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E3 Previews - Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect
In a sea of sequels, there are a number of original titles standing shoulder to shoulder with already-classic games. Two of those being demo'd at this years E3 are Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed and Bioware's Mass Effect. After the demo shown onstage at the Microsoft event, folks were understandably underwhelmed with Assassin's Creed; though the stalking and chase mechanic seemed fascinating, combat seems overly simplistic and numerous bugs caused some hiccups. Just the same, the idea behind the game remains tantalizing, and we still don't know what the deal is with the sci-fi background. On the other hand, despite an equal amount of hype and hope, Mass Effect looks to be meeting every expectation. Finally Bioware is letting folks play the game hands-on, and there are still few frustrations to be found. From Joystiq's analysis: "We were shown the basic in-game talk interface: get near another character and hit the A button to start talking. You can direct the flow of the conversation, by selecting your responses with the left thumbstick, choosing from a radial menu. For instance, if someone is telling you about an attack, you can pick things like 'Too bad they didn't kill you' to 'I'm sorry' to 'Really? What happened?' They aren't exactly what your character will say, they're more like the gist of it ... It reminded us a bit of the chat in the Indiana Jones games, although those gave you the actual lines that Indy would spout out. Conversations are crucial to Mass Effect, and end up providing you with information and shape your relationships with those characters."
Gamespot had both games in their office for demo [Jade Raymond was demoing AC :)] They have a twenty minute video of each on their E3 site. (Check the Wednesday tab).
http://e3.gamespot.com/live.html
According to CVG the reason that the Assassin's Creed demo was a bit buggy and underwhelming in the press conference demonstration was that they were asked to show it off at last minute because Bungie were unable to get a single player demo of Halo 3 ready in time.
What he said.
The project merely started the debug phase and while most of the content is there, the backend mechanics are quite complicated and debugging the whole thing is quite an ordeal. Honestly, a live demo wasn't a good idea at this time, I find... As for a personal released demo, it might very well happen, just not before release because of priorities. Focusing on the whole package is more important than making a demo right now, especially when there are still a few bugs as graphically alerting as floating corpses.
Assassin's Creed just doesn't lend itself to an interesting live demo like was done at the Microsoft Conference because it has a slower pace than, say, Halo.
Trust me, a demo really isn't out of the question. In fact, having your hands on the controls lends itself to be a much more satisfying experience than a *really* accelerated walkthru as seen during the presentation. Nobody wants to play a demo with floating corpses though, so it is worth being patient and hoping a demo is released right after the final submissions instead of being dissapointed that a demo isn't being released right away.