i do love assassin’s creed 3 but GOSH i wish it didn’t rob us of some story points...

like i know we see connor reading haytham’s journal at the beginning, but i wish we’d gotten MORE of a reaction out of him when he realized the head Templar was his father. 

Likewise I know Haytham was able to put things together and figure out Connor was his son before they properly speak for the first time, but like...I wish we’d seen that realization.  I wish we’d seen how Haytham initially reacted to that.  How Haytham’s goonies reacted.

They give us this juicy juicy central conflict of Connor fighting against his own father and then they don’t...give us these moments.  And it’s frustrating because i LOVE Connor.  He’s one of my favorite assassins.  But he’s got this Shakespearean level conflict going on and the game doesn’t dig into it the way it should.

My Thoughts on Psychonauts 2

Speaking candidly about Psychonauts 2, overall I love this game and think it's a great experience, but I have a surprising amount of cons alongside my huge list of pros. I'll talk about them under the cut to avoid potential spoilers. Once again, below the cut you may see spoilers. Reader discretion advised.

Full Disclosure: I haven't yet beaten the entire game myself, but I know everything that happens from watching streams, gameplay videos and listening to people talk about it. As of this writing I'm nearly done with Compton's Cookout.

I'm a little put off but how hostile, aggressive and dismissive everyone is of Raz. Given the circumstances it makes sense but it really does feel extremely offputting to see a character we've known and loved for over a decade now get shit on by so many people around him, even if they're just misguided or at the beginning of their character arcs. The interns are particularly bad about this because they do something really mean to Raz at the beginning and never really apologize or learn from it. Adam apologizes but still justifies the hazing as something that "had to be done." They never really seem to learn a lesson and it seems like Raz forgives them too easily after he saves their sorry asses. In a lot of ways this mirrors the campers' from Psychonauts 1, but for the most part they were just in their own little bubbles doing other stuff, not being rude to you. I get that pathos is an important thing for a protagonist but they really hammer it in here. Yeesh.

Raz's family are all really likable but also suffer from this problem. Dion is an especially bad case because he's just a brooding, edgy jerk pretty much the entire time. Sure, he looks regretful when it seems like he actually hurt Raz's feelings, and the fact that he was the first one to hug Raz near the end made me straight up cry, but we don't get to see a lot of him being nice or trying to make up for the way he acted. It's a plot element that could have definitely been improved if say, Dion had a series of side quests that you could slowly complete and make him warm up to you.

The only side characters that don't seem to get either put on a backburned or act like total jerks are the Psychic 7, which makes sense since the main story centers around them. The only thing that really gives me pause is how heavily the game strains the relationship between Ford and Raz, and in a way that isn't really something you can repair with a talk and hug. Some dark shit went down and huge mistakes are mad, and I wouldn't exactly blame Raz if he never wanted to speak to Ford until his funeral. Which is really, really upsetting because the relationship between Raz and Ford and the way Ford believed in and supported him unconditionally was one of the most emotional parts of the original game.

Lili was great and got a lot of cool stuff to do throughout the game, but I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't a little unsatisfied with how their relationship was handled. They had a lot of cute moments together, sure, but from what I can tell they don't kiss again (though they do hug!) and at the end of the game you don't get to really chill with her or enjoy her company, because she's more preoccupied with hanging out with her dad. Which makes perfect sense narratively, given that he almost died and they both obviously need a minute to decompress and bond, but considering how the relationship between Raz and Lili is easily one of the best parts of the franchise, it felt a little disappointing. Truman seeing Raz as Lili's nervous prom date really made me feel better about all this, though. That's friggin' adorable.

The biggest problem with the side characters is they seem to have not a lot to do. While in the original game the characters were doing something new in the overworld every time you finished a level, the characters here just kind of find a comfortable place and just stay there until post-game. There was a lot of potential there for character arcs and expansions that I felt was a big miss.

Cutting you off from the rest of the overworld until you finish Green Needle Gulch was also a really bad design decision, IMO. I think it might've been done to keep players from thinking the overworld seemed to repetitive and empty? But it makes collecting stuff take longer and means you can't get changable costumes or the best power upgrades in the game until it's pretty much over, and all that's left to do is use them on whatever enemies respawn in whatever minds you can find. The addition of a New Game+ or an Arena mode would really help this. Could you imagine you awesome an Arena mode would be? You could even have the other characters there watching or fight them or whatever. It'd be pretty sweet.

Overall, it's a good experience and I'm really happy the game came out and I got to play it after all this time, and I'll definitely be incorporating stuff from the game into my comic moving forward, but it ultimately left me with some conflicting feelings here and there, and wanting more.

With all that in mind, there's absolutely nothing in this critique that couldn't be fixed with a followup. So basically the worst thing I can say about the game is "there needs to be more" which is very, VERY good. Make a DLC, sequel, show or comic where Raz beats down hordes of enemies, have all the interns go on a journey of self-discovery that ends with them all apologizing to Raz and baking him a cake, have Dion and Frazie hug the little guy and tell him he's a great little brother, let's him blow up the moon with a giant piss cannon and end it all with him and Lili smooching like greeting Italians and you'll have checkmated ever criticism I've had.