Well, there is good news and there is bad news, the good news is that my dreaming was not as dark as before, the bad news, I redesigned a new version of Assassins Creed, nothing with that pansy ass Viking stuff, or more precisely the glitches and bugs (as I saw them on YouTube). A fresh version that grasps back to the actual strength of the AC series, the Ezio Auditore era. Don’t worry, be calm, I will not touch something that was near perfect, but it surprises me that no one in the Ubisoft offices had that foresight, that insight and if they did, who was the yahoo milk dud that stopped it?
When we consider the old games, and I just replayed both AC2 and Brotherhood in the PS5, I was amazed how I loved redoing what I know what was going on, this is not an attack on the AC games, I truly loved these two and I had them both on PS3 and Xbox360, I never regretted that. And after that it went quiet until Origins, OK, AC Black Flag was a great game, it was just not an AC game. Giving a pirate a hidden blade is not making him an assassin and I never got that, Ubisoft had the premise of a new franchise, all new close to a day one game on the PS4 and they botched it, like it was left to someone without backbone to decide, anyway, Origins was amazing and after that it was more of the same, and the same stupidity came to Odyssey, as such I refused to touch Valhalla, and when I saw the glitches in YouTube films I was doubly sure that until the game was 80%-90% priced down (because of all the patches required), I left it alone. So as I was playing this evening a little of AC Brotherhood a new setting came to mind.
It was an interesting time to consider it, because it would set a new stage right between AC Brotherhood and AC3, I set the stage in the Netherlands, and the idea was to make it full on stealth, like an assassin needs to be. The idea was to have a much larger antagonist and it does not get any larger than the VoC, the ‘Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie’ was the first setting of a true cartel, so it stands to reason that the Templars (or whatever they would be called then) wanted a piece of that. The idea is to set a story that intertwines there. Consider that art was at an all time high, the Dutch Masters ruled, so the art is there, the old cities of Delft and Amsterdam would be there and that nations has had it foreign military visitors (France an Spain) which also resulted in the 80 year war, as such, a nation in war is a nation with options and opportunities. Even as the VoC is the main antagonist, there is a much larger story, the Netherland were basically centred around North Holland and South Holland, Even as South Holland was mainly Rotterdam and Schiedam, it had its own life, its own set of achievements, and lets not forget that the Pilgrims on the Mayflower left from Schiedam. A whole wealth of options, and it was left untouched, as they tried to go for something looking cool.
The VoC had it claws in the East Indian nations and more important, until around 1675 the VOC navigators and cartographers helped shape geographical knowledge of the world as we know it today. In addition, the Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek started microbiology around 1650, he also invented the microscope (he was probably bored staring at the hookers in Caetendrecht), a nation with so much history and so many options and Ubisoft seemingly ignored it. Now there is a danger, the danger is that we do not want more of the same (AC2), but something more, something different and making it more stealth and evolving stealth is an option, we can also dispense with the leaps of faith, we will not be sailing but boats are larger setting as the VoC was a large fleet carrying organisation.
There are of course a few options that seemingly overlap, there is art, but this time around books (revelations) are a side, the need to steal becomes a larger stage, as such you might improve a location (your house) but it does not lead to money, as such you need to make choices. There is also the notion to include Belgium as Brussels was an important city, especially when Napoleon came stomping by, there is a setting of close to a 100 years and in that time so much happened, we could make a much larger game, with more settings and a larger story line that surrounds the VoC and optionally sets a much needed stepping stone to other sides of the story.
What surprised me is that I got all this in less than 3 hours, and all that whilst Ubisoft came up with AC Valhalla, which has as I personally see it a lot of its homework from watching the 2013 series Vikings by Michael Hirst, but that could just be me.
And my largest fear is not that Ubisoft goes into this direction, it is the massive amount of bugs that they put into the game as well. Even now we see (5 hours ago), that there are arrow bugs that are not fixed, I wonder if Ubisoft will ever learn, I might just buy all their IP. I still have $20 left, it should be enough.
Oh, before I close the story, instead of merely assassinating people (which is never waste of time), I thought it might be prudent in line of the VoC to add a diplomacy part, so whilst some need to be killed, some people should never be killed, as such the thieves are more important now, they can be used and when used enough they will teach you skills too. Something that sets a larger premise towards using allies. Just an idea.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 