Is this the least hyped AAA release of all time?

This is out in less than two weeks and the buzz around this is intriguingly non-existent.

It's understandable given that, even without taking technical shortcomings into account, Unity was not...great, but for such a massive franchise, it's odd to witness not even a smidgen of excitement.

the grappling hook looks neat, at least...

I don't know. I imagine Ubisoft has managed to pay for ads in all the places regular people go to, so their audience is likely aware of it at the very least.

As far as niche sites like this one, though? It may well be the least hyped AAA release in a long time. I can't think of any positive coverage I've seen. I think if anything people are just burned out on the formula, not to mention the incredibly divisive pivot they made by continuing the story after wrapping 3 up in a wet fart of an ending. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I mean when you think about it, the last game that received critical praise in the series was Brotherhood. Revelations was panned as mediocre and too gimmicky and 3 was divisive as hell. Black Flag escaped some scorn because it was a sweet ass pirate game, but virtually all coverage expressed disappointment with the non-piratey stuff. Unity as you say was ass, and Syndicate doesn't look any better.

It is what it is. Ubisoft had a killer IP that caught on with millions of people, and then they squandered it. They froze out the creative lead behind the game's success and have been running out of track for the last several years. It was bound to catch up with them eventually.

... and now watch when the game launches it breaks all sorts of single day sales records.

@oldirtybearon: Ubisoft needs that Activision tech where they pretend like every release is the best selling game ever.

Well, it's a nice change from their constant bombardment of promo videos each week.

It's in the same boat as Call of Duty for me. I'm well aware its going to happen, and I'm well aware of what it is going to be. The people who enjoy it will enjoy it, and I will continue to let it pass me by each year as I think fondly of my time with Assassin's Creed 2. They don't really need to spend a huge budget on advertising anymore. Everyone knows already and most people know if they're going to buy it or not. The only coverage that's really going to be important is the reviews telling us how buggy this one is or isn't. There's no reason to get hyped. It's a routine at this point.

People are already aware of this annual brand, as others mentioned with Call of Duty, so they don't really have to hype it that much. In addition, Black Flag wasn't really hyped either - people got burned by III. Unity had a lot of noise around it and it turned out to be a mess, so I can imagine that people are again wary of trusting Ubisoft.

I wish they would let it die, assassins creed's legacy has been forever tainted from these annual releases. It's hard to even remember how much i loved the second game by how forgettable the rest of them are.

@ghostiet: My recollection is that Black Flag had a lot of promotion...

Have you already forgotten about last month's Tony Hawk?

I can't wait 'til the Birgirpal video showing me just how many bugs I'm missing out on by not buying this.

@veektarius: It had a lot of promotion materials, but Syndicate has that too. They even have that terrible web app "encyclopedia". The conversation is more about people not really losing their minds about those games pre-release.

Wait what.

I was running down the list of big releases left to come this year in my head earlier and completely missed this.

My hype was initialised by MGSV, sustained by Mario Maker and what remains will be expended on Fallout 4. There is no hype left to go around.

Call of Duty: Ghosts?

Nothing about Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 is AAA.

At this point I think a lot of people are playing the 'wait and see' game, will it be another horrible mess like Unity, or will it be pretty good like 4?

There's no way I'd trust a day one purchase at this point, and I really do want it to be good because I love the setting, but it's something that can be easily written off and forgotten about when there's plenty of other games coming out this season.

My brother is looking forward to Syndicate, but he doesn't play nearly as many Assassin Creed games to completion as I do (read: all the major releases thus far on consoles) so he may not be as burned out on it.

As an Assassin's Creed apologist I'm very wary of this one, I've enjoyed most of the entries in the series even the one's that weren't all that great like Revelations. It was Unity that really soured me, I started playing that game in January of this year and it still played and ran pretty badly. The changes to the combat system were for the worse and they removed stealth aspects like hiding bodies, whistling to attract the attention of enemies behind walls so you could get a cover assassination and many more examples of stuff like that. The online servers for co-op were also very hit and miss. Some days they would work just fine, others not at all, or sometimes one person in our crew would constantly have trouble getting in at all.

