 What's up everybody I'm the hook and I'm the blade welcome to the hook blade podcast where we talk about all things hook blades yeah I was gonna call it the the look blade podcast because you might have noticed we have a new look a new aesthetic but Tim Tim stepped on my line so I'm sorry the hook blade podcast the hooky blade podcast has a new blade which is all just also something you said I never said that yes you did no I didn't all right well we'll agree disagree um Tim how are you today well okay hold on I should introduce myself I'm your host Lawson and with me as always is my co-host Tim and Tim how are you doing today I'm doing pretty good so you know what a pressure cooker is right yeah and so you can make bombs out of them I haven't tried that yet you'll have to Google pressure cooker bomb but Google it at work yeah or at school get arrested so I got one of those nifty like kitchen gadgets that is a pressure cooker but it also like it has the functionality of like at CO's hidden blade it's got it kills people it's got a pressure cooker it's got a slow cooker it can bake it has air frying capabilities it can also what else can you can see or saute in it air crisp which is their version of air fry slow cook obviously I can make yogurt which will never happen there's a bunch of other stuff if my mom was listening to this right now she would be quaking so essentially this one it's it's from the brand ninja I'm sure you may have oh yeah I'm here with ninja yeah so it's like an all-in-one kitchen appliance essentially and I've been like it has been for anyone who's if anyone who's ever considered it it is it's worth every penny because I have had such a easy going time with it and I can cook things with such more proficiency and I'm not a very good cook that's the thing it's just a can I got a smart toaster oven once and it did a lot of different things like that like you could broil stuff yeah oh you can broil that's another function is royal I forgot broil have you seen the June oven no the June oven it's essentially your guy and Marquette Marcus Aurelius the guy that Marquez Brownlee the guy that you watch the tech guy yeah Mark yeah he's the most famous tech reviewer yeah I was I was I was left in an AMA of his and he he was shouting out the June oven and it's essentially it's it's like what you just said it's a smart oven and it has cameras built in so you stick a pop tart in there and it's like hey is this a pop tart you have in our oven and then they and then you inserted a pop tart into me and you can like track it on the app and it has a little probe thermometer so that your meat doesn't get overcooked legal note the hook played podcast is not sponsored by the June oven or Ninja or the Breville smart oven but it's like it's like a Tesla ovens because it constantly updates itself for instance everyone okay I'll stop no I was just gonna say you're really cute when you get excited about something oh thank you couple notes at the top of the show I you know how a couple episodes ago I was like hey Tim would you believe it that I'm still sick and you said no and I was like I'm not yes I can now say with with scientific certainty that I have had strep throat for two and a half months so I've been sick the entire time the last time anyone's heard my non-sick voice on this podcast was episode 3 Jesus not that anyone would notice cuz according to some of our friends you and I sound too similar yeah apparently I've gotten used to it I suppose so I don't even know what you sound like not sick yeah I don't remember I think I think this is just yeah that's my normal voice now I think this is current I think I'm currently speaking in a not sick voice I don't know I think you sound handsome and smart and charming all the time thank you Tim you're like the Juno oven of people it's called the Juno oven subliminally I'm aware on some level that this is an Assassin's Creed podcast speaking of Assassin's Creed I wanted to I wanted to follow up a little bit on our last episode because it turns out in the context of the whole I'd I own a mission that I'm actually just a big dummy because there are multiple ways to figure out which one was the good one and which one was the bad one interesting okay you can you can go to bird vision and check them out with your with your bird boy you can just pay attention to the cutscene apparently one of them is choking the other one so thanks I'm a big dumb dummy idiot stupid head actually it turns out aren't we all also I wanted to add to my forgot to say last week because of that mission right when I was playing on ps4 I actually in an attempt to get it to unbreak itself I updated the software in my ps4 and that software update bricked my disc drive so Odyssey has taken a lot from me I have more reason than most I would say to hate that game and yet I remain fair and balanced I just I wanted to put that out there you've you've sacrificed so much you've lost so much Odyssey has literally killed my family at this point I'm still out here being like it's okay it's got it it's got a better story than origins it does I can't say I can't say for certain yeah you can't comment so Tim why are we why are we gathered here today what's the actual topic of conversation besides cooking appliances and dialogue choices well aside from those two things you and I ended up replaying the first ever Assassin's Creed 2007 G the word all began parentheses or did it yeah so this has been interesting we both replayed Assassin's Creed one and we've had some interesting experiences with it I guess the headline for my impressions would be that I kind of on this particular playthrough have the opposite experience that I usually have with AC one don't know why yeah not like oh I usually like it but this time I didn't more that like in the past when I would replay it for like the marathon and stuff I would really enjoy the game at first and I'd be like wow this is really fun and good and cool and interesting and then over time I would slowly begin to completely hate it and I would just really not enjoy playing it at all this time I actually I had a lot of trouble with it at first at first I was like oh this sucks this is bullshit I don't want to play this anymore and I definitely over the course of the game I warmed up to it a little bit more I like I did want to get it over with not because it was that aggressively like frustrating to play but more because I just really wanted to play AC to you know yeah but but I did and I don't know if this came across in some of our conversations about it I did warm up to it a little bit as it was how did you how did you feel so I didn't replay it in quite some time so coming back to it I was very excited about it and there's just there's just such this certain iconography and seeing it in that game and just seeing like Damas and Acre and Jerusalem and stuff like it still was as effective as it was you know when I