You can't skip certain "cinematics." I tried to skip one by force-quitting. No, when you start the game again ... there it is. I get it, Sterrick is a bland Snidley Whiplash. Fuck off. Consumers should have their own config file for this kind of horseshit. Oh that would be so tight, some sort of global "I like/hate the following" text file that all the game companies would follow to the letter. Hahahaha throw that on the fire, never going to happen.

Jacob has only about four responses when Evie hits the safe right next to his sleepytime couch. It gets tiring. I switched voice FX to French, much less annoying. "Oh how charming," even though it's the same Jacob idiocy. Amusingly half the NPCs still speak in English, and they didn't put down some bills to get enough French child voice actors ... so sometimes there's a kid waving papers and yelling out in a very adult voice. It's a very cosmopolitan city. Subtitles, however, are only shown during the main campaign, it seems. Running around randomly, everything you hear/say does not have a corresponding subtitle.

There's a gang upgrade called "City Takeover." It reduces the price of every other gang upgrade. (A) It's buried in the menu. (B) The cost to get to make that selection selectable and to select it is 17000 pounds, a huge outlay for a beginning player. So perhaps let's do a little accounting to see if it's economically feasible to purchase it. "All other GANG UPGRADES will cost less to purchase." Cancel the accounting. How useless can one sentence be. Write endless stupid quips for Jacob, bobble something simple like this.

Turns out the discount is a straight 20% across the board. You have to spend £3000 (knife/bullets now 25% off) and £4000 (gear now 20% off) to access City Takeover, then spend £10000 to get the 20% applied. The total subsequent amount saved if all upgrades are purchased is £50800. Spending £17000 to get £33800 off is a no-brainer. Not sure why it indicates 20% off with the previous two upgrades, then for this one they went with "cost less."

This is assuming that your first gang upgrade purchases (beyond the initial required medicine purchase) are the three in the City Takeover column.

I tried to gin up a variant I fancifully called 9-to-1, starting with the hardest open world missions and working downward. The problem is twofold. One, you don't get access to Westminster Hunts/etc until the first borough is cleared. Second, higher ranked high-level Blighters can kill a freshie with three hits that come in quick succession, with no recourse. Couldn't fight them, knives/guns needed serious upgrades to be useful; the only thing left was assassin-dropping on Blighters then scrambling to high ground over and over. Sort of ridiculous. So don't do that. I still like to battle way above my pay grade, but not that high.

There are a few missions that require you to kidnap someone and hustle them to a carriage waiting on the street, but there are a ridiculous number of baddies walking/standing around blocking all the entrances. The specific one I'm thinking of, Jacob has to kidnap a policeman in a police station w/far too many other policeman that all look like the same policeman. This is a time for your Rooks to shine. First, get on a roof, clear out as many police outside/inside the station as you can with your patented, lifetime warranty steak knives. Jump inside, clear out the rest except for your target. Kidnap him, then call your five Rooks. You kidnap him to prevent two mission fails: one, a Rook kills the target; two, the target "disappears" (even though he never leaves the station) if someone calls out the alarm. Stay on the top floor and hold your new friend tight; let the Rooks take care of things. You might have to call in two waves of them, you might have to walk a little closer to the closest policeman to be able to point him out to the Rooks. Doing this any other way is tedious, I don't want to play Super Fake Stealth Game Featuring Tiny Step Shuffle for thirty minutes. In subsequent runs, I quit the game before this mission.

Trying to get Rooks to clear out enemies in a Train Robbery. First, train/NPC mechanics are hilarious. Some bridges/etc are low enough to knock NPCs off the roof. NPCs will try to board/leave the train but the rate of failure increases with speed. This is probably why there are never any NPCs in a train station, unless it's a mission. NPCs also get hit by the train or (rarely) crushed between the train and a wall/different train. Enemy NPCs occasionally fall off the train they're stationed on, and one time a Blighter clipped through the floor of the train and died. Recently, a Rook tried to join the rest of us on the roof. Got up there, then immediately fell down dead, left a small blood patch. We told his family he died protecting whatever their particular borough was.

I holed up behind a crate on the train, signed up five Rooks, and ordered them to kill the Blighters in the next car. The problem is that the NPCs don't really understand the train. The Rooks will get close to the moving train but they mostly cannot board properly. You can order a hit on a Blighter, and the Rooks come flying around the corner on their carriage(s), shooting, but they rarely have an angle. There is one segment in the whole loop (here I'm assuming there's just one loop) in which the train is level with the street and they're able to pick off Blighters, but there's another problem: additional Blighters will spawn, either randomly if there's a "leader" Blighter, or if the "sniper" Blighter whistles for reinforcements (above/beyond the "spotter" Blighter opening the door on the four-Blighter "storage" car). If there are less than four Blighters in one car and they're being actively shot at, one will whistle and sometimes a new Blighter will spawn on the same car. I think what's happening here is that it's trying to spawn each time but the train is in motion so it's doing wall checks etc and failing about 75% of the time. Is it only the level 9 Blighter that whistles? I do not know this.

I left the whole thing going for about an hour, calling the Rooks to make hits before/during the segments in which they had potential shots on the train, but the spawning rate was slightly higher than the dying rate. Update: did it again, and was able to clear the train in about the same time. Get some IRL stuff going ... this is the computer playing against itself, you're just there to offer occasional well-timed suggestions.

The Rooks can navigate (at least) the Whitechapel train station (North center). They came storming in and boarded the train while it was parked at the station, but that only happened once over two long sessions. You can also just decouple the engine in a ground-level area and the Rooks will summon train-boarding courage and take care of things. Some times they will actually figure out a way to a decoupled train at an elevated/trench section, but it's not reliable. You will usually have to inch your way to them to get them in range etc.

A lot of times they're happy with just being directly under the bridge you stopped the train on, because it's the shortest distance and they're ... stuck in a local minimum, I think is how the math term goes. And some times, when you go to the map, you can see that your Rooks are all gathered somewhere far away, and stuck, and they're never going to move. You can dismiss them. One time the game bugged out and stopped showing the mini-icon for Rook dismissal -- the little count-down bar that snakes around the Rook profile icon. But it still worked the same way. Dismiss them, then you can call up new Rooks that will appear close to you, not two boroughs away.

