just like putty and they're constantly like or at least Arno is and he's constantly being molded and crafted into whatever Elise wants him to or the Brotherhood wants him to in that moment as you were saying, you know. So the expectation that's set out when you are doing an Assassin Templar, either love story or just team up type of story is that there's going to be the ideological challenges and they're going to have to work through that somehow. The biggest problem with Unity is that they don't do that. Or that they'll have to be working cross purposes to each other. But since Arno's only like actual concrete goal at any point in the story is to avenge de la Serre, he's never at cross purposes with Elise. They're always on the same side. Yes, yes, very, yeah, you hit it exactly because it's not like Arno's goal in the world is to rid the Templars out of Paris. Right. He is, and so, but that would create a conflict of the Elise because, oh, she's a Templar. Yeah. So that would be interesting. Right, yeah, because it's like, oh, shit, I actually, I don't want to kill Elise, but that's kind of what I've sworn to do. And so his main goal is just, I want revenge, I want to avenge de la Serre and that's it. And so where that leaves us is Arno's an assassin when he needs to be and Arno's not an assassin when he needs to be. It just, you should have these conversations between Arno and Elise where they are at odds and they should be so stubbornly assassin and Templar. And it's funny because you could kind of suggest, well, Elise is true to herself, Elise is a Templar, not really. She doesn't have any Templar allies. She is nothing. Right. She is constantly without allies and she's also fighting other Templars. She's not fighting assassins. You know what I mean? Her whole goal in the game is to kill Jerma another Templar. Like, she's not even shooting herself anyway. The whole, I think that they've really tried to present the peace between assassins and Templars by making it so that Arno isn't always an assassin and Elise isn't always a Templar. I mean, she is a Templar, but the whole coup has basically destroyed anybody that she could have had as an ally. So she doesn't have anybody left. Right. And she's not a threat. Except for Arno. Yeah, and that makes her not a threat. Also what you're hitting on, Wolfie, that I think also weakens the sort of narrative effectiveness of the story is that the whole thing is very mired in this political situation with assassins and Templars. And I never feel like the weight of that situation or the context for that situation is very well communicated. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I feel like in that first mission where you are at the party and you can hear all these conversations, you know what I'm talking about? Oh yeah, the Templars are there. Yeah, the Templars are there. You can hear them talking. I feel like I can hear Mirabeau and De La Serre talking about we should have a truce. Well, that's at the convention or when Arno is running from Victor and Hugo. Yeah. He overhears Mirabeau and De La Serre. Is that the moment the truce begins or am I misinterpreting? No, I think that they've been working on it for a while. Okay. And I think they've been working on it. It's just Arno overheard the word truce. And I mean, again, at that point, he didn't even know assassin Templars. He was like, fuck you guys, I'm going to go get some pussies. I'm just thinking like we're supposed to understand that the murder of De La Serre is the moment that it goes to shit because if the Grandmaster of the Templars has been murdered, then this truce may be up in flames, so to speak. If we are no longer aligned with someone who we could trust, then maybe there's no truce. And that should be like a big deal. But I feel like, one, that little conversation you over here indicates, it's not like they've been in the state of peace for maybe even longer than a day, if that's when they're hammering it out finally and then he gets murdered at the same time. I don't get that part. I don't get how avenging that murder is even really in the interests of the Brotherhood themselves, per se. Well, I don't know why they care. I think the idea is that they don't know that there is this kind of like rift between the Templars and so they feel like if they avenge his death then perhaps the good Templars will still be at truce with them. It's sloppy. It's clunky. Well, that's the other thing too, is Mirabeau is the only one who wants this. The rest of the council doesn't give a fuck. So it's only Mirabeau. It's only Mirabeau. The whole story is built on this very complex interfactional politics that I feel like never comes across as well as it should for it to be justifying so much of the narrative. And there's such an unsatisfying element to all the assassinations because it's not like Arno is there because he hates Templars. He's on autopilot. The whole time is on autopilot because whatever will make a leaves love me again. It's such a wasted opportunity for a story like this because I feel like you could tell a story where it's like, wow, their love is so powerful that it bridges a divide between the Templars and assassins. Holy shit. Or ultimately it doesn't, right? But it's so disappointing because with having a leaves like orphaned from the Templars and Arno being kicked out, they're both homeless to their respective factions. And so that's not a truce. A truce between who? Two people who don't represent their individual groups. You know what I mean? As far as the Templars of Paris are concerned, Elise is a bitch. You know, like, you know what I mean? They don't like her. Yeah. Yeah, they want her dead. No, I mean, you're right. And there's also the whole mystery structure that they aim for where the idea is each time Arno kills somebody, you get a piece of the story, you get a piece of the puzzle, or at least you understand why that person was culpable. But that structure prevents as you just, and this is something I only just realized, we don't care when Arno has to go kill a guy because the only thing we have to go on that we're killing XYZ person is because we've seen them say something weird in the last victim's memories. And typically we're not understanding the full extent of their responsibility until we see their memories when we kill them. So we're literally not getting the full story for why we should kill this person until after we kill this person. Well, that's also true with the murder of La Frenier. I'm sorry, I don't want to be part, so I'm going to kill these. Arno shouldn't have killed him. He didn't know that. That guy's on Elise's side, and Elise hears like, there should be a conflict between Arno and Elise that Arno just fucking stabbed him. There's no conversation about it. Oh shit, you just killed my last ally in France? Right on. Yeah, but he didn't know that until after he had killed him and then saw his memories that, yeah, he was trying to save things. I know, I'm just saying like, Elise should have reason to be mad at Arno because he just killed the only person who could probably help Elise. Yeah, exactly. And