Month: September 2018

Since the beginning, the central conflict in the Assassin’s Creed series has been freedom vs. control. For the most part, we’ve been placed on the side of freedom and fought to give others the right to choose how they want to live. Ironically, we haven’t had much choice in how we go about it, and have repeatedly followed a controlled narrative in each entry that forced us to kill certain characters, spare others, and react to the world in a specific way.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey changes that and delivers an unprecedented level of freedom in its combat and dialogue. The game even allows you to choose your romantic partner, personal allegiance, and which people deserve to die–including normal civilians and several of the assassination targets.

In the opening eight to ten hours of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, our travels through ancient Greece introduced us to a large supporting cast of characters, gave us our first taste of Odyssey’s naval combat, and allowed us to experience the effects of choosing certain dialogue responses over others. We got a pretty comprehensive idea of the differences in combat and how the introductory skills in Odyssey work too, as we played through the game’s opening hours with Alexios as a powerful melee fighter and bow wielder, and then again with Kassandra as a speedy and stealthy assassin who relied on small daggers.

As we played through Odyssey’s opening chapters, we noticed the game repeatedly go out of its way to give the player the ability to choose. Kassandra and Alexios may be its protagonists, but the next Assassin’s Creed is all about you living your own odyssey. For the most part, it works, but some of the new innovations suffer from solely focusing on the player’s needs and not those of the game’s characters.

New Skills Are Unlocked Quickly And Make Fights More Fluid

You level up and unlock new skills fairly quickly at the start of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, giving you plenty of opportunities to experiment with new abilities. At the start, the only abilities available to you will be different types of archery shots, melee attacks, and stealth skills. The higher end abilities that sheath your blade in fire or perform other seemingly magical attacks are locked until you progress a certain ways through the story.

Like Assassin’s Creed Origins, the use of these skills runs on an adrenaline meter. However, adrenaline fills a lot faster in Odyssey, so it’s easier to chain together many skills in a row to pull off devastating combos in combat or stealthily slice your way through an enemy compound in mere moments.

Kassandra and Alexios do not use shields, so the shield bashing skills from Origins are gone. However, plenty of Bayek’s other abilities make a return, including using a special vision to sense and tag enemies through walls or controlling the trajectory of an arrow after you’ve fired it into the air.

The new skills are way more fun, though. Spartan kick deals tons of damage and is a good way of putting some space between you and a powerful enemy. Ubisoft has even nicely stationed several foes alongside the edges of cliffs or towers in the early areas whose sole purpose seems to only be to stand there until they’re sadisticly kicked into oblivion. Compared to Bayek, Kassandra and Alexios have a lot more creative stealth skills as well, including a particularly effective one that allows you to throw out a knife into a person’s back and immediately appear behind them to finish them off before then throwing the knife into another target. It’s like Kassandra/Alexios are teleporting from one enemy to the next, but the game describes it as them being so fast and sneaky that enemies can’t keep track of them.

Instead of putting all your points into new skills, you can also spend them on upgrading your existing ones too. For example, the teleporting knife throwing skill only chains up to two targets at first, but you can use additional points to raise that number. And if you don’t like the skills you’ve unlocked or upgraded, Odyssey lets you respec your protagonist at any time.

Romancing Someone Can Be A Little Creepy

In our time with the demo, we only found one person we could flirt and start a relationship with. Her name is Odessa and she’s a direct descendent of the legendary Greek hero Odysseus, the protagonist of Homer’s Odyssey. Odessa is attracted to both Kassandra and Alexios so you’ll be able to romance her regardless of which character you choose.

Romance in Odyssey plays out a lot like the romantic storylines in Mass Effect: Andromeda. One of the dialogue choices for when you meet someone you can romance will have a little heart next to it. Clicking that choice causes Kassandra/Alexios to flirt with that person. Do it enough times and the game transitions into a scene where both characters are intimate. It’s very straightforward and easy to do if you want to romance someone, and just as simple to avoid it if you don’t want to.

The problem with romancing Odessa, is that you have to be a huge creep to “woo” her. If you choose to romance Odessa, you have to continue flirting with her and pushing for her to have sex with you while she’s asking you to help her gather medicine for her dying father or pleading with you to save her life from some men who want her dead. And when you do help her and she finally agrees to have sex with you, you can ask if she wants to go again. She resists–saying she’s tired from the sex you both had literally seconds prior–but she appreciate your advances and you can then offer for her to serve on your crew so she can find the meaning in her life she’s been desperately seeking. She’s then available to help you in boarding parties during naval combat.

