I wanna counter the Perma Death argument especially in the older games, because in the older versions you'd be reliving the moments through the eyes of Desmond Miles. One unintended detection would desyncronize the actual events played out in the past. I am not sure how multiple endings or perma death would apply to AC games.
However, my good friend, there is a solution to this: say, the player dies, that is not when the ancestor, in reality, died so the animus gets confused and boots the animus user out, which serves as punishment for not synchronizing and dying (the animus is modified to make it easier for the animus user to navigate because the purpose of it is to find the piece of eden - not relive the memories, but relive the memories to find information, so we could have a choice to have a more accurate representation of the actual historical events as an option).
But wouldn’t that be the point really? To have that tension as a real assassin would have during that time. That if you get spotted it could potentially screw up everything and derive a different outcome which could probably lead to death. In those situations you will need to rely on all your training to get you past this. I think it feeds into the Assassin Fantasy the most tbh in sections where you’re supposed to be in the shadows. But then again, its like the guy says. Permadeath should just be an option just for challenging and to be more immersive. Adds to the character building fr.
@@Stealthful_ but then, essentially wouldn't that mean the person accessing the memories would jump back to the moment they left? For instance, in the previous games we finish memory sequences as we play through. Why would Desmond want to re-access the same memories? He surely would remember the information gathered thus far, wouldn't he?
@@ILM6868 that would work, if we were just playing the Assassin and not reliving memories through a descendant. For instance, Desmond would be desyncronizing the memories if he were to be identified or captured as Ezio way before he became an assassin. There are plenty of missions that needs to be carried out without detection. And since we are reliving moments, we don't have the liberty to change the outcome. We miss the mark, we desynchronise the memory.
Ubisoft initially had some similar ideas. If you watch the gameplay demo for AC1, Altair could only get hit once. Getting into combat would lead to your surroundings desyncing like when you normally reach low health in AC games but you’re still alive which gives you the opportunity to escape. But once you get hit it’s over. It made combat way more of a risk, something you should actively avoid to do rather than being an alternative. I think that was AC protagonists being “glass cannons” in its truest form
You can have engaging combat while having "glass canon" type characters. Just look at the whole souls genre. Most bosses can kill you in one or two hits yet you play that game because of th feel of the combat.@@shadow_crne1030
Technically Altaïr never got hit during our time with him, his "health" bar is called the synchronization bar. So if you take damage as him then you've already lost 100% sync.
The thing about permadeath in longer games (not short roguelikes) is that the game that implements it has to be amazingly polished and having solutions to most "fail" states. A game like BG3 works very good with permadeath because basically every situation is covered by the game. You can fail a conversation, mess up and have to kill an important NPC, and so many other scenarios where failing just means your story will continue diffrently, but it will continue. Assassins Creed has always had these moments were it feels like you need to complete a mision in the exact way that the game wishes you to do it, and that wouldn't feel alright with a permadeath system. Basically: Long games with permadeath need to have clever ways to handle your possible failures, otherwise they feel frustrating and unfair. Also, they need to be polished as fuck.
I would never play a game on Perma Death mode because I'm more of a casual, story mode gamer. But perma death seems like a very simple thing to add to almost any game and if it makes some people's experience of the game better, I am all for it.
