#a bit of ac4

[transmasc-rose]

The gap between how Clay talks about Lucy in AC2 and how he talks about Lucy in Revelations is so wide.

And there's a handful of plot twists in between. And probably a different writer. And a personality shift on Clay's end. Really nothing between those two points was consistent.

But I'm the guy who spent AC2 and Brotherhood wondering how much Clay knew about Lucy, and how Lucy felt about Clay dying under her care, and then, when Brotherhood ended, wondered how much Clay even knew about what she was.

Only for Revelations to be the payoff. So.

(Which isn't to say I'm upset about Clay being mad at her. It makes sense for him to be mad at her. They just don't put 5 seconds into trying to tie that in with his earlier characterization. Like they don't spend 5 minutes trying to tie any of Revelations Clay to his earlier characterization. It takes them until the DLC to even establish what was going in with Lucy, let alone Clay.)

[quietwingsinthesky]

like okay establishing that anyone can use the animus to view any life regardless of if you actually carry the genetic memory was such a terrible choice. the whole point is how desmond's modern situation stands in parallel to that of the men he's reliving. as altair is used as a pawn, so is desmond. the bleeding effect, the past and present melting into each other, you spend the entirety of brotherhood in the ruins of the villa auditore, for fuck's sake. it's that connection that was holding the past and present sections together, much more than the artifice of using the video game machine to justify the video game mechanics! and for what. just to make meta commentary using abstergo as a stand-in for the Evil Video Game Company, a criticism that endlessly spins its wheels because it can't actually put any real venom behind talking about the horrors of video game development front and center, and now it only ends up feeling crass and distasteful knowing what actually fucking happened behind closed doors at ubisoft.

[garden-variety-snail]

armored core 4 operator: I've been known to have some of those "daddy issues" myself :D

me: everything in the world just reminds me of him

[weirdunclegamer]

Was laying in bed and starting having Thoughts™️ about something in AC6 and while I don't normally do this, I figure I should try just... rando talking about stuff on my blog.

I found it very amusing and interesting (strongbad voice; amteresting), how AC6 decided to use the term Raven in its new AC timeline. Its explained to us (eventually) to not just be one pilot's name, but a title that many pilots of a somewhat bygone time had used, a title that supposedly stood for their sense of freedom.

It's pretty obvious what the metatext is there, its using the Raven title from earlier AC games... and giving it a sort of mythologizing that the term likely sounds like it has irl to new players who, coming to the series new, and seeing all the old fans reawakening to the bell of a new game, heard the wistful, nostalgic tales of playing the games back in the day, of being Ravens for the first time on the old consoles.

And even irl that title faded from its original use, obviously because the game series slowed down then went on a full decade hiatus. But it actually faded in the games as well. In AC4 the pilots are no longer called Ravens, but Lynx. A change I remember personally feeling a bit bummed by at the time even. In AC5 (a good game and I will not tolerate the meatheaded hate it gets), you are uniquely "the mercenary" instead of holding a shared title, further diluting the very idea of the titles.

It was one of those sorts of things I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about. On one hand I feel like they should've just gone back to calling the pilots (or maybe just certain affiliations) Ravens in AC6, a way of going back to the roots, since AC6 is a proper reboot. But on the other hand I can appreciate the metatext, which def feels very FromSoft to do, weaving a sense of the real world history of the franchise into the lore of the new era. Either way, it is especially amusing, because it all stems from a funny quirk of the progress of video game technology; the problem game writers came into when voice acting was added to games, wherein it was impossible to account for the names a player would name themself, so they had to find ways to write around characters saying the players' name, in games where the player names themself.

Its a thing I feel people mostly associate with the more "modern" era, with epic adventure create-a-character games like the Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, or, of course, the Souls family. But its been a thing since as early as the PS1. Before voice acting was whole-game prevelant, when all the dialogue was text, you could just insert that bit of code to put in the players' chosen name into the npc dialogue (for true immersion, or to name you're pokemon stuff like "I" or "You" or "Farts"... also for true immersion), but now... well I already said the thing about the voice work. Coming up with a title to call the player (Dragonborn, Courier, Commander Shepard, etc etc) has been a popular way to handle the problem... which seems to be almost satirized in AC6.

Despite everything I just said about the use of Raven in AC6, the player character has like two scoops of nicknames the other characters call you; 621, hound, raven, buddy, tourist, G13, freelancer, wallclimber, wormkiller, liberator of rubicon... pretty sure there's others I can't remember. That might've just been a side effect of how the characters are written vis-a-vi the players' in universe muteness, but knowing From, its very likely to have been a sort of good natured ribbing about the fad both in their games and others.

