To be clear, this did not actually happen. I don’t let my kids watch me play games with graphic violence yet.
My four-year-old did wander in and witness an assassination… but he’s still gullible enough that I was able to convince him Dad was playing a game where the goal was to tag people with red paint and they’re “out”. Asleep. In the bushes I dump them in.
And I did recently pick up Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. I pretty much signed off of the AC franchise after Black Flag; I was just getting too fatigued with the whole formula. Though I heard good things about Origins and Odyssey, I was content to let them pass me by.
Still, a recent sale had the “All-In” version at $20, and I was feeling the itch for a buttload of tasks to tick off a list, so I grabbed it. And boy, it is a lot of game. It just keeps on going with stuff. But, generally, it’s pretty fun stuff. Honestly it feels only marginally related to the Assassin’s Creed franchise I remember ditching, and I think it’s a better game for it. Not being burdened down by as much of the Abstergo stuff really lets you just get lost in Ancient Greece. And there’s a lot of legit educational/historical tidbits scattered in that I don’t remember from earlier AC games.
Also Kassandra is a badass and I love her.
I actually did use both AC versions to teach my eldest daughter (11) about Ancient Egypt, and Greece..and she’ll get Vikings at school next month..so..(I just used the discovery version..she even did a presentation on embalming in Egypt, using screenshots and the kids and teacher loved it!)
Eh, right now the marketing on the Vikings game looks like it’s going to go with the Stereotypical Vikings rather than Historically Accurate Vikings.
Maybe Ubisoft is trying to “Virtue Signal” to people who expect that and will gently lure them into the truth, though with their last Tom Clancy game marketing stunt I’m having doubts.
They did add an educational mode 🙂 https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/10/assassins-creed-odyssey-gets-an-educational-mode-complete-with-quizzes/
This is actually very helpful. Thank you!
I totally agree about Odyssey being better for not having anything to do with AC which is why I warn you: Better don’t play the DLCs. One of them ruins your character’s story, both of them ruin the game.
Better late than never.
and it teaches the virtues of social distancing too
wouldn’ve have stabbed that guy in the neck if they kept their distance in the first place
I’m pretty sure victims of assassination not keeping distance from the assassin are in the minority of their general population…
Well, the victims of Covid-19 are also the minority of the general population, but that doesn’t make social distancing a bad idea.
This strip reminds me of something. Of my co-worker who introduced his 8yo daughter to Baldur’s Gates (1&2) so she learns about consequences of her decisions :D.
My favorite version of this can be found on Youtube. A 3-year-old girl playing Skyrim ignores a man’s plea to leave his house at sundown and guards break in to kill her for trespassing. She tried in vain to cut them down; as she put it, “People don’t like to be sword-ed.”
We were in Rome years ago, between the Colosseum and the Forum, when it just clicked. I knew where everything was, and my wife was very impressed. Happened again a few days later in Istanbul. We were supposed to vacation in Greece this summer (which obviously didn’t happen) and I played Odyssey as legit research. Amazing that these landmarks stay constant over the centuries.
Wife score! Nice!
So you thought landmarks move around?
Meh, who cares about the graphic violence. I say show it to them while they’re young, so they can distinguish between fiction and reality (of course there are limits to how graphic it should be).
If they don’t gain that skill while they’re young, they’ll never learn it, and then you end up with idiots wanting to ban media for being too violent.
“Oh, but they’re too young to be able to distinguish the difference!”
That’s bull crap. I’ve never seen a child that can’t tell the difference, but I’ve met countless adults that can’t.
I don’t disagree with your take specifically in regards to distinguishing fiction from reality, but there are other important factors to consider than just that. I vividly recall certain events from when I was 4 and 5. I remember what it’s like being that age, and the way I thought back then, before I really developed a good amount of impulse control and while I was still discovering the more basic intricacies of how reality worked. I did some really stupid, incredibly dangerous (for other people) things at that age in an innocent desire to emulate the heroism or “coolness”… Read more »
well… that’s absolutely NOT how it works. At all.
