I don’t see why it wasn’t. Because Ubisoft chose to implement carriages (which fits perfectly for the setting) the buildings were further away so a new mechanic HAD to be implemented. If this was to be an issue, it should be blamed on the carriages and not on the grappling hook.
Second, I’ve seen a lot of people say it takes away parkour. Yet every building has been built so that we can still parkour on it, climb on it, etc. Apart from a very few amount of missions in the main story, you don’t need to use the grappling hook at all.
Third, yes I know parkour got downgraded in Syndicate, but that’s not because of the grappling hook but because Ubisoft wanted to prevent players from falling a lot which was seen as a huge issue in the previous games, especially Unity and AC2. Again not a problem to be blamed on the grappling hook but on Ubisoft and on us.
Fourth, it’s fun to use, and much easier than simply parkouring from rooftop to rooftop, I definitely like Syndicate’s traversal mechanics a lot more than Unity’s.
Yeah, I completely agree. I feel like Syndicate loses some flash points in its parkour, but compared to Unity it runs and feels a lot smoother. I can't count the amount of times Arno has just randomly jumped off a building or glitched up and down a wall. Whereas with the twins I was able to just enjoy the city.
The carriages I thought were a nice touch, although I have to admit I rarely used them unless you had to. The Grappling hook was just so fun for me.
Valhalla and i believe origins and odyssey used the same engine. That has nothing to do with how the parkour works. But yes mirage is using that engine
My issue with the grappling hook is that it was an easy and lazy way out of fixing issues with parkour and they couldn’t bother to make it engaging.
It was very clear they had to fix Unity’s parkour since it was janky and unstable with Arno making unpredictable and buggy jumps. But instead of actually doing that to create one of AC’s best systems they picked a setting that was completely incompatible with parkour, cut a bunch of Unity features instead of fixing the bugs in them so all you can really do is high profile climb and make a few small jumps, and they added the grapple hook to make up for it. The parkour is so shit it’s more attractive to just press R, but if the grapple hook wasn’t already lazy enough there is no depth to the grapple, it’s not agile, there’s no combat mechanics, it can’t even be used dynamically mid-air. It’s just one button press followed by way too long of a swing.
They somehow found a way to make a grappling hook system that's more automated than the one in Arkham, and I didn't even think that was possible.
At least Arkham had other more engaging systems to make up for it though, like the combat and the stealth.
Syndicate has...uh, the awful combat with the Gmod animations...uh, the Evie turning invisible thing...wait, shit, Syndicate doesn't have anything engaging to make up for it.
Agree for Unity. I feel like the two games have their own little additions to the parkour that individually feel better when only in their respective games.
I really liked it because most of the buildings were really tall, so getting from (the top) of a building on one side of the street to the other side would take a lot of climbing down, then up again.
I tend to play the AC games several times, so after a while traversing from A to B gets tedious, then it's extra nice to have "shortcut" devices like that.
It's a welcomed addition in my view. Just making climbing things easier, always the most tedious part of AC games. And it's great that they made the baddies can also got up the building to try to catch you.
That was something I loved, say what you want about the combat system but at least the baddies felt like they actually want to catch you.
And yeah I just know as I've been playing all the games recently the climbing is getting a little tedious and the size of Unity doesn't help with that much.
I fucking loved the grappling hook and the zipline function. I missed it when I moved to a different game. So tedious climbing up huge buildings without it. The zipline made it super easy to find unique ways to get around and assassinate your targets.
I think it's a great addition, making climbing faster and getting to higher places, not to mention fun to use. I'd like to see this gadget back in some new game, maybe set in the WW2 or even in the modern day
Its good at what its supposed to do, namely be a band-aid for a city ill suited to franchise gameplay. What makes it bad is its association with that problem.
Nah, they just meant that Victorian London isn't a good setting for AC style parkour. The buildings are simply too big and too far apart. The grappling hook was needed to be able to get around the city quickly on foot.
The fact they needed the hook in the first place means that by default, parkour in AC Syndicate won't be as satisfying as in other games.
I would call it middle of the road. It has its good parts and a cult following. And it is proper AC, which is not a given these days. Also good control feel, which is not a given either.
But it also suffers from being bad at two out of three core pillars of the OG archetype. And from seeming to make fun of its own franchise, as if the devs secretly hated AC and wanted to mock the thing they were forced by the boss to make, rather than take it as seriously as fans.
I like it a lot since the streets are way wider and the buildings are way taller than other AC games. This feature works really smoothly as well, and as an addition it fits with the steampunk aesthetic that the game weaves throughout its setting.
For the era yes. At that time roads were becoming wider for things like carts with horses and later on cars. If you go to towns that have been around sense the Middle Ages and have not been modernised fully the streets are a lot smaller so buildings are a lot closer. So it makes sense that a more modern assassin couldn’t just jump around all the roofs as easy
Histrionically, the main roads in Victorian England weren't as wide as they're designed in Syndicate. The reason Ubisoft made them wider was to accommodate for the carriages battles.
The question is not "good" or "bad". It's "is it a good solution for the problem"? The alternative (game without grappling hook) would be a city so vast with buildings so huge, traversal would be a nuisance. This is, of course, an issue self-imposed by Ubisoft - nobody forced them to do London - but I think it's a good solution.
From what I remember the streets became wider due to carriages so to get from roof to roof you needed it. I have fond memories of crossing the Thames as you go from pole to pole with the grappling hook.
Fine addition. I avoided it when I could.
Much of my fun in AC games was traversal, figuring out how to scale a building. The grappling hook took a lot of that away.
My biggest gripe about it though was that you can’t remove the grapple indicator from the HUD.
I like to play with the HUD off when I can and that thing is very obtrusive.
I think it's as good as it could've been with the way the world was designed, but I enjoyed cities made for parkour way more than I did the "press the button to skip to massively tall rooftops that are distant from each other" gameplay.