Forging the relationship feels very formulaic and unnatural. There are cute moments–especially at the start–but the overall experience leaves a bad taste in your mouth. It’s a moment where Odyssey’s message of this being a journey for the player gets in the way of the gameplay. The Odessa romance is purposely built for you to have the girl if you want her, and dispose of her if you don’t–you can literally leave her locked in a cage on an island. By the end, we didn’t feel like we’d formed a loving connection with a special person; rather we’d chosen to recruit someone who felt indebted to us. Hopefully there are other romantic storylines in Odyssey that feel a bit more like actually falling in love.

Shaping The Protagonist’s Words Can Create Amusing Consequences

Despite having the choice of choosing what Kassandra or Alexios can say to someone, the dialogue in the game has been structured to fit a specific archetype. Kassandra and Alexios are hot-headed, stubborn, and very opinionated so all of their dialogue choices reflect that. When an annoying woman is badgering the protagonists about finding her stolen wood, they can either ask her to be patient with a hint of annoyance in their voice or angrily yell at her and tell her to shut up while they go get her wood. Both answers are technically the same–in both instances Kassandra and Alexios are getting tired of being badgered about getting this woman’s wood they already agreed to find–but the player decides whether or not the protagonist should keep their emotions under control.

There are a few moments where you’ll be able to use dialogue to solve problems. For instance, you can help a praying woman by having the protagonists speak out and pretend to be the god Hermes. It’s hilarious how easily the woman believes in the ruse, but it convinces her to return home to her family. You can continue the charade by following her home and leaving the gold she was praying for on her doorstep.

During the demo, we also got to see how our dialogue choices can affect the game’s story. Not all of the choices in Odyssey lead to the result you think, and you’ll have to be careful. A positive action does not always yield a positive response. Early on in the game, we learned about some plague victims. After investigating the situation, it seemed like the civilians in quarantine were clean, so we allowed them to return to their lives. It wasn’t until much later–after we’d sailed away from the island–that we learned the plague had spread from those civilians and killed more people. Ubisoft informed us that had we allowed the guards to continue detaining the quarantined citizens against their will, the plague would have ended.

Another surprise was the lack of complete censorship in Odyssey’s dialogue. Although a few words–like “mercenary” and “hello”–are spoken in the native tongue, the protagonist and the other characters they meet all freely swear without being censored by the Animus. We’ve never heard an Assassin’s Creed protagonist drop so many f-bombs before. It’s a little jarring at first but we quickly got used to it, and it occasionally makes Kassandra/Alexios’ angry outbursts a little funnier.

Naval Travel Is Tedious

Naval travel is so slow in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. From a historical sense, it’s understandable that Odyssey’s protagonists wouldn’t have access to the same technology seen in Assassin’s Creed 3, 4: Black Flag, and Rogue, so their vessel would be slower than Ratohnhake:ton’s Aquila, Edward’s Jackdaw, and Shay’s Morrigan. That doesn’t change how annoying it is when it comes time to sail on a longer voyage, and it certainly doesn’t help that the ocean lacks the same vibrant life and activity that made exploring so enjoyable in Black Flag. After playing the mandatory naval missions, we steered clear of the optional ones.

Naval combat is still pretty fun, although you’ll often be ramming into and sinking ships in the beginning of the game instead of boarding them. If you do choose to only wound a vessel and leap aboard, an army will no longer follow after you. A few sailors might join you, but you’ll mostly be on your own. If you want a boarding party, you’ll have to recruit people for the job–in a similar style to Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain. You find someone you want to recruit, knock them out with a Spartan kick or melee takedown, and then abduct them. When they wake up, they can be assigned as an officer within your crew.

Officer recruitment is another unfortunate example where Odyssey’s mission to cater to the player has a negative effect on the gameplay. It would have been nice to have specific missions devoted to acquiring officers–similar to Assassin’s Creed 3’s assassin recruit missions–so each member of your crew had a bit more personality. But again, your crew’s story and their choices don’t matter, it’s yours that does. It’s also a little weird that everyone you kidnap is just okay with serving under you, even if just prior to being knocked out you killed every one of their fellow soldiers. Apparently, no one you abduct has a family who misses them either.