something that I've often criticized about the game, I've made this point many times in like reddit posts, conversations, what have you. I've always said that like, it's a bad idea to make the villain of your story. Like make who the villain is a mystery. If you still want to have that sort of villain hero relationship where there's like a big showdown at the end and you fight the villain and it's dramatic, like if you want to do that, don't make it a mystery. I do think though, when I when I replayed, like they almost do it well in the sense that they follow the typical mystery convention of like in any mystery story, the ultimate culprit is someone you've already met. And that they do well. Like we meet Jermon, he's a silversmith and he seems like he's just caught up in this. And maybe if there were other like compelling candidates for like, oh, that person could be the culprit, that person could be the culprit. Like if Arno was actually following leads in the traditional mystery sense and not just as a plot motivation to get him to kill the next person on the list, then it would have worked out maybe really well. Many other Assassin's Creed stories after have done the same thing, but even worse, like Origins and Odyssey, both have mystery villains that you end up being completely meaningless. And so I give Unity a bit of retroactive credit for that. No, the end of Origins with the big bad villain. No, no. It's a joke. Straight up. Yeah, I completely agree, Lawson. It's like if only there are other people that you met throughout the game that were actually candidates for being the villain, because it's like, there's everyone else, you're slaughtering. Eventually, you're going to get to the fucking prison. And I want to go back to something you said, Lawson. You were talking about each time he kills someone, he gets a little bit, a piece of the mystery. Yeah. It's almost laughable how literal the Assassins are just taking Arno's eagle sense visions. Yeah, I don't know what was up with that. Literally, he's like, there's another piece to this puzzle. Someone else ordered De La Serre's murder. I looked through his memories. What are you basing that off of, Arno? Oh, well, when I killed him, I saw a vision of it. Oh, OK. Nice. Yeah. Literally, he says explicitly in a scene, he's like, when I went through his memories. What? Hello. Excuse me. You did what now? Arno? Wait, Arno. I thought you were basing this off of empirical data you found. No, I went through his memories. Sifted through like a file. Oh my God. Yeah. And also, the obvious thing is that it's the laziest way to do a mystery story where literally just killing a person gives you the evidence. Like, you don't actually have to look for it. You never have to put thought into what that evidence is, how it gets left somewhere, how it gets found, the way that a mystery normally does. Arno's just fucking throwing darts on a map. He's just like, all right, well, let me kill you and see if you did it. And they're like, stop killing people we don't ask you to. And he's like, no, never. I need to find out who killed Dennis there. I think the moment that really clenches my assessment of Arno for me is there is nothing that makes me want to turn this game off more than drunk Arno. I fucking hate the entire drunk Arno section because there's not a single ounce of anything in my body that believes on any level that Arno cares so deeply about anything he's involved in, be it the brotherhood or his Elise drama, that what he's going to do now is get shit-faced and go on a week-long bender. Like, none of that makes sense to me. I don't think that's believable on any metric for who Arno theoretically supposedly is as a character, which just tells me like, yeah, this is the part where the writer said, we need like a third act low point. We need all to seem lost because that's how stories usually work. Let's just have him get drunk, go on a bender. We don't need to do anything interesting with him. Oh, see, I disagree with that. Okay. Yeah, I actually like the bender scene. No. I like the, because as he's going through the palace, he's seeing old memories of basically a happier time in his life. Yeah. Of course, he sees his dad and then he sees Elise and the whole scene where he's following Elise through the party. I just see it as Arno that's really his low point. Elise basically has told him she doesn't want him around. He's like, fine, I'll just go. He's been thrown out of the brotherhood. Fine, I'll just go. Again, it's abandonment issues. He's feeling sorry for himself. He doesn't know what else he can do and he goes and he gets drunk. And then it's only after he loses his dad's watch and he has the whole fight with the guy who, the soldier who stole his watch and Elise shows back up again. And he's basically like, what do you want? You only come around when you want something. So he's feeling pretty low. I do like that while he's drunk, there is that whole playable sequence where he's like, I really need wine. So he kills 12 people to get some wine. He really needed his wine. That's just how these games work, but it was pretty funny. Yeah, you know, it's like, I appreciated Arno being like, oh, you must want something. Because it's like, oh, wow, Arno is actually speaking for himself. Oh, character conflict. That's interesting and cool. Then immediately he's like, all right, let's go to France, I guess. Yeah, it kind of does go straight from like, you're just using me to like, well, I know you're just using me, but let's go. Yeah. Come on, let's have a fun talk. And it's like, again, oh, who let him keep his assassin gear? Oh, I don't know. Fuck off. Here's your fan blade. Good night. Like, how does he end up being an assassin again at the end anyway? We don't get to see that. No, we don't. And that's very disappointing. It's like that whole time that he's drunk and on a week-long bender, his assassin gear is just in a trunk somewhere. Okay, I just think like on a storytelling level, it's like the assassins as a concept don't matter much to Arno's character. Like it's not really part of his arc that he joins them or that he eventually rejoins and becomes a master assassin. Like none of that is speaking to any character transformation that we can see. It's purely about, well, we need that to happen at the end of this game so that it seems like there was an arc, but they're not actually earning that. He's not even a true assassin at all, even when he's inducted. He's just there because it's a means to an end. And Wolfie, to your point, I do think that him being ousted from the Brotherhood could have been a moment where he realizes his fuckery and perhaps uses that to grow, but he's ousted and he's just like, he just kind of looks at it like they're like, they just don't understand, you know, like he's just misunderstood. And that to me is a very self-centered way to look at it. And he's so deserved to be kicked out. He did. Yeah. He totally did. There were three, I think three assassination missions you go through where he never once went to the council and said, you know, this is what I found out. Yeah, he's the worst