first played it or would have you but I had a very similar experience I was having kind of a rough time with it at first and you know I mean that could just be because I haven't replayed it in a long time I'm very rusty and I'm more used to the recent games and I am to that game for sure for sure yeah and just in general like you know I I haven't been playing video games as much as I was when I first played Assassin's Creed well not first sorry but when I would have replayed it I haven't been like as active as playing video games so just all around I I I'm not exactly like an expert with AC1 and you know as as as some of our friends are but I definitely warmed up to it later on I mean look all the assassinations being memorable and everything it's just getting to those assassinations really became kind of a chore you know yeah and definitely some of those assassination activities or sorry investigation activities got a little tedious more for you than for me because I actually was playing for the first time on PC and there is a significantly better variety of activities on the PC version just saying yeah only they add they add something called Informer challenges but Informer challenges itself is a pretty broad selection of activities I found stuff where it was like stealth challenges like go kill all these guards without getting detected which was often pretty fun or you know kill these archers there were races things you had to collect a bunch of flags whereas I believe I guess in the original game you're pretty much limited to to beat someone up pickpocket someone and well drop so so what you're describing I actually did have in my version of the game oh really well I had certain informant option like I could go to I can go to an assassin informant and he'll either have me collect some assia flags I can kill archers or I can go kill us very specific kind of guard without anyone else seeing me so what did the PC have more of then I I don't know I just was always I always heard that the directors kind of PC had more like investigation stuff was there was there any of those that you didn't mention that like you had to do yeah so I'm looking it up Ubisoft is this is an article from 2008 on Eurogamer Ubisoft has revealed the four new investigation types for Assassin's Creed on PC there's the rooftop race challenge where you charge from one informant to another within a set time limit archer assassination which has you murdering rooftop dwelling guards in a set area without being seen the merchant stand destruction challenge where you have to trash the livelihood of tradesmen tied to your assassination target and the escort challenge which has you guide a fellow assassin somewhere safely yeah so all the ones I didn't mention yeah yeah so yeah I those are the ones I did not see so there you go yeah so you did have a you didn't have a bigger variety which would probably make a lot of it better I pulled up on I went all the way back to the year 2014 and I found the very first post that was ever made regarding the Assassin's Creed marathon which was titled 65 days until Unity and Rogue release 66 memory sequences in the AC main games let's do a sequence today for 65 days and this these were my impressions back then I said I loved running down the hills of Masyaf and slaughtering Templars along the way it was very immersive and the chaos going around me was pretty exhilarating the very first ever leap of faith was brilliant and epic I completely forgot how it was so cleverly used as a way of demonstrating the Assassin's welcoming of death to the Templars activating the trap and watching the logs crush to Saddle's goons was pretty freaking sweet too this is me as a 15 year old I get that the tutorials served a pretty important purpose of introducing the character to the gameplay mechanics but damn if it wasn't the most tedious and cumbersome tutorial I've ever played still true I much prefer the other games usual approach of giving story significance to the tutorial rather than just doing it in an empty animus techscape AC3 did this as well no coincidence then that oh this is my 2014 me talking AC1 and AC3 are my least favorite games in the series wow there was so much terrible yet to come my young self so much terrible yet to come my third point Jesus Christ Altair is such a dick damn I wanted to slap him he's very arrogant has no respect for the Creed or the wishes of his supposed brothers I'm wall in seems very wise and dedicated to the assassin order of course we all know the truth now yeah we all know did you would you have any comments on this did you participate fuck no aw also this would have been long before you and I ever talked so it's not like it would have been like oh my friends doing this thing I should join in oh yeah well yeah so not you know I always would have liked to participate but 2014 that was I was still on the forums making shitty posts there so I wasn't I didn't even know what the subreddit was I didn't even know what reddit was to begin with so I wasn't around for that with with the only games existing at the time being you know one two brother had revelations three and four as of 2014 yeah I guess three and one would have been my least favorites out of that group yeah I suppose so I mean there's nothing in that group that would that I would have liked worse than three and one yeah interesting because now now I let me see I'm gonna pull up my actual ranking list and see where AC1 scores and this is still 2014 ranking no I'm gonna pull up my current ranking list okay yeah AC1 is in fourth place on my on my last time I did this list there's no way that that's accurate to now it would it be lower yeah yeah I think I would have it just above unity odyssey origins in three yeah I think I'd take this over unity for sure yeah yeah so in general I guess my yeah my experience with AC1 was pretty rough which is a shame because there is a lot to like about it there really is yeah it definitely has the best story and as far as the modern day goes for absolutely yeah and the it definitely has the most consistent internal mythology of all the Assassin's Creed games the way that it's presented for the the layer of animus between you and the game that's like really well done I think yeah and I had forgotten I mean I tweeted this out a little bit ago I completely forgotten how well done the anus integration is now yeah keep in mind it has it has some rough edges there are things I don't like about it I found that it was pretty it can get to the level where it pulls you out of the game a little bit to be like fast forwarding memory to a more recent one well I'll tell you I'll tell you what's really annoying about the animus about the animus stuff that in this game that isn't in other games so much is when I get detected or anything happens my screen has a fucking seizure and it's like that doesn't help me with like assessing my environment you know like