Parts of modern Czechia especially the Kingdom of Bohemia were major powers in Europe during the period in which the game is set, Prague itself was a major city in terms of culture, science and especially religion and this was before it became especially truer under Rudolph II. It isn’t the last time Czechs are in the game either, a few more crop up in the second act and Prague gets mentioned a few times in Act III
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I hope you wrote all this for the others and not myself - I´m not completely ignorant of my country´s history you know 
That being said, while I was expecting (heck, demanding) Bohemia/Czechs to be included in the game given the setting, I was expecting city references to be pretty much limited to Prague. I certainly did not expect there to be a reference literally to home, even if a rather hidden one (it wouldn´t be surprising if it was a game set around the Hussite Wars, but I really didn´t see it coming here).
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Oh I write boring history facts for everyone even if it looks like I am just explaining something somebody would most likely know. It is because I love hearing the sound of my own voice even in my written accent.
True but it does tie in well to the game’s themes. Hus, his followers and the Utraquists were all made possible because the Bible had been translated from its traditional Italic languages into Czech.
Pentiment does a really good job at showing the profound impact translation, moveable type and the printing press had both good and bad on both religious and secular worlds.
Also not many games would have a Romani person in their game or make that same character a Gnostic as well.
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Me and @TheChicken finished Far Cry 5 and all of its DLC. We enjoyed it, even if it did have some issues, I think Far Cry 5’s difficulty is a bit on the easy side, since you get so much gear unlocked so early, and like Grand Theft Auto, the game really struggles not to become a joke when you have an attack chopper. I think my favourite bit of lunacy is that you can buy an LMG, give it a silencer, the silencer seemingly doesn’t negatively impacts any of the LMG’s stats, and when you burst fire it, it’s astonishingly accurate. I actually used it a few times when taking on outposts in stealth, managed to even snipe a couple of guards with it from 50 meters away.
I beat Far Cry 5 a while ago by myself, but me and Chicken played it together in co-op, this being the first Far Cry game he has really played (besides dipping his toes into 3 and 6 I believe). Far Cry’s gameplay suits co-op pretty well, although at times it can make a game not that challenging even more easy. It does have some snags, the co-op buddy who join’s the host’s game can’t save their progress, which I know is also true in Dying Light and other games that allow co-op. Surprised to be honest it can’t save co-op progress, don’t really understand why not. Guess I’m used to co-op progress being saved from all the Borderlands games I’ve played. There’s also the fact that the co-op partners can’t be too far from each other, not much of a problem except when it comes to airplanes, you pretty much need to always share a plane together. I think we rarely used planes honestly and preffered to takes choppers because they are just far easier to handle and aim weaponary with. And some challenges, especially the Clutch Nixon vehicle stunt challenges, were clearly designed with just one person in mind rather than two, surprised they didn’t just gate it off from the co-op buddy to be honest.
DLC is pretty good, although I can say that since nowadays you can buy the edition of the game with all the DLC included for a little extra on sale. Zombie DLC is probably the weakest. Fun, but pretty short and forgettable, I often found the zombies to be a janky to shoot at, like I felt like a lot of my shots just wern’t registering properly. Vietnam is I think the best one, but it is arguably the least ambitious, it is essentially a small slice of Far Cry, but with '60s weapon and a Vietnam war setting. But honestly, sometimes that’s all you need, I like the Far Cry formula, and I like having a nice little slice of it, something that works well for speedrunning too, or something you can try to do stealth only. The most ambitious is the Mars DLC, it has a big open map, and the alien’s you fight are completely different from the human enemies of the main game, the aliens being more like giant ants or spiders. I actually didn’t like the Mars DLC when I played it the first time, but in co-op, the Mars DLC improves dramatically, mainly because it feels like the aliens were designed to fight co-op partners, since they tend to swarm players and their weak points are often on their backs.
