Hey guys,

So I've got this love/hate thing with this series where I don't really care for the story, but I love the mechanics and the settings. So I'm playing syndicate now and loving the Gotham by Gaslight vibe of the whole game. Here's my question about the series. I want to at least play Odyssey next if not the one before it (Origins maybe?) and maybe even check out the remaster of 3 since I never played it. How difficult is it getting around in past and future games from Syndicate without the grappling hook? I remember playing a little bit of AC2 and Brotherhood before Black Flag really flipped the script on it's head.

Anyway, just wondering from seasoned players how exhausting it is to watch the Assassin shimmy around the different game worlds and if its worth going back at all. I'm hoping going forward will be worth it still. Like I said, not in it for the story. Thanks everyone!

The further back you go the more concerned they'll be with feeling like you are actually climbing. It was sort of part of the spectacle. So it's a lot slower and more methodical.

With Origins and Odyssey you run up any god damn remotely climbable service so quickly you might just forget you had a grappling hook.

It's not hard. I think by the time they got to Syndicate, ppl were over climbing so they came up with ways to do it quicker. If you haven't gotten sick of climbing, I don't think it'll get in the way of your enjoyment for a game or 2.

There's barely any parkour in Origins. There's climbing puzzles and a little bit of climbing in strongholds, but most of the traversal is on the ground on foot or by horse.
I remember earlier entries as tedious. Syndicate has the best traversal in the series, IMO, due to the fact that climbing is trivialized but the level design still supports parkour. Climbing to a rooftop in Origins takes longer and there's nowhere to go once you get there.

Yah as mentioned above, they threw all that stuff out in favor of an expanded combat system. It's a shame but hey, both Origins and Odyssey are hailed as the "Best AC games" to date, so I guess thats what the mass market wanted.

Post brotherhood was when they turned the dial up to 11 on climbing, from then on it was pretty breezy in a general sense, however there were specific areas with climbing "puzzles" that were a bit tricky but I remember them being separated from everything else and easily avoided. Not that they were especially puzzly to begin with.

Nothing quite as freeing as that grapple in the other games though.

Pretty early on in Odyssey you unlock the complete removal of fall damage, and you can scale just about everything pretty quickly. It's necessary because that world is massive and very cliff-heavy. I quite enjoyed it, even if it did trivialize whatever remained of the human skill displayed in the series' climbing.

I'm one of those weirdos who vastly prefers the older game's more deliberate pace when it comes to climbing. I actually just finished playing through AC2 again and that game's traversal honestly feels 1000% better than the crap they've had for the last several entries. It's obviously not totally perfect, but the problem was always that the game wanted to grapple to the wrong things rather than the actual climbing speed.

Of course, rather than solve that problem, Ubi decided they'd rather just trivialize climbing altogether by removing fall damage, or any sense of weight and gravity (while simultaneously removing "assassination" or an identifiable "creed"). Why have engaging and unique gameplay when you can add another featureless fetch quest, right?

@therealturk: I don't think we can ever pretend there was an actual "Creed".

Can say all the words you want we all stabbed the Money Money Money guy eventually.

Origins is the best game in the series IMO, haven't played the latest one. Grapple hook is cool but they pretty much revamped the entire game so it's not necessary in the slightest.