@@tekdrudge I like the power fantasy and running into danger. I'm currently playing Tears of The Kingdom and I could NEVER play that game on permadeath the way I like to play. Unless I was somehow immune fall damage... and my own explosives... and 1 hit KOs... lol
The vast majority of assassins in history (especially in the Middle East where the word assassin comes from and where Mirage is based on) died before they could escape the killing of their targets. So as a history buff this works too :)
@@12DAMDOsuch funny folk lore Altair did take damage ubi just didn’t add a health bar to the first assassins creed game 😂 if that was the case he wouldn’t have a health bar in revelations
I remember playing watchdogs Legion with permaDeath mode and it made me literally sweat in every dangerous situation which added extra immersion but once my favourite character died and I was forced to play with another character I stoped playing the game as the other NPC character had terrible AI voice acting so I couldn’t play it but if it’s a well fleshed out character with better voice acting I wouldn’t mind permadeath at all like I said it adds immersion
Can you credit my friend Iggy in the clips next time please? It was very confusing recognizing his modlist but having to check the description to confirm Getting burnt out on Confession is exactly the problem with permadeath in linear games. When you keep resetting a checkpoint or playing the mission over and over for fun or working on a showcase, you memorize every guard position and finnicky script trigger, shattering your immersion and playing it more like a video game than ever before. In order to make this work, we need to look to an element of the Assassin fantasy forgotten all the way back in AC1, and that's Assassins as detectives. In order to get close to his targets, Altaïr has to talk to contacts, pickpocket civilians, and compare documents hidden deep away in the memory log, and in the present day Desmond has to talk to Lucy, pickpocket old men, and compare emails. So how does this help us? Well instead of learning about a target, we have to learn about history by running simulations of events where we *don't know what happened.* In-game this looks like targets with complex schedules and personal lives that can be exploited in a variety of ways. Maybe you go for a flashy kill in a dense castle on your first run, but that becomes too impractical to sustain when you inevitably die and have to run it again, so you try something more subtle and overhear a valuable piece of information that helps you with a later target. It's possible you might even happen to bump into him while walking down the street when you had no idea he would be there, from which you can try to replicate the same conditions next time. If you die, then like the Prince telling the story in Sands of Time, that must not be what really happened. The difference from Deathloop is that there's still some sequence structure so we can have a coherent conspiracy story while having assassinations that are potentially different every time
Spacing out save points in a Elden Ring bonfire type system would add more gravity to de-syncs/dying and would also work well in the more recent rpg ac games, the tricky part would be spacing out the points to maximize gravity but minimize putting the player through petty tasks multiple times. That should be done along side adding a perma death mode btw. Giving the player the option to choose difficulty on 2 axis would be best for everyone since some people prefer more gravity in their decisions and the general difficulty being high, some include gravity in difficulty, I'm not gonna go through all the variations but you should get the point. Having a slider for difficulty(not just damage values) and another for how much gravity there is to your actions(how spaced out save points are, saving anytime through menus, permadeath, etc) would give the player more freedom to tailor the game to how they want to play it.
Permadeath in Mirage could be an interesting addition. In my first play through I didn’t recognize how long it takes until guards will detect me. Also in potential dangerous situations the chain assassination will become your lifeguard.
I can definitely see how perma death could make the experience more intense and encourage stealth and escape rather than fighting. But at the sime time I feel like you would be playing extremely defensively all the time in order to not loose you progress which would take out a lot of the fun and the feeling of being an assassin.
Dead Rising's proposal of permanent death was very effective. It brought a real sense of risk-taking to our decisions, and we had to develop a real mechanical and environmental learning curve to progress. Rescuing the surviving NPCs was certainly very frustrating, but it reinforced our involvement, as the difficulty and reward were so great. In the style of Dark Souls, a challenging but generous game that pushes you to excel.
Right now, there is a game with permadeath dream came true. It is Watch Dogs: Legion, Resistance difficulty. Permadeath adds not only your cares about protagonist but also your cares about NPCs in open world. It's the best permadeath implementation I've ever seen.
Personally I don't like permadeaths because they encourage you to play the game in one particular way that works which would usually be the safest and possibly but not always the most boring style of gameplay and it also discourages you from taking any risks or trying to experience the game in new ways and trying to beat the game with different styles of gameplay.
I feel like if death reset the game from each sequence it might work for the longer titles, so instead of permadeath where your 100 hour save gets deleted its somewhere in between where you lose 10 hours of progress instead
I, yes, of course, let me just change my ancestors course or history and make him die at the age of 20 after hitting a random beam during parkour, instead of dying peacefully in his 70s, yes, indeed, because Animus isn't letting you watch and relieve the memories of your ancestors, it's letting you change the past
Perma death would ruin whole idea of animus cuz in animus u relive your ancestors memories so if u die and desynchronize from the memory it would be stupid that a machine which has such abilities cant just put u back in previous memory. If it wasn't for that permadeath would be perfect for ac. Maybe they should just ad a mod with that like hardcore in Minecraft
The problem is tacking on permadeath doesn’t make the game more challenging because the game is designed in a very forgiving way, you would need to rework how to unlock upgrades and strip out allot of the side missions
5:00 what outfit is that? It looks awesome. Is it an outfit that's available mid-game or end-game? I havent completed Unity yet but I'd love to have that outfit
on one hand i understand your point it would make every scenario and every engagement significant on the other hand AC in general is a long experience with a lot of grinding especially the last 3 ones grinding and permadeath are not two concpet that mix well togher
The best way to implement permadeath (in my opinion) would be that you reset as another assassin part of your current clan, but now all your equipment and moves have downgraded by 5/8 levels but each new assassin has their own strengths and weakness. Only downfalls would be a soulless protagonist and as another commenter pointed out, it would go against the lore of the creed games, as the animus represents 1 persons ancestral memories. Although, good enough writing could solve the issue
When i play Unity and Syndicate, i self imposed a permadeath mode, meaning when my character get struck down, i delete my entire save. However, i make exception for stuff like desynch because i failed to follow a target or get detected.