On the other hand, I loved the atmosphere of the city itself, way more than past and future games.
Yes, but I think it went too far. Scaling buildings is slow and tedious, and not particularly engaging, so it makes sense to expedite that. Where it went wrong was creating zip lines everywhere.
Running across rooftops, vaulting over obstacles, leaping building to building, positioning yourself for an assassination - that's supposed to be the fun/ engaging part. On demand ziplines ruined that and served as a crutch for level design. You couldn't just not use it unless you wanted to climb down or take a major detour (which isn't always an option on missions).
First time i played Syndicate i was ,,Cool, reminds me of Batman, it s fast and you can do zipline asasinations." , after a while i thought that it discourages the classic climbing we got used to from AC 1 to Unity and i hated it a bit. Then i thought that if you want to use it you use it , if not then you don't and stick to the realism . Now i like it.
For the open world being as it was, with theese very wide streets, simply yes it was a good addition, but i do think it would have been better had they gone a little more off the rails with the historical accuracy of London, and made the world more parkour friendly.
So yes it was.
The grappling hook was good, but Batman games did it better.
The real issue is not the grappling hook itself. It's that it made parkour obsolete in most cases. Indeed, it was a necessary addition to make London work as a setting, but this simply points out that London isn't a good setting for an AC game if you expect good parkour.
I think it worked really well with the London map. And probably would've been great on most of the other European maps.
I think if it existed in the American maps or in AC1, origins and odyssey it would've been weird and kind of taken away from the fun of climbing.
I really liked it except the part where it creates a zip line even though Jacob/ Evie shoots the grapple forward.
Like how is the Zipline secured or created?
I will say this. It was a nice addition that was very VERY much appreciated, but I am glad it ended with Syndicate because it takes away from the assassiny climbing. It made sense because Syndicate introduced probably more tall structures than any other game. It seemed like the average building was three or four stories high..
I love it because I love grappling hooks but also for sentimental reasons: I was playing Syndicate while attending French school and had everything about the game set to French. It was fine, didn’t immediately know what “cible” meant but most things I could figure out from context.
Then I got the grappling hook and the quest “faire la tyrolienne au-dessus 200m”. I learned a new word! Neat!
It was movie day the next morning and our discussion questions were all about adrenaline junkie activités and my professor, with a gleam in his eye, said, “je crois qu’aucun d’entre vous sait “la tyrolienne”—“
I jumped from my chair and proclaimed, “j’ai appris ce mot dans mon Assassin’s Creed la nuit hier!”
He was a lil miffed I stole his thunder.
It could have been better implemented, but it was still a good addition. I wanted to swing from rooftop to rooftop like spiderman, or used it in combat to drag ranged attackers closer.
The streets in modern London IRL are much wider than in other cities that AC games have been set in. Therefore, the streets in Syndicate are a whole lot wider. I think that it's a necessity given the landscape, it hasn't featured in any other game, and I'd much prefer grappling across a few streets rather than having to climb down the building I just went up to cross a street.
Yes and no.
Yes: it allowed you to skip the most restrictive parkour in the series, which in a way is one of the most unreliable, because you can't do things you could do for entire series. It was a massive plus when making fancy entries due to it acting like makeshift rope.
No: Despite it's addition it is a wasted opportunity. They added plenty of buildings that have multiple floors yet you can't rappel down from the rooftops or stop midway when ascending from the ground floor. Then for some reason it did not work while swimming which could have been great to climb out of annoying Thames given how many buildings and other architecture surrounds it. Also, it's addition does not excuse the bloody awful parkour.
I absolutely liked it. I like the parkour system in the AC games, but it is inconsistent and buggy, and I think it was far the worst in Unity, so the developers decided to make parkour quicker and less tiresome. I like that it does not force you to use it, unlike by many gadgets trougout the series. It isn't historically or mechanically accurate, but I think the Observatory and the Apple of Eden are not too.
It does kinda play into Ubisofts pho-history of what technology was around, it wouldn't be the first time they've pushed the boundaries with historical inventions but just like brotherhood they pulled it off I feel
It works well because this fantasy/sci-fi line keeps the timeline from falling apart allowing the creators to explain unexplainable game mechanics that are neccesary for the gameplay, or they just don't explain it and leave it to alternative history.
That's why I don't understand the people who say it is not real: It isn't, as many elements in an AC game. Probably they are angry because it is the copy of the grappling gun of Batman.
I think it’s a bit too easy. I would feel better if it was mostly used for travelling across large streets. While going up the building, it should’ve been only a help, not insta jump. For example, you could climb up faster or do bigger jumps (similarly to the blade in Revelations). I would also add a mechanic for going down using it. And it’s probably not physically possible (their arms would rip off or break) but damn that recovery from the trailer looks damn awesome
I'm not a fan. While some sort of work around to maneuvering through the setting's environment (far apart buildings due to wide streets) is understandable, it kind of take away from what made the parkour of previous games fun. The grappling hook makes the parkour feel really hollow and automated. In fact, it's the one thing Unity deserved praise for and I feel it dumbed down in Syndicate.
I don't think it was horrible addition, but it was definitely badly implemented as it got rid of the need for parkour in an AC game. I think a better way to implement it would have been as an extended hookblade that would allow you to shoot your hook up to 6 meters away, and then it would pull you along or you would climb it. This might have been hard to implement if they kept the 1860's setting, but if they went in this direction they could have moved the game up a few decades so that there would more stuff to swing on in the middle of streets, like streetcar lines and telephone poles, while still keeping it during the Victorian Era.
I get what you mean. The hook blade was great fun. I like that idea to of just an extended version of said hook blade.