The use and challenge of use of players' getting to name the protagonist in games is one of those fantastic things that mostly only exists in video games.

[hath-e]

Heavily considering emulating ACVD cuz AC6 is just that good, and AC4/4A looks a bit too fast for me to keep up with. Could always go for more good Mecha games tbh although I doubt there will be another one like AC6 anytime soon

[mikhailwrites]

Soaring Ever Higher - companion post

Hello!

I've decided to write this post detailing my motivations and explaining the realities of my fanfic crossover between Modern Warfare reboot and Ace Combat 7.

Do you need to read this in order to enjoy the story? No. Are you going to have better idea of what's going on and who's who (including Soap's new callsign being Trigger) if you do? Yes! And for those of you not familiar with AC, it might be a reason to play it, and I'll be very happy if you do, because it's a great game.

So, without further ado, let's get to it!

Jets are cool!

Let's start with obvious. Jets are cool. As-in, "one of the pinnacles of human ingenuity combined with unique and often genuinelly pleasing aestethics" cool.

There's also prestige and, obviously, a huge popculture cult surrounding Top Gun and being a fighter pilot. The fact that I've loved planes since I was a kid also played a role.

Soap or Trigger?

Trigger is a silent, faceless protagonist of Ace Combat 7. Now when I say he's silent and faceless, that doesn't mean he doesn't have a personality. This is mostly conveyed through the other characters (with the most prominent being his wingman Count and a mechanic Avril) that either talk to him or about him.

Trigger is an outstanding pilot, an ace, he's a daredevil but also has a strong moral compass. He owns his mistakes and does what is right. Since he's a fighter pilot, he's also very independent and can sometimes come off as defying.

Long story short, I think he has a lot in common with Soap. But since there's virtually no information about Trigger, it made most sense to me to create a crossover where Soap would take on that role.

That's how John "Trigger" MacTavish came to be. The "three strikes" on the tail of Trigger's jet, that's also AC thing but I will address that in the story, so... no spoilers.

So I basically took Soap off of 141 and made him the AC Trigger, including characters from AC that are now part of RAF, as is Soap. The rest of 141 stayed the same, but they are one Sergeant short. If only there was a character from OG MW that Activision deleted from the reboot, huh...

MW vs Ace Combat

There's a lot that MW and Ace Combat share, too. Of course, both deal with military themes, even though Ace Combat takes place in an alternate universe called Strangereal. Countries on Strangereal Earth are fictional but they are historically and politically mashed up from our reality. The jets, however, are 100 % licensed "real deal" stuff.

The similarities don't end with military themes. Most notable is an anti-war message. That is not really that strong in rebooted MW, but in OG, it was pretty clear. Ace Combat is very, very vocal about it's anti-war sentiments. While Ace Combat adores the "warmachines" it condemns their purpose. Think of Gundam or Metal Gear.

Ace Combat tells the story of war and combat through the eyes of individuals affected by it. Soldiers and civilians alike. That is a little bit closer to the rebooted MW that focuses on the individual characters way more than OG used to do.

So, all in all, both games give me kinda similar vibes of "it's cool to play soldiers and acknowledge the heroism of people fighting for peace and freedom, but killing is still wrong and war is in itself a crime against humanity".

And... that's it. Thank you for reading and if you're videogame music nerd, absolutely go dig that Ace Combat soundtracks (at least all the way to Agnus Dei from AC4) because that stuff is really good.

[dndhistory]

363. Gary Gygax and Frank Mentzer - AC4: The Book of Marvelous Magic (1985)

A pretty unique source book for D&D (with an appendix containing rules to adapt its content for AD&D) The Book of Marvelous Magic is both weird and pretty funny. Basically it's a 80 page book of magical items, loads of them, as well as listings for other magical items previously published. For example under "Amulets" one of them has already been explained in the D&D Expert Set so the entry will just tell you that.

This means that the majority of this are original magical items and if there is one thing you can tell from browsing through the book is the fact that Gygax and Mentzer clearly were having a bit of fun doing this list. It's full of just amusing items such as a Barrel of Monkeys, a Can of Worms or a Can of Can't, or even a Sun Deck. 

However, there are other items which just feel a bit crazy today. You can see that in the very first item of the list, the "Alternate World Gate", a listing of gate items which can transport characters from other TSR games into your D&D campaign, like a Violin Case that can transport a mobster from the Gangbusters game or a Medal which can bring a first world war ace pilot into your fantasy campaign. There's a lot of fun to be had with these items but there are also useful ones and particularly useful randomized tables of items which will really help you furnish your campaign.  

