Assassin's Creed - Manual Free Run Thread

Hullo all!

So, it's rather fun running through the AC games' environments. But it can become a little stale due to the minimal button input of either "Hold to free run up" or "Hold to free run down". The mod I'm imagining would basically require the player to press a button for each action. The goal is to simply alter the button input, and avoid creating new mechanics or animations.

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The control scheme would feature three buttons:

1. Run
2. Hands (which activates all hand actions)
3. Feet (which activates all feet actions)

The "Run" button can be held throughout all actions, but the "Hands" and "Feet" buttons will time-out if held, so are required to be pressed for each action. Here are some scenarios:

• When approaching a ledge and "Run" is held, the character will fall off.
• When approaching a ledge and "Hands" is pressed, the character will climb down.
• When approaching a ledge and "Feet" is pressed, the character will jump.

• When landing from a jump and "Run" is held, the character will fall over.
• When landing from a jump and "Hands" is pressed, the character will fall over.
• When landing from a jump and "Feet" is pressed, the character will land correctly.

• When jumping for a handhold and "Run" is pressed, the character will fall.
• When jumping for a handhold and "Hands" is pressed, the character will grab the handhold correctly.
• When jumping for a handhold and "Feet" is pressed, the character will fall.

• When hanging from a ledge if "Hands" isn't held, the character will fall. To climb up press "Run".

An additional feature would be the "Highlight". AC games are frequently criticized for their imprecise movement - but within the games coding, I figure that the character magnetizes to a certain object depending on distance and direction. This feature would create an aura around the magnetized object, to at least indicate to the player where they can expect they're going.

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I recognize that this would require quite elaborate coding. And the level of input complexity would certainly require playtesting to find the right balance. But it seems like a relatively simple adjustment that even Ubisoft could incorporate into future AC games to make traversal a bit more interesting.

That actually sounds extremely complicated. It is true that today's dumbed down games have less flavour, but sometimes game mechanics are dumbed down for a valid reason. Then, the question of other factors, such as the moment of approaching a ledge, or transition from a jump to approaching a ledge (when you are free-descending from a higher position for example) comes into play, you can see that this would turn Assassin's Creed into Mirror's Edge and completely break the fun of AC-flavoured parkour (which you also use for combat and stealth approach not just freerunning, and overcomplicating freerunning makes stealth air kills, ledge kills etc trickier and more difficult to perform).