As for the plot of Far Cry 5, well, I have issues. I think it depends on how much you’re willing to just “go along with it”. If you’re the type who likes to scrutinise plot points, you’re not going to have much fun. Most games tend to have a disconnect between what’s going on in the game world and the actual story in cutscenes, but goodness, I really wish our protagonist could speak, just to ask the Seed villians what they hope to accomplish. Like, they’re a doomsday cult, convinced the end of the world is nigh, but once they get set off by the sheriff and co trying to arrest Joseph, the plan seems to be to just start an all out war for Hope County, killing and torturing everyone in their way, and being insanely evil about it. I think my favourite bit of stupidity is finding out they are slaughtering all the livestock on a farm, which you would think would be a very useful resource for an upcoming apocolypse.
I have my theory that Far Cry 5’s original story was water downed by Ubisoft. I remember at the time alot of people were hoping FC5 would be some grand statement on Trump’s America, but it really isn’t, the cult you fight is pretty generic. Their version of Christianity seems to basically revolve little more than quoting the Book of Revelation and that the seven deadly sins exist. The cult is made up of people of all races and has women too, surprisingly inclusive. No anti-LGBT, or anti-abortion, or keeping women in their lane stuff here, wouldn’t want it to mirror any real life politics. You even meet a priest on the good guy side just so you show that the cult aren’t “real” Christians. Honestly if the Seeds were people of colour or migrants, you could easily make this more like a right wing gun nut’s fantasy as the good people of USA use their guns to defend themselves and protect their FREEDOM. My least favourite bit is the fact that one of your allies happily tortures cult members to death for information, I’m sure a bit to add grittiness, but they make the cult so laughably evil as to make sure you don’t feel bad for them. Still feels scummy though.
I’ve always hated the ending of Far Cry 5, something I’ve told Chicken a few times, mainly because I was curious to see how he would react to it. I don’t think Chicken was a fan. It was rather hilarious when during one of the last cutscenes of the game, we have this exchange:
Chicken: “Oh, I get it, this is just another drug hallucination.”
Silvereyes: “No, this is really happening.”
Chicken: “WHAT!?”
Still, I enjoy FC5. It’s too easy but it’s also fun to run around causing chaos in Hope County. But I do think in a way, FC2, 3, and 4 are better constructed games, they are less willing to give the players all the toys right away, forcing you to be a bit more cautious and clever. FC2 especially loves to really kick you in the nuts. It’ll be interesting when moving onto New Dawn and Far Cry 6, when we buy them on sale in the future, I know those games are when RPG style levelling systems are introduced, which I’m curious to see how that works.
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And it’s done. I’m finally through every Assassin’s Creed game (available on consoles) from the first through the Chronicles game and about to begin the RPG trilogy, starting with Origins. This is actually a big deal to me, and here’s why, just to kind of get it out of my system since I’ve been thinking about it so long:
I never really planned on getting into the AC series. I had enough game series to follow, I really didn’t want to add another. I’d tried a bit of the original at a coworker’s house, but it didn’t really seem all that interesting. I’d seen the ads for the games as they came out and was impressed by all the different outfits of the Assassins, but that was it.
Then the movie came out, and while I didn’t see it, the trailer showed me a concept that I found intriguing: the idea of reliving the experiences of your distant ancestor in a simulation generated by a machine that reads your genetic memories in your blood. Lofty, but I figured it was something made up for the movie, kind of like how Doom completely altered its story.
Then, Origins released, and I saw the advertisements showing pyramids and the Egyptian desert, and that caught a little bit more of my interest. Then the big thing happened: Odyssey was coming. Seeing the Ancient Greek world in the ads for another entry in this series, after having seen the Egyptian world, and finally I knew that I needed to at least look into this a little, so I brought up the series in the Tv Tropes website, and it was there that I learned the three crucial things that took my already blooming interest and convinced me that I absolutely had to get into this series.
The first was that the movie had not made up the whole generic memory thing; the machine that did it was different, but the concept really was in the games. The second was the whole Assassins vs Templar war. When the images for the original game first appeared in GameInfomer magazine way back when, by the looks of it, I was under the assumption that the “assassin” that featured in the game was a member of the Knights Templar and was killing religious and political enemies on behalf of the Church. Boy, was I wrong. And the third thing I learned, the one that drove it home for me, was learning about Those Who Came Before.
