The Lost Archive podcast featuring writer Jeffrey Yohalem! | Forums

[goclo822]

Me too! It would've been like 10 times better, and would've given a good concept to an otherwise mediocre one. It just bothers me that the things they took out from the game as whole were better sounding and more important to the story than the things they left in.

Agreed. I hate how they dumbed down and simplified a really complex storyline. It would have made the game and storyline make so much more sense!

That was very informative, thanks.

I enjoyed TLA, but it sounds like it could have been a better experience and more coherent. It seems a shame they reacted to the criticism of Desmond's Journey by abandoning their original plans for it.

Which makes no sense, b/c it's the exact same thing as Desmond's Journey, just with Clay instead.

Exactly. They took out all the bits of the game that would have changed it from the Desmond missions making it more interesting and different in all the right ways. The things people disliked about the Desmond missions other than the actual gameplay was the missions were repetitive, weren't visual enough, didn't tell the storyline in a very interesting way and didn't have a climactic ending. From what I saw on the forum, most were willing to look past the gameplay if they at least listened to the criticism and tried making the unpopular gameplay more interesting as well as how they told the story. If the storyline was at least told better and they made the missions more visually stimulating, the DLC would have been much better received. Seems like they did exactly that and then changed it all taking out everything that players wanted and substituting it just to give us exactly what we were complaining about.

Yeah, it sounded like the marketing was lacking because of the reception of the Desmond's Journey gameplay. Jeffrey made it sound like The Lost Archive was originally going to be one of the big revelations of the game called "Revelations". It seems like they were originally developing it as Desmond living Clay's memories to learn the truth about Lucy, which was going to be a climax of the main game. It sounds like at some point Alex Amancio decided that the game's story should be more about Desmond himself, and so they took the gameplay from Clay's memories and used it to build the Desmond's Journey segments and make the story about Desmond instead of Clay.

I wonder if all of the portal doors on Animus Island were originally going to lead to Clay's memories. This could be why the 2 doors were repaired at the end of the game, if they were additional memories of Clay's that he passed on to Desmond when he "hugged" him. There were 7 doors after the last 2 were repaired, and The Lost Archive had 7 memories with the last 2 memories being the big reveal moments. It also makes the whole Animus Island concept much more interesting when you realize it was originally planned for Desmond to relive Clay's memories, and Jeffrey also mentioned Lucy sort of "haunting" you on the island. It would also explain why Subject 16 didn't tell you much, since he was going to reveal it through his memories anyway.

It was interesting to realize that the writers don't drive the whole game and that the creative director is ultimately responsible for a lot of the decisions. I hate to blame Alex Amancio, but he made several decisions that really went against the core of Assassin's Creed and came out of left field. The decision to not reveal the truth about Lucy in the game itself was the worst one of all though, because naturally that was one of the biggest questions that fans of the series had. I'm glad they were still able to get it to us in some form.

Yea sounds like that is exactly what they had planned which made sooo much more sense. Seems like everything people had problems with and everything that was wrong with Revelation, would have been solved had they not changed all their original plans. The annoying thing is that there was really no reason for the changes. They made everything all complicated for nothing.

I almost wish they didn't put the reveal in the DLC and instead found a way to incorporate it into AC3 in a very climactic way. I'm sure they will still in some way but now it won't be as surprising and ground breaking

[GLHS]

Well the reasons for a lot of the things that they left out was because of time constraints and flow. Which leads to another thing that a lot of people were complaining about, the annual releases. B/c of how everything played out, they had to release it last year in order to release AC3 this year, so they didn't have enough time to put everything in that should've been included. So, even though everything ended up working out ok, they still screwed up pretty bad.

[SixKeys]

I wonder if all of the portal doors on Animus Island were originally going to lead to Clay's memories. This could be why the 2 doors were repaired at the end of the game, if they were additional memories of Clay's that he passed on to Desmond when he "hugged" him. There were 7 doors after the last 2 were repaired, and The Lost Archive had 7 memories with the last 2 memories being the big reveal moments. It also makes the whole Animus Island concept much more interesting when you realize it was originally planned for Desmond to relive Clay's memories, and Jeffrey also mentioned Lucy sort of "haunting" you on the island. It would also explain why Subject 16 didn't tell you much, since he was going to reveal it through his memories anyway.

This makes a lot of sense and definitely sounds like that was the original plan. They probably decided to make it more about Desmond since people have been complaining for years that we don't know enough about him to care about him as a character. In a way I understand the decision as having Desmond in a coma is a perfect excuse to take pause and have him tell us more about himself. I just wish they'd have found a better balance between Desmond introspection and Clay's memories which actually gave us some revelations.