The obvious way to hustle this is to detach the engine. Wait until you're at relatively level ground, detach from the engine. A warning: multiple Blighters spawn in the train cars right as the cars come to a halt. It's odd, there are Blighters that already occupy the cars. My usual M.O. was to board the train and hide on the front of the engine, wait until level ground, detach, hide again if Blighters are too close, dismiss the crew because they're probably stuck somewhere, call a fresh crew, start ordering fights.

It's the strangest thing. Here's an interesting mechanic, train robberies; here's another interesting mechanic, commanding a crew. Let's skip making the two work together.

Carriage takeover variants. You can get inside a carriage and the driver will either not move, go slow, go two different "medium" speeds, or go breakneck. They don't follow GPS lines, they just go in random directions. One time I was able to take over a carriage and it set me to drive randomly through the streets. Okay me. One time it was just a horse, and I was inside the carriage, and the horse just ran the streets of London. Okay horse. I think you're more likely to get a breakneck speed NPC if it's a Rook that is not in your crew. I used the breakneck NPCs, when I could get them, to scan with Eagle-Eye-Vision to reveal collectibles while I was off mending my jeans or whatever IRL. Ideally you want to be hidden in the cab if you're doing this AFK because occasionally there are skirmishes. One time I left it going for over 45 minutes. All of the carriage wheel hubs started throwing off sparks. Two of the wheels were seriously wobbling. Then ... probably an hour in, the driver took a turn too wide, hit an omnibus, the horse and all three Rooks died. I was hiding, one was inside the cab as well. Then the very next day, same thing: the horse and two carriage occupants died RIP (separate services this Saturday. Rooks: Noon, finger sandwiches and root beer served. Horse: 4pm, butterscotch pudding cups). This is something you'd rarely, if ever, see during "regular" gameplay ... the sparks, the accident. You have to put some serious miles on the carriage to get it to crash ... wobbling/sparking/big chunks of wear down to the wood.

What I have found works with the carriage takeover sometimes is to have your 1-5 Rooks, and a hard-top four-person carriage in the middle of the street, nothing in front of it, and "hide" in the carriage. Then your Rooks clamber all about you, and sometimes one of them gets in the driver seat, and sometimes you'll take off and sometimes it will be at a fast clip. If you're still at a dead stop but you have a driver, "exit" ("E" on keyboard) and you'll crawl up onto the side of the carriage, and that usually activates the driver because of course it does. Repeat a few times, if it doesn't happen, try it w/another carriage somewhere else. Maybe different Rooks.

Another variant: hang off side of a carriage, then call up 2-5 new companion Rooks, whatever level you're at. Sometimes one will climb into the driver's seat and take off at a good pace.

The real hotness is to hit "X" when passing by Blighters/police so the Rooks in your carriage (and possibly 1-n carriages following it) open fire. This speeds things up; the police especially give a good chase. Had one big collision that threw me out of the "hiding" spot inside the carriage and smacked into the back of an omnibus. Usually, if the driver actually stops, they'll take care of business, return to the carriage, and continue on. Things do not get this amped up with missions. Highly suggested.

A third variant: jump on the roof of a two-seater carriage with a driver. They will speed up while you point your gun at them. During the only test of this, the carriage driver went inside the Buckingham Palace grounds and things got spicy. Dodged about 30 bullets. Eventually the horse crashed or a guard shot the horse; not easy to tell because your view when you're pointing your gun at the driver the view is just of the driver and the ground whizzing past. Also, your "stealth" position is sort of a 80%-standing position, not a full crouch, so you're more in danger of getting canopied.

"Big Goose Egg" Gameplay Variant. Started a new run, conquered Whitechapel, unlocked Ned. But this time, no chests, no collectibles, no Templar Hunts/etc. Just Train Robberies, street mayhem, scrappy kids. I think the stationary Carriage Hijacks are one and done, you can't repeat them, so only the on-the-road Carriage Hijacks. It makes things much more interesting/harder. Money is tight, so upgrading is much slower. Have to rely on Rooks a lot more to help out. Silk in particular is a bear to get; in the regular campaign, I paid zero attention to the types of crafting materials because it wasn't an issue. The Little Rooks rarely award it, and they're also harder to find in the this early stage. Unfortunately one concentrated Little Rook area is a bit prone to mayhem, Lambeth near Bell's place. They walk near the shore/in the West for the most part, but most of the shore is controlled by the Blighters. The Little Rooks are scared off by street violence so there's a balance required. Once they're spooked seems like they never return to a "normal" state and run around screaming until they (presumably) despawn. The street farthest to the North in Whitechapel has kids, but you have to keep walking back and forth, sometimes they appear way behind you walking away from you, and there are also Blighters who occasionally screw up the handoff. Every now and then the kids hand you nothing. Rotten little grubs, you want to go back to shovelling shit at the factory? Didn't think so.

And no, the two/three places with the infinite Little Rook glitch, those either don't have Little Rooks or just have Blighters. Seems like you have to unlock another borough or two for more regular Little Rook sightings. Then, at some point, the kids all disappeared, they weren't populating the streets any more. Which was okay, I'd stocked up on all the crafting materials; stack another odd design decision on top of the massive pile.

This variant also means the best gun available is at level four for most of the time; everything higher is locked to achievements. Another gun becomes available at level ten with this restricted play "through." Similar problems exist with levelling up pouches/throwables.

I suppose the "win" condition for this daft exercise is when the character is completely leveled up/all gang upgrades/best possible weapons etc.

Treatin' the crew to ice cream after a fun day of killing!

Achievement Unlocked: Dynamite on fire barrel.

Odd/Stupid Things.