assassin. He's the worst. And they're like, you know, if you assassinate people without our permission, that just basically makes you a murderer. So you are just a guy that murders people. Yeah, you could be doing all of this without the assassins. Clearly you can because you kill Latush without any assassin involvement at all. You just go and stab his ass. So why are the assassins even present in the game at all? And it's not like they help him or he helps them. Like they don't even care about his revenge quest. They're just like, hey, if he wants to kill Templars, let him kill Templars. Dude, and that speaks to like the best line of the game because he's fucking like, this is why I joined the brotherhood. And some fuckface is like, yeah, not because you believe in our cause, but for revenge. And it's like, yeah, you motherfucker. You're going to be like, yes, listen to him. Listen to him. He's accurate. See, I think Arno just really wanted to belong. I think he really wanted to belong. And so when the opportunity came up to join the assassins or to join the brotherhood, he was like, hey, look, I get to belong to something. I do not think that he wanted to belong because immediately about hearing about the assassins, he's like, okay, well, your cult sounds like a fine bunch, but no, thank you. But as soon as Balak is like, well, hey, how are you going to save Elise without skills? Then he joins on. He doesn't want to belong to them. So it's not like he's like, oh, wait a second. My dad was an assassin and you're one too, and you're asking me to join? Hell yes, I'll join you. Yes, please. I need purpose. No, he just, he does it because, well, I guess if I can learn how to stab people, then I can go and save Elise. Nobody, he doesn't, he doesn't join them. He doesn't join them. And it's not until after he escapes the Basti and he goes to Elise, and Elise again is like, get away from me. I'm not going to deal with you. And again, he's feeling sorry for himself. And he's just drinking a bottle outside of the San Chapelle and then he finds the sanctuary. I think you are right to a certain extent, Wolfie. Like I think what you're observing of like abandonment issues and like feeling a need to belong, there's an argument to be made that that's subtextually there. I just don't feel like it actually makes sense as the motivator behind the actions that he takes in the story. I don't think it's consistent that every choice he makes or whatever is out of a sense of belonging because I think there are a number of choices that don't line up with that motivation at all and a number of alternate motivations that could just as easily explain some of the choices that do line up with it. So I think there's a worthwhile question to ask which is like, I find Arno to be, he's very likeably acted. He's very like, you know, he has a great character design. How much of the character that you or anyone else would associate with Arno is actually there in the text versus how much of it can we kind of connect dots ourselves and how much credit can we really give the writers for creating a character that so many of those things that we might consider to be foundational attributes of the character aren't present in the story. There are things we have to kind of connect ourselves, I feel like. Things we perceive ourselves. Right. Things we perceive to be, I don't know. I just, again- I'm not trying to push you on blast. I'm just trying to explain where I'm coming from, you know? I do see a lot of what you're saying. The story definitely is lacking. It could have been told a lot better. Plus too, a lot of people say that the whole there's not enough of the French Revolution portrayed in the story. And honestly, I'm kind of glad for that. After the Bender scene, when he and Elise go back and they're trying to discredit Robespierre and then the whole thing with them trying to find Robespierre so they can get to German, that part is boring to me. I don't like the whole thing, the whole scene where they're trying to, like I said, they're trying to discredit him. The narrative is all over the place. You've got the political, you've got the internal strife between the assassins and the Templars, and you've got the love story with Arnaud and Elise. I think you said it earlier. It's kind of like a Frankenstein story. It's too many pieces put together. And I want to say one more thing about that Arnaud and Elise thing and then we can move on from the Arnaud abandonment issues discussion. I just, I wanted to add, and not to backtrack too much, but yes, Arnaud gets rejected by Elise and then he's like, he's probably feeling a little low and that's why he just decides to go to the assassins. He's even just drinking alone on a rooftop. So yeah, he's feeling pretty low and that's why he gives it a shot. What I will challenge on is, it's not just that because Elise rejected him and now he feels lost. It's more of that, oh darn, Elise thinks I'm responsible. How can I make this up to her? And that's why he goes to the assassins. He even says in that moment, is that a fancy way of saying I need your help? Because he's not, he's not seeking out the assassins because he wants to become one now. He's seeking them out because they might have the means to where he can avenge Elise's father and hopefully recapture her affection. Right, and at one point they even ask him, are you doing this for revenge? And he's like, no, I'm doing this for redemption. He's trying to get back in the good graces of Elise. Yeah, there is that guilt element of like, I was late with the letter and now he's dead and I need to atone for that. That is part of it for sure. Can we talk about Balak? Yeah, I just wanted to talk about Balak because he's the best thing in this game. And that's not saying much. Do you like Balak too? He's great. He's really well acted and he's a fun character. It's just why the fuck does he end every single sentence with pisspot? I don't like it. It's just grating at a certain point. Stop saying pisspot. It's not that funny. It's not that funny, Ubisoft. It's just the word pisspot. Jesus fucking Christ. They're like, oh my God, what if he said pisspot? Jesus Christ. Sorry, continue. Balak is great. Yeah, Wolfie, what do you feel about Balak? I like him to a degree. When they're having the confrontation up on the rooftop and he's sitting here naming off all of these past experiences on how they had to tear down the brotherhood in order to build it back up again. I don't agree with all of his examples. He was kind of wrong. Nope. Manre Gionni's SEO did not stab his dad and rebuild the fucking order in Italy. That's not what happened. Nope. No. It's weird. It's weird, Wolfie, because in the line, it's honestly just poor writing because in the line, he's like, do you think this is the first time that the assassins have had to purge their leadership? And then he says, do you think this is the first time that the assassins have both themselves back up from nothing? So his first example of Leventine is accurate for purging leadership, but then the rest of his examples are all about bringing the order back up from