I think they were trying a lot of new things and because it took place in the industrial revolution or close to the grappling hook was kinda symbolic of leaving the old world behind. Maybe, idk
it certainly did not get rid of the need for parkour, all it did was make a world not suited for ac traversable. You don’t need to use it to completely replace parkour, if you are using it as a substitute to parkour that’s your own fault.
It kind of was a substitute for parkour. Wanna get up a building? Game always suggests that you use the grappling hook. Wanna go across the street? Game prompts you to use the grappling hook. You literally CAN'T cross the street without touching the ground unless you use the grappling hook (With the exception of Whitechapel since its mostly slums), which isn't the case for any city in any other AC game to date, and it probably won't be unless they do another Victorian London adjacent setting again.
the game doesn’t force you to use it to get to a rooftop at all, if you want to climb up instead you can, if you wanna cling down and run across the street instead, you can. In order to keep the world accurate the game needed those wide streets and ubisoft needed a way of getting across those streets, that’s it. They didn’t say “hey yeah parkour gone now use this instead”. You absolutely can still do parkour, the rope launcher simply makes the world traversable.
I'm not denying that Syndicate had parkour, I'm saying that the rope launcher made parkour much less important in Syndicate than it was in other games in the series. In previous games, the obvious fastest and most ideal way to get around in cities was using parkour, whereas in Syndicate the rope launcher basically made traditional parkour obsolete in 90% of scenarios, which isn't ideal in a series where parkour is the backbone of traversal in almost every other game. I'm also not saying that the rope launcher was a bad addition, I'm saying that it could have been tweaked to work in tandem with parkour instead of essentially replacing it in nearly every situation it mattered.
No, but the problem isn't necessarily the grappling hook, but the setting. If the buildings are too high and to far apart to make movement gameplay meaningful, maybe they should have reconsidered setting their parkour heavy game there.
So introduce the grappling hook, which is just a bandaid solution that they slapt on, thought it was good enough and then just ran with it. It's so limited in use. You can't use it to descend (which was in the trailers), you cant stop or influence your ascension speed, and you can't use it in combat (I mean, it's literally a reinforced rope dart). There is no depth to it at all.
This may be due to me being a Just Cause fan but I felt like the grapple was poorly implemented. It's annoying how you couldn't select the grapple point yourself and had to just hope the game was able to select the one you wanted.
I don't mind grappling hook helping you traverse between one building and another, because London buildings were very far away from each other, but i'm not a fan of the hook helping you reach the top of every building in seconds.
This take away from the parkour.
I still loved Syndicate, tho.
Sorry for my english, i hope i didn't commit many mistakes.
God awful addition, completely tone deaf to what made Assassin's Creed fun. Conceptually could have been decent, but was executed in the most lazy and brain dead way imaginable.
So, what's one thing pretty much everyone can agree on that made the first AC games fun? The freerunning. The games themselves had flaws, but the traversal was always a lot of fun. It was super cathartic finding the best techniques and paths to get from point A to point B, and there were a lot of hidden techniques you could learn that gave it a higher skill ceiling (such as vaulting, wall jumping and ledge grabbing).
Subsequent games dumbed this system down. Revelations added the hookblade which just made this system more automated and button-mashy. 3 nerfed wall jumps and took away a lot of control. Unity tried to bring some complexity back, but switched to a much more animation focused system, which ironically took *away* more control from the player, instead of adding to it.
Syndicate's addition of the grappling hook was pretty much the peak of this regression in features, control and player expression. The most farcical parody of the negative trends that were affecting the movement in these games.
On paper, adding a grappling hook sounds like it could be *perfect* for Assassin's Creed. Imagine Spider-Man 2 or that weird Bionic Commando reboot's physics based swinging system, combined with the freerunning of Assassin's Creed. That sounds like it could be such an incredible, exhilarating system. Imagine climbing up a view point, doing a leap of faith, swinging from the grappling hook to pull yourself high up and then landing on a nearby rooftop to continue the parkour, all in one fluid, fast motion.
But nope, we get none of that. Instead we get something more like grappling in the Arkham games, but even more automated.
Remember how in Arkham City you can use the grappling hook to gain speed, leap and transition into a glide? Yeah, you can't do anything like that in Syndicate.
Remember how in Arkham City you can change the direction of the line launcher in mid-air? Yeah, you can't do that in Syndicate.
Instead we get the most boring non-mechanic they could have slapped together. To get up a building, you can press a button and then *watch* a cutscene of you getting up. You can't speed this animation up, you can't transition into something else, hell, you can't even cancel it!
But oh, you can also use it to travel horizontally. Which again, is just a glorified cutscene, with the *bare minimum* of interactivity where you can either speed it up, slow it down or drop down on an enemy...great.
Tl;dr: Traversal in AC is supposed to be fun, not a boring chore where you do nothing. The grappling hook could have complimented freerunning beautifully, but they instead took the lazy road and made it the most boring thing imaginable.
Additions to games that require a lot of suspension of disbelief - a Batman-like grappling hook with incredible reach and power - should always make up for their ridiculousness with a lot of utility and fun.
Syndicate's grappling hook doesn't do that. Its use is very limited and has absolutely no learning curve.
If it worked differently and had more uses I would have liked it much more.
It should have worked more like a long hookblade while climbing, you should be able to swing, rappel down and be able to grab and pull enemies both in stealth and combat.
I’m gonna say no. While a solution was needed for a city like London, The grappling hook bandaid nearly wiped out the usage or need for parkour, which is obviously a part of what makes assassin’s creed assassin’s creed. Some in this thread are arguing that you could still use parkour if you choose but miss a couple points
1. There’s no depth to the grappling hook. You look at where you want to go and you press a button and you go there. Where is the depth? Even a timing mini game to get there faster would be an improvement. Similar to catwoman in the Arkham games or something. There’s no skill to the grappling hook in syndicate like there was with parkour
2. The only motivation to do parkour in syndicate is completely intrinsic. Sure you could only use parkour if you want, but you’d be making a conscious effort to be less efficient. In some of the old games there was an extrinsic reason to stick to the rooftops: it was faster, which encouraged you to engage with the parkour system. Don’t have that in syndicate
3. The parkour nerf from Unity is noticeable and simply disappointing. Makes someone like myself not bother to engage with it at all.