[neko-tempo]

Started this one yesterday. Running about as well as AC4 in rpcs3, only with a couple more slowdowns during some more taxing missions with a lot of explosions and enemies. Also having a weird issue with emblems where they kinda glitch out when playing the arena mode (something that also happened in AC4, forgot to mention that in previous posts). The game itself has been rly good! Was a bit difficult to get used to at first since it's a far more challenging game than AC4, feels more on-par with some of the classic entries. Far more ambitious in terms of the level design, too. Just wishing I could've carried over a lot of what I acquired in the previous game besides the mecha schematics but ehh, maybe that would've made the early missions in this more of a cakewalk.

[forlibcrty]

little thought because i've been binge-playing ac4 for the past week: since we know that connor goes to the caribbean several times, both in the main story with haytham to catch church and in the captain kidd side quests, i'm gonna say that he did spend some time there asking around about his grandfather. we know that connor is aware of edward and what he got up to re: piracy in the caribbean, so i have to imagine he'd take the opportunity to find out a bit more. and i just like imagining connor in various ports listening eagerly while the bartenders and patrons tell him legends of the fabled captain kenway.

[whydotheit]

You coward, you tried to answer this ask privately, but I do in fact know how to screenshop and also how to crop screenshots.

Anyway, one of my great shame is that in spite of knowing a pretty decent deal about pirates and about all of the individual parts of boats and how to run a boat, and quite a bit about the nature of shantymen and the specifications of their roles on boats, I don't actually know much about boats themselves, specifically the difference between different boats. The difference between a sloop and a scooner? Don't know jack shit. I know that Royal Clipper had 42 sails in a last ditch effort to compete with steam boats (the ship was historically an absolute pain to handle) and that the royal British navy gave a small but tall and rocky island a naval position and christened the HSM Diamond Rock, but is a man o' war an actual thing or something AC4 made up? I don't know, and I fear I never will.

[mishkakagehishka]

yeah no fr you get it. i notice so many little things that just feel weird when games try to be too realistic. like modern fallout games? you immediately notice when character's mouths or animations are wonky. tbh i play far too few super-realistic-games to really point out any ones i have flaws with but like!

final fantasy! 15 is pretty realistic but still keeps that anime vibe. prompto's hair is a little silly but hey, its ff! and it fits in the world and doesn't feel off. kh? entirely silly. even in kingdom hearts 3 where there's a lot more like "high-def" textures and stuff, all the characters are so silly and anime-esque that it still just works.

hell i sometimes think ts2 has more polish and personality than ts4, and that came out in approx 2004...

idk man i love my silly anime games and my clunky/chunky/low-poly graphics. realism is fun as are pretty graphics but man. i can look past shitty graphics if the story and characters are fun and i have a reason to care. but if the graphics are slowing my device down and i can barely play? that's just a pain.

on that note why are assassin's creed games so fucking big. i had to dl over 100gb for ac: valhalla awhile ago. is this even necessary anymore...? ngl i like ac4's graphics more than the more modern games sometimes...

sorry im a little passionate abt games. oopsies. ily corks

No, but exactly, that's why i brought up ff. It has a dash of realism to it, but the charas look so stylised in the anime way despite that, that flaws don't jump out as much as they do in the RE engine, to me. I very much remember wonky hair being a thing despite the fact that i played one (1) 3D final fantasy entry, and that was years ago, but it never struck me as odd, because... it was stylised, and it could get explained as part of the style. When you aim for photorealism, even the most minor flaw registers as - a flaw, cannot be explained by saying "it's stylised".

And, yeah, real. I can't tell you for Valhalla or Odyssey - I don't own them and don't really have an urge to get them either (not in an elitist "it's not a proper ac game", but just a bit of a side-eyeing "i play ac for certain reasons, and odyssey and valhalla took a path that removed those reasons"), but from what I hear they have a fuckton of content. I think Origins also took so much to download, it was ridiculous.

(And same tho. I made tumblr bc i wanted to be insane ab elder scrolls somewhere, enstars just kinda took over. But i've always been a video game freak)

[someone-you-do-not-know]

You asked about Assassin's Creed, and in all honesty I haven't played many or finished a single one. I love history when it's presented to me properly and yeah the series isn't fully accurate but that's what caught my attention. So it bugs me when the game pulls me back to the present and reminds me what's going on. The overall story interests me but I also don't care for it if that makes sense.