Like the weapons and gear you find, each potential officer has a rarity level and extra attributes. For example, a common enemy archer we recruited increased the number of arrows our ship could fire by a tiny percent and he brought a small contingent of soldiers with him when he joined us while boarding an enemy ship. Meanwhile, Odessa–who’s very skilled with both a bow and sword and considered a rare character–increases our ship’s arrow barrage damage by a significant amount, remains by our side while on enemy ships, attracts a sizable boarding party, and can kill most sailors in just one to two hits. At the start, you can only assign one officer, but if you choose to upgrade the size of your ship then you’ll be able to pick up to four.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey releases on October 5 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. The game comes with certain in-game bonuses depending on where you pre-order it from and what edition you buy, of which there are quite a few.

Viz Media has announced the worldwide pre-order for Long Story Short, the first of two novels that add additional context to the story and characters in Nier: Automata. The book is already available in Japan, and its English translation will release on October 9.

Long Story Short is written by Jun Eishima and Yoko Taro–the latter of which is the director of Nier: Automata–and works as both an entry point for those unfamiliar with Automata and as an avenue for those experienced with the game to further explore its lore. The novel includes story details and character thoughts that weren’t included in Nier: Automata, some of which change your perception of certain actions taken by the game’s protagonists.

In 2019, another Nier: Automata novel, titled Short Story Long, will release. Instead of following the events of the game, Short Story Long is a collection of short stories that take place within the Nier: Automata universe. The original Japanese version of Short Story Long is also already out and includes seven stories, but it has not been confirmed whether the English translation will include the same number. Short Story Long is also written by Jun Eishima and Yoko Taro.

You can pre-order Long Story Short for $15 in the U.S. and $20 in Canada, or nab it at a discount if you buy the digital version.

Nier: Automata was one of our favorite PS4 games in 2017 and we gave it a 9/10. In our Nier: Automata review, we described it as “Taro’s most exciting game to date” and praised the combat mechanics and powerful storytelling–all of which remained in the game when it released on Xbox One in 2018.

Anime Crimes Division is returning for a second season. The popular web series stars Riley Rose Critchlow and YouTuber SungWon “ProZD” Cho and is produced as a collaborative effort between RocketJump and Crunchyroll.

In the exclusive clip above, RocketJump co-founder and Anime Crimes Division director Freddie Wong talks about what viewers can expect to see in the show’s new season. Full warning, if you haven’t watched Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood yet, the above clip contains a spoiler of one of the more prominent character deaths in the series. Some of the other trailers for Anime Crimes Division showcase the same death scene so if you don’t want to be spoiled, watch Brotherhood first.

Crunchyroll’s synopsis of the second season is as follows: “Detectives Joe Fuyara and Diesel are back for a second season, working to solve a series of anime-inspired crimes taking place in Neo Otaku City. In order to do so, Joe and Diesel must defeat TOXIC: a terrorist group from nearby Prestige City who want to steal all the anime from Neo Otaku City because they don’t believe anyone else is worthy. Joe and Diesel battle these evil terrorists in order to restore order to Neo Otaku City, and ensure anime is still something for everyone to enjoy.”

Anime Crimes Division Season 2 begins airing today on Crunchyroll and new episodes will go live every Friday. The season is composed of six episodes. Season 2 moves away from the villain of the week formula the show used in the first season, and is instead structured like a segmented film with one overarching plot.

Bungie has announced the next update for Destiny 2, Hotfix 2.0.2, is going live across all platforms next week. The patch notes for the update will be revealed closer to its launch.

Hotfix 2.0.2 goes live on Tuesday, September 11. The update is rolling out in three waves, giving you time to prepare so you don’t lose your progress in the game. At 9:00 AM PDT / 12:00 PM EST / 5:00 PM BST, Hotfix 2.0.2 will start going live. If you’re playing Destiny 2 at the time, the update won’t stop your game. However, an hour later, the update will start removing players to the login screen after they’ve finished whatever activity they’re playing at the time. If you’re not in an activity, you’ll just be removed straight to the login screen.

You should try to download Hotfix 2.0.2 as soon as you can, because at 2:00 PM PDT / 5:00 PM EST / 10:00 PM BST, all remaining players–regardless of what you’re doing in Destiny 2–will be removed to the login screen to download the update. Download the update early so you don’t have to worry about cutting out in the middle of a mission with your Fireteam. If you’re also playing Destiny 2 on September 11, finish your stuff up early instead of leaving your game paused in the middle of an activity because that won’t stop you from being kicked to the login screen on the third wave.