the ashes. And so it's poor writing because you would think that his examples include both of those things, but they don't. Yeah, it's two separate things. Yeah, that's a good point. I like Balak. Yeah, Balak is a good character. And you're right. He's well-acted. I want to highlight part of why I feel like the Unity intro is so striking to me. I love so much, and it speaks to how well-acted the character is, but I love so much when Balak is chastising Arno because of the leap of faith. He's like, this is the purview of every assassin boy, and I love it because the music and the atmosphere and the urgency of that scene is so well done. And I feel like, yes, I need to jump off this building. And here's the thing I love about the line. Dude, Unity makes me feel like I need to jump off a building. So here's what I love about the line, ultimately, is it's not that he's mad at Arno because he is worried about the jump. He's mad at Arno because of his attitude about it. So if Arno was like, wow, okay, this is a hard jump. I don't know if I'm going to do this. It's different than saying it's impossible because the leap of faith isn't so much about having the strength or precision to pull it off. It's about having the willingness to do it. Because Arno is so unwilling to do it in that moment, that's why he gets upset. And then he works up the courage and he does it. It's great. If only the rest of the game was like that. I also want to say, well, and I'm not going to spend too much time on this complaint because it's been made many times, but this game, part of the reason I disagree with liking everything up to the title card is that it's a very redundant introduction. There are three different beginnings to the story, essentially. There's the whole intro sequence in the medieval times. There's Arno then doing his thing with the... He's getting the watch from the two thugs and he's trying to deliver a letter and failing. And then there's breaking out of the Bastille and all these three moments feel like they could be the start of the game. I don't know why they aren't. This game could have started in the Bastille for all it would matter in terms of giving you a reason to actually do the tutorials and stuff. There are three combat tutorials in this game that it just feels like people weren't communicating with each other when they were setting it up. I agree. I agree. I don't know what's up with that. I have one nitpick about that leap of faith. It could have been so much more impactful. It could have met so much more if they hadn't allowed us or allowed Arno to do it off of the church when he's looking for the carriage. Which is great because you have controlled descent. So it's not like you're fucked if you get to a high point. Like if you just couldn't do a leap of faith, then congratulations. You have to control descent your way until you acquire that skill from Belac. So it's like, I don't know why they didn't do it. 100%. Up there at the top of the church, you actually get the prompt to do the leap of faith, not the controlled descent to get down. I agree. It would have been nice if it had gotten to the top and then Danjanot was like, yeah, I didn't think this one through. And then they just controlled the descent. Like that'd be awesome. It would be great. Yeah. Oh, I was going to have one more thing to say about story, which is that Germain sucks as a villain because I was trying really hard on this play through to like pay close attention to like what he actually wants, like what his motivation is. He talks a lot about like, I'm bringing Jacques de Malay's vision to life. And it just seems like he wants to control the world, I guess, or with banks, I think, I don't, I think he wants to, because I guess the Templars were, you know, in the de Malay times, they were a, you know, they were kind of a banking service. Maybe he's thinking like, the Templars will control the money and therefore control the world or like, he just wants to just institute Templar world domination. I don't know. It's just, it kind of sucks. It's shitty. I don't like it. And there's also not much connection between him being a sage and any of that. Like, he talks about these visions. It almost feels like, shouldn't it have more to do with Aita and with that storyline, whatever visions he's getting? Like, why is he getting de Malay visions? Is the implication that he's like a sage on a different level, like with de Malay, and they're both sages of a different isu? Like, I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Plus too, the, at that, in the beginning intro, we're not playing as Jacques de Malay. We're playing as some nobody guy who has to hide the sword and the codex. So we really don't have the connection between Germain and de Malay. Yeah. You just reminded me of something, Wolfie. It's so funny how Thomas, it's like, it's Carnelon, right? Carnelon. Carnelion? Carnelion. Carnelion. Well, okay. You can say it better than me. Something like that? Carnelion. It's funny how he's like clearly not able to get into the vault after the Templar guy locks it in. Like later in the game, Arno just walks up, turns it, and it's like, oh, it's open now. Cool. Nice. And yet that one assassin couldn't figure it out. Also, how is the sword of Eden factor into anything your mom wants to do? Because he has a, because it's a sword, he could use it. He's going to be like, time to rebuild the banks with my big ass sword. Lightning sword. Also, guys, I think the Napoleon introduction is like one of the best scenes in any Assassin's Creed game ever. That is such a good scene. 100%. It is incredible. I love that scene. I really enjoyed the Napoleon. The subtlety. Same they wasted him on fucking dead kings. The subtlety of it, of like him reaching for his pistol when Arno suggests that they're after the same thing. The way that he opens up the apple of Eden behind, like out of sight. It's so fucking good. And you know what? That happens right after you kill Black. That feels like a different game. Like that's what I'm saying. It's a fucking Frankenstein. Yup. It feels like a different experience. Like now all of a sudden I'm with Napoleon. It's like, and it sucks because Napoleon has no relevance to the story. And that was something that you were saying before. I know you don't, I know you were more in favor of this. But I think this game is so absent of the French Revolution history that I don't know what the fuck's going on ever. At any moment. At any moment. I don't know. Like in revelations, it's like a five minute thing. And you completely understand why the Byzantines and Ottomans are fighting who they are, who they represent. And obviously it's a less complex issue than the French Revolution. But the French Revolution is so absent to this game that I don't, like I have no context as to the world that I'm operating in. You know what I mean? It overcorrects the AC3 problem to where there's just no mention of history at all really. It's like Arnaud and Elise are in the hot air balloon and they're like, wow, France is tearing itself apart. And it's like, is it? I wouldn't know. I would like to know