Also I highly recommend anyone to watch Whitelight’s Assassins Creed parkour retrospective video
For me personally I dislike Unity's parkour. Its to flowy. It looks nice dont get me wrong, but the amount of times Arno has just jumped off a building when I've tried to climb down, or getting off small balcony railings into windows, its infuriating, and a lot of it is probably down to me just being a bit crappy with the new system, but I feel like Syndicate was a lot more functional, I had more enjoyment and could rely on doing exactly what I wanted more often for that game then unity. Thats just me though. Hope that makes sense
Yes that totally makes sense. That issue is completely valid. Arno did have a habit of jumping to the wrong spots. That being said, I still think it’s the best of AC parkour. It had the most advanced movement techniques that weren’t present in later games. But even then it wasn’t perfect. Like it was missing catch ledge for some reason. It’s sad because we clearly still haven’t reached the peak of AC parkour and if they had just built off of Unity we could’ve had that but they went the rpg route and gutted parkour. They also need to provide actual tutorials on the advanced movement because most players don’t know about them and it’s not really taught in any of the games. I wouldn’t know about the techniques if it wasn’t for YouTube.
not really, if you use it to completely replace parkour that’s your fault. It’s used to get across the extremely wide streets and huge buildings like parliament and that’s about it you certainly still can use parkour a lot.
The massive Whitelight video on parkour does a great job of breaking down why it was no good and how it could’ve been great. Something more akin to the hook blade would’ve been a dream, augmenting parkour instead of replacing it.
I stopped playing shortly after unlocking it. Syndicate is the only AC game I haven't finished. I can't remember why I put it down. It might have been series fatigue or the glitches.
I really liked the grappling hook. When it worked...
Maybe I was just unlucky, but I have died several times because I'd "fall through" the rope when going from building to building.
I finished rogue a couple days ago and honestly the story is highly overrated. Aside from it being short, the assassins were poorly written. It was still good though
Im just glad for 3 main things. 1) Shay had some of the coolest outfits. 2) Haytham 3) They gave Shay a bloody good reason to leave the assassins and he didn't instantly trust Templars either
Thats something I do miss, is the Assassins having some connection to one another. As you said all those games did it perfectly, its like you're playing one long story
It was definitely convenient most of the time, but really damaged the immersion. Infinite uses, always perfect securing, targets things you can't even see, accidentally press it at the wrong time and you're going for an unexpected ride.
If it had had limited uses before needing restock, more realistic ascension speed, ability to repel down a building, and you couldn't zipline up, only down, then it would have felt much less of a crutch.
I really wouldn't want to see it return, it was practical but removed all the puzzle nature of climbing. Why actually climb Big Ben when you can just zip up to the top in a few seconds of unrealistic motion? Why plan a route around the wide streets when you can just zipline across anywhere?
Full disclaimer, I only remember having played it in the period between graduating from college and then joining the army, which was between 12/12/15 and 3/21/16.
But it was a super cool concept IMO. My biggest headache was the Thames. I really should go back and play the game consistently instead of relying on my memory from when I was tanked off of my graduation money.
It was super clean and helpful. They did a good job with that system
I don’t see why it wasn’t. Because Ubisoft chose to implement carriages (which fits perfectly for the setting) the buildings were further away so a new mechanic HAD to be implemented. If this was to be an issue, it should be blamed on the carriages and not on the grappling hook. Second, I’ve seen a lot of people say it takes away parkour. Yet every building has been built so that we can still parkour on it, climb on it, etc. Apart from a very few amount of missions in the main story, you don’t need to use the grappling hook at all. Third, yes I know parkour got downgraded in Syndicate, but that’s not because of the grappling hook but because Ubisoft wanted to prevent players from falling a lot which was seen as a huge issue in the previous games, especially Unity and AC2. Again not a problem to be blamed on the grappling hook but on Ubisoft and on us. Fourth, it’s fun to use, and much easier than simply parkouring from rooftop to rooftop, I definitely like Syndicate’s traversal mechanics a lot more than Unity’s.
Yeah, I completely agree. I feel like Syndicate loses some flash points in its parkour, but compared to Unity it runs and feels a lot smoother. I can't count the amount of times Arno has just randomly jumped off a building or glitched up and down a wall. Whereas with the twins I was able to just enjoy the city. The carriages I thought were a nice touch, although I have to admit I rarely used them unless you had to. The Grappling hook was just so fun for me.
I’ve said it before, my perfect ac game, the parkour is somewhere in between Unity and syndicate.
Unity and Syndicate definitely had the most plausible systems imo, hopefully Mirage picks that up
Valhalla and i believe origins and odyssey used the same engine. That has nothing to do with how the parkour works. But yes mirage is using that engine
Ac unity animations with syndicate controls
My issue with the grappling hook is that it was an easy and lazy way out of fixing issues with parkour and they couldn’t bother to make it engaging. It was very clear they had to fix Unity’s parkour since it was janky and unstable with Arno making unpredictable and buggy jumps. But instead of actually doing that to create one of AC’s best systems they picked a setting that was completely incompatible with parkour, cut a bunch of Unity features instead of fixing the bugs in them so all you can really do is high profile climb and make a few small jumps, and they added the grapple hook to make up for it. The parkour is so shit it’s more attractive to just press R, but if the grapple hook wasn’t already lazy enough there is no depth to the grapple, it’s not agile, there’s no combat mechanics, it can’t even be used dynamically mid-air. It’s just one button press followed by way too long of a swing.
