I know this game is a little out of my wheelhouse, but there was just a ton I wanted to show you and talk to you about in it. I'm hoping to gradually expand my repertoire beyond just Skyrim, Pokémon, and Zelda to include other games and game series-- what others should I start to work in?

He claims these are unremarkable places...but I just know he's going to make some remarks.

"I like when stuff is in a place"
Preach brother.

standing in the final boss arena

“I’m sure this will be used for something.”

The concept of "the noises of someone doing something somewhere that you'll never find" just hits different

I love how Austin's take on the themes of the game is: "there's a lot of religion and shit"

I found the dude dying on the way to the quiet place as oddly poetic. As if their existences are fundamentally incompatible, and he couldn’t get there alive. As a NPC, he’s destined to be loud, in a loud place. Mildly saddening.

I usually tell people to think of the first game as a sort of tech demo for the other games in the series. 90% of stuff in AC1 falls into the category of "things you're supposed to run past and never look at again." It gets a little weird if you camp out in populated areas for a while and just let the NPC scripts run. For example, the top of the hill as you enter Jerusalem (I think, it's been a minute), where you can see the walls but you haven't actually approached the city yet. There's a constant supply of people leaving the city, which normally you'd gallop past on your horse and forget about. But if you just camp there for a while, the NPCs build up and eventually you have this absolute river of identical people marching up the hill toward you, which is probably not supposed to happen because you're not supposed to just sit there staring at them for an hour. The other games are slightly better about this.

The garden in the back is a reference to the actual legend surrounding the Assassins IRL. Supposedly the leader would drug new members, have them wake up in the garden surrounded by beautiful women to convince them he had the power to send them and bring them back from heaven. IIRC this get alluded to when Al Mualim punishes Altair for the botched mission at the beginning of the game.

What I love about the first Assassin's Creed in particular is the atmosphere. What I notice about it, that I believe was intentional and makes it perfect for one of these videos is that a lot of the game feels like a dream. When you think about the nature of the Animus, it makes total sense. Desmond is effectively in a forced coma and what he's experiencing is a cross between a dream and a highly immersive video game. It's reconstructing a memory locked in his DNA from an ancestor. Memories often have an etheral nature to them - imagine how a memory from a thousand years ago would be to think back on. Then there's the nature of the Animus creating an aproximation of things according to its programming and it can glitch out at times. The more games that come out in the series, the more they dilute that orginal concept and atmosphere. Later games also seemed to focus more on the technological nature of the animus. That orginal game is so unique.

If you ended up looking at AC2, places in that game that give me this same kind of vibe:
- uninhabited houses in the Apennine Mountains
- some parts of the Assassin tombs
- places in the final mission in Rome (not meant to be explored until the sequel)
- Ezio's very odd bedroom/study/gallery in the attic of the villa

The silence is deafening. I had no idea it was possible in AC1.

I'm so glad someone is talking about this! The original game was so dreamy, so liminal and just so melancholic.. There's something about the vast emptiness of it's world and it's washed out colors, but also the constant awareness of being in a video game. These kinds of spaces in video games are so fascinating. I have many memories of being ill, staying home and spending the whole day wandering around in games like this. Great video!

I was really into these early assassins creed games, and AC1 really does just have that FEEL to doesn't it?

This is my second favorite series on youtube please never stop nobody does like you

The stagnant black moat around the abandoned mansion might be my favorite odd and remarkable place yet. Wow. What an absolute seam of a place. It would've been really consistent with AC1 design philosophy to throw some guards in there or lower a gate so that you couldn't re-access the area, and I'm so glad they didn't.

While these places may be unremarkable, this series sure is remarkable to me. Great stuff.

as a game designer myself, I must say that the unique joy you're able to find in the worlds we create is absolutely delightful. it is a breath of fresh air how you choose to find the good even in the "useless" experiences

Your burnt log monologue is timeless.

AC 1 is a very odd game. There's so many elements in it that seem relics of an earlier development period or that seem out of place. One thing that always fascinated/frustrated me in the game was that during the mission to kill the Merchant-King, you can learn a piece of intel that there's an easy path up to where he is, but if you actually spend time looking for the path, it doesn't seem to exist. So much of the game seems to just exist without a real purpose; like most of the Kingdom is just empty space full of enemies with some busywork collectibles.

I would really love to see a remake of this game.