I started playing 2 years ago but got to the part where it takes me back to the present where something was happening and I had to run off, but I lost interest after that. I was interested in Ezio, but nothing else. Haven't tried to play it since. There was something that bugged me about the gameplay too but I can't remember what exactly it was.

Valhalla grabbed my attention with the title because I've always had an interest in norse stuff. And I do enjoy it. But exploring England distracted me from the main story. There's so much other stuff to do that I happily ran off to do all of that instead. Then I got distracted by other games and haven't played in a bit. Would love to get back to it though, I have so much fun with it.

I also have Odyssey and Rogue remastered for the ps4 but I haven't started those yet.

My personal favourite is Rogue, so please please please please please play that one!

I mostly heard bad stuff about Valhalla, and haven't played any of the mainline games since Origins, because the choose your own adventure/rpg style was not what I wanted from an Assassin's Creed game. I have Origins, but I haven't even installed it yet, because I just kinda don't care to try it.

The gameplay is kinda janky, so I get if that put you off. I think AC4 Black Flag, AC Rogue, AC Unity, and AC Syndicate are some of the AC games with the best balance between side quests and main quests – the modern day story is also lesser in those, so you might enjoy those more than Ezio trilogy.

I like the modern day story myself, but I get that it's annoying to be pulled out of the story all the time – that's why I really don't like AC3, it always switched between history and modern day at the worst times.

Getting distracted by other games is so real though.

[quietwingsinthesky]

idk rip to ubisoft but i would’ve just also given them a presence in the base game so that it doesn’t feel like they’re only acknowledging sex workers when they’re part of a story where they’re getting abused and murdered. they could’ve just like. been around in london. why does henry green have a contact with a cop and a literal child but not with any sex workers or brothels. am i wrong? this is a weird state of affairs?

it feels weird to me that prostitutes only become a faction again in syndicate specifically for the jack the ripper dlc. that’s weird, right.

[femboyyuri]

as someone who loved ac4 and for answer and who actually kinda digs how janky the series is how does ac6 compares

like i keep hearing nice things about the game but also one thing ive seen mentionned quite a bit is that ac6 is less janky than the previous games to the point some folks recommend to NOT try the older games?? and im like "theyre.... theyre good games...."

[teecupangel]

Your opinion on John Standish/Noob ? I just finished AC4 and I feel like there was definitely something there in that John wanted his wife to possess Noob’s body and all… I think the idea of that ship is cute ngl!

I personally don’t ship it because John used and blackmailed Noob in the end and that’s not my type of tea but I can get why you’d ship them. There is something in their interaction that can be seen as something and I believe that stems from the fact that John/Aita wanted Juno to possess Noob’s body.

Either Noob has high enough Isu genes or maybe Noob looked a lot like Juno or maybe Noob was actually the type of person John Standish (not Aita) liked and that bled thru even as John has pretty much assimilated with Aita’s memories and personality.

Also, John was pretty helpful at the start, even friendly (although with a hint of condescending that Noob probably thought was because technology is John’s jam and they sorta needed a lot of help so they didn’t mind the snark aimed at them). Plus, we were made to believe that John is an ally of the Brotherhood (perhaps even an Assassin himself) to keep the plot twist that he’s Aita’s Sage a secret.

Honestly, with how loyal Aita is to Juno (and vice-versa), I think this ship would work if the idea is that John Standish and Aita are two separate entities occupying the same body and not the fully assimilated Sage we got in Black Flag. The friendly one that’s still a bit of an asshole is John himself but Aita’s personality is slowly corrupting him. In this case, the plot would most probably be Noob and John developing some kind of attraction with one another that turns its head once Aita starts appearing more and more.

I won’t say that the power of love will save John from becoming Aita though. Instead, chuck him into the Animus, load the Animus Island, and have John and Aita duke it out.

Then once John is about to be defeated, get Noob in there and let them kick Aita’s ass using Edward’s Bleed.

Then it’ll be more on the side of John having to heal from Aita’s influence, dealing with the aftermath of Aita’s actions and keeping Aita at bay with Noob staying with him.

Pretty sure, at this point, they would be on the run from Abstergo and maybe John would be reluctant to ask help from the Assassins since he is carrying Juno’s husband inside of him.

Oh, and of course… Juno and her Will of the First Bitch will also be on their tail.

[bizarrelittlemew]

Fave part of ac4 is how the stede characterization is the dumbest guy you've ever met. And when he gets used as a foot stool

absolutely. i love how (seemingly) every portrayal of Stede Bonnet just goes in the direction of "useless and a bit pathetic but very enthusiastic blond man". and they're right ❤