One of your Rooks throws a projectile that looks like a smoke bomb. Totally undocumented by Ubisoft: what exactly is this thing. If you have all the assistance HUD garbage turned on (I don't know which specific switch triggers the overhead arrows/icons, the names are all poor and there's no, gosh, I don't know, they don't pay me the big bucks, but like ... an IMAGE showing what you're turning on/off? Again, I'm very amateurish at this), the bomb thrower will have a "bomb" icon displayed above their head for a quick second before the bomb is chucked. The tossing animation is also quick, difficult to see. The path of the bomb is highlighted by a red arc and lands, creating an expanding red ring. When the red ring reaches its maximum, there's a "whump" sound and the screen goes semi-psychedelic/blurry if you are in the radius. No damage iirc, just loss of movement for a short while. It affects anyone within range. I have seen Rooks get stuck in some sort of aggro mode loop and alternately fire their guns/throwing these psych-bombs repeatedly. "Someone's been playing with fireworks." After another skirmish, the original bomb-thrower (not an associate) left with two of his Rook companions, and an associate Rook took over bomb-throwing (but not gun-firing) until I ran him over with the carriage. Then he became docile and boarded the carriage without further incident. It would have been a lot more interesting if Rooks/Blighters threw smoke bombs instead, especially if triggered contextually. Chaos boost.

Ran into a reference to a "fear bomb" that is only available with the Jack the Ripper DLC. Not the same bomb. Watched the tutorial, that is a lot of hand-holding for a pretty ineffective weapon. "This puny fear bomb is NOT LETHAL but will make enemies fear fear, and fear what fear can fear #fear"

Enemies: "Huh, shit got cloudy for a second. Welp, back to stabbin'. Stab stab, doin' the stab"

One of the phrases the Rooks repeat endlessly, "shank's pony" was a reference to walkin' legs. The Rooks say a lot of things, mostly inspired by fresh kills. "I'll find out where you're buried and dance on your grave," "You won't be stirring up no more trouble." A Rook will say "It's shank's pony for someone" if the two wagon horses are killed in a Cargo Escort mission, or even just another NPC's single carriage horse. Though to my tin ear it sounds like they're saying "shank's boney." A timely aside: Napoleon Bonaparte used to be referred to as "Boney," as in "Boney's Ribs," a then-popular multi-colored lollipop as referenced in a 1847 issue of Punch. "Luckily" I can just stand over the dead horses and the NPCs will repeat the triggered dialogue over and over, "someone's going to be late for supper!" etc. I finally heard the plosive bit of "pony" after the sixth time with the volume cranked.

Only the woman Rook with the hat will laugh after every kill. Seems easier to find one in Westminster. Another will whistle a tune for awhile. It adds levity, doesn't wear out like someone saying "they won't be needing breakfast tomorrow" twenty-seven times. Hey, free breakfast.

Don't bother cutting down bells if you're not in a mission. They re-generate. Why? Some things stick around, some things despawn/reset. Hope you like hats.

If an NPC has been "highlighted" with an asterisk above their head for an inordinate amount of time, they might start waving at it ha-ha comedy time. Which is stupid, because usually the reason this happens is because the "tackle" command bugs out and isn't offered properly to the player for an NPC that's supposed to be tackled. They also do this with written words above their heads for the dipshit Conan Doyle Kiddie Mysteries.

There are at least two open-world missions that randomly spawn near you -- hijack/escort a carriage. Your ability to shoot is severely limited -- once a Blighter is near you, you're given the option to do a "quick shoot." A Blighter may get a little icon above its head indicating that it's hot on taking the carriage -- good idea, good implementation, fair gameplay, the icon probably gives a little too much to the player, but okay. But now that you're not driving, one of your Rooks is now free to slide over to the driver's seat and quickly drive the carriage away (!??), past the mission boundary so you fail the mission. A Rook will try to get in the driver's seat you've just vacated around 80% of the time. "I'm helping." During "escort," you can climb onto the carriage and the driver goes bananas, constantly shifting around while going breakneck, really hugging the buildings which also have awnings which usually knock you off the carriage which doesn't stop for you and goes past the mission boundary: mission fail. Shitty gameplay, ridiculous. The capper is that then, ONLY THEN, the Rook driver will do a 180 and pull up beside you with the carriage which now is not a MISSION carriage but a REGULAR carriage. I usually shoot the driver. AYFKM. Did anyone actually play these missions. It's that bullshit when a team has this cockamamie idea about the "best" way to play a mission and then they code for only that. "No one would hole up when the Blighters come to shoot them down instead of trying to get to the mission objective point as fast as possible." Oddly enough, the Blighters have carriages that are just a little bit faster than yours, even if you've maxxed yours. So I hole up and try to find a good parking spot that an errant Rook driver can't manuever out of to fail the mission. "Send in the clowns." It's exactly like GTA5. Hole up or flee. Code for both.

The wagon driver's actions are intentional. This is why the driver returns when the mission fails; starting the Cargo Escort mission puts Rooks into a different driving mode. Failing, it goes back to normal, and Rooks will try to get as close to the player as possible, whether standing or in/driving a carriage. Normally, if a Rook drives a regular non-mission carriage, going on the sidewalk is a last-resort strategy if the roads are clogged. Seriously, as soon as you climb aboard a Cargo Escort wagon, it's double-speed and off to the awnings. So instead of standing on the wagon, and being ready to quickshot/etc, you can hang off the back of the cart and have no offense/defense other than taking medicine over and over ... that is, until you're shot once, you lose your grip on the wagon and of course the wagon continues on, mission fail. In any event, the driver doesn't go to the objective marker anyway and appears to actively avoid it. "Oh you want to be a passenger? How about no, and also no." Why did they bother, they could have just made the driver mode breakneck + avoid mission marker. "Quickly make player fail mission even though there's no way to complete the mission by only standing on the wagon" seems odd.

Sometimes during a "case the building" mission at a party you can walk upstairs past the guards (Kohr-I-Noor) and sometimes during a "case the building" mission at a party you cannot walk upstairs past the guards (A Night To Remember). Here's a surprise, they don't let you know either way. You're apparently supposed to contextualize from the one clue -- that there's people standing on the stairs in the former mission, and no one in the latter even though in other areas of the former mission, party people are partying outside in a cordonned area but if you try to join the party people it's party over for you. There's a few things like this that are beyond common sense and rather annoying. Did you know you can kidnap someone and hustle them by guards while they're saying "you're hurting me" and the guards will not care, as long as your "circle of influence" -- or whatever that white ring is called -- doesn't touch them? Even if you're a foot away.

One of the items of clothing you can earn -- the one that takes the longest to acquire, that has good upgrades on specific abilities -- has some sort of electric interference pattern because: unknown, not explained. It's visually annoying. I switched back to the outfit that increases steak knife damage. "Folks, it's like I'm giving these knives away. Don't miss your chance to re-invigorate your personal lifestyle brand culture thing."