Agree to a large point. Saw the original Robocop (in all it’s original glorious ‘gore’) when it originally came out on vhs, at only 8.
Grew up knowing the difference pretty damn well. Same experiences for Alien/s, The Thing, Stuff, etc. “Stuff of nightmares”, sure. But I knew it was all fake (and many things also being “not Ok”).
Granted, I also had plenty of Atari groing up, and cartoons. Maybe all of it in a bundle helped.
I still have nightmares about Friday 13th – and I was 20 when I first saw it (I never liked horror movies). I guess it depends on the child too – some are more sensitive than others. The only other example I have is the son who played WoW ended up as a games developer and the one that played CoD ended up in the Forces (pre-uni).
Conveniently enough AC:Origins is also on a massive sale right now in case he wants to learn about the Ptolemaic dynasty, how messed up that was.
To be fair Sir Tim, I did this in Hades with my daughter. “This is Zeus, god of olympians and thunder too. Now I need to run around these demon and explode them BAM. Oh look, Dyonisos boon, he’s the god of …”
“This is Zeus, when you grow up you’ll understand that he is the enemy of all women”
It’s not education unless somebody bleeds…….
Oh boy, the memories. I once wanted to drive around – and only that – in Los Santos with my then 2 year old. It worked well one day on the Harley once around the island. But the next day we wanted another car and out of reflex I went to a red pick up truck and back the figure smashes the driver window to get into the car before I could prevent my little one from looking. Even more problematic was that earlier that year some thief broke into our car in a similar way and stole my sister’s… Read more »
Beware the chickens.
Reminds me of how my little brother when he was 3 years old was watching with us Halo on the Xbox and was able to understand it very quickly despite the colored blood that we were killing the evil aliens yet he had a blast screaming “There! Shoot! Shoot them!”. Obviously my Mom was not really amused about it as us. ^^
Get Hades, teach the kids all about Greek mythology. It’s the only game I’ve played in years that has deserved all of the praise it has received.
When I was taking my Art History class someone showed my professor this game and she was impressed by how accurrate it was to how Italy looked during the rennaisance, with the exception of the fact that they removed the mansion that had been built around the Triumphal arch.
Personally after playing both characters I found Kassandra to be a little too serious and angry. Alexios is more of a goof and I loved the delivery of his humorous lines(like when you confront the Cyclops at the beginning after stealing his eye). Plus Kassandra makes a way better Deimos.
OMG I’m not the only one. I got Fatigued with Origin and the new gameplay style was just hard to transition at first. With Odessey, it has been amazing. I love discovering things again, exploring feels good, combat and gameplay feel flushed out and the world is just beautiful. I find myself taking more screenshots than I use too and now I fear that Valhalla will not be as beautiful.
I recently went through the Witcher series and my kids watched a bit of it. They’re 8 to 11 so they understand that’s it’s not real, but sometimes the hyper violence of getting in a bandit camp and hacking heads and torsos to pieces with blood spraying all over the place got me a bit worried about what they thought of it. I mainly played when they’re in bed, so it’s not too bad.
My big problem is it feels Too far gone from AC. its just an RPG now.
the older games, I felt ‘i’m an assassin, i can sneak in here and do this to this big baddy’.
now, in odessey, its ‘i’mma sneak in here and tickle this big baddy since I dont have a high enough level’
well, an assassins creed RPG. That’s great tbh.
Odyssey and it’s ‘a lot of stuff’ was the Assassins Creed game that caused me to burn out on the franchise. I would probably be all hyped about vikings if it wasn’t the case…
I let my 7yo play the “exploration” (or whatisitsname) mod a lot. That’s great, very great. She loves to play it, no blood, only exploration and history lesson. Only problem: I cant play while she’s enjoying that.
Dad of the year 2020. Here, take your mug.
