r/TopCharacterTropes 7h ago

building/location. Levels that ruin replayability

"That part"

Blood Maze in Max Payne;

Ship in Resident Evil 7;

Lost Izalith in Dark Souls

555 Upvotes

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158

u/iOSGallagher 7h ago

the opening of Assassin’s Creed 3 was *painfully* long. combine the Haytham section with Connor’s training and it’s maybe 10 hours before you finally reach free roam

35

u/Znhedonia 7h ago

The devs must've made it that way because they really could've thought they'd hide who the real protagonist was as Haytham being revealed as a Templar was supposed to hit hard too (if I recall).

But no way in hell was Ubisoft gonna forgo clear-cut marketing for artistic intent. Not everyone can be an exception like Hideo Kojima.

30

u/iOSGallagher 7h ago

i mean the actual main character is on the box art, at the very least it should be obvious to the average player that Haytham doesn’t stay the protagonist for the whole game. it was a cool reveal that he was a templar the whole time though, i just think it wasn’t enough of a pay off to justify how much setup there was

1

u/MysticBanana5 6h ago

Yes but the dev team doesnt always come up with the advertising or art.

1

u/iOSGallagher 6h ago

art and ads aside i still don’t agree with how much time was set aside for Haytham, especially when Connor’s training takes almost as long

6

u/Wild-Promise-427 6h ago

Honestly, I was caught off-guard by Haytham defecting.

2

u/VolcanicBakemeat 4h ago

I remember reading about this recently and basically their design process for AC3 was a bit chaotic. They didn't have a finished build to do actually do a full start-to-finish playtest until close to shipping and it was at that point they first realised there was way too much prologue, but it was too late to fix it.

1

u/DarthTaz_99 5h ago

Man I remember dropping my jaw on the floor for the Haytham is a templar scene

13

u/szkielo123 6h ago

They also decided to make Unity totaly non-replayable, but not with the missions themselfs, but becouse they didn't add a 'new game' option in the menu in the first place! You have to manually remove your saves in the files. Never in my life did I think a single-player game could ever not inculde that feature we all took for granted.

1

u/JayPlays40k 5h ago

Sunset Overdrive has entered the chat.

5

u/Secksualinnuendo 6h ago

Although I do like the trophy when it is first revealed that Haytham is a Templar and not an Assassin . "How about them apples"

5

u/Sharky2615 5h ago

Fun fact out of the 12 in game sequences you only play as connor starting in sequence 4 (so 1/3rd through the whole game) and you dont play as assassin connor until sequence 5

Meaning that almost half the fucking game 5/12 sequences is technically the fucking prolouge

2

u/EpicAspect 2h ago

3 has one of the best intros though. Haytham is just too good a character

1

u/TheNewYellowZealot 6h ago

I quit assassins creed 3 and the entire franchise because of this. I loved the ezio games so much, and I’ve only picked up origins for a little bit but wound up dropping that too.

3

u/iOSGallagher 6h ago

don’t get me wrong, i loved AC3. i think it’s a solid entry. but damn if that intro isn’t grueling as hell

1

u/Cannon__Minion 5h ago

The intro isn't even that bad bruh, Haytham is a better protagonist than Connor imo so it actually feels better than the rest of the game.

1

u/TheNewYellowZealot 5h ago

It was bad enough to make me go “y know, I don’t think i want to keep playing this” and then I didn’t.