Destiny 2 is in the midst of its largest expansion yet, Forsaken. Our Destiny 2: Forsaken review is still in progress, but we’re currently giving it an 8/10. We’ll update that score once the new Raid drops. If you’re just starting Forsaken, we’ve got a guide of essential tips, as well as a list of all the new Exotic weapons and armor.

Destiny 2 is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

The PC version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has a new update that adds content and fixes a lot of the game’s bugs. Update 21 implements a new mode, weapon, vehicle, weapon attachment, a reward system for fulfilling certain criteria during matches, and multiplayer improvements.

Update 21 adds a new training mode that allows you to practice different mechanics without fear of being killed. Taking place on a small island–only 200×200 km–the training mode contains 14 zones for trying out different skills. You’ll be able to practice jumping off ramps in vehicles, maneuvering on twisting roads, controlling vehicle speed, piloting a boat, driving off road, shooting on different gun ranges, landing in a parachute, free-running over rooftops, swinging different melee weapons, trying different grenades, and learning the effects of consumables.

All three maps get the new assault rifle the MK47 Mutant. The rifle takes 7.62 ammo and holds 20 rounds a clip. The rifle can be fired in both single shot and two-round burst modes, and takes almost all types of assault rifle attachments other than stocks.

Sanhok gets a new exclusive vehicle: the three-person Tukashai. It’s slow but it handles off-road better than the motorcycles.

Update 21 adds a lot more to the game as well, including an objective system where you’re rewarded for completing certain tasks during matches–like reviving teammates a certain number of times or dealing a certain amount of damage with one attack. There’s also a new laser sight, which fits into the grip slot on rifles. It offers greater accuracy at the cost of giving away your position. You’ll also be able to place markers on your compass, which translates to your teammates’ compasses too. This helps you determine the direction of a threat more efficiently when your team is stationed at different points on the map.

All of the changes are outlined in greater detail in the full patch notes on PUBG’s Steam page. If you’re simply interested in the bug fixes, we’ve listed them below.

This update is only live on the PC version of PUBG, but the battle royale game is also available for Xbox One. PUBG just officially launched on Xbox One with its 1.0 update, which added the Sanhok map and weather conditions.

PUBG Update 21 Bug Fixes

• Fixed the issue where, after connecting the XBOX controller to the PC, the drop-down menu would not appear to select the reason for reporting on the results screen.
• Fixed the issue where a character on board a vehicle would sometimes be shown as immobile in a very different location.
• Fixed the issue where a character is sometimes shown in a different location
• Fixed the issue where a character who is driving in a vehicle is created in an unspecified location.
• Fixed the issue where weapons are sometimes shown in locations different from where the character is holding them.
• Fixed the issue where the gun of the person you are spectating is sometimes not rendered, causing problems when the gun goes into ADS mode.
• Fixed the issue where approaching a corpse while lying down could sometimes cause the camera to zoom in.
• Fixed the issue where approaching a window with glass and throwing a throwable could sometimes cause the camera to temporarily zoom in and out.
• Fixed the issue where sometimes a character standing at the very edge of the sea would be shown as falling out of the sky.
• Fixed the issue where the Bluezone UI timer occasionally decreases by 2 seconds.
• Fixed the issue where an underwater character is unable to move to land because the terrain is shown as stuttering.
• Fixed the issue where colliding with an object while driving in a UAZ deals comparatively more damage than other vehicles.
• Fixed the issue where the firing mode of a gun that has been dropped and picked up again is reset to default settings.
• Fixed the issue where the AR compensator on the SLR was not reducing the horizontal recoil.
• Fixed the issue where a character cannot peek while over a gas can.
• Fixed the issue where frame drop occured when the weather was rainy and the character was swimming in the water when the perspective changed from under to above water.
• Fixed the issue where the suppressed AKM and Beryl M762 sounded the same.
• Fixed the issue where characters could pass through a wooden door while riding the scooter.
• Fixed the issue where players sometimes couldn’t loot items when the item was dropped on stairs or a slope.
• Fixed the issue where the vaulting action was not working properly with certain building windows in Sanhok.
• Fixed the issue where the HP gauge was displayed red in certain conditions.
• Fixed the issue where an afterimage sometimes remains on other players’ screen when repeatedly arming/unarming.