Your Rooks are constantly stumbling over each other as they follow you. When they do, they make grunting/sighing exclamations. So that follows you around, endlessly. if bump(rook1,rook2) audiogrunt(rnd(30)) I are good programmer what have solutions! Same thing with comments while you're looting dead bodies. "Good riddance to bad rubbish. " Five Rooks, all making the same comments over and over.

Finding collectibles is more teeth-gnashing than it has to be. You have to be right on top of a collectible w/Eagle-O-Vision to reveal it, it's not the outer perimeter of your circular radar inset. You can buy "treasure maps" that show where some things are, it's worth it. I tried just looking for the last two-three chests in two or more boroughs and it wears you out. The other categories, there aren't as many individual items, and some have location context -- beer always being in a corner pub, posters always being in a block opening etc., so they're easier to find. The "Secrets" category is the most fun, with the object being displayed in a photo in situ and you have to puzzle out where it was taken. More interesting, you can hear it when it's close by. So you're doing Thing A, you hear the tinkling ... and stop your murder spree. "Hold on, everyone, there's a collectible that needs my ... collecting."

One of the last quick cut scenes (w/no associated event/mission/quest) happens in your base and I have no idea how/why it was activated because I had already finished every event. I was spending time just gathering collectibles and mayheming. It wrapped up a part of the main story. About 30 seconds in length. Very odd.

There's a "quick shot combo" in which you block then throw a knife/shoot, point blank at someone. But there's a borough chief that is happy to take 10+ close-range bullets to the stomach because logic. I think it's only one of the lower-level ones, oddly. Update: other borough leaders are into the endless-bullet situation. Rubbish code, probably. "Oh right, the quick shot."

When you enter the street event to protect someone from "criminals," after you kill and start looting them the person you rescued will shout "stop, thief!" Ungrateful wretch. There's a lot of little things like this: try whistling while you're delivering a bit of dialogue, for example. The oddest is when one of your own Rooks calls you out for looting. "Uh, how exactly do you think you're getting paid, Jerry."

Kill someone, come back a half-minute later and a crowd has gathered. "Help, murder!" Problem is, the body has despawned, so ten, twenty people are gathered around nothing. Or a hat, really. The hats don't despawn, usually. Sometimes I'll be on my way to Important Event and will cut through an intersection with seven, fifteen hats. "Oh right, this is when murders."

A Gang Upgrade: "Nimbler, faster and more reliable: fire trucks can reach the poor boroughs of London." ... Who cares? Fire trucks? This feels like a stub that was supposed to do something, like the red psych-bombs. You don't use fire trucks for anything. Fire trucks don't do anything. Fire trucks: you are useless. Fire trucks clear traffic, but they're slower and Rooks can't catch a ride on them is how I understand it.

I've already groused about the UI, but I'm 75% through second run-through and just noticed that my equipped weapons are indicated by a dingy faded triangle mark in the upper-lefthand corner and/or a incredibly slightly brighter white background. Again, odd choices. "We have to make a UI in a week? My cousin is great at UIs." A small dot in the corner? A small star? Something more distinct than "less white."

Horseshit / Tedious Things.

Horseshit Top of the list: Disabling weapons and forcing melee at "close" range which (bullshit sub-problem) can also vary. SFA. Induces rage quickly. I wouldn't have a problem with this if the range was right up next to you. Sometimes Evie is standing on a carriage, and a Blighter 10+ feet away gets the notion that it's time for melee to begin and then Evie can't fire a gun, throw a knife except with the mode-switching "quickshot" which sometimes isn't triggered [shrug] and I'm not really into aim-assist.

Second: I was almost done with my fifth playthrough, intending to stop before the wacky guy who tries to blow up an orphanage or some such. The Strand borough, the boss fight before the boss fight. The one that you're just whisked away to after claiming most of any one particular borough. It gives you a chance to kill the boss before you have to fight them in a small enclosed space, so I'm a fan. The boss will try to run away while some of the Blighters run interference, attacking/tackling you. You kill boss, or boss gets in a carriage or disappears, end of pre-boss fight. Earlier I had taken out a carriage-fleeing boss with a last-chance just-in-range headshot which was satisfying. The next time, an extended fight with the Strand boss and three Blighters. Very extended. Boss takes four shots to the gut which isn't even the reason I'm writing this. Once the boss got to about 5% health, he decided to flee. Ran after him trying to shoot my gun five times. No clicking "out of bullets" sound, just when the gun was pointed at him, it would not shoot. Every time. He ran to a carriage, got away.

If you're designing a game and things are not working out how you want them, don't "quick fix" in a cheating mechanism like that. It's just kind of sad. Especially if this was a bonus skill-required hurdle bit and the hurdle was jumped but you know what, we decided: fuck you. I am now done with Ubisoft products in general, forever.

Immediately shut down the game. Hours later, restarted and oddly ended up right back at the starting "cinematic" of the same The Strand boss. Right after the cut scene, turned the corner and killed him instantly. Nope, still not buying anything Ubisoft. Nice try.

Quickshot. Blighters have longer range than you (and way way far away if they get that odd sunburst-icon above their heads as you pass by in a carriage, say), Blighters can shoot you through a police carriage when they clearly can't see you. You can see Blighters while cruising in a carriage, and they're close enough, but they don't turn yellow indicating quickshot is available. Early on, your gun is so useless it takes four quickshots to zero out a carriage Blighter's health, consistently. You start with ... eight bullets maximum? There are always four+ Blighters that chase w/hijacks etc. So you're guaranteed to run out of knives/bullets. Could have just made it so your aiming was poor at the start (with a bit of random luck spice thrown in), then got better as you leveled up. Same effect, but not "three headshots is not enough because your gun isn't good enough."

Keeping players notified about what exactly they're supposed to do/where they are is left wanting. When you go to select a mission in the progression log/progress tracker, the menu will add the additional requirement(s). Depending on the mission, it will not show you what is required during the mission. Same page. I get it, the particular mission I'm thinking of, the Funny Self-Exploding Templars Bullshit Bombs mission, has stages to it, and they thought showing the additional requirement early was going to confuse people.