I get detected by one guard and like my screen flips the fuck out you know it's like you know we've practiced as you're saying that we like the animus integration in the hide but that is a feature I do not fucking miss fuck that because big blurry yeah because detection in this game is not forgiving and so you get detected all the time and at least if you suck like me yeah and like so my screen is flipping out all the time and it's like it gets me to the point where it's like I don't even want to like participate in stuff I might as well just go kill everyone like literally be easier except for me you know something we've talked about a lot cuz well let me ask you this point blank just I'm gonna put you on the spot put me on always told me that in your opinion the best that combat has ever been in Assassin's Creed was a C1 after this replay is that still your opinion as of right now yes yes because is wrong with you know the look the combat is fine it that there are other problems like stealth being non-existent I actually had a big problem with the stealth with the combat which was that I felt like it did not behave predictably I felt like I could do exactly the right thing as far as countering or dodging or grab breaking or whatever like it felt like there was a chance element where even if I timed it exactly right on countering it wouldn't counter or so even if I didn't time it right it sometimes would I feel like I was constantly just playing the odds and I don't know why so I I do I do see what you're saying a hundred percent because I even ran into that so in no way am I saying that it's a perfect system I think they start to go in the wrong direction with AC2 that's a conversation for another time but I do think that in terms of just like visceral like you know weighty and brutal combat you know like the way that certain enemies are just laying there writhing in pain when you're done and the and like some of these animations like I every time I would fight someone I would or a group I would see the same like four animations over and over and over but that presented in such a visceral way that I never got old it was still so much fun and I completely I was not impressed by the animation a variety I thought it did get old after about three sequences well look I'm definitely there is be more animations but I started switching to different between weapons just to like refresh my eyes and I do that too I'll switch from the short blade in the in the sword but keep in mind though a big problem with the combat is simply that when you get hit your screen flips out so if memory serves you know I'm pretty sure that when you get hit by something like your screen your entire screen gets taken up for like a frame you know I mean yeah there's definitely like a I don't know the word it's an aberration of some sort where the camera and the and your character become dislodged from each other for a few seconds while it while it shakes around to give you visual feedback it's a little aggressive I think yeah yeah so it's not perfect by any means and there are probably more like fun and timeless versions of the combat that are that have existed I don't even know if I'd say that I think there are better versions of combat full stop I think that there are games in Assassin's Creed that had more variety of animation still were challenging and still were functional and that didn't give me the same problems that the AC1 did right I think it's and I'm open to this opinion changing it just as of right now I found that it kind of does kind of scratch that itch of combat being kind of cinematic and for me and the thing is too is what I really like about the combat is while you know it can't canonically all tire you know doesn't even get a scratch during this whole game there are plenty of ways to fuck up and the guard can like punch you in the stomach and you fall down or he can grab you and throw you the ragdoll physics or something else yeah well not and not letting you have all of your skills at first like grab break yeah does make it more challenging I will say though that does lead into another complaint that I have because something that I love about this game is that is like the narrative linked progression throughout like you get more skills you get more web you get you get better weapons throughout yada yada yada however I think it's a brilliant idea to strip you down and have you work your way back up I think it is you just want to see someone strip I'll tell you down I think it is an equally bad idea to wait until like the end of the like basically the end of the game to get you fully equipped with everything again yeah that's very very fair and like I think it'd be one thing if there was any way that the game opened up or recontextualized its gameplay at the end of itself that made it so that now that you have all these abilities there's actually something rewarding and fun to do with them but yeah you don't get to spend a lot of time at maximum assassin quality which is definitely a weakness of the game yeah you're you're 100% right on that it's just kind of like it's the same experience now you just have all the abilities you did at the beginning of the game and I like that idea that it's like you kind of in the in the beginning missions and stuff you have you have even in the beginning you don't have that much time to utilize the grab breaks or the catch ledge and stuff because it's almost instantly taken from you which keep in mind I don't have a problem with it's just it's like the final ninth person I'm pretty sure and then you get your shit back finally let me ask you this did you start warming up to the game once you started getting those skills back I think so there is definitely I always was a big fan of the throwing knives in this game so I was able to have like all of them and I could kind of use them more strategically as part of a stealth attempt I definitely enjoyed that more and just also big part of it for me was getting comfortable with the systems as far as parkour and combat and quote-unquote stealth because there's a lot to get used to especially when you've been trained on you know modern AC games the parkour in this game is straight up garbage it is really bad I've seen a lot of people like I saw a guy in on Twitter making a clip of like here's all the cool stuff you can do an AC one parkour I should not have to have all tight-ear straight up like sniffing the ass crack of a hand to get to move to it I feel like it's worth the worst part is when a big part of the gameplay in this game more than more so than in any other Assassin's Creed is getting chased and when you get chased in this game first of all there's the whole Assassin's Claw thing we talked about so you can't move the camera which is right just a nightmare but then you have the fact that when you are climbing a building trying to escape from these people who are all like throwing