Although i love the idea gameplay-wise, it wounldn't make sense in the game's lore. When you make your ancestor die in the animus, you just get desync'd, you don't die, nor do you make your ancestor die in the past. And the info you acquired so far is still in the animus, and and the rest of it in your adn. But if you really want that perma death mode, you can just delete your save yourself once you die
I don't agree with permadeath for Assassin's Creed but I do agree it is better than the existing patch. I believe a better approach is to make death impactful without potentially harming the narrative being built by an AC game by resetting you to the beginning. Waking up in jail after one death. Waking up naked down the river on your next death. Waking up hung from the ceiling. So on so forth in having fun with the death outcome. Sometimes the death would be a continuation while another can be simply acknowledging you died and transitioning to an interesting dive back in point.
while i understand the reasoning and would love a permadeath in a lot of the games I play (some games have it such as ready or not's ironman mode). In assassins creed i ironically wouldn't want it as lore wise it would make 0 sense as your in a simulation of the past and cannonicaly that character from the past never "died" during your simulation run as he needed to be alive to pass down his genes so you can simulate it. even in ac1 you dont have a health bar but a sync bar meaning lore wise altair never got hit and if you get hit during the simulation your just desynchronizing with his actions and if it happens too much your booted out of the simulation. I would however understand if in the future installments lore wise they do an isu character storyline and it corrupts the animus to the point where if you desync (aka die) your characters brain melts (some cyberpunk level stuff essentialy) so i would understand that case and would be fine with a permadeath
I thought it would be cool to have an ac game ( similar to hitman ) with multiple characters and time periods, each one having one target and a huge variety of ways to take that target out, with permadeath too, so you have 9 levels each with one target somewhere in the game and you can choose how to get to him, similar to the dynamic contracts but with a lot more variety
@@simonockas yea effectively but way larger in scope, think a dishonered level, I like the idea of multiple settings in one ac game but there’s not much point since they’re all going to have their own progression so to me it makes more sense to have one level, one target, kill him you win, how you do that you have to figure out and if you die you start again, your gadgets get reset to level one, you lose all your inventory
I'm sorry but NO, it's 99% my fault when AC screwed me. Especially 1 and 2. I don't rush my inputs. It screwed me plenty even if I was trying to climb slow in low profile from what I remember. Now, I'm not saying it's 99% the game's fault or the parkour was awful or anything, either. Don't put words in my mouth and assume I'm over-correcting... but it absolutely screwed me more than 1% of the time. Syndicate was the one I enjoyed most since the original, and the Rope Dart Ascension mechanic was a huge reason why lol. Can't F that up. I think it could be really interesting if they did a permadeath-optional remake of basically everything before Unity. (They could maybe even fix 3 so it doesn't suck so freaking much. I mean, seriously, you don't become an ADULT ASSASSIN until partway through Sequence 7 of like 13 or 14, I think it was? It was way too far in. The pacing is atrocious and the rest wasn't great, either. The rest barely need touch-ups, but they could certainly improve the parkour a bit. Even though I actually PREFER the high/low profile, and the "puppet system" where a/x was legs, x/square was the hidden blade, b/circle was sword/main weapon, and y/triangle was head... but goddamn it definitely wasn't perfect and if you think 99% of it was MY fault you have some rose tinted glasses, dude. I might even give you like 70% though that seems high, but certainly not 99% man.