During the two boss fights for each borough (a "pre" boss fight and a regular boss fight) it will abruptly go to black and either back to open world (pre-boss) or from gang fighting to the boss (regular) because you've killed the required number of Blighters. You could be in the middle of fighting, it doesn't matter. There could be five+ Blighters left. Doesn't matter. You might have wanted to loot afterward. Doesn't matter, you get maybe one token body + many hats. This game feels like a nesting doll of weird decisions.

Comparing weapon stats is annoying. There's one main category with all weapons, but you can't see what the upgraded stats are for a particular weapon if you haven't crafted it and you can't compare the attributes of two weapons against each other, it just always compares the selected weapon with your current weapon. Clicking "CRAFT" takes you to another sub-menu, "GEAR" which is all gear that has the ability to be crafted. You click "CRAFT" on that page as well. Now you're thrown back to the "GEAR" page and you can click "UPGRADE PREVIEW" there to go to the "UPGRADE PREVIEW" menu and you can "UPGRADE" there. You can also spend money to "CRAFT" gear that is level-locked but the game doesn't tell you. It also shows you many icons for potential weapons and offers the "CRAFT" button and you click on the "CRAFT" button and it throws you to another page that indicates that you must "find the schematic to unlock this item" and why exactly do we have to go to another page to be told no, you can't do that? "CRAFT." Did someone say lots of page flipping around and not being able to compare weapon stats etc would be exciting? The "CRAFTING UPGRADES" menu, though, those are your throwables and medicine etc. [FX: bashes coconut-skull-understudy against wall repeatedly]. Good times with suckjob UI.

There are "modes" of attack that vary depending on the mission. If you attack the driver from the roof in a moving carriage hijack, you can just knife/shoot 'em. If you attack the driver from a stationary carriage hijack, you automatically pull the person out of the driver's seat up to the roof for melee. The inconsistency grates, "don't forget to throw knives as soon as you climb on the back of the roof when it's a stationary one, don't get in range of auto-melee."

"Child Liberation" is a whole sub-thing in this game. After you "Liberate" a factory from all the child doffers/sweepers/etc, sometimes children can still be seen shovelling literal shit/sweeping/etc around the grounds. Congratulations, you "did" "it"! Child Liberation Simulator (Inside Factory Only Edition).

Rare situation in which you "Hijack Carriage" w/two Blighters, coming up behind them to double-assassinate. You have the drop on them, neither of them saw you. That's the whole point of this series, yeah? Sneaky Killy VIII: Moar Sneaky Killy? But no, magically, one swings from their seat at you and knocks you, sending you spinning off the carriage, landing flat on the ground. Don't come up with rules for engagement then occasionally break them to the enemy's advantage because you want random things to happen. This happens in the Far Cry series as well. This is just another reason why I avoid melee. A bullet is a bullet, but the melee dance is where developers shine! [SFX: retching noise]

Tail missions are horseshit. Countdown clock starting the millisecond the quarry goes around a corner etc: horseshit. The designers haven't unlocked the IRL level one "object permanence" skill perk. All tail missions in any game are awful. Stop making tail missions.

Long-ass cut scenes that are unskippable. This is an gaming industry obsession. These days, I just take the headphones off, turn off the screen, go do some IRL errands, come back.

Killing people as Jack the Ripper in the Jack the Ripper DLC.

Oooh, there's the first gold chest you usually see, lemme get that, I'm low on cash. You can't open it, you need Lockpick Skill I. Okay, I'll spend one hard-acquired skill point to get Lockpick Skill I, I need some cash, that's a GOLD chest. [FX: opens gold chest] You have successfully opened the first gold chest and you now have: "Colors: Green." This is Rockstar-level trolling, love it. I was going to make a joke about at least barfing out a pound, but that's exactly what the second gold chest did.

I'm doing a play-through in French, so I miss little bits of the do-this-to-advance narrative. Pop-up: "press F5 to access the CRAFTING MENU and craft upgrades." Okay, so this is a generic message indicating that the crafting menu is available. Click F5, there it is, not doing any upgrades, trying to save cash. Back to the open world. Pop-up still there. Hrm. I'll upgrade my steak knives, get some wicked neon flames. Pop-up still there. Must be a bug. Turns out, ten pop-up minutes later, I remember that the game wants you to do a smoke bomb/knife upgrade. One or both of those. Don't catch it in the narrative there's nothing else telling you. Do that and return to fake Alexander Bell, you finish the mission.

Child dipshit detective Arthur Conan Doyle's bloodthirsty quips about actual murders. Houdini razzed Doyle good, I can't remember the book it's in. At one point I was dragged into a body-stacking brawl in the street while he stood a few feet away. "Did you enjoy that, Doyle. Little morbid shit."

Rooks don't pay attention to GPS, if they commandeer a carriage it's random path time. Actually, I think they avoid going to the ending spot. More tests required.

Rooks will sometimes commandeer driver's seat even if player is driving.

The train robbery icon disappears after getting to a particular station. There is no way (?) of knowing if the train will disappear or just trundle through stations. You could be within 100 meters of the train and suddenly the icon/mark winks out. For a game obsessed with timers, perhaps throw one on the train if it's getting to w/in a minute of disappearing. Or it could, I don't know, never disappear once it's on the map, because sometimes it's not on the map at all. It could just trundle around alla time until it's robbed, then there could be a cooldown if not-having-train really has to be a thing. During one run this happened four times in a row. Still feeling raw about it two days later.

Game mechanic "sitting in seat of carriage triggers Blighters in carriages that spawn right behind player; make electronic bell sound; repeat four-eight times" feels very GTA-like. Not a compliment. Except for the bell sound. That's INNOVATION.

XP value never indicated except with blue gauge that has no numerical display.

"Meatier" missions to free boroughs like Child Liberation pay poorly; quick fun things that have no consequence like the train robbery pay 3x-4x as much.

Can't sit anywhere except carriages. Cannot sit in train in comfy chair next to fireplace even though Evie is shown sitting in the same chair when playing as Jacob (and buggily as Evie, see below).

If you fast travel somewhere to get closer to the train robbery icon, it will have moved/disappeared because apparently you are not fast travelling, you're just time skipping.