rocks at you and stuff it's so slow you can almost hear all tier going I guess we're going to that one and then you've been hit with a rock and so you say fuck it and you go find a ladder and climb the ladder like a dumb little bitch boy who can't do parkour or you just say fuck it and you get pelting of the rock you fall down the ground and you just slaughter them yeah or you just kill them all immediately I did notice one point I'll give to the combat is that I was much better at the combat once the game had already made me angry like if I was pissed off I could slice and dice and nail the counter every time which I guess it's maybe a design like but they had to really piss me off sometimes for me to do good parkour or good combat like that one mission there's a there's the assassination where you think you can be stealthy you climb up the you sneak around all the guards you climb to the top of the thing you look down keep he's surrounded by like eight bad guys and you think because you've played good assassins before you think you can air assassinate this guy there's no air assassinate in the game so you can't you can you can tell me you can tell me that I could have done it I don't believe you I don't believe that I could have jumped off the scaffold and done a perfect air assassinate trying to it's in the demo I kept trying to do it and I couldn't it couldn't do it I I assume that's the game's fault not mine and then you have to fight like nine dudes and some brand you can only distinguish him because he's the only one with a bad haircut and try to focus your efforts on killing him because once you kill it could get mixed up it's not some brand it's it's William yeah you're right it's William DeMon for that this is the second character I've accidentally called some brand on that's the only name I remember okay so yeah the air assassination is not very intuitive but it does exist sure if you insist all I'm saying is that I got killed by those guards four times which it turned out was the exact number of times it needed to happen for me to get angry which immediately allowed me to slaughter them all man yeah look I mean I kind of look there's there's a fucking mission in here too that like we're combat pissed me the fuck off too so the assassinations memorable 100% when it comes to the air assassinate I like look I know it exists in the game but it's not intuitive and here's an example and one of the assassinations I was doing I climbed up the proper building I killed the archer that was gonna see me otherwise and he's right in my view and I leap off the building I'm doing the air assassinate and a major innovation excuse me in the last minute that's second actually like as my blade is approaching his fucking ear lobe as it's tickling his fucking neck hairs he like does the whole animation of where he like catches me midair and throws me it's like he didn't even know his back was turned to me you know and so look I know that there are people who fucking like massacre stealth in this game it's just I had such a problem with doing it effectively and detection in this game is not forgiving call me you know like yeah I don't know call me a pussy I just pussy Tim I'm just not I didn't have a good time with the stealth and no you know perhaps it's because maybe it's user error I just didn't have a great time with it I just think yeah I mean there's something to be said for the fact that these missions design they're very linear there's typically a stealth path and a combat path and if you can if you have eyes that work you can at least see what the stealth path is but then you're probably going to fail at attempting it and you're gonna feel like you didn't fail it because you were bad you're gonna feel like there was an unpredictability or there was a system problem that that caused you to fail it we were watching an interview with Patrice Desole where he was talking primarily about AC2 but he really views he really thinks back on AC1 as like an experiment just to prove the viability of this world in this gameplay style and that really AC1 is more of a toy or a tech demo than it is an actual good game and I think that's probably yeah I think that's true which I have to give it credit for I mean we got to be we got to be real here I think AC1 is is a cool game like I really enjoy the world building I really enjoy the story I really enjoy the way that the character progresses over the course of the narrative it's a simple game it's a simple story you don't get much of any of Altair's you know inner or outer life besides the process of killing these targets but that's a form of limitation that I feel like they did some interesting things with you know and the atmosphere of this game the mood and the tone of it is unparalleled because as soon as AC2 came around took things into the slightly more goofy blockbuster territory and it's been in that world ever since but I enjoy the just the vibe of AC1 it is a vibe that is so distinct and so well-crafted that that alone in my opinion saves the game from a lot of its faults yeah I agree and it's an atmosphere and a setting that I've been wanting to get back to ever since the first game so it yeah for it to have that effect on me it does it very well what I will say I do have a problem with I guess my only nitpick with like the atmosphere and the vibe is I don't know I I suppose I don't know I'll tell you it doesn't really feel like he's a part of the world because he's voice acted terribly well because does that make sense like I just because he has the wrong accent and he's the only character in the entire game with the wrong accent no not that I know you know I know it's a gripe for you but what I'm saying is I don't know this like the lack of I don't know I gotta you can just probably cut this out because I think I get what you're getting at because something that we talk about in class for those of you who don't know I am a student of television writing that is what I've taken classes on there's something that comes up a lot where they talk about the characters inner and outer life and that's like all of the things that a character does all the ways that they interface with you know their outer life being the people in the world around them their inner life being their own feelings and their own characteristics in that context and versus someone like Ezio or really any other AC protagonist there is no story about Altair that besides the fact that he kills people and eventually we learn that he gets jiggy with a Templar lady so yeah that so yeah that's pretty much right on the money because in the book for instance see what you need to read sicker crusade there's a lot of that momentum shifting where the Altair will go from kill to kill but you get his internal monologue you get his internal feelings on everything even even when he gets back to Masia after leaving Malik and his brother for dead not leaving but