It all sounds well and dandy until you actually are watching the opening of the same game for the 4th time because you mistakenly jumped off to your death. Also, doesn't this go against the animus system of "desynchronizing"? I think it would be better if there's a more dynamic system rather than a one dimensional perma death. I do agree that these games are easy and need more tension, but it could possibly be that the further away your actions are from what say Ezio would do, the more desynchronized you get. Losing a fight in a mission will initially only set you back 1 checkpoint, but doing so more and more times would increasingly desynchronize you more and put you further back. I guess this system too has the flaw of fucking a player more who's already getting fucked, but I guess it's better than a full on permadeath still, and be something only for optional playthroughs just to add the tension.
Perma Death is foolish in anygame. Because many times you may die due to bugs. The fact the game is played via a memory in the animus is a perfect way to justify death as part of gameplay.
@@talicowart9577 Every dark game who seeks the challenge will make a crucial atmosphere. regardless you can tryhard all game and after completing 80% you suddenly die because of a floor glitch that drops you to death... It's safer to discipline yourself into deleting the save and starting from scratch upon death.
Okey, not permadeath but what if we get more partitions in endung. I don't care if they keep on making RPG games. I care if they make a good experience. What if you do a chase mission and lose that person, rather than desyncing you just continue. You can still make room for mistakes while making it equally punishing.
Prrmadeath has extreme issues with valuing a player’s time. In real time games, if you do much as have to scratch your eye, there’s a chance hours of your life may have been waisted.
How is this different from souls games? Not as difficult of course but pretty much same. You are following a storyline and want to see how that story unfolds. It's better if you not gonna die constantly. Unity was tough as hell for an AC game.
no i dont agree permadeath doesnt belong on anything outside roguelikes, CRPGs and Strategy games. assassins creed are you reliving the memories of past assassins perma dying just doesnt fit the narrative especially with how long the games are losing your progress because on archer shot a flaming arrow and one shot you isnt fun thats called being masochist i play video games to have fun not to prove myself more skilled than others.
There is a view point in AC Revelations where you can do a leap of faith into 2 different haystacks. However one of the haystacks is a bit too close to a nearby roof, which causes Ezio to hit the back of his head on the roof, instantly killing him as he lands in the haystack. If there was permadeath in that game, I would be so mad.
@TheSpaniardAssassin It's even worse because Ezio does the animation, the haystack was close enough that Ezio could get in that haystack if there wasn't a rooftop. Made me laugh for a bit.
The problem with permadeath is that it completely contradicts the whole setup of the animus. We aren't actually playing as the assassin, we are simulating it through memories, so losing progress through death just makes 0 sense
It could just be the Animus user is that good and never loses sync. And if you die then the story resets because you aren't following the canon of how good the Animus user actually was at their job. Lol idk just have fun with it.
I agree somewhat I can imagine it being frustrating and some players may hate it but i remember in watch digs legion there was this mission where I lost 8 of my operatives permanently and I regretted it so bad and had to replace all of them when they couldn’t be replaced because they were unique.
@@jojocasimir1118 yea but the point of the video is that permanent death as a setting would fit assassins creed like in watch dogs legion and other games. Which is why I mentioned it and why people may hate it being in assassins creed since the issues I had with it in watch dogs but yes it’s a setting we all know that it’s irrelevant to mention it can be turned off.?
I love permadeath due to how much it changes the behaviour in gameplay. It makes every scenario significant and puts a lot of value on approaching conflicts with full confidence.
But it doesn't make sense because the whole point of assassin's creed is reliving the assassins ancestors their memories, so if you die you have to reload because the assassins didnt die at that point. That's why it says desynchronized instead of death.
@@TheSpaniardAssassin But like it says in AC2, they're memories. You can't see the whole picture of what happened, since, even though it's stringed by a story, there are separate threads of what you can see through your ancestors life
@@TheSpaniardAssassin Problem with that is the reason why there's a "beginning". We've seen multiple times modern day people wanting to jump straight to the memory they want to access, but get denied because the descendent isn't in sync with their ancestor. They need to back up to the most stable sync point and go forwards from there. The descendent as they progress through these memories is the one synchronising with the ancestor, not the animus. The further the descendent gets, the more memories they can access. Reboot the animus and they'll still access the memories they're up to date with. In fact, the animus isn't even needed for this, it's just a tool that helps. The Bleeding Effect is literally the descendant accessing memories on their own without the animus at all.