No one needs to see the found-music-box cut scene 32 times. Sure, it's short, just ... perhaps give it a good think. Could just play the "collectible acquired" sound effect then follow it with the music box tune, so the player is now in the world walking/running/carriaging around with the tune for a little bit (this does happen when the game starts after you find the first box, and also sometimes when you warp etc, but it's a bug). A nice little touch. Not "Remember that you-found-a-thing cut scene you saw 27 times already? Here it is again."

If you are chasing the leader at the end of the Queen Victoria boat mission, it's a scripted chase and if you're too close your controls are semi-disabled so the scripted dynamite can go scripted off. This is so incredibly weak.

Bugs.

With two monitors, sometimes game loses focus on first screen, jumps out of game. Sometimes mouse can be seen on second screen. Had to switch to Windowed/Borderless.

During borough boss Cletus Strain fight, controls are broken, suddenly cannot move properly, camera angle is wrong, etc.

Following Rooks disappear after fast travel, mission complete, when you burn the plans ... basically any cut scene/time you don't have an eye on them, they're gone. Sometimes, oddly, the "completed Cargo Escort/Hijack mission" stat pop-up will not also freeze the screen and you'll still have your Rooks afterward.

Markers disappear after fast travel, etc.

The amount the train safe can hold is inconsistent. This might only be the PC version.

Landing in hay bale then jumping a small wooden fence in a Blighter mission area, all the Blighters froze. I could attack them but only the blood animation played over and over even though I stopped ... they were "dead" but still standing, then at some point they all came back to life. It was an exciting time. Happened only once.

A Rook changed genders when it ducked into a house to pop out the roof trap door after Evie used a "lift." I've only seen this once and I'm inclined to think I just miscounted. I looked for a Rook corpse, no luck.

With the first borough boss, you can run past all the Blighters on the train roof and hide on the very front of the engine. They don't chase you all the way, you regain your health, can turn on Eagle-O vision quest to find crates etc. It will keep triggering the "someone sees you" bit and then that will time out then it will happen again etc. Sometimes this extended hiding mistakenly triggers the "Gang Leader Eliminated" cut scene. About half the time; usually when the train starts crossing the Thames. The other half, it looks like the leader accidentally falls or jumps off and that triggers desynchronization, re-starting the train boarding sequence.

You can hang off the train cars and in most of the positions enemies/boss will stand directly over you shooting, but you will not take damage.

On steep angled roofs (specifically the church by the London Thomas Blackroot Templar Hunt mission but probably everywhere) you can angle your camera while you're climbing up the edge so you climb into thin air, then have the Wile E. Coyote sudden realization and plummet to your death.

Attempted hijack of police wagon. Usually player pulls off driver, replaces driver, and passenger throws you off. It's scripted, you can't interrupt it, you can't quickshot the second cop, etc. Just bad decisions here. One time, companion Rook shot the second cop before this happened; the animation still took place with an invisible cop, was thrown to the ground as is the standard, but by no one. The wagon disappeared. There's an achievement for hijacking a police wagon but it's not clear if this scripted faff counts as a hijack. [later] Turns out, no. The way to get the achievement ("Gone Lawing" or some such) is to quickknife one cop, then hit E to hijack the wagon from the other cop. If you're too close, the quickshot command mysteriously becomes an "assassinate both cops" command which will not work.

While hidden in a hay bale etc, sometimes when you go to assassinate an enemy npc coming too close it goes through the animation of the criminal being killed but you're invisible and there's no cut scene. The enemy is thrown farther away from the bale and (a) looks like a turtle lying on its back (b) is still "alive" but frozen. After jumping out of the hay bale, the enemy stands up but is frozen.

Sitting on rooftop kniving everyone in the Carriage Hijack. Turned away for a second, the carriage despawned, Blighters formerly dead on a carriage now dead Blighters on the ground. This may have been a timeout, the carriage was blocked by one of Evie's Rooks for ten minutes or so. Still, timeout should reset if things get spicy.

You can super fall off the top of Lambeth Asylum. Holding "Parkour Down" and "Run," there's one bit at the front that doesn't prompt for a drop.

During the big don't kill the police police investigation, I accidentally shot a Blighter with a hallucinogenic dart. Program counted that as a policeman kill and immediately desynchronized.

Carriage Hijack, got carriage to destination point but cannot trigger "win" scenario because oh no, a Blighter saw you. While the ensuing fight played out amongst the green and red NPCs, the horses were startled by the dynamic gunplay and ran away with the carriage, ending the mission because the carriage was too far. Is this a bug, or just "here's a random fuck you you can't do anything about." I'd stay on the carriage but quickshot is unreliable/limited when stationary, unlike the NPCs, so you have to get off the carriage to actually bring the body count down. Yes, I should have used "R" to get on the "roof" of the wagon. I did this on the same block as the mission destination; the Rook took the reigns and happily sped right past it, the clown.

One of the Strand Bounty Hunts (I think Milton King to the West) kept crashing when I would bring the dead bounty to the end delivery point. Then I tried bringing a live bounty from the opposite way and it worked. Another, Maude Foster in London, same thing; crashed twice riding a carriage full of Rooks & dead bounty. Apparently it's the called carriage causing the bug (for the last nine years). Source one on the street.

During the Kohr-I-Noor jewel handoff sequence cut scene between Jacob/Evie (DLC), there was a guard trapped behind a door and occasionally clipping through it. The previous time was bugged, in that Jacob didn't show up, I was frozen in place, but guards showed up in the cut scene to beat the stuffing out of me (you can't do anything at all during cut scenes -- ultimate loss of control). A new take on entertainment. I would suggest not activating the cut scene and tossing a grenade (someone else suggested a smoke bomb) into the small tower room where the cut scene starts.

In the main story about halfway through Jacob is supposed to follow a carriage delivering explosives or some such. That's the whole mission [SFX: noise created by exhaling into party favor here]. There's a checkpoint in the middle. If you screw up after the checkpoint, when you re-start at the checkpoint, sometimes the scenario will not properly start and there will be a message "desynchronizing due to carriage being fucky" or whatever and it unfortunately re-loads again. Stand still, let that happen; on the second or third re-load it resets properly, at least for me. This also happens with mission replays, see below.

