While I realize there are some huge Connor fans out there, this article is addressing the larger numbers that didn't seem to take to Connor from Assassin's Creed 3. I, personally, like Connor. Not as much as Ezio Auditore, but I did like him. Or maybe I liked his potential. I want to say that, clearly, Connor was unpopular since Ubisoft promised another Connor game if he was well received. However, I dispute the reveal of Edward Kenway as being a result of fan opinion. They had to be working on Edward long before fan feedback on Connor to launch Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag a year later, simple as that. Either they were thinking Connor wouldn't be popular, or they had no intention of bringing him back until further on down the line.
Voice Acting
A common complaint comes in the form of Connor's voice actor (VA) being inexperienced. While I think this is true, I also believe the voice direction is majorly at fault because a lot of the VAs in AC3 seemed far more flat than in prior games. But beyond this, I think it's a lack of understanding when it comes to the Native American accent.
There's a reason in popular culture that Native Americans often have that calm, wise sounding voice. Obviously, this isn't a rule, not all Native Americans hold this accent, but it comes from the way they speak--though, I should say 'spoke', when Western/white accents and languages weren't as prevalent in their culture as it is now--in their native tongues.
The key thing to remember is that Noah Watts is Native American. As is the VA of Kaniehti:io (Kaniehtiio Horn). You'll notice the pattern of calm, level words, even though Ziio had a bit of a sassy bite to her (and we love her for it). So, I think a lot of the complaints that are put towards Connor's/Noah's voice is more a lack of understanding for what's being gone for with that part of his presentation.
He's So Boring and Naive
First things first: You need to have a sense of humor with Connor, especially if you're saying this because he's not Ezio.
Let's clear the womanizer thing real quick: Connor is not a womanizer due to naivete, but his upbringing.
Ezio was a womanizer for the same reason. Ezio had a father who was a playboy early on. He had an older brother who basically taught him how to play the game probably long before he even understood it. (I'll always have the image of Ezio as a child just agreeing to do whatever for his pretty lady tutor or something.) To be blunt: back then, the more women men nailed, the more awesome they were. Not that different from today, just with a lot more bastard children running around.
Meanwhile, Connor grew up in a society of much more tradition and gender balance. For example, the Clan Mother we see in the game was an integral part of their tribe, in real life. Chiefs were made and broken by the Clan Mother. If a Chief was unsatisfactory to a point there was a great deal of issue, the Clan Mother carried the authority to remove him and even pick a new Chief. Women carried authority and weren't just conquests.
Connor also lost his mother very early on, so much of his childhood and on was absorbed by the idea of revenge. Making a family for himself was just not of any importance when it came to avenging her by killing Charles Lee. (This is kind of where you need a sense of humor, because Connor screaming WHERE IS CHARLES LEE? all the time is the best thing ever.)
Unfortunately, it causes a complex situation to convey in a likeable way: an accent that is calm and almost monotone and a single-goal drive. But you need to remember, there's someone else that was very much like this in the AC series: Altair Ibn-La'ahad. Their goals were different, but they were equally focused and hardly charismatic. So the two base concepts that people criticize with Connor aren't exactly new to the series.
I Felt More Involved with Ezio's Story
Okay, this is true. I felt the same way. It wasn't until Sequence 10 that I actually really started to feel Connor.
Again, I'm going to blame Ubisoft more than the character first: we were promised an expansive lifetime story in the very beginning. We didn't get that. We were set up for failure before the game even launched.
We had Ezio for, what, three years? We were there for his birth (AC2) and we were there the day he died (AC: Embers). We met his family, we lost part of his family. We watched him struggle to protect what he had left while becoming an Assassin whose story rivals that of Altair in their universe. We traveled Italy, Spain, Syria and Constantinople with him. We watched him fight the Borgia family.
Ezio was a character built with a lot of love, and a lot of effort, and we could see that in the final products.
Connor is factually wonderful. But we didn't get much of him before his life was ripped apart. Speaking in-game, we got LESS of Ezio, since it was about a day's worth, but in gameplay that was an hour or two of him cavorting around Florence, Italy. Running from angry fathers and guards, angry rival families, joking with his big brother and doting on his younger siblings. Connor, we got him playing hide-n-go-seek with his little friends, and then his life was torn apart.
We knew Giovanni Auditore's story before we were even handed the live action film. We knew he was an Assassin and it was passed on to Ezio under horrible circumstances. With Connor, we were given a small tidbit through the Clan Mother regarding a past association with an Assassin (I believe the insinuation was Achilles Davenport himself) but we were given nothing beyond that.
Unfortunately, it felt like the game was more about length and strategy than story building. The Homestead missions were fun, and cute, but really couldn't help the gap in that connection we wanted to feel with Connor. Connor was presented as a shadow of what he could be until towards the end of the game. A premise that could have been really amazing, but fell through the cracks.
I really can't argue this point, other than the fact that he does come into his own in the end (which is too late for a lot of people), and to try to appreciate him for what you feel he could have been.
But I will say that please remember one key, tragic point: Connor was a tool of Juno's. There is a big chance that Connor would have ended up giving up his desire to kill Charles Lee if Juno hadn't pawned off the idea of the Assassins to him, to get the key to her prison placed where Desmond could find it. He was a tool, and nothing more, and that's pretty tragic. The fact that it seems Ezio and Connor share this (Ezio the prophet, Connor the... deliverer, I suppose?) is sad to me.
Game Glitches Didn't Help Either
This is actually my gripe. I'm a pretty easy going gamer. I can usually find a large amount of humor in glitches. Especially if the story is really amazing. But this game, man.
This game.
It hurt. This was seriously one of the most buggy games, from Assassin recruit missions disappearing from my status after completing them and not reappearing until I sacrifice a cat to Satan, to targets being caught in horse carriages they had nothing to do with in the first place so I would have to abort the entire ordeal for it to reset... it was just unpleasant.
Not to mention I'm not a fan of killstreak based fighting systems. I could killstreak like no one's business in prior AC games, but it felt so impossible for me in AC3. I don't know why, but it made that really unpleasant too. It knocked me pretty significantly out of the game.
Either way, I think Ubisoft has no one to blame but themselves for the lack of positive response towards Connor. He was a good character with the potential to become amazing. I'm glad he won Character of the Year, too. But that just gives credence to the fact that I don't think Ubisoft planned to bring him back, and if they try a game after AC4, it might be too late unless there's a significant change in his writing.
Connor isn't Ezio, and it's okay to like one over the other.
No comments:
Post a Comment