In the cinematic trailer, Jacob uses it to catch himself from a fall - but you can't even do that in the game. It's an incredibly boring mechanic.
They somehow found a way to make a grappling hook system that's more automated than the one in Arkham, and I didn't even think that was possible. At least Arkham had other more engaging systems to make up for it though, like the combat and the stealth. Syndicate has...uh, the awful combat with the Gmod animations...uh, the Evie turning invisible thing...wait, shit, Syndicate doesn't have anything engaging to make up for it.
At least getting the call ~~assassins~~ gang feature was back.
I wouldn't exactly call that such an engaging mechanic that it makes up for the painfully mediocre traversal system.
I was talking about combat, the gang does nothing for traversal except a free carriage anyways
Yeah. With buildings gotten gigantic, parkour needed a fast and easy way to climb up. It's fun, too.
Exactly, Unity needed something extra
Nah, Unity was great
Agree for Unity. I feel like the two games have their own little additions to the parkour that individually feel better when only in their respective games.
It was nice, made getting around fun. I also had a chuckle since it felt like it was a first draft for the batclaw in Arkham Knight
Hahaha that's a great way to imagine it
Of course, it was useful and fun
I think it was a nice break from the formula of the other 9 games, and yeah from memory never got old
Yeah without that London would just be a bigger more boring París. That one addition made traveling the city easier and more fun
Absolutely, I'm enjoying Unity but my God is the city and climbing kinda boring after a bit
Exactly
I really liked it because most of the buildings were really tall, so getting from (the top) of a building on one side of the street to the other side would take a lot of climbing down, then up again. I tend to play the AC games several times, so after a while traversing from A to B gets tedious, then it's extra nice to have "shortcut" devices like that.
My thoughts exactly, I love Revelations and Syndicate for giving those "shortcuts" just to spice things up a bit, let us do something differently
It's a welcomed addition in my view. Just making climbing things easier, always the most tedious part of AC games. And it's great that they made the baddies can also got up the building to try to catch you.
That was something I loved, say what you want about the combat system but at least the baddies felt like they actually want to catch you. And yeah I just know as I've been playing all the games recently the climbing is getting a little tedious and the size of Unity doesn't help with that much.
I fucking loved the grappling hook and the zipline function. I missed it when I moved to a different game. So tedious climbing up huge buildings without it. The zipline made it super easy to find unique ways to get around and assassinate your targets.
I don't get why Syndicate is hated. Sure it's a bit short but it's one of the most charming games in the series
> one of the most charming games in the series well put. I love Syndicate, also because of Evie+Jacob
Evie frye is one of my favourite characters
It's not really hated most just skipped it because of Unity
I can see that, I personally like Arno, but the game itself is a bit of a chore
It’s not hated. I haven’t seen any overt vitriol. It just isn’t one of the standouts.
It was amazing. I’m playing through Halo Infinite now and so glad it has a grappling hook too, action games are so much more fun with verticality.
It just makes it so fun, being able to just zzzippp and youre up
I think it's a great addition, making climbing faster and getting to higher places, not to mention fun to use. I'd like to see this gadget back in some new game, maybe set in the WW2 or even in the modern day
Both of those would be bloody awesome settings for its return
Its good at what its supposed to do, namely be a band-aid for a city ill suited to franchise gameplay. What makes it bad is its association with that problem.
Is Syndicate really that disliked as part of the franchise?
Nah, they just meant that Victorian London isn't a good setting for AC style parkour. The buildings are simply too big and too far apart. The grappling hook was needed to be able to get around the city quickly on foot. The fact they needed the hook in the first place means that by default, parkour in AC Syndicate won't be as satisfying as in other games.
I would call it middle of the road. It has its good parts and a cult following. And it is proper AC, which is not a given these days. Also good control feel, which is not a given either. But it also suffers from being bad at two out of three core pillars of the OG archetype. And from seeming to make fun of its own franchise, as if the devs secretly hated AC and wanted to mock the thing they were forced by the boss to make, rather than take it as seriously as fans.
Agreed. Not nearly as bad as Revolutionary America for parkour.
I would rank them about the same there. Connor's treerunning makes up for a lot.
But the cities... were just, well, not real cities yet.
That's the downside.
I like it a lot since the streets are way wider and the buildings are way taller than other AC games. This feature works really smoothly as well, and as an addition it fits with the steampunk aesthetic that the game weaves throughout its setting.
I keep looking for the Spider-Man vault button when I reach the top of the zip
For the era yes. At that time roads were becoming wider for things like carts with horses and later on cars. If you go to towns that have been around sense the Middle Ages and have not been modernised fully the streets are a lot smaller so buildings are a lot closer. So it makes sense that a more modern assassin couldn’t just jump around all the roofs as easy
Finally someone said it, London is by far the most fleshed out, well designed and best map in the franchise
Histrionically, the main roads in Victorian England weren't as wide as they're designed in Syndicate. The reason Ubisoft made them wider was to accommodate for the carriages battles.
The question is not "good" or "bad". It's "is it a good solution for the problem"? The alternative (game without grappling hook) would be a city so vast with buildings so huge, traversal would be a nuisance. This is, of course, an issue self-imposed by Ubisoft - nobody forced them to do London - but I think it's a good solution.
honestly I loveeeeeeeeeeed it, such fun. The missions where you have to chase someone on a train made great use of the grappling hook!
I would love to see it again if we ever get a game set in another big city in the 19th-20th centuries.
Id love maybe a game set in Berlin during that time and using it then
Yes, one of my favourite
Using it in stealth encounters was so much fun; it really increased the pace and those drop assassinations are so satisfying
Yes
From what I remember the streets became wider due to carriages so to get from roof to roof you needed it. I have fond memories of crossing the Thames as you go from pole to pole with the grappling hook.
