Marvel at the Technology Used to Build Assassin's Creed: Unity

Careful with that excitement, Alex.

Game looks like... Assasin's creed...

But you know, I'm honestly sickened by that final pre-order roll...

This tech would have taken an extra decade to allow for playable female characters.

the parkour looks like a lot of fun this time around.

@hailinel: Hyperbolic commentary startin' early.

Can't wait for those exciting eavesdropping missions.

I'll take a new Prince of Persia game using this engine please...

Did anything ever come of them sending out all those questionnaires on building a non-assassin pirate game? I would play the shit out of that.

@dorkymohr: Commentary that Ubisoft did walk right into.

Alex, I feel like that's lowballing it quite a bit. I think the over/under should be set at around 25.

For some reason I read that as Marvel (the comic company) creating the tech for Assassin's Creed: Unity. I was so hype... ;~;

If adding a new playable character female or otherwise is such an insurmountable task for their revolutionary new tech, then that pipeline is going to make putting out their inevitable DLC expansion a challenge.

Oh wait, no it won't.

Did anyone get confused and thought they were talking about the unity game engine while watching this?

This is like the first Assassin's Creed game that I'm actually somewhat excited for. Normally, I could not possibly give less a fuck, but this time is different. I think it has a lot to do with the fact you don't get many games set in the midst of the French Revolution. Well...not many interesting games anyway.

Also, something something something female characters something something something and this game will still sell a bazillion copies.

People appearing out of nowhere at 3:35.

I feel like this headline nicely maximizes the joke about AC being made in Unity. (Though it's also unavoidable.) Well played.

All off-topic commentary aside, if it does half of what it purports to do I'm pretty interested. The parkour seemed a lot faster and fluid than previous titles, and it was already pretty quick in Black Flag.

Not bad.

That's not true. If you said "became complacent in a cycle of under-representing female protagonists in their banner releases" you'd be correct. Instead, picking apart a technical explanation as to why they couldn't add a second main character solely for the purpose of clowning on Ubisoft ignores the real problem.

The new engine looks nice. I hope it stays as good looking come release. Watchdogs didn't look as good when it came out vs reveal.

Paris seems like it would be a good place to visit in an AC game but setting it during the Revolution seems like a really bad idea. They're risking making the whole game too dreary by making the story dour. I can play sad and dour games but I don't want to play a 20+ hour open world game with that tone.

DAMN IT! I was going to make a comment very similar to that! Now the joke is ruined.

Sorry, not enough time or resources to make playable female characters but PRE-ORDER NOW!

Not enough time or resources to make playable obese characters. There goes my preorder.

I was actually commenting this to a friend... I feel the name choice is rather unclear.. and kind of terrible, especially with how well known the unity engine has become in the last few years...

I kept on reading this like "Marvel at..." and was like, "Marvel what?" intent on identifying a destination or something that Marvel recently had done. Then I thought, "Did Marvel sign a technology deal with Ubisoft? Huh?"

...And then I came to the realization that I need a f'ing vacation. :D

"HELLO!"
I think that voice over guy has learned some tricks from Jeff.

"This engine has... Revolutionized" -Game person

VOMIT EVERYWHERE

Also, the french revolution was like, really fucked up.

Wait, this game is only a few months away? It seems like I just played Black Flag, it can't be almost a year already. I could use something new, though.

One year to design Notre-Dame de Paris, not one second to make a 'playable dame'.

LOOK AT HOW AMAZING NOTRE DAME IS! BEAUTIFULLY AND INTRICATELY DETAILED! LOOK AT THESE ANIMATIONS! AT OUR MOTION CAPTURE!

What? You want to know if we've done anything to fix the broken pacing and poor mission structure of the previous games in the franchise?

....uhhhh.....

PRE-ORDER NOW!

Tagline is better than the trailer!

And holy shit, look at some of those guys' run animations! I'm assuming they're placeholders, but haha, damn.

I didn't know there were so many wooden planks jutting out of the walls of Notre-Dame.

Here here

lol yes!

Like it or not.. It appears that Ubisoft is investing more than any other company in RnD and next gen engines that go beyond just higher res textures/models. Incredible stuff.

I really like how Unity looks and I am probably going to play it but I'm totally with you. Black Flag broke me in that regard. The missions in that game are so incredibly tedious and boring that I could not bring myself to finish it.

