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I like big, grand kitchen-sink conspiracies (like Illuminatus and Foucalt's Pendulum), but I thought AC suffered from taking it too seriously and from having boring / annoying characters in the modern era.
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Sep 19, 2014 03:44
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Doesn't Mark of the Assassin also have a painfully awkward segment involving a noble who attends a party with an obvious transvestite elf that's played for laughs?
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Sep 19, 2014 03:45
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:Doesn't Mark of the Assassin also have a painfully awkward segment involving a noble who attends a party with an obvious transvestite elf that's played for laughs? Uuuuuugh. Yes. Mark of the Assassin has elements of a good DLC, but the team that made it was too busy circling Felicia Day like a puppy. To make a less pithy summary than pentyne's: You get lured into a trap by some Carta gangsters one night, only for a mysterious elf to intervene with a long and obnoxious cutscene showing her effortless executing a bunch of dudes because you have to know first thing that she's super awesome. Then she says she needs your help because you have an invitation to a party in Orlais, because she needs to steal the Heart of the Many, a gemstone of great value. So you go to Orlais with this elf, who is a required party member throughout. She looks like this:  And she just looks even weirder in motion compared to everyone else. She's supposed to be gorgeous (as implied by how characters talk about her) but modeling a human head onto an elf body makes her jaw look monstrous. Anyway, the first thing you need to do when you get to the party is participate in the ceremonial wyvern hunt. A bunch of poo poo happens that doesn't matter, with Felicia Day making pithy comments at every turn, and then you can lure out a wyvern. So Tallis plays bait:  Yeah. Anyway, kill the wyvern, go on to the party, where you have schmooze trying to find a way to sneak into the manor. During this time you can find Leliana from DA:O! She already knows who Tallis is because they are both fantasy super spies and have crossed paths before! Wouldn't want you to forget how awesome Tallis is! Also you meet Serendipity and that red headed rear end who works for the viscount, and the transvestite is played as a repugnant joke. The closest thing to good about the entire party is this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq42P6rtPDw Eventually you get into the manor and can either sneak or fight your way through. Whatever you choose, you eventually get to the chamber that's supposed to have the heart, only for it to be a trap. You get captured by the duke, who throws you in his dungeon. While you are incarcerated, Tallis explains that there was no gem; she's there to kill someone from her past, someone who is going to sell Qunari secrets to Orlais that could potentially threaten thousands of innocent people. Oh, right, Tallis is basically a Qunari priest, despite the fact that she at multiple points contradicts the lore we already have about Qunari. On top of that, her role doubles as Qunari secret police, but she's not here for the Qunari: She's here for herself. In case you forgot that you're supposed to think she's hot poo poo. She asks you to help her get the secrets away before they fall into the wrong hands. Then you break out of jail and reunite with your team and fight your way out of the manse (or go solving puzzles for loot). Eventually you get out by going under the chateau through some caves (but not before they try to artificially build tension by making you think Tallis has abandoned you in a boss fight!) and at the exit of the caves you can either help Tallis or ditch her. Don't worry, the difference is negligible: If you help her you have to chase some qunari up a mountain to find out that the person you're after is down the mountain; if you leave her you start at a different part of the mountain and just work your way down, eventually ending up in the same place. You interrupt the duke meeting the qunari traitor. He gets the secrets, but finds out it's a list of names of qunari agents in non-qunari countries and their families, not the secret to blackpowder or something similar. He throws a literal hissy fit and murders the qunari; while he's distracted Tallis steals the secrets back by putting on a guard's helmet and acting like she belongs there--she changes nothing else and somehow no one notices. Then you have a boss fight (which is actually pretty good), and the duke falls off a cliff. Then Tallis leaves and you go home, having murdered a foreign nobleman on his own land and inviting the wrath of the entire Orlesian empire down on Kirkwall. If you'll recall, the duke discounted the secrets and killed the traitor for us, so if we had stayed in Kirkwall literally nothing would have been different except we wouldn't have committed an act of war against the second strongest country in Thedas. Oh, and you can make out with Tallis if you want, I guess. No hanky-panky, though. When you get back home there's a note in Hawke's house about how they haven't seen the last of Tallis. If they had made this DLC without Felicia Day, it would have probably been actually good. It has actual puzzles, some actually engaging boss fights, and some amusing dialogue so long as Tallis is not the one talking. But she's a required party member and never leaves your side and 50% of the words are either her bad jokes or her non. Stop. Preaching. "How can you think Qunari are bad people!?" "I never--" "We're not all some hivemind, you know!" "I didn't--" "Like you're so different!" "Would you let me--" "And another thing!" That's the entire second half of the DLC. marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 04:32
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I remember them trying to spin the transvestite thing off as the noble actually having a thing for transvestites and it being perfectly fine and okay. The way it's presented in-game, however, is that this is a bloke in a dress and he's too stupid to notice isn't this funny why aren't you laughing what's wrong with you. It's baffling how something so blatantly offensive made it through.
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Sep 19, 2014 05:20
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CitizenKain posted:Because they wanted a multi-game spanning narrative that would hopefully keep people coming back to it every year. Plus it probably seemed like a really good idea at the time, but fell off the rails somewhere in AC2. You could do the game spanning narrative with a single family through history (even though the Assassins were wiped out well before a lot of the sequels take place so the series makes little sense even from an historical perspective). Kaboom Dragoon posted:It's funny, in the leadup to the very first game's release, they made absolutely no mention of the modern day segments at all. So people getting ready to stealth-shank some dudes in the past were totally blindsided by this Desmond chappy. My brother was playing the first game in the same room as me when it came out and I looked over and said "what the gently caress" 'cause it was one of the future scenes all of a sudden.
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Sep 19, 2014 10:53
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:I remember them trying to spin the transvestite thing off as the noble actually having a thing for transvestites and it being perfectly fine and okay. The way it's presented in-game, however, is that this is a bloke in a dress and he's too stupid to notice isn't this funny why aren't you laughing what's wrong with you. It's baffling how something so blatantly offensive made it through. Stuff like that happens all the time, no one gives a poo poo about transpeople's feelings 
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Sep 19, 2014 14:34
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Lotish posted:
You know, I think you just hit on why I liked the virtually-identical Kasumi DLC mission in ME2 so much better than Mark of the Assassin: lack of Felicia Day, soapboxes and transvestite laffs. Also Kasumi's a much better thief. Felicia Insert doesn't even have flashbangs!
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Sep 20, 2014 02:40
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about Mark of the Assassin
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paco650 posted:You know, I think you just hit on why I liked the virtually-identical Kasumi DLC mission in ME2 so much better than Mark of the Assassin: lack of Felicia Day, soapboxes and transvestite laffs. Plus I like the little set pieces it had, like the large art gallery, including the Statue of Liberty Head and a Ogre from Dragon Age, or you smuggling your weapons in a statue of Saren. Plus you got Kasumi who was a fun party member and a really neat suit/black dress for Shepard to use on the ship.
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Sep 20, 2014 03:02
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paco650 posted:Also Kasumi's a much better thief. Felicia Insert doesn't even have flashbangs! Oh yeah, Kasumi is much more fun to play with. Tallis has a unique combat tree but it's pretty bad, and since you can't customize her stats without bringing a respec potion from the Black Emporium, she's going to be mediocre at best. A properly built Hawke, Isabella or Varric will pretty much clown her, so she feels like an albatross in gameplay as much as everywhere else.
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Sep 20, 2014 03:30
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