why. I think a lot of the side content though, yes it's side content, but if you do a lot of the side content, it does give you a little bit more of a feeling that there is a war going on. The various companion missions and the various, it's the little, they're blue or gray with the assassin logo missions on them. I can't think of what the other ones have. The Paris stories? Paris stories, yes, thank you. Yeah, those do tend to tie more into what's going on behind the scenes in Paris. Too bad they suck. Just kidding. Even like, I haven't touched Unity's side content since launch because I 100% of the game, well, that's not true. I 100% of it a few years later, like round one origins was coming out. And I haven't touched it since then, so I don't remember a lot of it, but not a lot of it is especially memorable. There's a lot of side content and most of it is just like, go here, do this, grab a thing, come back, kill that guy. Yeah, it feels very much crafted. It doesn't feel crafted in the world. It feels like they crafted the world in the mission. I did a murder mystery and I enjoyed it, but I hated the way that they presented the information on my screen. I hated that, like it was just, I hated the whole like, oh, do your eagle pulse and then go find it and then I'm gonna put a big block on your screen with text. You can't read it because the little pop-up box pops up right over the description of what's happening. Yes, it's like, okay, well, I'm just gonna fucking wait for my Creed points to fucking spend. Like Jesus Christ. Also, if they ever remaster Unity, please get rid of the Creed points for every single action I do. Stop it. Yeah. Every single thing I do. Creed points. Hey, congratulations. You just crouched. Have 100 Creed points. Yeah, it's like, I kill a guy and it's like, whoa, did you just jump off a building in Assassin's Creed? That's some fucking Creed points for it, bro. I also, hey, I have to go to the database to look at all your evidence. It's not fun. I don't like the UI in this game very much, but... But some of those murder mysteries are real puzzlers. They're fun. And some of them are the most obvious things in the world. Like it's a 50-50 crapshoot, whether you're gonna get a mission where it's like, hmm, the butcher has a lot of human body parts at his thing. I wonder if he's the one who did it, or if it's gonna be like, oh, there are five people who easily, equally could have done it. You have to find the one thing that sets one apart from the others. I have 100% of unity three times, I believe. Yes, I have. I have played the murder mysteries, like I played them for real the first time through, but after then, nope, I just, as soon as I find out who I can accuse, yep, that's the person. Wait, wait, so you can accuse the wrong person and you don't fail the mission? 100%. You can, yeah, you can accuse the wrong person. You can accuse all the wrong people before you get the right one and you'll still complete the mission. Whoa, okay. Yeah, you'll still complete the mission. I'm not sure if you get the reward. What I thought you were saying is that you can accuse the wrong person and then the mission just ends. No, no, I think you're, I think you're given other chances. Yeah. I just looked it up after the first time I did it. From then on, I just looked up, okay, yep, that's the person. Okay, yep. You're it. Fuck a Nostradamus enigma. Have you done that shit three times? Yep. Jesus Christ. And the Helix riffs as well. So are you wanting to talk more about gameplay now, Lassen? Yeah, I wanted to start by talking about the combat because I've always wanted to be a Unity Combat Apologist. Like there's something about it I find satisfying on a basic level and that I've often like defended like, hey, Unity Combat is better than people give their credit for. But I do feel like I know more about game design now that I can say absolutely not. It's pretty terrible. Just because like it's fun and satisfying to me when it's like one or two or three other enemies that I'm fighting. But when you're getting like gang banged by like 30 different bad guys, there's like no way to deal with it. So you don't get the impression that like, oh, if I was just more skillful or I had better gear, I could take on these mobs. But it's just that like the actual basic systems don't scale well to multiple combatants. You have like only a few actual tools in your roster as far as like things you can use during combat, moves, you know, there's like technically a heavy attack, but you're good luck using it. There's like staggering strike, I guess. But for the most part, it's just you got to you got to hit and you got to parry. And it gets really clunky, obviously, because of the animations. But when you have like the way the guns are designed, everything like that, it's just really fucking awful, especially because things that should happen instantly like say, I want to hit a smoke bomb or I want to dodge. That should happen instantly, but it wants to wait until you're done with whatever you'd already started doing in order for that to work. So like good luck dodging gunshots past a certain point. Good luck with handling these crowds. There's something to be said for, I guess that it incentivizes stealth because combat is so punishing that you don't want to fight. So you run away and you come back stealthy. And that's fair. But I would contrast it with something like Ghost of Tsushima where combat can be punishing and difficult. So you are encouraged to use stealth, but you never feel like getting out of a combat encounter would be impossible. You never feel like the game doesn't work with a certain number of combatants in play. There's a lot of like in the more recent Hitman games where you like in just a firefight, it's really hard. But if you're like using cover appropriately and like getting headshots and stuff like that, you can get out of a combat situation. And yeah, I completely agree with you. After a certain number of enemies, it gets really fucking just frustrating. I do like Unity Combat to a certain degree because I like how it's kind of based around fencing. I like how it looks in certain scenarios. It's very stylistic. It's very... It can be very cinematic at moments. And I do... Which is what I like about it. I do like two to three guys, but when you get a fourth and a fifth, it's almost impossible no matter what level you are. Well, that's not true, but it can get really difficult. In fact, cinematic is a great word because that really encapsulates what I love about Unity. Why I'm so kind of torn as far as whether I love it or hate it is that the tone and the atmosphere of the game, the vision for it is just so strong. Beautiful. All across the board. Beautiful. You know, it's like... You can almost see through the jank to visualize the game that they thought they were making or wanted to make but didn't really achieve. And that game would maybe be the best game in the series. It would be amazing because there's so much beautiful vision and just uniqueness in terms of the aesthetic, the mood, the tone, the presentation, the beautiful animations in