I don’t mind comics like these, not at all, but are we gonna get a continuation of the Campaign series? I know we got a one shot a couple weeks ago but a full installment would be sweet.
Personally, I found Origins to be the better game. Bayek was great, but his wife is absolutely awesome. The dialogue is delivered much better in Origins and the quests are a bit more believable.
I tried AC. Gave it a good go because I heard loads of good things about story and game-play and graphics. I did meet all those But I had to take the game back after a couple hours. It is a VERY fast game with many button combinations that need to be pressed back to back quickly. My brain cannot handle it after having a massive brain injury and several concussions on top of that. so…great game but too fast is my review of the Assassin’s Creed Family.
100% agree with your assessment of the game. I got it on sale on Steam earlier this year, and I definitely did not intend to put in 85 hours into it but I really enjoyed it, mostly because of Kassandra. I wasn’t sure about the gameplay changes myself but it honestly, it works. It lacks a little of the depth and finesse of Black Flag or Syndicate, but it works much better for those who get impatient with stealth and find themselves in a lot of open fights. I may or may not fall into that category.
When my son was 8, he saw me playing the original Call of Duty. He immediately wanted to play, but I told him ‘No, it’s too violent.’ He went away crying. 20 minutes later, he comes back. “Dad, you used to be a programmer. Write me a game like CoD without the blood!’ I used to write code for small business database applications…so he went away crying again. 20 minutes after THAT, he came back and said, “Dad, teach me to code so I can write my own games.” !!! :-O !!! This led to Scratch. Which led to Java… Read more »
It’s a tad late to try Unity for all its worth, especially since the co-op missions were well worth the purchase at one point. After the updates fixed all the bugs and with inspiration from the Notre Dame fire last year, I decided to hop back into after a long hiatus. For the exception of the limited lure bombs (Arno can’t whistle), it’s a great game to dive into.
Wait. That’s really NOT red paint? Oh no. Oh NO!
You want educational- with violence? Try Ghost of Tsushima. Its like AC but is far more historically accurate. With Samurai, Mongrels and lots and lots of fairly accurate swordfights.
Kassandra is the badass mercencary pirate lesbian I always wanted to be
Loved the AC franchise but since Ragnarok wont be sold on Steam I guess my run with it ends there, at least until (like Bethesda) they come to their senses and stop disregarding their fan base there.
Steam Lives matter (oh wait… forget that I can just respawn)
I think it’s a vital lesson for children to learn, as early as possible, that no, the world is NOT a nice place, but it is worth fighting for. There are many people who do bad things for money, like killing people, which is always wrong, but there’s also people who would use violence to get rid of those bad people, to protect another. It’s a complicated lesson for a young mind.
Surely you are joking. All of the AC games after Black Flag have been the WORST out of the entire franchise. A lot of people have written off the AC franchise simply because of how badly dull and boring the newer games are.
Ah yes, I have a different opinion than you, so clearly I cannot be serious. It would be unfathomable for someone not to share your point of view. Also Black Flag, Origins and Odyssey all have nearly identical metacritic scores, so it doesn’t seem to me like there was some sort of seismic shift in their reception. They changed some things, which will undoubtedly turn off some people and turn on others, but I don’t find the game “dull and boring” (one of those adjectives would have sufficed, they mean the same thing) at all. But you don’t need to… Read more »
It was not meant to be that way and I am sorry if you took it that way….You are right and I could have worded it differently but I am a blunt person. Thank you for the alternative.
Kudos to you, Digi, for taking correction. Few people will do that. In a sense, I agree with you on your opinion (though I loved Syndicate, because Evie was so amazing and the missions to free the different parts of town were fun). Origins and Odyssey were essentially completely different games than AC. However, I just take them as they are. Think of them as AC RPG instead of AC main line games. Odyssey, of course, had some major flaws as an AC game, but it was still fun. Origins was a bit more of an AC game, but still… Read more »
Then the kid grows up and realizes daddy’s “game of tag” was all a lie ?