you know causing them to be kind of yeah betraying a little bit and he gets back and the weight that you feel an Altair in the book is a lot different than in the game and I'm not saying that the game doesn't execute it properly but when it comes to like the weight like he feels ashamed and the inflections in his dialogue and stuff in that instance are represented a lot better in the book and I understand that the book has the ability to be like this omniscient force and to be able to say it's coming after the game too so they have all the context of what happens in the game of course during that with emotion and story right and I'm not saying that the game doesn't hit you with those cues because Altair's character arc in this game is still one of the best but you have to keep in mind especially in a game without cutscenes at all you don't see emotion and Altair's face you don't see you hardly see emotion in anyone's face you don't hear emotion in his voice either yes you yes I will agree with you on that and so you can pick between like five camera angles in this game but like none of them probably kind of like tell a story with the camera work and whatever and look I like the over-the-shoulder look but eventually it got a little old and I just wanted to see like the camera turn around and show me Altair it took us until revelations to get a proper cut scene with Altair yeah like does that make sense you know that makes perfect sense that's our our criticisms are going hand-in-hand where because of these these elements of the game we are kind of deprived of a real like fully developed characterization and fully developed story and honestly you know there's a lot of like I used to think it was really subtle and cool and interesting how Altair's understanding of the conflict evolves over the course of the story yeah honestly coming back to it now with some of the things I've learned and some of the things I've you know explored in my in college and I can't say I I like it as much today like I used to think it was subtle and cool it's it's definitely it may be cool it's not subtle there are good three or four times in the story where Altair is like it's wrong to kill people just for disagreeing with you while killing someone for disagreeing with him yeah that happens like three times at least that I count well but I think okay sorry go ahead obviously on some level he gets the irony but does he you know that's the thing that is definitely explored in later games as the irony of the creed and all that and I think especially in AC2 they very much lean into the it's they still lean into that morally gray area of like yeah I mean are the assassins really the good guys at the end of the day like they might be the the more noble maybe or the more like righteous but saying that they're good guys you know and that changed that changed kind of later on but I will say this game and the next definitely pick up on that a little more I don't know if you would agree I don't know if I would I mean I think AC1 definitely because of the way it treats the relationship between assassins and Templars and because it isn't completely black and white it's not like here the the good assassins versus the evil Templars there's some gray area the assassins themselves are eventually pretty much revealed to be you know systematically corrupted by yeah it's by yeah by Templars but at the same time you know you you get the impression that we're not dealing with Jedi and Sith right in this in this story that's great that it does that in the first game because it kind of gives them license to you know later on it's it's still part of the identity of the creed and the identity of the conflict that there is that there is gray area even though some games I think AC2 being one of them choose not to really explore that I think AC2 is a good example like many AC games where the priority was not to really mind that that depth of conflict at all the priority was more like yeah here your assassin good guys and here your Templar bad guys Templar bad guys are very bad and they're obviously bad and the assassins are obviously good well keep in mind though I also do think in a lot of the confession scenes like I do find myself sometimes being like that was actually kind of a good point and like yeah no it is it's believable for all of these targets to think that they're doing the right thing and all about all time here all that also affects all time here because all time here is like I'm questioning this and that I think works very well in the context of the story at the same time though I don't think that it's very believable to me that all time here is so surprised to learn that the people he's killing think they're doing the right thing just because I find it to be the case nine times out of ten in real life that people are not typically thinking of themselves as doing the wrong thing even when they absolutely are like you could take the worst people alive today and you know you could interview Joseph Coney or whatever and he'd be like well actually I'm the hero of this story like I think most people think that way so for that to be kind of the driving force behind Altair thinking that there's more going on like I don't know it's it's it's maybe a little simple it's maybe a little not that deep yeah I mean I can't say I necessarily disagree with you on that one I just I also think like it's a very smart way to develop the Templars beyond just mustache twirling and that's true like I do think that if you're a story designer on this game and you're given the gameplay system of you know well each level you you go you kill the guy and then you have a little chat in in heaven about it right like the writers on this are using that opportunity like they're getting the most out of what systems are available to them they're getting the most out of the fact that all of the the story in this game is pretty much existing to motivate the gameplay right which is normal that's how most games work but they're doing it well in the sense that there's there's a clear visible feeling of each kill that you accomplish you are unlocking a different piece of the puzzle right and I think in terms of most of your targets they all seem like they're bound by like the Templar order obviously but they all have independent motivations and independent like thoughts and feelings and I I think that's something that was lost for a little while on certain targets like even though the assassinations that led up to them sometimes didn't work right for me or I had a bad experience with them you know for instance like with the Sabrina assassination I will always remember that one because I remember parts of the context I was given as leading up to the story or sorry leading up to the kill the kill itself and the confessions and like the glitches and stuff and you can you know press about and get a different camera angle and I think it's