terms of the cut scenes and the facial capture and just the cinematic feel. It just feels cinematic. I love that about this game, but yes, the janky gameplay just undermines it so significantly. I know that's kind of a harsh 90 degree from talking about the combat but I wanted to get that in there because I was worried it wouldn't... I mean, that's why I love the Unity Prologue so much is it's like the opening to a movie. It's awesome. And the tone is so well-realized there and that's when Unity starts to fail is when it loses sight of some of that execution on its tone throughout the game. It's not so much... Obviously, there's a lot of other issues, but that Unity Prologue, it's not great because of the writing because there's not much story going on there. It's just... It's all in the tone and atmosphere that it presents. Like, seeing Jack D. Limit... Jack D. Limit... Fuck. Jack D. Limit... Oh my god. Jesus. Jock D. Malay. Okay, I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it. Seeing the Grand Master... Seeing the Grand Master Templar order being burned at the stake, like, that's some cool shit. And seeing the reflection in the King's eye, like, that's awesome. In the eye. That is awesome. It's great. That is awesome. Oh, yeah. I remember... I remember playing that and like... These are the best graphics I've ever seen. They still are. I think that also, there's a lot of interesting parallels between this and Revelations, presumably because of the Alessandra Mancio, however it's pronounced, Alexander Amancio influence. Just that, like, I remember commenting on Revelations that it feels like a blockbuster movie. Everything from the music to the set pieces, Revelations feels like an action blockbuster. Unity is very close to that. Unity almost hits that. Like, it sort of recreates the experience of watching, like, a modern adaptation of, like, the Three Musketeers or the Count of Monte Cristo, where it's like, just take this French Revolution imagery and put it in the context of a Hollywood action adventure movie. You know, there are a lot of set pieces in Unity that work really well towards achieving that, and the tone is spot on. Unity, for me, is the game that, if I'm gonna just put on a game, just to run around in, I can put on Unity and I'm happy for hours. I can just run around in that game and just, you know, view all the beautiful vistas and, uh. It's the game I'm most likely to, if I just need to, like, if I'm just gonna run around in a game, I'm running around in Unity nine times out of ten. So it gets, like, booted up on my machine, like, at least once a year, so that I can just run around Paris and have a good time. More so than any other Assassin's Creed game, by far. The interiors, for example, are just, I mean, I say this on Reddit or whatever all the time, it's just pure eye candy. You've got beautiful tapestries and chandeliers and marble floors, and you can go into all of these buildings and just love it, love it. The interiors really add to making Paris feel like a living city. Yeah. Yeah. And the crowds. The fact that you can just, like, be running and, you know, every, I think it's one out of every four buildings you can enter. And so just the fact that you can be running and pretty consistently, you could just make a hard, like, you know, a hard right turn and you could probably land into a building somewhere. Like, that's cool. I like that a lot. And it really takes advantage of that when you're going from, like, rooftop to down into a building on the second floor and then running out the other end. It really works. And it's funny, because I wanted to perhaps feel differently. I don't like Paris. In the game or? In the game. I'm OK with it. I love Paris. I love that. I literally had an experience once where, like, I accepted a mission and the place I needed to go was 800 meters away. And I just was able to stay on rooftop for the entire 800 meters. Yeah. Like that. I can't say the same thing about any other Assassin's Creed game, really. A lot of people, when they say, you know, what game has the best parkour or the best, you know, free running, it's Unity. Yeah, well, that's not correct, but... For me, anyway. It's like, OK, look, if you're going to say that you have the most fun in Unity, that's fine. No, Unity has the best parkour. We don't have to get into it, but it is a fact. Not even a little bit. OK. It's funny, because there are parts of Paris that I genuinely think are, like, amazing, looking and beautiful, like, really well-crafted open world. And I like how dense it is. I like how dense it is and how you can always stay on buildings and whatnot. I just, there's something about it that I, like, the Notre Dame being, like, the centerpiece of the whole city, beautiful, amazing. Yes. Beautiful. The fact that one building is so huge and climbable and you can go inside of it, and it's amazing. It's awesome. I just, there's something about a lot of the city that I just, I don't love. And I'm not, I'm not saying that's bad or anything. You know, if people think Paris is the best Assassin's Creed city, I'm totally OK with that assessment. I did something about it that I don't like. I don't know what it is. I can't help you there. If you don't know what it is, I can't tell you why you're wrong about it. So I can't. It's like, there are parts about it that I love and, like, I love climbing the Notre Dame and stuff. It just, there's maybe, I don't know. I haven't yet put my finger on it. I was trying to, in this playthrough, I just, there's something about it that I don't love exploring. I don't know. It's weird. The stained glass windows. Oh, beautiful. And, oh, yes. Amazing. Yes. Yeah, they really, they really crafted this world very well. Yeah, the stained glass budget on this game must have been incredible. I remember reading somewhere that the rose windows in Notre Dame are copyrighted, so they couldn't exactly duplicate it 100%. So they had to create their own stained glass windows for Notre Dame. Wow, that's cool. Yeah. That's awesome. You know what's not awesome in this game? Stealth. Yes, stealth. What is up with that cover system? I know it's too sticky. What is that? Yeah, the cover system is not good, not good. Someone needs to take that cover system out behind the barn and grab a shotgun and just fucking put it out of its misery. I swear to God. I do like the fact that I think this was the first game that we had a dedicated crouch button. Pretty sure this was the first one. I do like that, and a lot of times I would do that instead of covering, or at least when I had to cover around a door. It was janky because it didn't seem to, it seemed like the cover status was more important to breaking line of sight. So I could be crouching behind something and still get spotted, but if I then am covered to that thing, I wouldn't get spotted, which feels weird because what is effectively the visual difference between me crouching behind something and, you know, sticking to it in the cover system? Not much, doesn't explain why I'm being seen now. So it's like just part of the jank or redundancy there. I was going to say, why