On the map, green dots indicate Rooks and sometimes there will be a dot on the map and no one is there. These are phantom duplicate dots of actual extant Rooks. For example, along the train track "trench" in North Whitechapel, dots will appear on a road on one side of the track, and a duplicate will appear on the other side. If you mark the duplicate phantom, sometimes your mark will jump to the actual extant Rook.

The Rook sub-menu does not come up sometimes. The "call carriage w/five Rooks" command does not work sometimes (beyond the cool-down timer which is .. about a minute). Sometimes a Rook will die, and their little rectangle in the Rooks sub-menu will have an even smaller rectangle in it. You cannot call up a Rook to fill the spot. Don't know why. This also timeouts, usually, but sometimes, it will just lock the slots. Dismissing all Rooks doesn't fix it. In the same manner, your Rook rectangles will go red when they're fighting but sometimes that gets stuck, you're all riding in a carriage w/no alerts and all the rectangles are red. Dismissing and rehiring can fix this one. Fast travelling somewhere will (usually) trigger the "get rid of all Rooks bug" which fixes both of these bugs. Bug fight.

Moving Boat Raid w/timed "mark crates" mechanic suddenly ends at around two-minute mark. Timer disappears, no markers on map. Now you're just taking a ride on a boat with your Blighter friends.

Pretend elevator bug: Children when startled off high ledges fall to ground, then immediately stand up w/o fall damage. This also happens to factory workers. Usually it's a pair of children/workers.

Bounty Hunt parked carriage on road with body, Escort mission pulls up and it becomes a bloodbath, many Blighters shooting etc, horses running. Bounty Hunt mission just disappears.

Rook commandeered carriage even though player was driver, then player scooted to left, then again, then again, all while floating in air, always scooting to left until hitting a building, soft lock w/animation smacking into building. Has only happened once.

Child Rooks run to the place player was when the child was hailed, not player's current position. If the kid runs far enough away, they'll just stand there until you go back to get within the give-scrap radius. One time Evie was standing on a carriage roof and summoned goods from a Little Rook. The Little Rook stood on the sidewalk and made a series of gestures I'd not seen before. Jumped down, figuring there was no pathfinding for the kid, and then the kid made a huge leap onto the roof, gave Evie stuff, then came back down, saw Evie crouching, and said: "Hide and seek? So childish." No gruel for smartmouth that night.

Music box melody plays almost every time after fast travel after first music box is collected.

Cannot move through (some?) large openings in Whitechapel (?) Station. Sometimes player is climbing on the empty openings.

Player can encounter themselves in the train. Advise player to just ignore yourself, you'll go away eventually.

Rooks cannot pathfind in a lot of situations, especially the train. Only one area where tracks are flat with ground. Rooks also have trouble getting/staying on moving train, die a lot. If you are in an elevated station, and Rooks are street level, they usually can't find you and just stand around doing nothing. Take about FIVE steps down to street level which puts you in range and they will then scramble around corners/up the stairs to meet you, full of vim and vigor. Why is there a range at all? If you hijack an omnibus and do not move, your Rooks will stop adoring you if there's a gps route. They will follow the gps route for awhile (edge of range? just beyond?) and stop there. Then if you change the gps routing so it's no longer on the street that they're on, they still just sit there. Probably because they're just beyond the range. Double logic.

You know and I know and you know I know that you know that the reason this is all like this is because the Rooks can't figure out the train. "Just set the range a little shorter than the elevation of the station," someone said in what I'm fancifully calling the Bug Stopping Department, and that fixed Rooks going to some of the stations.

Below: "Okay, here's the plan. I have dismissed a bunch of Rooks because they got caught directly under London Station when I detached the engine from the treasure train of delectable treasures. You can see the clump of dismissed Rooks and the train on the mini-map."

"Mini ... map? Map?"

"Shut up. I climbed down here at great risk of dismissing the treasure train mission. Can you climb up this structure?"

"No, but we'll climb up the one to the right and get to the train platform before you do."

"Works for me."

"Why does the treasure train have a 'treasure case,' I suppose, sitting out in the open on a flatbed car with a lock you can pick in half a second?"

"No questions, just plunder."

A view of the structures. The left structure is in range of the train, but once you get to the tarpaulined pallet stack forward of that, a near-out-of-range warning will pop up.

Rooks die on the train randomly, even if they're all grouped together with you in the middle of a mail car, for example.

Cannot switch Evie/Jacob while on train.

Cannot call for more Rooks nor switch weapons nor view weapon inventory from train, unless you step outside on to one of front/back platforms. Logic.

Rook died trying to board slow-moving omnibus. Is that a bug, really? Actual people have died doing typically less dangerous things throughout historical history.

If you are hiding in a carriage and Rook who is also inside is killed, the body may blast through the top, arc about six feet higher than the carriage and land on the street. "Jeez with the drama."

Random outside shopkeeper would flash white every 20 seconds or so. Waited patiently for sidequest.

NPCs coming in or disappearing while walking forward. Very rarely see random blip of NPC standing on street. Was in the world for less than a second. RIP rando, you were missed entirely.

While Evie/Jacob are stealthing, random NPCs on the street will make comments. Over and over. It is constant any time you are within ~10 feet of a rando. "You all right, miss? Feeling faint?" "She's a bit scatter-brained." They really went to town with the variety of snark ... "wow, we better make a whole bunch of phrases because they keep getting triggered over and over and over and over."

There's a gang uppgrade you can buy that makes the Blighters fear-respect you so much they no longer antagonize/start fights ... and yet street randos just will not shut up w/the trenchant observations. Here is an incomplete list of comments from people on train station platform when Jason crouch-walks right in front of them and stops:

What an odd thing to do for a grown man.
Who's that loon over there?
Someone must be after him.
He must be up to something.
What you hoping/moving to achieve, my good man.
That's your criminal element, that is.
What's he about, then?
Looks like he's got a screw loose.
We can [all/still/???] see you, my son.
He's hiding from someone, that's for sure.
Is this some sort of strange performance artist? [you wot mate? 1868? wiki: The term "performance art" and "performance" became widely used in the 1970s, even though the history of performance in visual arts dates back to futurist productions and cabarets from the 1910s]
Is he having a laugh?
[dramatic] Shhhhh! He's hiding.
Mate? Something wrong?
Child: I'll bet he's up to no good.
Child: Peek-a-boo! I can see ya. [backs away slowly]
Child: He's in trouble ... that's why he's trying to hide.
Child: What's the matter with him I wonder.