just I can't disagree with you on that one Larson well I mean you can but I appreciate that you don't I guess that kind of leads into the other thing I want to that we want to talk about which is the modern day unless you had something else you want to talk about I think that wraps up pretty much most of my if there's anything that comes to mind you could probably just move the edit around I guess sure yes a modern day modern day I vividly remember when I actually started playing this game for the first time which was right before three came out my parents like just got it for me as part of like a bunch of cheap games they picked up somewhere and they were like happy birthday kiddo here's here's Assassin's Creed and I was like yeah I've I've known that this existed for a while but it kind of became popular in a time when I was like too young to play a game that was completely about murder so I booted it up and I had never ever been told or found out in any way that there was any modern-day sci-fi elements to Assassin's Creed I learned that while playing the game and that was a really cool moment because I'm I'm a big sci-fi guy I'm not a big historical fiction or fantasy guy so that immediately like pulled me in to the world and contextualize the historical stuff in a way that made it far more interesting to me to contextualize it as being part of this modern-day ongoing saga versus just jumping around in history and playing different stories right yeah but I just remember the the cliffhanger at the end of AC1 just put me on my ass like I had to know I had to know what happened next I literally bicycled down to the post exchange the very next day and bought AC2 from Gamestop yeah I mean that that that's the thing is this game has probably the most like consistent view of the Assassin's Templars like in the modern day yeah because as we talk about a lot later on you know like in AC Gold they're the underdogs or in the comic they're superheroes yeah and in this game you really get the idea of like you know fuck like even though Desmond technically is an assassin you know like is the rescue mission goes fucking terrible and and we know and we get these little hints that they've been dwindling in numbers for a while now because the Templars to the Templars have their thumb on the scale and they pretty much directly reference the purge yes exactly yeah 100% because that's the thing is what other reason why would the assassins like go from like and that's the thing too is giving us such a giving us the crusades and the assassins then and then giving us the assassins in the modern day and but they do it in a way that's not jarring because we don't necessarily see them you don't see them at all yeah so they do it in a way that that's like very believable too because the idea that like Desmond you know kind of like escaped his his his assassin compound or what have you and well it was originally it was the farm but I don't think they mentioned the farm in this game but Desmond escaping it still kind of gives you that idea that like maybe the assassins aren't necessarily like the most like accessible thing for for it for just everyone just like why did Desmond want to run away but also that that element kind of threw up some interesting questions for me where it was like you know on some level Desmond is acting for the entire time that he's you know in obstegro activity like he doesn't know he doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground pretty much the whole time he's like what's all this assassins and Templars that's crazy but then then he's like oh yeah I escaped from other compound one time I'm not I don't consider myself an assassin it's like oh so so you do know what they are because a moment ago well yeah we have because he says like he's like I'm not an assassin not anymore yeah I was a little unclear on that I think he's just being coy and I tried to play this whole game from the perspective that that Lucy is actually working for the Templars even when she presents herself as otherwise and like it is a stretch well can we talk about that no yeah we can talk about that I like especially you're playing this game I fucking hate that retcon like it makes no sense it's pretty stupid because it like it doesn't make any sense it's actually if anything it's a better twist that Lucy isn't a Templar fuckface yeah it's not necessarily a twist but you know what I mean like that's so much more interesting than oh this woman at obstergo also happens to be a Templar yeah fuck and the fact that they reveal that she was a Templar in a DLC anyway makes me feel like you can almost get away with pretending it's not true all right that's what I do fuck that shit dude like it's it's just like up until up until revelations it's not even like explicit yeah because the the the the big change happens at the end of well we'll talk about that when we get there but just fuck fuck that and you can tell that this game has like certain pieces moving forward like the fucking satellite that just gets forgotten about between ac2 and ac brotherhood we know why that happened yeah and it's just like I and I look I know there are certain people on twitter that like will mention the satellite plotline I never quite got why people cared about it so much now I get it because I replayed and I realize that they were building up a lot of internal mythology about what obstergos plans were and then to cash in on annual releases they're like ah fuck that no and whatever yeah and it's just yeah fuck off you know it's like a certain point I get so cynical about it because just instead of completing an arc efficiently they just they're worried about how they can keep making this make sense and stretch it out for longer games and they fuck it all up yeah they really fucked it up because when I play this game I realize how much potential there is in the modern day and especially through the emails which you so much don't care for I also couldn't find them like I kept trying to interact with their computers um every time I had a modern day interlude and like it let me look at Lucy's once but I could never look at warren's for whatever reason so to get to get into warren's you have to pickpocket his pen off of him oh well I never knew to do that well there's a scene where he's like get in the animus Desmond and he turns around from you and you can walk up to him and I'll just take that pen of yours to access your computer and the next time you come out of the animus you can access his computer and then at the after the credit sequence you can you can get the code to the conference room and you can get into the conference room and then there's a laptop in there with with all the emails one of which that we read during the conspiracies review you're blowing my fucking mind dude because like that's the kind of thing I would have tried to do when I played the game the first time because I was