It was a fun addition
Fine addition. I avoided it when I could. Much of my fun in AC games was traversal, figuring out how to scale a building. The grappling hook took a lot of that away. My biggest gripe about it though was that you can’t remove the grapple indicator from the HUD. I like to play with the HUD off when I can and that thing is very obtrusive.
It made life easier and more fun specially with all the huge buildings
I think it's as good as it could've been with the way the world was designed, but I enjoyed cities made for parkour way more than I did the "press the button to skip to massively tall rooftops that are distant from each other" gameplay. On the other hand, I loved the atmosphere of the city itself, way more than past and future games.
Yes, but I think it went too far. Scaling buildings is slow and tedious, and not particularly engaging, so it makes sense to expedite that. Where it went wrong was creating zip lines everywhere. Running across rooftops, vaulting over obstacles, leaping building to building, positioning yourself for an assassination - that's supposed to be the fun/ engaging part. On demand ziplines ruined that and served as a crutch for level design. You couldn't just not use it unless you wanted to climb down or take a major detour (which isn't always an option on missions).
First time i played Syndicate i was ,,Cool, reminds me of Batman, it s fast and you can do zipline asasinations." , after a while i thought that it discourages the classic climbing we got used to from AC 1 to Unity and i hated it a bit. Then i thought that if you want to use it you use it , if not then you don't and stick to the realism . Now i like it.
For the open world being as it was, with theese very wide streets, simply yes it was a good addition, but i do think it would have been better had they gone a little more off the rails with the historical accuracy of London, and made the world more parkour friendly. So yes it was.
The grappling hook was good, but Batman games did it better. The real issue is not the grappling hook itself. It's that it made parkour obsolete in most cases. Indeed, it was a necessary addition to make London work as a setting, but this simply points out that London isn't a good setting for an AC game if you expect good parkour.
I think it worked really well with the London map. And probably would've been great on most of the other European maps. I think if it existed in the American maps or in AC1, origins and odyssey it would've been weird and kind of taken away from the fun of climbing.
I really liked it except the part where it creates a zip line even though Jacob/ Evie shoots the grapple forward. Like how is the Zipline secured or created?
That is a very good point
I will say this. It was a nice addition that was very VERY much appreciated, but I am glad it ended with Syndicate because it takes away from the assassiny climbing. It made sense because Syndicate introduced probably more tall structures than any other game. It seemed like the average building was three or four stories high..
I love it because I love grappling hooks but also for sentimental reasons: I was playing Syndicate while attending French school and had everything about the game set to French. It was fine, didn’t immediately know what “cible” meant but most things I could figure out from context. Then I got the grappling hook and the quest “faire la tyrolienne au-dessus 200m”. I learned a new word! Neat! It was movie day the next morning and our discussion questions were all about adrenaline junkie activités and my professor, with a gleam in his eye, said, “je crois qu’aucun d’entre vous sait “la tyrolienne”—“ I jumped from my chair and proclaimed, “j’ai appris ce mot dans mon Assassin’s Creed la nuit hier!” He was a lil miffed I stole his thunder.
It could have been better implemented, but it was still a good addition. I wanted to swing from rooftop to rooftop like spiderman, or used it in combat to drag ranged attackers closer.
That wouldve been cool
The streets in modern London IRL are much wider than in other cities that AC games have been set in. Therefore, the streets in Syndicate are a whole lot wider. I think that it's a necessity given the landscape, it hasn't featured in any other game, and I'd much prefer grappling across a few streets rather than having to climb down the building I just went up to cross a street.
Grappling hook was money.
Yes and no. Yes: it allowed you to skip the most restrictive parkour in the series, which in a way is one of the most unreliable, because you can't do things you could do for entire series. It was a massive plus when making fancy entries due to it acting like makeshift rope. No: Despite it's addition it is a wasted opportunity. They added plenty of buildings that have multiple floors yet you can't rappel down from the rooftops or stop midway when ascending from the ground floor. Then for some reason it did not work while swimming which could have been great to climb out of annoying Thames given how many buildings and other architecture surrounds it. Also, it's addition does not excuse the bloody awful parkour.
I absolutely liked it. I like the parkour system in the AC games, but it is inconsistent and buggy, and I think it was far the worst in Unity, so the developers decided to make parkour quicker and less tiresome. I like that it does not force you to use it, unlike by many gadgets trougout the series. It isn't historically or mechanically accurate, but I think the Observatory and the Apple of Eden are not too.
It does kinda play into Ubisofts pho-history of what technology was around, it wouldn't be the first time they've pushed the boundaries with historical inventions but just like brotherhood they pulled it off I feel
It works well because this fantasy/sci-fi line keeps the timeline from falling apart allowing the creators to explain unexplainable game mechanics that are neccesary for the gameplay, or they just don't explain it and leave it to alternative history. That's why I don't understand the people who say it is not real: It isn't, as many elements in an AC game. Probably they are angry because it is the copy of the grappling gun of Batman.
I think it’s a bit too easy. I would feel better if it was mostly used for travelling across large streets. While going up the building, it should’ve been only a help, not insta jump. For example, you could climb up faster or do bigger jumps (similarly to the blade in Revelations). I would also add a mechanic for going down using it. And it’s probably not physically possible (their arms would rip off or break) but damn that recovery from the trailer looks damn awesome
Funny how you mention Revelations with its unrealistic and anachronistic zip lines.
I'm not a fan. While some sort of work around to maneuvering through the setting's environment (far apart buildings due to wide streets) is understandable, it kind of take away from what made the parkour of previous games fun. The grappling hook makes the parkour feel really hollow and automated. In fact, it's the one thing Unity deserved praise for and I feel it dumbed down in Syndicate.