I never understood people banging on about how bad the parkour used to be. In ac2, doing that first assassin seal in the tomb, I kept dying at one particular point, and I knew it was because I kept messing up the button timing. It's not "uncontrollable" it's precise. You have to be trying to get to where you want, instead of just aiming thereabouts. There is no thereabouts in the old games, there is do, or don't.
No bro I’ve 100% ac2 and brotherhood (only saying this bc to 100% it have a lot of hours in both) and I can assure you the movement is trash compared to 3-syndicate there was so many time where I’d jump to my death bc ezio has down syndrome and a mind of his own
It's basically the same as Ghost Recon Wildlands' permadeath mode. You go from being able to knock out bases guns blazing to actually taking your time with every encounter. You always want to start a fight on your own terms, which ideally is never, because your enemies should be dead before they know you're even there.
I have a feeling that the same people who think that you should have the option to turn on permadeath in games that don't have permadeath in them are the same people who will say that it would be rediculous to have an option to turn off permadeath in games that already have permadeath in them. Just something to think about XD
The issue with permadeath in Assassin’s Creed is that it would break the established rules and lore of the setting. The assassins you play as, they were ‘real’ people who existed in the time period and you are experiencing their genetic memories in a simulation. Everything they did from the day they were born to the day they conceived an offspring or died when they did. A fully immersive autobiography. The best way to introduce permadeath mechanic in a way that makes sense in the setting is by making it an in-universe game itself.
or perhaps in an animus training simulation where, desynchronising with your character makes the animus reset the simulation from the first memory available (i.e. the start of the game)
It could make sense to be fair, the reason you live multiple memories instead of jumping straight to the relevant one is cause you need to build confidence in your ancestors body. Desyncing / Dying could be excused as the modern day character losing established confidence and needing to start again at the beginning memory.
@@obsidianwarrior5580 that’s part of what desyncing is. It can happen when the one experiencing the memories does something ‘off script’. Simply answering ‘no’ to a question in which the memory states the answer was ‘yes’ will desync you. Or the users mind rejects the simulation for reasons.
Commenting now after the permadeath update. So turns out it's not permadeath in the sense that if you fuck up it means Basim has actually died in the story, but it's an Animus thing where you just "fully desynchronise" and have to start building up the memory again. I think lorewise that's as good a justification as any, treating it like you have a faulty Animus or smth like in the past where when you desynchronise your Animus just completely resets.
Assassin's Creed games historically don't do a very good job of letting you meticulously plan your assassinations safely. Also, a lot of assassinations have a setup where you sneak up on a target, kill them right in front of their guards, then have to escape the guards (which forcibly puts you in direct risk of dying). Players need to feel in total control for permadeath to work, so AC games would need to let you plan out your assassinations more thoroughly and make risk assessment a much bigger part of the game. As it stands, the game just isn't built that way. EDIT: Forgot to add, the reason most games with permadeath don't have much story is because forcing players to re-visit story every time they fail sucks a lot more than forcing them to re-visit gameplay. Imagine trying to watch a movie, but halfway through you have to restart the movie and see it over again without getting to see the ending. Now imagine having to do that three, four, even five times. I think most people would just lose interest at that point.
I think it would work only in missions where u send out an assassin adept So u ll have your brotherhood like in AC brotherhood, u can make thrm more skilled and upgrade gear, u got their names, traits description and find them in the world maybe un the base Then when u play a "brotherhood mission" u actually use that agent,with the current brotherhood gear and if he dies he s no longer aviable in the game, u can only see the archive documents and his tomb in the undergrounds secret caves
What I'd like to propose that can achieve a similar effect of high-stakes gameplay is to make Desynchronization not a fail state. Fail state in AC games almost always prompt the player to load their last save or just does that automatically. What I'm suggesting is not a total deletion of a save file, but more like making the player live with the bad consequence of dying. Maybe the main character gets dragged back to the Assassin hideout but half of their money is gone. Or the same thing but their wounds from getting cut up by the enemies form a scar that will permanently lower the player's character max HP, for example. The concept of implementing permadeath in AC games is interesting but I'm guessing a lot of people will find it too much of a hassle and/or gimmicky. By designing desynchronizations from death to have a noticable punishment or long-lasting effect can make it less intimidating and more interesting.