didn't they let Arno whistle? Arno knows how to whistle. What the fuck? He knows how to whistle. We see him whistle when he's viewing the journal from Lafrenier's journal in La Halle. Whenever they were playing. Yes, Arno knows how to whistle. So why can't he whistle when he's... Imagine if the reason there's no whistles because Dan Janot just didn't know how to whistle. He's like, well, we wanted to put it in this game, but we wanted to stay authentic to Dan as a person. Yeah, it's like, how about you throw a really inconsistent cherry bomb? Yeah, fuck the cherry bomb. I think they wanted us to lure people with the whole line of sight thing, like, oh, switch between the cover and then they have to follow your silhouette. But it's like never predictable enough to actually reliably control. Here's another ridiculous part about the cover system itself, is that the cover kills are not, like, aren't invisible. If you think back to Bush, to foliage kills in Black Flag, they're always invisible and blended. And perhaps that's not super realistic, whatever, but you need those kind of leniences to enjoy the stealth system. I can't take advantage of the stealth system in the nudie because none of it makes me invisible. It's a little too harsh and unforgiving, you know what I mean? And ironically, if the stealth was flawless, then it would almost be okay that the combat sucks as bad as it does. Right. But because the stealth is equally janky, it just feels like the game does not work. And I go back to Black Flag because it has such great stuff. And a lot of that is because it gives you very clear rules to follow. And it gives you a lot of room to play and to take advantage of those and have fun. Larson, did Tim just acknowledge something good in Black Flag? Did I hear him say? Tim likes Black Flag. He just doesn't think it's the best one. Well, the more people praise it, the less I like it. I was going to say. No, I love the stealth. And I just have an issue with it being like an ultimate Assassin's Creed experience. I don't think it is. But this isn't the, what did you say? The Hook Black Pod Flag. Yeah, it's like. And so in this, cover kills will always get you caught. If people aren't even looking in your direction, you're fucked. So it's like, that's not something I can take advantage of and have fun with. Or the fucking double assassination only like works 30% of the time in my experience. Like how many times I've tried to do an air assassinate even with two targets highlighted just to watch Arno's dumbass kill one and get spear fucked by the other. That's ridiculous. Yeah. Or when the objective is you need three cover kills and it's like, okay, now I'm seeing and I'm going to have to run and hide again because I can't do anymore. It really all adds to the sense that like the moment to moment gameplay of unity just doesn't work. Like it's just not functional most of the time. And that's like the biggest problem with the game really. Yeah. But like we've said, if you learn to speak the language of the game. Yes, you learn to control it. You kind of have a good time. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it's, you know, it's worthwhile to look at, like where stealth has been good in these games because Lawson, it's kind of like I think a game makers toolkit. They did a video, they were talking about like they mentioned how in uncharted when you come out of cover for like a few seconds, you're invincible, you can't be shot. And that is an important lenience to where, you know, it allows you to feel powerful and allows you to actually kill some people from using the cover system effectively. There needs, there's like none of that in unity. They want you to have a terrible time. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, like, and AC is no stranger to those kinds of subtle, like tweaks and leniences, like, you know, how often do you look at a room and all of the guards are like helpfully looking away from your direction, you know, or, or consider how like classic assassins could fashion when you're using courtesans to distract guards, they completely blinds them to you, you know, and it's like, and when, and when Vahalak does it and you lure a drunk to some guards, they can still see you. It's like, come on, like give me some leniency, please. You know what I mean? Learn lessons from the past when these games were good. I also, Lawson, this is, this is the point that you made and, and, you know, I was feeling this, especially on my playthrough to where I just stopped buying things because I couldn't afford it because I can't play co-op and I can't make any money. The economy got thrown out of whack. Like, I feel like the existence of co-op really like looms over this game in an unpleasant way in a lot of facets, from the like those co-op skills that are useless to, you know, the, the customization system that's a little overboard to, yeah, the economy being fucking broken. I spent most of the game not being able to so much as like refill consumables. And it feels really strange when like, you can do, you know, your average side mission, your average side mission is going to get you like 400 francs and it's going to cost you like at a minimum 2000 to refill your consumables as much as 5000 once you get certain upgrades to the point where, yeah, later on, you've got fucking iron skin or whatever, you're going to be having to spend 125,000 francs to just refill consumables. That's before buying any gear. If you want to fucking actually buy any of the like highest tier five gold diamond gear in this game, you're probably going to have to like just sit in front of your community, your, your chest at the cafe Teatra and just literally like set 30 minute timers for yourself so you can come back and pick up all the shit because that's the only way you're going to make enough money to buy anything worth a shit. If you play the game including, if you just do the main story, yes, it's, it's hard, but if you play the game with all the side content, it's a lot easier. If you do all of the companion missions, I did do the cafe theater missions just to get enough like capital to, you know, afford medicine, but it just felt like I was playing American economy simulators. Couldn't do any social club missions too. The why don't the main mission is just reward you with money. That AC2 did that. Like, come on. There's also, I had to rely on some of the gear pieces that they just give you as a reward in missions and they're some of the ugliest ones and they don't go together at all. Like, if you just gave me the equivalent amount of francs that I could use to buy my gear of choice, then I can still actually enjoy the customization system you care so much about. Put on an outfit to cover up the ugly. Yeah, but most of the outfits suck. Until you, until you unlock the master assassin outfit, you are fucked outfit wise because Edward, yeah, all the legacy outfits eat my ass. I would have loved, okay, seriously, as a compromise, I would have loved that there was just an outfit that was the default robes because yes, yes, those. Thank you. Because those also, I think