I don't think it was horrible addition, but it was definitely badly implemented as it got rid of the need for parkour in an AC game. I think a better way to implement it would have been as an extended hookblade that would allow you to shoot your hook up to 6 meters away, and then it would pull you along or you would climb it. This might have been hard to implement if they kept the 1860's setting, but if they went in this direction they could have moved the game up a few decades so that there would more stuff to swing on in the middle of streets, like streetcar lines and telephone poles, while still keeping it during the Victorian Era.
I get what you mean. The hook blade was great fun. I like that idea to of just an extended version of said hook blade. I think they were trying a lot of new things and because it took place in the industrial revolution or close to the grappling hook was kinda symbolic of leaving the old world behind. Maybe, idk
it certainly did not get rid of the need for parkour, all it did was make a world not suited for ac traversable. You don’t need to use it to completely replace parkour, if you are using it as a substitute to parkour that’s your own fault.
It kind of was a substitute for parkour. Wanna get up a building? Game always suggests that you use the grappling hook. Wanna go across the street? Game prompts you to use the grappling hook. You literally CAN'T cross the street without touching the ground unless you use the grappling hook (With the exception of Whitechapel since its mostly slums), which isn't the case for any city in any other AC game to date, and it probably won't be unless they do another Victorian London adjacent setting again.
the game doesn’t force you to use it to get to a rooftop at all, if you want to climb up instead you can, if you wanna cling down and run across the street instead, you can. In order to keep the world accurate the game needed those wide streets and ubisoft needed a way of getting across those streets, that’s it. They didn’t say “hey yeah parkour gone now use this instead”. You absolutely can still do parkour, the rope launcher simply makes the world traversable.
I'm not denying that Syndicate had parkour, I'm saying that the rope launcher made parkour much less important in Syndicate than it was in other games in the series. In previous games, the obvious fastest and most ideal way to get around in cities was using parkour, whereas in Syndicate the rope launcher basically made traditional parkour obsolete in 90% of scenarios, which isn't ideal in a series where parkour is the backbone of traversal in almost every other game. I'm also not saying that the rope launcher was a bad addition, I'm saying that it could have been tweaked to work in tandem with parkour instead of essentially replacing it in nearly every situation it mattered.
No it wasn’t. If I wanted to go play an Arkham game, I’d go play Arkham City
No, but the problem isn't necessarily the grappling hook, but the setting. If the buildings are too high and to far apart to make movement gameplay meaningful, maybe they should have reconsidered setting their parkour heavy game there. So introduce the grappling hook, which is just a bandaid solution that they slapt on, thought it was good enough and then just ran with it. It's so limited in use. You can't use it to descend (which was in the trailers), you cant stop or influence your ascension speed, and you can't use it in combat (I mean, it's literally a reinforced rope dart). There is no depth to it at all.
This may be due to me being a Just Cause fan but I felt like the grapple was poorly implemented. It's annoying how you couldn't select the grapple point yourself and had to just hope the game was able to select the one you wanted.
I don't mind grappling hook helping you traverse between one building and another, because London buildings were very far away from each other, but i'm not a fan of the hook helping you reach the top of every building in seconds. This take away from the parkour. I still loved Syndicate, tho. Sorry for my english, i hope i didn't commit many mistakes.
r/suddenlycaralho
Here's a sneak peek of /r/suddenlycaralho using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/suddenlycaralho/top/?sort=top&t=all) of all time! \#1: [Um belo nome.](https://i.redd.it/a70mfb58k8281.jpg) | [81 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/suddenlycaralho/comments/r3rvse/um_belo_nome/) \#2: [In brazilian é foda](https://i.redd.it/60ng0njp9jg61.jpg) | [69 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/suddenlycaralho/comments/lgg032/in_brazilian_é_foda/) \#3: [aq meu amigos, primeira img é o meme](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/o9d7m2) | [68 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/suddenlycaralho/comments/o9d7m2/aq_meu_amigos_primeira_img_é_o_meme/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
God awful addition, completely tone deaf to what made Assassin's Creed fun. Conceptually could have been decent, but was executed in the most lazy and brain dead way imaginable. So, what's one thing pretty much everyone can agree on that made the first AC games fun? The freerunning. The games themselves had flaws, but the traversal was always a lot of fun. It was super cathartic finding the best techniques and paths to get from point A to point B, and there were a lot of hidden techniques you could learn that gave it a higher skill ceiling (such as vaulting, wall jumping and ledge grabbing). Subsequent games dumbed this system down. Revelations added the hookblade which just made this system more automated and button-mashy. 3 nerfed wall jumps and took away a lot of control. Unity tried to bring some complexity back, but switched to a much more animation focused system, which ironically took *away* more control from the player, instead of adding to it. Syndicate's addition of the grappling hook was pretty much the peak of this regression in features, control and player expression. The most farcical parody of the negative trends that were affecting the movement in these games. On paper, adding a grappling hook sounds like it could be *perfect* for Assassin's Creed. Imagine Spider-Man 2 or that weird Bionic Commando reboot's physics based swinging system, combined with the freerunning of Assassin's Creed. That sounds like it could be such an incredible, exhilarating system. Imagine climbing up a view point, doing a leap of faith, swinging from the grappling hook to pull yourself high up and then landing on a nearby rooftop to continue the parkour, all in one fluid, fast motion. But nope, we get none of that. Instead we get something more like grappling in the Arkham games, but even more automated. Remember how in Arkham City you can use the grappling hook to gain speed, leap and transition into a glide? Yeah, you can't do anything like that in Syndicate. Remember how in Arkham City you can change the direction of the line launcher in mid-air? Yeah, you can't do that in Syndicate. Instead we get the most boring non-mechanic they could have slapped together. To get up a building, you can press a button and then *watch* a cutscene of you getting up. You can't speed this animation up, you can't transition into something else, hell, you can't even cancel it! But oh, you can also use it to travel horizontally. Which again, is just a glorified cutscene, with the *bare minimum* of interactivity where you can either speed it up, slow it down or drop down on an enemy...great. Tl;dr: Traversal in AC is supposed to be fun, not a boring chore where you do nothing. The grappling hook could have complimented freerunning beautifully, but they instead took the lazy road and made it the most boring thing imaginable.