so attracted to the mystery of the the modern day and what was going on that I explored like every inch of the area that was available to me and I tried to find all the opportunities to learn more stuff and then after that in like subsequent playthroughs that felt less important to me because I've played the sequels I know the answers and I know there's really not that much going on here but I never knew you could get into the conference room I also never knew you I never changed the camera angles much during cut scenes so every other playthrough I missed the part where you could like actually see Alan Reichen like I think you and I had a conversation once where you're like he's in the game he speaks he's you can see him I was like no he's not yeah he's through the he's through the conference like I got the very end you can see him through the window but he looks exactly like Jeremy iron he's kind of hard to see oh yeah he looks exactly like yeah but yeah we can agree this is the best modern day ever yeah and I mean the emails to me also just represent like a a completely different world that it that it ended up becoming like I think eventually eventually it just started becoming our world but with assassins and Templars yeah but I think in this game and a little bit in AC2 they are very much different worlds for sure for sure yeah there's a lot of that world building stuff some of these yeah well because some of these emails just represent like a like like a the entire continent of Africa not being accessible because of a virus yeah or the fact that yeah like I had a little brain alarm go off because when I read the one about like oh people in America are taking refuge in Mexico like I've seen that trick used once before and it was in an episode of sliders are you familiar with the show sliders I'm familiar with the sandwich sliders are is a show about people who they they can slide between alternate realities and so each episode they're in a different dimension where things are different somehow and in the pilot he's like he's crossed over to an alternate dimension he's in a car and he's listening to the radio in the car and it's like immigration between the US and Mexico is at an all-time high and Mexico keeps wanting to shut us out they're just looking for a better life people and I was like oh that's really interesting that they took a thing that that we know about the world and they just did the opposite of it and don't justify it or explain it or explore it at all that's really clever it's not it's not the most elegant thing definitely I suppose when I consider that email though I consider like what if abstergo is like doing certain shit yeah in America that people don't want to have happen anymore no there's some lengths you can fill in and that is part of what makes it interesting I think I agree with you on the level that AC as a whole would have been more interesting storytelling opportunities for the modern day if they had committed to the whole idea that they're taking place in an alternate world the way that those emails imply that they are but I don't know that I would have wanted it to be the alternate world that is created by those emails if that makes sense like I love the concept of yeah obviously the assassin temple or conflict doesn't exist in our world so to tell us that here's a world where it does exist and nothing fundamentally has changed about the world as a result that does make it less interesting to me so to do a different world with alternate world building and and things that are true in terms of like the geopolitical scale and the way that people interact that's I think a great idea if they reboot assassin's creed that's on my list of things I would want them to do but I do think that the way that these emails are written it's a little lazy to a certain degree I do think all of the emails that have to do with absurd go happenings are very well written oh yeah no I mean I think they're all pretty well written I just I'm really just talking about like the choices that they made about some of the alternate stuff I I know what you're saying oh yeah I'm not saying that like you're thinking they're not well written in terms of I love the way that they were kind of characterizing Lucy and and and Vidic like in the Lucy emails that I read where she's all very you know she's like she's very a serious email writer you know like we all know that person and then Warren Vidic writes emails like a fucking boomer like that's amazing yeah she like she's like correcting his grammar and he's like why do you sign your emails you loser yeah why do you sign your emails it's at the top of the email I can see your name like I just loved that that was great but I I love how he's also like a dick over the emails too he's such an asshole Vidic was a really fun villain he was just he was very kind of seen chewing over the top bad guy another thing that's wasted in this fucking series the things that he says about the Templar ideology like it all made sense as far as like I can see an organization that's pretty maybe well intentioned organization that's just trying to end violence and create peace and all of that like it just it worked it there was something kind of poetic about the way that these ideologies played off each other and the way that some of these games especially ac1 used to take advantage of that conflict was it was just something else the thing that this game does very well is kind of like giving you an inch at a time of exposition like in the conversations that Desmond and Vidic have you really get an idea of like I guess what I'm trying to say is you always go you always leave one of their conversations wanting more yeah like when when Vidic is like they're gifts from those who came before you're like what the fuck does that was such a cool line yeah I remember hearing that for the first time being like what and it was like it really felt like you were just learning more about the the puzzle you were learning more about the world and it nothing came out of left field it it all kind of built on itself like okay to learn that there's a race of precursors that would be a pretty big drop but they don't cover that in the first game really but they hint at it and if they've established that there are these magical artifacts like a piece of Eden then yeah a very plausible explanation for that would be that they were left behind by a precursor race but we just get that that little that little tip tease that little tease of the tip that there's more going on I love it yeah that's the thing is it all comes down like this to the subtlety of it I mean there's a lot of conversation in the historical story between Amualam and Altair and it's like they're discussing the piece of Eden and things and events like there are certain events that Amualam mentions that like are explained away by a piece of Eden but it all makes sense in this mythology