That did it. I bought a digital copy of the original game on my Xbox One because it had backwards compatibility and I started playing. But, I didn’t get far, as I began only a few weeks before my wife and I were going to move, and shortly after that, Hitman 2 released and that took up most of my time for the next year and a half. But, in January of 2020, Odyssey went on sale in the Xbox store, with a copy of AC: III with the purchase, as well as the Ezio Trilogy, and so I just bought up all the games while they were on sale and started playing the first one again. I kept going, stopping only for Hitman and occasionally Resident Evil: Village.
And now, 4 years after really starting, I’m at the point where I’m finally playing the games that convinced me to start the series, having gone through the whole thing. And I’m pumped!
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I am still sad they took a genuinely interesting period to explore (The Spanish Inquisition) and wasted it on some mid movie adaptation and then decided to make the next five games in the series the five most basic historical factions to explore. (Even if Valhalla actually had a unique spin on Vikings by exploring the early Danelaw and Nordic Incursions)
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Finished Pentiment a few days ago. Really enjoyed it, although I have a bit of an issue with the pacing of the third act (mainly for replayability reasons).
Anyways, already started two new parallel playthroughs with different builds to experience the different options they provide, and I have at least 4 more in my mind I’d like to try. Hopefully I won’t get burned out too quickly…
And turns out you can even have a brief conversation with them in their mother tongue with the proper background, woohoo!
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Just played a very cool theatre-based mission in AC Brotherhood.
I think it’s a pretty cool level set around killing an actor on-stage, and you’ve got to prevent it in time.
Also (after failing a few times) I found you can do a ridiculous daredevil jump, catch behind you at the last moment, and skip a lot of tedious climbing down in the middle of the mission. Kinda proud of that, but I edited the whole mission together because I just really like it.
(Also, I did fail at the very end once, if you let the full “Is Jesus Dead?” line play, it automatically plays a failure cutscene.)
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I’ve hooked up my Wii U to play Twilight Princess HD, after that i probably start Windwaker.
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Installed Linux Mint yesterday to get familiar with a Linux OS before MS decides to shove W11 / ads down my throat. Installed Disco Elysium from Steam and Control from GoG to see how games perform. First time playing Control, not 5 minutes in and I’m already scratching my head. Too early to say if I’m enjoying it or not. Feels kinda janky too 
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I’ve been playing Metroid Prime Remastered. The move to first person works better than I thought it would. Still enjoy the exploration and unlocking new abilities more than the combat, especially when I’m just trying to backtrack someplace and have to take on an enemy that you can’t just blast in the face a couple of times. It’s fun, but I definitely still prefer my Metroids 2D.
And I’ve been playing the original Legend of Zelda. I played it some as a kid, but I never owned it myself so I don’t think I ever got very far. Being able to look up maps online helps a lot. It’s pretty basic but it’s interesting to see just how much of the formula (a lot) was there from the very beginning.
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Just finished Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood today.
Damn, the story teams for this series really love ending them on abrupt or major cliffhangers.
Overall, I enjoyed this entry, I think content-wise its better than AC2, but there’s a couple changes in world design and story I didn’t quite like.
The more and more I used the Assassin Recruit feature to clear guards in my way so I could stay stealthy was very cool.
I kinda thought Rome was just OK, but it feels kinda different from AC2’s three cities. As it’s all one big map, and you’ve got one quarter dedicated to developed urban areas, one quarter with ruined and dilapidated buildings, and half a map of flat terrain where you’re gonna want to use a horse to get around faster.
Not my thing, That’s what Origins turned me off of it – the distinct lack of Parkour needed to traverse most of the map.
The story itself was uhh okay.
Given that it follows AC2, unfortunately they have to follow up Ezio’s triumphant “no, I won’t kill you” to Rodrigo, ridiculing him and putting him at his lowest point (and possibly leaving him to die and suffer at the entrance to the Eden Vault that he can’t open) and immediately has him somehow escape and run off to be Pope again off-screen once you walk back into the room from the last game.
Also, this one is focused on a revenge quest again, but honestly less captivating and less notable than the last entry.
Basically, Rodrigo has a son! And he’s your typical power-hungry, loves-violence-too-much bratty evil son of the big bad guy.
He’s ruthless and scary, and honestly I enjoyed what he brought to the table, but I liked the last game’s Mysterious Puppet Master vibe to the villain.
