No, they're all partially or wholly white European, which is odd. It just about made sense with Connor, but they didn't really use that for any more than a brief surprise moment in the game. There was no reason, other than a financial fear, why Altair was not from a fully Muslim Middle Eastern background. That's a toe…

I disagree about Full Sync - it's certainly become horribly restrictive because the mission design doesn't let you walk far from a single path anymore, but in ACB it was a reason to play the game/missions again, and sometimes they were interesting challenges. It's out of control in 3 though.

It's in a forest and you have a bow. Beyond that, I'm really not feeling that it's thematically similar in any significant way. Of course the movement animations look similar, but all jumping and climbing animations look similar.

Fair enough! I will wait and see then :)

Regardless, they do need a break, if only to re-examine their process. AC3 was seriously lacking in excitement and memorable events. I'm a huge fan, but the last two games have been a real struggle for me to replay. Brotherhood was the last time I was fully engaged by an AC title, but that's not to say I just want a…

Hey, I wouldn't argue that they were fun! I just think it's a feature that will always be best as a side quest. It was getting a bit samey for me by the last ship missions, and I played almost all of them in one block.

I completely agree. I'm playing Brotherhood again right now, and it's the one I've come back to again and again. It's hard to say what makes this one tick, and I wouldn't argue with anyone who says it's more "go here, do this", but something about the way it all feels makes "go there" a much more enjoyable order.

They probably don't want Watch Dogs and a new AC going head-to-head at the end of the year. If they skip a year for AC, that will be headline-grabbing in itself, and the biggest fans of AC will surely buy Watch Dogs instead.

That's true, and it's certainly a comic style (it reminds me a little of the sub-comic series in Watchmen). But if that's so, I don't know why they would call a comic "AC4" before there's a game title.

The try to go with periods that aren't overdone in video games. Not history. They're relying on the period of history sparking interest.

It's quite possible that there'll be a 2013 release, as other people have said, but there's no reason why Ubisoft would be making a poster for it now unless it was going to be a surprise mini-release for late spring/early summer (in which case it wouldn't say AC4 at all).

I think people overblew how good that really was. It looked beautiful, and it was undoubtedly good, but when I see people saying "I'd love a game doing nothing but naval combat", it's really code for "the was the only exciting task in the entirety of AC3" and that's not quite the same thing.

Yeah. It's just about conceivable that Ubisoft would buy themselves a year by making an end-of-cycle game that can be made easily on the current gen, and then wait for people to buy the next gen consoles before launching a full new title, but then they wouldn't call it AC4. They also wouldn't call it "AC4: Something…

It's alright if you don't overdo it, much the same as you'll sound weird speaking in an elaborately French accent when speaking French sentences. Pronunciation is important, but it should sound natural for you. We wouldn't dream of mocking a French person for speaking English with a slight French accent behind it,…

Yeah, I do agree. I also feel the same way about most DLC, and I'll probably never buy a season pass for any game because I don't play multiplayer. I would also be a lot less equivocal if I was a console player, because that market is seriously gougey, but I buy on PC so I get a much lower starting price and if I shop…

I bought Dishonored's first pack, and I'll probably buy this one. I don't mind dropping an extra few pounds to support this game (or to encourage more like it, assuming there's no sequel). I feel like I got a game's worth of entertainment for my money in the first place, so this doesn't feel like it was trimmed out.

Connor felt utterly fake to me. The writers seemed to be either unwilling or incapable of giving him an identity. His weird emotional responses were a constant shock to my sense of what was going on - often he'd go into full teenage RATM mode over things that just didn't warrant it, or he'd be robotically calm about a…

From a technical standpoint, it was a pretty incredible game world. I just felt like some great gameplay must be just around the corner, and then the game was over. It seemed to me like the decision to make that setting and period was a constant straitjacket for the project (see, I even shrink from calling it a game).

I think Luke's half-there with this point. I'm reminded of an early excuse the developers gave for why the 5th console/PC game still didn't have a woman in the assassin role. They said they thought about it but ultimately felt that a female character would not have access to the events they wanted to cover in the…

Yes, that is how trolling works. Not a lot of point in going to Fox or the Daily Mail if you enjoy riling people up.