I recently came back to Unity in the past month to finish out the story and play through that Dead Kings DLC that we got for free as an apology and my feelings felt very much the same. Just a very under-cooked and glitchy game that all it had going for it was some pretty spiffy visuals, the story was also completely forgettable. It says a lot that when your direct-to-video sequel Rogue while having problems of it own and basically being an Black Flag expansion pack was still a way better game then Unity.

I saw at least 5 trailers for this game up to now, so no it's not the least hyped AAA release of all time.

@oscar_explosion Except the pricetag :)

That's ok. I'm done with Assassin's Creed anyway.

Last years release struck such a huge blow completely negating the hope Ubisoft got out of 4. This will most likely be just ok but if it's another release like last year's the series could be in some huge trouble.

Also it is astounding how this is coming out in less than two weeks.

@veektarius: That fucking obnoxious ad on every site I went on where the whole screen would turn into a telescope.

It'll have a few kinda funny bugs trumped up by the press and everybody will be tripping over each other in describing how utterly broken it is.

I'm sure it will still sell well, but the excitement among people like us is almost negative.

maybe not super far off.

but I think you make a good point: it wont matter if its good or not the internet crowd has already made their decision. I mean last years was a pretty mediocre game with some well publicized bugs of a long in the tooth franchise so I get it. Though I am not looking forward to post release coverage of this.

unless the game is really really good.

I don't mean this to sound rude, given my lack of interest in the game, but because you and some Internet message boards aren't hyped doesn't make that true for everyone.

Given that this is the 9th (mainline) Assassin's Creed game I'm not surprised. Even my some of my friends who are massive fans of the game haven't been mentioning it at all.

This. I had no idea it's coming out in two weeks.

Their open world formula is starting to get a little overdone nowadays so I have no interest in most of their games. I've climbed enough towers to last me a lifetime.

As someone who has not been a fan of the series, London and a female protagonist at least makes me want to check it out. I've always been baffled by how well AC was received by players and critics so I'm not totally sure but it has lost a ton of cachet among enthusiasts in the recent years do to several duds like ac3, unity, and perhaps titles like watch_dog (it took me about 30 seconds to remember that name).

Most last gen IPs ppl have gotten really tired and I think Ubisoft has been lucky to be able to milk this franchise annually for this long. That said, if I'm correct, it's still popular among the causal nongaming gaming folks so I think it'll do fine. It does feel weird Ubisoft is not bombarding us w daily trailers but maybe they are hitting the right places with ads and not being crazy for once. AC doesn't need you or me.

I was one of those who liked the present days things in AC Two was the best, Three was the total letdown the way the whole thing with Desmond ended, you could clearly see that Patrice Désilets was no longer in the Company, and I really wanted to see his version of the conclusion with Desmond.

Black Flag went a whole other way, and I kinda liked it, and the present day was a fun spin on things, and it keept on in AC Rouge. But then there was Unity, gorgeous looking game, but the story was bland, the present day things totally irrelevant. and the missions was just dull, and the sidequest there where just to many of them, and they were boring.

I played through the singleplayer, but it was not grabbing me as much as the series used to. I will check AC Syndicate out for the curiosity, but damm this series need to either end, or have a big giant makeover, to be succesfull again.

@oursin_360: yeah I would say the same thing, but Ubisoft will probably be beating this dead horse as long as they can lol

Yeah I feel like they cut the marketing budget for this by 85%. Normally this close to release you start seeing AC stuff plastered everywhere, but the only thing I've been seeing from Ubisoft is Far Cry: Primal and Rainbow Six stuff.

Not sure what that means for this game or the future of AC

I wonder if this game will be another Tony Hawk 5 situation. No news means it sucks?

I think they're playing it cool with how bad the Unity launch was last year.

This was they can play it down right as the game is coming out until they can hear from their users it's a fully functional game that doesn't give children nightmares of faceless french people; then maybe host a giant media blitz and sell it as the "Greatest AC Ever".

Which i doubt will be any good.

I don't see a whole lot of press excited for it, no. But every time I turn on my TV I see that ad with a weird cover of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus on just about every ad supported channel, so they're certainly markerting it. I don't even recall seeing so many video game ads on TV since Haze.