Arno's default robes is like the best assassin outfit, the best default assassin outfit of all time. Exactly. It is amazing. You don't like the fearless, you don't like the fearless Tim, right? It sucks. Fuck the fearless outfit. It sucks, it sucks. I hate the fearless outfit. But Wolf and I are both solidly, firmly on the team. Yes. McFarlane outfit, which you don't like. Yes. I love the McFarlane outfit. If that was Arno's default outfit, it would also be the best default outfit that any assassins ever had. Yeah, it's interesting too. I was talking with Jacer's Hobbes and he was, and he made a good point about how like Arno's outfit kind of reinvents what assassin colors can be. Yeah. Because usually it's like just like kind of white and red and maybe a little blue. But Arno is literally walking around with the with the France flag on his on his body and red, white and blue. It looks great. I love it. I love the, also by the way, the moments that I loved playing this game the most is when I was just like walking as Arno and the default robes because there's just something about the way that they shape on his body. It is he just looks like the perfect assassin. You know what I mean? Like he just looks so awesome. Yeah. Like when I'm on a fucking rooftop and I like the default robes are kind of like, you know, like moving around with my legs and I've got the the smoke coming out of the chimneys around me. It's like amazing. So I guess to summarize, you know, me personally, Unity is kind of a complicated game for me because it was like it really was, in my opinion, the the highest point of potential in the franchise that we've had like like not just that this game had such high potential, which it did, but also that like I had all of this hope that the next games that would come after it would like really focus that potential and like deliver on it, which they pretty much roundly have not. So it's like it's the point in the series at which I was the most passionate about Assassin's Creed and I was just so nostalgic for that time and I really loved the time that I spent playing Unity when I came out even despite all the jank. I had fun with the co-op missions. I had a little co-op group. I, you know, I had a good time. There's so much I love about Unity that maybe it doesn't deserve and there's also so much I hate about Unity that it totally does. So it can't rank super high on my list, which it doesn't, but I can't put it at the bottom because there's just too much gold. There's too much like beautiful, beautiful shit in Unity that works really well. So it's tough. I love it. I hate it. It loves me. It hates me. It's Unity. That's all I can say. It definitely needed some more time to to polish up things and if if if ever they were to do a remaster of it or yeah just to clean things up, fix up the combat, fix up the gameplay, fix up the the jank would be a whole lot better. I used to be very anti Unity remaster, but this this replay brought me around to thinking that even if it can't look much better graphically than it already does, giving it like gameplay like you know the kind of quality of life gameplay improvements that AC3 remaster got could be a huge dub. Yeah, I I guess I mean to summarize like I think my biggest issue obviously is there's a lot of jank and one more year in the oven and it would have been the best AC game ever. I agree with you that like there's like a post like you know classic AC world this is this is where we could have went but my my biggest issue ultimately I feel like like if the story was good I could I could ignore a lot of these things. I just feel like it's kind of lazy from a writing perspective when you're doing an assassin's creed story to have a Templar and assassin character who are in love and to do everything you can to avoid them having these like ideological discussions that you know that are going to challenge them and make them actually have to have some conflict that that sucks and I and I don't like that but there is a lot you know that there is a there's some good there. I think I I dislike Unity the most out of all of us but there is some like hints of of what of what could have been a good game and so I do appreciate it on that level. For me I I still I I guess I just look past all the the jank and I can look past all of the the issues with you know combat or whatever because I've learned how to control Unity. Yeah. I don't let it control me. You speak the language of the jank. Yes. So I adore Arnaud. I really feel happy when I play when I play Unity. This playthrough for example I still a hundred percented all of the missions. I didn't a hundred percent the game. I barely even touched much of the the the side content but I still a hundred percented all the missions because I know how to. I can get through them relatively quickly and I think this playthrough the only one I really had issues with was the was the fight with Balak. The when we're in the Saint Chapelle and he would smoke bomb. I can't tell you how many times are I got desynced. Yeah that fight is broken for many many reasons. I didn't have any issue with that at all. It's interesting. Yeah I had the random weird desync where like you're supposed to dodge him but it actually just makes you like stand completely straight in one place and then he just and he just he just jumped on me or whatever. He just jumps on you and kills you and I also had the button prompt problem where there's like one button prompt where even though it doesn't visually communicate this at all you actually have to tap the button like twice as fast and if you don't you fail the button prompt over and over and over again. Yeah I've had that in the past but I didn't have it this playthrough. I did. So I just you know going to playing the game again I'm still finding myself oh I love this game or oh I really like this part or I really you know can't wait till I get to whatever so I I just enjoy Unity so much. I guess that about does it for this conversation about Assassin's Creed Unity. Wolf thank you so much for joining us again. It's always fun and delightful to have Wolf on the show. Oh thank you I really appreciate it. I have a lot of fun with you guys. I've been a long time listener to Hookblade. This is episode number 30. I'm so proud of you guys. The big three out. So thank you both so much for having me back. And thank you dear listener for listening to the Hookblade podcast. If you enjoy the show there are a number of ways you can support us. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel. Follow us on Twitter at Hookblade. Like us on Facebook which we're just the Hookblade podcast. You can use the search. Figure it out. You're smart and you know leave us a like. Leave us a comment. Tell us what you think about Unity all of these years later. So many years later. Is it the best Assassin's Creed game or the worst Assassin's Creed game. Those are the only two options you can choose. Nothing in between. So tell us what you think. That about does it. I've been the hook. And I've been the blade. And I'm the elegant design. And we will see you on the next episode. Bye.