Absolutely, given the consistent nature of almost all AC games (aside from Valhalla), a permadeath mode is only fitting. It would test the skills of the veteran players without punishing them over RNG.
I’m more of a casual gamer admittedly, but some of the times I have died in Assassin’s creed have been because of a glitch where I fell through a map or got stuck in a crevice. Having my entire save file deleted just because I died due to an ubisoft glitch would be unbelievably frustrating. If there was no free roam and just linear missions, yes I can see it. In free roam mode, its more about just exploring the cool geography of the AC universe. Basically, my 2c would be to have a “hybrid” version of this. Have permadeath mode be available to be turned on for missions but turned off when you’re just roaming the map. Especially in the older AC games with the clunky controls, the last thing I want to worry about is falling off a ledge to my death because of a mis-click.
I mean... does any game ever need a permadeath "mode"? It is entirely pointless. If you want to impose the restriction on yourself (which as you explained you may have a whole range of reasons for) then you can always just start a new game each time you die manually. Tadaa - permadeath mode.
Ngl i like hard games, but if I played unity, got to the cathedral mission, then died and was sent back to the beginning of the game that just wouldn’t be fun. I wouldn’t be motivated to keep playing after maybe the second time it happens.
Perma death in open worlds is underrated. I play a game called deepwoken which is a perma death open world rpg but it is also online which makes an interesting dynamic where players can kill and progress off of each other.
Enjoyable video and a solid concept, probably best executed as an additional difficulty of alternate game mode. I have to point out that while some of the perceived issues with the movement systems in the early games are indeed played input, there are absolutely moments in AC 1 in particular where the movement system does not work as intended. Especially the sections where you are crossing a body of water by jumping between boats/docks and stuff. Anyone who has replayed the game recently knows what I am talking about.
AC hardcore fan here. Played all of them, loved all of them (except Rogue) and hate when people talk trash about it without even playing. I agree with most things in this video, but my ultimate opinion is: all AC games should have permadeath, but it should be optional. I played Far Cry Primal with permadeath and it completely changed my experience. AC games should at least have the option.
i think there should be the option, kinda like minecraft has hardcore, but you can set it on and off, so some players have this immersive experience, while others don't lose their progress. i would like to have permadeath, but i would like to play it maebye in a second moment, like having my main saving where i finish the whole game, and then have a side saving with permadeath so i can enjoy the "true risk" experince
also side note: by having only permadeath there wouldn't be the perfect runs that someone like Altair Stealth does, because it would be so much harder to partice them
This would work perfectly if players would play first as a novice assassin. The more the complete missions and assassinations with said assassin, the higher their rank would become. But if their character dies, they would continue the story from another assassin's point of view, a new novice the previous assassin hired to the brotherhood. If all the assasssins die and player fails to recruit new people before that, the game ends.
It's a good idea but definitely isn't for everyone. For me to want to do it, I want all my abilities to be unlocked, but I still have to replenish my resources to refill my equipment tools. But most likely I would never finish any game in this mode. I'm too old and would not have the time like I would have when I was younger.
NO STOP TALKING ABOUT ORIGINS IM SAD. i feel like casuals who wouldnt wanna play permadeath can simply avoid it. personally i'd love it, ik im going to love it in mirage too
So it would be something like loosing synch, I'd agree with important events as checkpoints for synchronization and if you die on the way you have to restart from the specific memory.
I love the idea of permadeath in Assassin's Creed because it could very easily be interwoven into the lore. It would make sense that, in the animus, a regular desync that is not caused by death such as being detected in a tailing mission or letting your target escape would cause the animus to restart only that memory so that you could properly sync. It would also make sense that a desync caused by something as significant as the death of your ancestor would result in an issue with the animus that requires you to go back to the very beginning and resync every memory up to that point. This is because a desync of that magnitude could result in the complete destruction of prior memory, especially since the person in the animus experiences everything their ancestor experiences within their memories. If the person in the animus experiences death, lore-wise it wouldn't be too far off to consider that their brain could not handle such an experience. In the classic Assassin games it is cautioned heavily that pushing Desmond and the animus could cause Desmond to lose his mind, go insane, have his brain turn to mush, etc, so having to reset the entire animus as a result of a death-caused desync would make a lot of sense to preserve not only the animus but the mind of the person using it.