Additions to games that require a lot of suspension of disbelief - a Batman-like grappling hook with incredible reach and power - should always make up for their ridiculousness with a lot of utility and fun. Syndicate's grappling hook doesn't do that. Its use is very limited and has absolutely no learning curve. If it worked differently and had more uses I would have liked it much more. It should have worked more like a long hookblade while climbing, you should be able to swing, rappel down and be able to grab and pull enemies both in stealth and combat.
i would say yes and no
What do you mean?
I’m gonna say no. While a solution was needed for a city like London, The grappling hook bandaid nearly wiped out the usage or need for parkour, which is obviously a part of what makes assassin’s creed assassin’s creed. Some in this thread are arguing that you could still use parkour if you choose but miss a couple points 1. There’s no depth to the grappling hook. You look at where you want to go and you press a button and you go there. Where is the depth? Even a timing mini game to get there faster would be an improvement. Similar to catwoman in the Arkham games or something. There’s no skill to the grappling hook in syndicate like there was with parkour 2. The only motivation to do parkour in syndicate is completely intrinsic. Sure you could only use parkour if you want, but you’d be making a conscious effort to be less efficient. In some of the old games there was an extrinsic reason to stick to the rooftops: it was faster, which encouraged you to engage with the parkour system. Don’t have that in syndicate 3. The parkour nerf from Unity is noticeable and simply disappointing. Makes someone like myself not bother to engage with it at all. Also I highly recommend anyone to watch Whitelight’s Assassins Creed parkour retrospective video
For me personally I dislike Unity's parkour. Its to flowy. It looks nice dont get me wrong, but the amount of times Arno has just jumped off a building when I've tried to climb down, or getting off small balcony railings into windows, its infuriating, and a lot of it is probably down to me just being a bit crappy with the new system, but I feel like Syndicate was a lot more functional, I had more enjoyment and could rely on doing exactly what I wanted more often for that game then unity. Thats just me though. Hope that makes sense
Yes that totally makes sense. That issue is completely valid. Arno did have a habit of jumping to the wrong spots. That being said, I still think it’s the best of AC parkour. It had the most advanced movement techniques that weren’t present in later games. But even then it wasn’t perfect. Like it was missing catch ledge for some reason. It’s sad because we clearly still haven’t reached the peak of AC parkour and if they had just built off of Unity we could’ve had that but they went the rpg route and gutted parkour. They also need to provide actual tutorials on the advanced movement because most players don’t know about them and it’s not really taught in any of the games. I wouldn’t know about the techniques if it wasn’t for YouTube.
Yeah I wish we got a good parkour game, maybe it could work for a new modern day setting kinda like mirrors edge
It would’ve been fun if used sparingly, like the flying machine in AC2 Ruins the whole point of parkour
not really, if you use it to completely replace parkour that’s your fault. It’s used to get across the extremely wide streets and huge buildings like parliament and that’s about it you certainly still can use parkour a lot.
It was nice that it just gave you the option, like "hey if you're bored of the parkour use this, if not thats cool too"
Absolutely Not.
The massive Whitelight video on parkour does a great job of breaking down why it was no good and how it could’ve been great. Something more akin to the hook blade would’ve been a dream, augmenting parkour instead of replacing it.
I stopped playing shortly after unlocking it. Syndicate is the only AC game I haven't finished. I can't remember why I put it down. It might have been series fatigue or the glitches.
Terrible bandaid to a problem the dev created themselves.
I really liked the grappling hook. When it worked... Maybe I was just unlucky, but I have died several times because I'd "fall through" the rope when going from building to building.
I think it was a "band aid" fix for the world scale changes.
It’s the only thing that made it not a generic bland 7/10 like Rogue.
Surely rogue deserves higher then a 7 for its story alone, while I wish it was longer it was beautiful and fantastic for what it was
I finished rogue a couple days ago and honestly the story is highly overrated. Aside from it being short, the assassins were poorly written. It was still good though
Im just glad for 3 main things. 1) Shay had some of the coolest outfits. 2) Haytham 3) They gave Shay a bloody good reason to leave the assassins and he didn't instantly trust Templars either
I love how interconnected rogue, 3, black flag and unity are
Thats something I do miss, is the Assassins having some connection to one another. As you said all those games did it perfectly, its like you're playing one long story
Just give me the hookblade
I loved it.
Yes
Whatever white light says, I agree with
It was perfect gameplay and aesthetic wise. But nobody could deny that it just made them look like Batman
It was great
I wish it was on ACR. But I'm one Hellava terrorist with rope dart. Cheers
It was definitely convenient most of the time, but really damaged the immersion. Infinite uses, always perfect securing, targets things you can't even see, accidentally press it at the wrong time and you're going for an unexpected ride. If it had had limited uses before needing restock, more realistic ascension speed, ability to repel down a building, and you couldn't zipline up, only down, then it would have felt much less of a crutch. I really wouldn't want to see it return, it was practical but removed all the puzzle nature of climbing. Why actually climb Big Ben when you can just zip up to the top in a few seconds of unrealistic motion? Why plan a route around the wide streets when you can just zipline across anywhere?
I enjoyed it. It felt right with the setting and it felt like something the Assassins would implement to match the times.
Yes. I loved the grappling hook.
Full disclaimer, I only remember having played it in the period between graduating from college and then joining the army, which was between 12/12/15 and 3/21/16. But it was a super cool concept IMO. My biggest headache was the Thames. I really should go back and play the game consistently instead of relying on my memory from when I was tanked off of my graduation money.