and I think at a certain point they just they really overplayed their hand oh yeah but when they when they were keeping it very close to the chest in this game in ac2 and whatnot like to me the entire time I was like please just like give me more of of like this stuff in the modern day yeah because you can make a good modern day conflict story but you what you can't get back is those little nuggets of precious information that they just gave to us and all the mystery that they've completely blown the load exactly and that's the thing is that's why I think that's a big part of why these modern days stand out so much is because we knew so little and we wanted to know so we had to and we exactly and we had to film the gaps ourselves until we told us otherwise that and that's what's missing is because now we know too much you know you took the words right out of my dick and I hope I did I agree completely oh here's a little note that I had that I wanted to mention maybe I'll slide this in somewhere the sound in ac1 is very very bad there's some cool sound design things I like the you know the piano thing and then when you collect a flag or whatever I like the really dramatic whoosh of when you assassinate some with the hidden blade but the music I mean these are very iconic sound effects the music is all over the place in my opinion there's stuff that sounds very like you know you got that really iconic like I think theme in damasque where it's like yep exactly like that's great but then you have like the chase music which is cool but also sounds like it's from the matrix like it's very sci-fi you know what I mean like that early 2000s for sure sound aesthetic and there's just no like I feel like there's no cohesion like there's a lot of really cool modern sounds and cool old sounds but nothing is blending them together remotely well at all I don't I don't I don't disagree I like I yeah I mean like you said I love the hidden blade sound effect that it needs to sound like that again I think and there's a cool like like I think that a lot of those pieces of music on their own are great it's just in the context of all of it together it's a very jarringly all over the place soundtrack I also think that one of the big problems with I mean look we're not gonna be the first people to shit on the ambient dialogue it is jarring that each city has the exact same lines of dialogue they've just replaced the accents but what makes it I think more annoying is the fact that I don't know if you notice this playing ac1 the sound of someone talking in the city in most normal games and in every other Assassin's Creed game the farther you get from that source of sound the quieter they get and you know you move your head to the left or right you'll hear them in the left or right it's positional audio ac1 doesn't do that at all it's all just like in the mix at full volume and that volume doesn't change whether you're on a rooftop or the top of a tower you're gonna hear you know someone say thief you are a thief at top value unchanging it's very jarring and distracting and also I think what they have are they have these like nodes that essentially emit the sound um positioned throughout the city so if you are standing nearby to one of those nodes you are going to hear whatever line of dialogue is programmed to it over and over and over again so if you find yourself standing on a rooftop for any reason for any period of time you're going to hear it a constant loop of I'll have your hands for that I'll have your hands for that I'll have your hands for that so it's very poorly done even by 2007 standards if anyone wants to jump in the comments and tell me that I'm actually wrong about the system or I'm wrong about how it was done uh or that there's like a really good reason why they did that way but I'm pretty sure immediately an ac2 that's corrected and I never have that problem again well also the something worth mentioning is that the just ambient talking from crowds and people and uh an ac2 has done a lot better than an ac1 like because like I guess we won't I guess I won't go into a tangent I just wanted to mention that I really like how the animus looks and I think it looks really like they how cumbersome it is the fact that there's like a whole whole section a whole corner of the room that's dedicated to servers alone you know kind of makes it really stupid that Leila just pulls out a fucking animus and out of her pocket they literally fucked that part of the animus by game two yeah I'm not disagreeing with you I'm saying that this game this game does the best and by ac4 it's a VR helmet oh yeah I'm not I I'm just giving that as one of the egregious examples yeah that's fair that's I think there are plenty I think there are plenty like ac4 I thought ac2 when Rebecca Crane was being like they just have no passion no competitive edge anything they can do I can do better I was like yeah all right sure I guess whatever you say Crane cool but we have more to talk about ac2 later yeah we're gonna do an episode just on the just on the corrupted sequences only all in all Assassin's Creed one you know it's kind of like when you have a parent you don't like very much like you got to give him a lot of credit they did create you but I've really lost track of this metaphor um yeah well they they kind of made you who you are but you moved you moved on to better parents yeah exactly and you know 13 parents later they're kind of all losing their magic yeah ac1 I got to give a credit great atmosphere great tone definitely the starting point and if it had not sold as well as it had we may not have gotten uh the Assassin's Creed we know and love and hate today but um really not that fun to play and I will probably never play it again I think I'm done with ac1 I've I've reached my ac1 quota but sound off in the comments you guys do you love ac1 do you hate ac1 what what do you think this is the official podcast of hating Assassin's Creed and still somehow liking it enough to be doing a podcast on it at all yeah somehow some way we're home to many contradictions on this show we really are uh go out and get yourself a ninja foodie go buy a June oven or whatever it's called a Juneau oven Juneau oven Juneau what I mean as always there are ways to support the show if you enjoy listening you can send our linky poos and linky pods to your friends who like Assassin's Creed and or podcasts um you can leave us a comment telling us what we got wrong about this Treviso Treviso if you have any fact checks you want to make leave them in the comments but also message them to us and put them on our discord server so thank you all for for listening thank you for interacting we we love you we love love love you muah muah muah muah muah muah I have been the blade and I've been the hook I've been the hook this time around guys and this has been the hookblade podcast see you next week so you can use one or the other