The improved stealth is most certainly a step in the right direction but I'm really not feeling the idea of sidemissions that have a "best suited for x players" description. I feel like the narrative is going to suffer from that and I don't like having that stuff in the singleplayer. I found the missions in AC2, Brotherhood and even Revelations to be fairly decent with a few highlights like the bard mission in Revelations but since AC3 there is barely anything other than eavesdrop and "follow that dude" missions which are always terrible.

I don't give a shit about the characters anymore and while Kenway was a slight improvement they can do a lot better. Sadly the new protagonist doesn't look very interesting either. They really have to shake it up and for me a female protagonist would have been a step in that direction (like in Liberation but with an actual game around it). I could be wrong and I hope I am, maybe Arno, or whatever that guy's name is, will turn out great but at the moment I'm more than sceptical. But as I said, it looks gorgeous so it's got that going for it.

Thought it was finally a new Marvel game. I am so disappointed.

There are no playable campaign characters other than the main character, who is a man. Are you saying they should have made multiple playable characters? Why shouldn't this rhetoric apply to all games?

Deus Ex should have let you play as a woman. Half-Life should have let you play as a woman. BioShock should have let you play as a woman. Kirby should have let you play as a woman.

Fuck it, why even bother. Everyone is convinced that everyone else is the worst possible fucking things on the planet, and then have the unmitigated gall to call themselves "empathetic". Fuck. You know what it's like, knowing that absolutely everyone else on the planet is going to judge you unfairly, in the most harsh terms we have? And then claim that they're 'the high-minded moral people'. It reminds me no less of pastors trying to convince me I'm evil unless I do exactly as they say. I had thought the video game community, after decades of being unfairly criticized and labelled by out and out jerks like Jack Thompson and FOX News and Pokemon-are-demons ministers, I had hoped we would be a little more reasoned, a little more fair, but I was totally fucking wrong.

You do a pretty good job of pointing out the fact that most games utilize male protagonists, with the exception of Kirby (I honestly don't know if Kirby is gendered). Just accept that this is extremely alienating for a good portion of the game playing population. Don't get angry at the person who pointed it out, get angry at the system in place that allows the status quo to remain unchanged.

... was this footage captured from the 360 version, or something? I mean, call me jaded, but some of that looked preeeetty rough. Rougher than I remember the E3 reel looking.

I'm having a difficult time seeing how it is "alienating" to have to play as a gender that is not your own. Perhaps it's because I've never taken very much interest in "identifying" as the conglomerate of useless stereotypes that is a gender, but I really don't care one way or another whether or not I'm playing as a male or female character. If they're interesting, they're interesting - their anatomy really, really shouldn't matter. Deliberate diversity is just another form of segregation. Maybe there should be more female protagonists in gaming, but it really shouldn't be because "there should be more female protagonists in gaming."

For some reason, I wasn't notified of this response, so I didn't see it until now. But anyway...

No, clowing on Ubisoft in this instance doesn't ignore the real problem because the clowning on them specifically relates to that problem. They were criticized for the lack of female character options in the game and responded with a statement that only succeeded in highlighting their obliviousness. They could put all of this effort into the game's engine and tech, and yet, to add playable female animations would be a massive undertaking that would hamper the game's development?

Sorry, but no. It's a foolish argument on Ubisoft's part. They could have just said that they didn't put consideration into playable female characters in the game. It still might not have gone over well, but at least it's straight-forward line of reasoning that isn't blatantly foot-in-mouth.

While Im a bit exhausted from the constant releases (*a phrase I find myself saying every damn year) - I will admit that this game does look quite amazing, from a technical point of view. The animations seem much much more fluid and dynamic, which is awesome.

Dont know that I will get this as I had to force myself to finish AC3, and barely scratched the surface of ac4. meh.

So long as you are more Assassin's Creed 4 (AWESOME) and less Assassin's Creed 3 (OMG this suuuuuuuuucks) I will be totally happy.

Thats great and everything Ubisoft (for the consoles) but is there any chance for once you could make a GOOD PC version? for such a good game AC4 looked and moved terribly on PC like AC3 before it etc. I'd really appreciate it as would every other PC gamer, as I know to keep up with the limits of the new consoles you decided to stunt the exceptional looking original PC Watchdogs, but it's just not fair to gamers who like what your games are, spend their hard earned money on them and are disapointed again. Think about it please.

@sydlanel: It's really only recognizable to a small part of people like us that keep up with that kind of stuff, the vast majority of those who will buy this game have no idea what the Unity Engine is, i assure you.