#and i already freaking love basim

[foxstens]

mirage looks great but i don’t have high hopes for it

[teecupangel]

i love that y'all have long meta conversations or worldbuilding ones for stuff for 10+ yo games with characters that are totally fine and weren't killed off. sorry, that's besides the point--i love that you guys get really into it. i can't follow the convos mostly, but i love the enthusiasm. means i'll get to read more awesome fic <3

When canon fucks you up, you fuck it harder.

Okay, but in all seriousness, I think the reason why we can have this long meta conversation or world building is because it is about a 10+ year old story and because it's Assassin's Creed.

Based on my experience, new lore dumps can break your will to write a fic that heavily focused on worldbuilding. That happened to me when FEW3H dropped earlier this year and I still can't find the will to continue the long fic I had that was heavy on worldbuilding because of the many new lore dumps it had that contradicted what I had already set up.

But Assassin's Creed...

Or, to be more exact, Ubisoft...

Ubisoft's choices in lore and gameplay make it so easy to just pick apart the lore and go to town with it. It's a common joke here that we all hate Ubisoft but we all say we love them the moment they give us a new trailer only to then hate on them again after we hear or see what other bs they have in store.

I can't easily do that to Monolith Studios or to Falcom or to Fire Emblem in general. But Ubisoft? Hell yeah. (Still bitter about that Prince of Persia 'postponed indefinitely' and also Splinter Cell new game when? Child of Light was good though.)

The fact that I focus heavily on the Desmond Saga and his part of the modern day setting also helps because that part of the lore is done. We have all the information Ubisoft decided to make canon.

That means we can pick it apart.

And if we don't like them?

Well, Desmond's been dead for 10 years already, we haven't really liked a lot of things Ubisoft had done to the franchise even longer than that.

I love Assassin's Creed but I don't like many of the choices Ubisoft made in regards to the story and the gameplay. And it's that contradiction that gives birth to so many fic ideas, headcanons, and metas.

It's less of a fix it and more of a

Even if it's about the current game, I can still screw around with canon because of that mindset when it concerns an Ubisoft Original.

(Also, the multi-universe theory is in play with the calculations. If the canon doesn't suit our need, there must exist a calculation that will, thanks Minerva)

Anyway, what I mean is these kinds of meta and world building will definitely continue.

Hell, with how they're teasing us with having Alamut in Mirage, we might get to see the actual Alamut castle later down the line and it will most probably contradict my idea of Alamut being a bigger version of Masyaf that is heavily influenced by the Alamut castle in the Prince of Persia movie. Will seeing canon Alamut stop me later on? Nah.

I can add an eagle-exclusive aviary on top of a tower in Alamut so they can have eagle partners ala Basim and Enkidu or even put a freaking thermae in Alamut and not even Ubisoft showing us the real Alamut Castle will be able to stop me.

Assassin's Creed says History is Our Playground and I am playing on the sand making my own crap with you guys and throwing wet sands at anything Ubisoft gives us that I don't like.

[ilikedetectives]

Even if it is Kassandra's hair, I don't see why so many people made such a big deal out of it. Its a freaking side braid. Something many women wear every day. If Kassandra's hairstyle was a completely unique style, then fine but it wasn't. Also I don't understand the complaints about reusing a few minor assets like hair. Its not that big of a deal.

Tbh idc about assets being reused, with the scale Ubisoft wants in an open-world RPG game and only gives the devs 3 yrs, especially for a cross-gen title, reusing assets is the only way to ship the game on time. Ubi has a lot of talented devs, but Ubi doesn't give them the time, the tools, and the creative freedom that they need. This is why I often call Ubi stingy/greedy, rather than how most would call the devs “lazy”.

The majority of Odyssey's hair library is in Valhalla, but none of that bothers me. Compare the Roman architecture/statues in Origins and Valhalla, I actually think it's a clever the way the devs reuse the assets. I think a lot of people (myself included) have issues only w Kassandra's hair because to a lot of us, it IS her hair. To you it’s just a common hairstyles and that’s ok. The fact that a lot of people went nut thinking it might be her during the Valhalla trailer to the point the Narrative Director had to clarified it himself on Twitter shows it is not just a typical hairstyle; I also had to go and extinguish that dumpster-fire hope from a lot of people. I mean, nobody looks at Alfred and Basim and goes “OMG it it Leonidas??? That’s Leonidas’s hair!!!” So, why just Kassandra’s hair? The hairstyle itself is very common (I can do that side braid too), but in AC specifically, it IS Kassandra’s hairstyle and she is a protag who is loved by many (not sure about older games but are Aveline, Elise, Evie, and Aya/Amunet’ hair got reused in the same manners?). So for us to see Ubi reusing her iconic hairstyle in the AC game right after, on another female NPC who is crucial to the plot, that’s just stingy on Ubi’s end. I say stingy because Randvi already had her own character design, the sudden change in the end was prob the devs were pressed on time imo (Ubi higher-ups here thinking making AAA game is like making instant ramen). Now, I prob just overthinking this for a vg, but shouldn’t Randvi deserves her own individuality? She is an entirely different character with her own story, seeing her as being known as Kassandra’s doppelgänger is just sad tbh. At least mod the hair so it’s longer/shorter or something or reuse a different hairstyle, they don’t have to create a new one from scratch.

p/s: I do draw the line when it comes to reusing base game assets for selling mtx items in an offline, single-player game *looking at Galloglach/Hearthweru and HiddenOne/BlackRaven sets*. Free updates? By all means go ham.