Also the revenge plot felt a little like treading on familiar terrain, though little of Ezio’s motivations seemed to revolve around that conflict like it did the last game, and focused on a completely different “we must liberate Rome for the people”
There were a bunch of other things I quite enjoyed though!
You get much longer, actually gameplay-centric sequences as Desmond and you can parkour around with him a bit.
One is a bit of a hub-type area in a neat little modernised version of Monterrigioni (neat to see cute modern signposts and cars dotting the area you’d become familiar with in AC2.
The other is the Collisseum near the end of the story, bit more of a linear platforming challenge.
I really enjoyed how nearly all the side quests are tied into the central “liberate Rome/inspire citizens to join your cause”… I do think the take too long to introduce the Assassin Brotherhood mechanic to the game, but it’s a fun little meta-game you can run in the background to level up recruits and improve them for using in-world.
And nearly all the side-missions have some narrative hook or relation to the main quest too, which is a much better motivator for me to seek them out – as AC2 only had Races, secondary Assassinations, Beat Up missions, and Courier missions, but they were all very basic and samey overall.
This one has various Assassination/Tailing/Races type missions, but each has some extra dialogue flavour to it.
Plus there’s Leonardo’s War Machines missions that take you to a unique small location to destroy his machine, but not before using it in a fun vehicle destruction tour. The Flying Machine Cannon was my favourite.
There’s even missions that expand upon Ezio’s love Caterina from Ac2, who got sidelined after the main plot picked up.
I’ve still got some side missions I wanna get through, and there’s also a bonus set called “The DaVinci Disappearance” set just before the final mission to get into.
Otherwise, yeah, pretty good game overall!
Next I think I’ll try out Mirage’s free 2hr trial, just gonna skip all the cutscenes and get into the story later on. I just wanna see the modern-throwback gameplay.
I’d love to hear more of @Heisenberg’s thoughts on the classic games in the series.
I’m definitely not gonna go through the whole thing, but at least up to the end of Desmond’s story…
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Well that (technically) means playing until 4.
Speaking of that I am playing the remaster of ACIII because it has been a long time since I have played it.
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No. I refuse. I just don’t like all the sailing in between the on-foot stuff.
I will maybe try the mini Freedom Cry as a bite-sized version of it though if I get around to it.
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Luckily you can play to the end of the Desmond Saga without playing 4 then. It is a shame though, I love IV, it is by far the best pirate game.
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I love them. The first four games in the series are my favorite as far as combat; starting from 3 onward, killing people without using the hidden blade or shooting them becomes a tiresome exercise as you have to pretty much cut them to pieces before they finally fall over and die.
They are also my favorite - so far - for the story. The Desmond arc was fascinating, and although I had read almost everything before playing and had spoiled the story for myself, I could see how huge the story as a whole might have seemed upon release, especially the twist at the end of 2 and how the next games deal with the implications.
I thought that too before I started playing. I changed my mind pretty quick. There’s a reason why it is consistently ranked one of the top 3 games of the series on any list since its release.
Theres really not much I can say to convince anybody to give any of the games between the Desmond arc and the RPG trilogy a try unless you become a hardcore fan, but I will say, the RPG trilogy, and Mirage as a decent epilogue to it, has a story in a similar vein to Desmond’s, with the main player character, Layla, having an important arc from experiencing the memories of different past warriors that all tie together across centuries and continents, predicted since the time of the First Civilization, and gives a lot more depth and scope to the lore, the most since 2 and 3, respectively, anyway.
Also, for anyone who doesn’t care at all about story or lore and is only interested in pure gameplay, you gotta give Unity a try.
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Nice. Yeah, that’s the plan. I’ve seen the clips, heard the fan sentiments. The system is still kinda broken and buggy, but when it works, gosh it works beautifully. (Plus all those detailed animations OOOH)
Specifically, my plan is to make it through AC1, AC2, ACb, ACr, [Freedom Cry, AC3 (/vice-versa)], Unity, Mirage.
Just gottta take it slow and not push myself to get burnt out on Ubisoft open worlds at some point.
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Why Unity? You are better off playing Syndicate if you ask me.
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Unity is great but Syndicate aged like fine wine.
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Yeah there are a lot of little things in Unity that piss me off. Actually there are a few large things that piss me off there as well.
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