I don't have a problem with the open world formula, the kill everything then sit on a bench 'stealth' & the switching between the past & then the boring present is what turned me off the series after the 2nd Assassins Creed game.

I can do more open world, just not in the Assassins Creed universe.

If you consider any of the Rachet and Clank games to be AAA then I would say those games. Sony seems to really have no faith in those games.

For as much grief as Unity got, it still managed to sell over 5 million copies. So no matter how much bad or non-existent press Assassin's Creed gets, it still manages to sell well.

I'm hoping they learned some good lessons from Unity. Hopefully, they fixed all the bad decisions of Unity and this is a stealth good release. Basically sneaks up on everyone and is AC2 levels of good. And maybe a smidge less crapola on the map. And NOTHING you can't access at launch (no broken shit).

@scottg13: My god the map in Unity was a nightmare! It was one of the things that really put me off that game. I actually think Syndicate looks really good and after having barley played Unity, I'm excited to play another AC game.

I think Gears of War Judgement did a lot worse in terms of hype. People just actively had no interest in that game, and they weren't even burned by past experiences, it was a gloriously subdued crescendo of apathy.

Ive seen maybe two videos of this and in the other one the main female assassin had some kind of cloaking device and a hook to instantly scale buildings.

Seems that Ubi has finally made some neat new innovations to the series.

I've seen full spread ads for the game in non-gaming magazines. I don't really think it's unhyped. It's just that the internet collectively just stopped giving a shit about the series after Unity.

@retris: Difference between advertising and hype. You basically stated yourself that there's no hype around it. I don't think I've heard one single person excited for this release... other than @pompouspizza just now.

Yet they kept putting out R&C games on the PS3, even if those game barely had any marketing behind them. Also with a movie coming out in 2016, maybe Sony will give the game tie-in a push.

But on topic, if I had to pick, it would probably be either Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 or Lost Planet 3. I remember LP3 coming out of nowhere when it was released. At least I'm seeing Gamestop commercials for AC Syndicate, so it has that to try to hype up the game.

I wonder if Unity has done the same thing to expectations for the series as AC3 did when it took them down so low that Black Flag looked pretty great by comparison. Unity was then a broken mess and seemed like a natural death-point for the franchise. So I'm super curious to both see how Syndicate reviews and how it is discussed by journalists and gamers. The AC series has so much baggage at this point, it'll probably be close to impossible to be unaffected by it when looking at this new game.

Is there any need to hype it? It's October, that means Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed will be out. At this point it's a total given.

The way I treat Assassin's Creed every year is that I watch about 20 minutes of gameplay before I decide "Nah, I really don't want to play this".

I think the lack of hype is just down due to the laws of diminishing returns. Also the pressure to release a new assassins creed game every year seems to lead to issues with quality control as evidenced by Assassins creed Unity.

The basic gameplay also needs some changes. Fights are still too easy in Assassins creed games and the map is full of collection type sidequests which dont really offer a great deal of variety.

Ubisoft is basically destroying the brand of the Assassins Creed by trying to do yearly realeases. People are slowly getting tired of the sameness of these games.

My guess is this is the series drawing its last breath. Even fans of the series and people who care about their annual AC/CoD/FIFA/Madden fix and don't expect much in terms of radical formula changes have little patience for atrocious bugs which render a game unplayable. At least your CoDs actually care about people being able to play the game.

They'll still be making more of these of course, but I only expect the sales to get lower and lower.

The hype and PR campaign has been about sending out early copies to youtubers and streamers while press and media F5s their inboxes. Same for Just Cause 3.

edit: aaaand the game is out in the wild, good job murdering shelf-date embargo contracts yet again

Not that this is the most important thing in the world, but I was curious and looked up how the game was selling on Amazon. On the list of top selling video game things (includes hardware), the PS4 version is at #49 and the XONE version is at #94. On the list for each game's consoles, both are around #10. It looks like the game comes out on Friday for some reason, so it could be pre-ordered or purchased by more people on or around release date, but doesn't that number seem low?

For comparison, Fallout 4, Black Ops III, Halo 5 (for Xbox of course), and Battlefield are higher ranked, so it's not like people aren't pre-ordering games anymore. Again this could mean nothing, but it's one thing to guess at what the hype is and another thing to see how many people plan on buying the game.