I just thought of something: during some of the cut scenes, Clay tells Desmond he'll be keeping the Animus busy so Desmond can explore his memories in peace. I wonder if by "keeping busy" Clay originally meant he was reconstructing his memories for Desmond to explore? In the final game it just seemed like such a throaway line, we never actually saw him do anything except creating pointless database entries. It would have made more sense if keeping the Animus busy while Desmond was exploring Ezio's memories was Clay's way of trying to gain Desmond access to his own memories, hacking the system in order to create new gates. That would explain why two of them were unavailable up until the final moments. (Had they gone with the original plan of all 7 gates being Clay's instead of Desmond's, the last two gates likely would have been repaired before the "hug" scene.)

[infamous_ezio]

I get that the 2 extra gates were to hint at DLC. I suppose it was good to get a little bit more insight into desmond's story, both clays and desmonds memories from desmonds journey and TLA were both essential for revealing unanswered questions and building desmond as a character, Desmonds life was interesting and i guess was cool to have, but i would have preferred if TLA was in the actual game. I think they really stuffed up by making TLA DLC, it seems like they just couldn't fit the two in the game in time, due to the constraints? but i doubt it because the leaked DLC audio came out in December 2011, so i don;t see why they didn't just add both, as a reward from doing 1 desmonds journey for example you get a clay memory, and once you collect all the fragments you would get the last 2 memories, i can't say for sure that they did it just to get more money, but i think it was a very inconvenient decision on their behalf.

I almost wish they didn't put the reveal in the DLC and instead found a way to incorporate it into AC3 in a very climactic way. I'm sure they will still in some way but now it won't be as surprising and ground breaking

They have to, from what we know desmond has no idea of lucy's betray, we can't be sure of the significance of clay hugging him, i wander if at the start desmond will be like "alright lets do this" then shauns all angry and sais "wait.. you killed lucy.. WHY" then desmond will have a moment just like when clay mentioned lucys funeral, and everything will come to him, but ofcourse in a very awesome way haha

[SixKeys]

I get that the 2 extra gates were to hint at DLC. I suppose it was good to get a little bit more insight into desmond's story, both clays and desmonds memories from desmonds journey and TLA were both essential for revealing unanswered questions and building desmond as a character, Desmonds life was interesting and i guess was cool to have, but i would have preferred if TLA was in the actual game. I think they really stuffed up by making TLA DLC, it seems like they just couldn't fit the two in the game in time, due to the constraints? but i doubt it because the leaked DLC audio came out in December 2011, so i don;t see why they didn't just add both, as a reward from doing 1 desmonds journey for example you get a clay memory, and once you collect all the fragments you would get the last 2 memories, i can't say for sure that they did it just to get more money, but i think it was a very inconvenient decision on their behalf.

If they originally had completely different plans for TLA which were then changed once the focus became about Desmond, it's no wonder they had to put it off until DLC. If they had had more time than one year for development, they might have been able to put both in the game (or even better, scrap the whole first-person idea and give us something better :P ). As it turned out, the Clay stuff they originally had planned was probably too complex so they turned it into a simple Desmond-style DLC.

[infamous_ezio]

If they originally had completely different plans for TLA which were then changed once the focus became about Desmond, it's no wonder they had to put it off until DLC. If they had had more time than one year for development, they might have been able to put both in the game (or even better, scrap the whole first-person idea and give us something better :P ). As it turned out, the Clay stuff they originally had planned was probably too complex so they turned it into a simple Desmond-style DLC.

Yeah, the annual releases weren't exactly helping them haha.

[Serrachio]

I would have preferred it also if for the Desmond sequences, there wasn't just Desmond yammering on, and they actually showed us something like a flashback when he touched one of those interactive blue hands.

I figure it would have driven the point better about Desmond running away from the Farm, since what's in there now is just boring monologue. And to be fair, while it does give some small details about Desmond's early life, it's only "I ran away and I became a bartender before I was kidnapped by Abstergo", which is the equivalent of what is told you at the very start of AC1.

Though I suppose that's great for someone who joined late into the series, I didn't feel like it was worthwhile to someone who was a long time follower of Assassin's Creed. Maybe that's why I wanted to actually see something, as opposed to this whole "Ooh, it's so abstract-y!" *shimmer* *shiny* *Desmond waffling on about how much his life sucked, even though he was designed to be the blandest character in the series from the beginning* etc.

Ahem, anyway, I also felt the first person perspective was silly. I personally felt that the camera was too zoomed in, which is kind of detrimental, since you could hardly see the edges of the platforms you created. And seeing as the whole point was "spawn platform to go", it's kind of unforgivable in some respects.