Same train station, same crouch-walk with Evie:

Are you following me?
Bit old to be playing hide and seek, aren't we?
Hey lady, what're you hiding?
Huh! Someone's going to get quite the fright.
I hope she's not in any real trouble.
I hope she has someone to look after her.
[I see you./???] What do I get.
I wonder what she's up to.
Is she all right do you reckon? I mean in the head.
Looks like she's up to no good.
Miss? Are you hiding?
Normal people don't hide about like that.
She's an interesting one.
Someone must be after her.
Strange girl.
That's the creepiest woman I've ever seen [also while running by].
You all right, miss? Feeling faint? [just while running by].
What game is this?
What're you doing back there, miss?
What's she playing at.
Who's she hiding from, I wonder.
??? she's a bit mad.
Child: Bit old for hide and seek, ain't she?
Child: Hide and seek? So childish.
Child: I think I saw a ??? that you could hide in.
Child: She's a bit weird, that one.
Child: She's a funny one.
Child: She's a ??? if ever I saw one.
Child: What do you suppose she's doing?
Child: What you playin' at, miss.
Child: Who you hidin' from, miss.

This happens even when Evie's "invisible," which breaks immersion 100%. Invisible to enemies, randos see her (developers would probably argue that everything is lined up: they don't make comments until they're close to her, but the representation of inivisibility doesn't go away like it does if an enemy is close enough, oh it's just chaos). Similarly in Watch Dogs: Legion if you jump on a drone, which, to be honest: that is madness. Not every single character has to comment on the player's situation 24/7, especially when it doesn't comport with the world we're all supposed to be creating together in our player brains. I've read one comment complaining that the near-invisible representation itself is immersion-breaking, which, yeah.

Perhaps, instead of having a large amount of NPCs continue their little walk cycles but spouting off the same quips over and over THAT PERSON IS CRAZY etc, they could break their walk cycles to avoid the player, like it would happen in real life. Except for Evie, I mean, she becomes almost invisible so NPCs should accidentally bump into her instead of implying she's crazy. That would have added to the gameplay, you can't just go invisible on the sidewalk, etc.

Also your hired Rooks gather around your invisible ass, even if you're in the middle of a red zone trying to hunt a Templar or whatever. Instead, have them act as scouts, spreading out, sneaking when the player is sneaking ... not constantly looking at the player, crowding in. "Go away, idiots ... I'm assassinin' here." This is also a bear with the camera angle; they will crowd around close enough that sometimes the screen is almost filled with Rooks, or even just one Rook's back. Could have made the "crowd" function put them just ... a half-foot back, that would have worked a treat. Additionally, less Rooks would die to the counterweight for the lift.

I encountered these three blokes below, two of them are giving the what-for to the third. It's a looping animation, you can't interact with them/run into them/break their holds/shoot them etc. Probably got lost in the program sauce. "We'll get to them later." There's a similar thing in Watchdogs II: More Watchdogs in which people are tied up in a container and you can't open the container/do anything about it.

Why are horses outlined in yellow. Even when dead. Why can't I get close enough to turn it into a red outline ("assassinatin' zone"), if we're going to play that game. New DLC: Horsin' Around, five new exciting horse assassination missions featuring Ada Lovelace.

After finishing train robbery, Blighter spawned on train six feet away.

Ran to back of train while invisible, jumped off train; throwing knife appeared in mid-air for a few beats. Then after the train had done a complete route, went by the floating throwing knife again. Blink and your Rooks disappear, but throwing knives are forever.

I have no idea why the "warning/threat ring" is still giving you updates about enemies that are on-screen and right next to you. "Oh they're really mad," the threat rings says. "Really? I mean I am cutting his throat, so .. yeah, I guess." I'm calling this a bug because I'm petty. I don't like the threat ring. I'm turning off the threat ring.

Leap of Faith requires three keys to be hit at the same time. Either I'm just bad at this or 50% of the time it misreads and bobbles the handoff, turns you around 180 degrees.

Marking icons on the map is fiddly.

Five Rooks arrived in called carriage, most/all stuck in endless loop getting in and out of carriage. Carriage was parked on a small curb on the Thames. Moved carriage to level ground, Rooks followed player afterward.

Five Rooks arrived in called carriage, made endless large circle in intersection instead of exiting.

A Blighter got stuck on the edge of one of the train robbery cars, caught in a walking animation. Then, as the train shifted on a curve, the Blighter slid across the back edge to the other corner, still in the animation loop. It was like a "moonwalk," a popular dance sequence of the 1980s.

Rook pushed off train adopted impossible bent posture floating in mid-air, stayed with train. Seemed content with situation.

Shot a horse through the back of its carriage. Plausible, I guess.

Rooks pulled up with invisible carriage. They were also invulnerable; multiple knives into their skulls, no reaction.

During Cargo Escort while on a bridge, the last of the Blighters fell down below the bridge/wagon, and turned into the icon that indicated they had the bright idea of hijacking it. But they didn't move, staying directly below the wagon. The "you've been spotted" status never left, health was not increasing. After killing the Blighter, normal status returned, and health began increasing.

During Cargo Escort if you command your Rooks to open fire on a Train Robbery Blighter, the current mission switches to Train Robbery and Cargo Escort is no longer available even if you're driving the Cargo Escort wagon.

Rooks can go missing -- full five count, but two of them are not on the map and have been given more than enough time to report for duty. Can dismiss everyone and re-hire, but still.

Blighters/cops are excellent shots from moving/stationary carriage driver seats. Rooks are horrible at shooting Blighters/cops on moving/stationary carriage driver seats. Assuming it's a bug.

If riding on Cargo Escort wagon, the corpses of dead Rooks/Blighters will scream when they're jostled off the top of it.

When replaying missions, you may "warp in" to a mission but then immediately "warp out" to restart; it's happened four times in a row before. Usually only twice. If you cross the invisible boundary line around a replay mission while casing out an area, even just one footstep, the mission immediately "warps out" and you restart. If you have completed the mission and are running away as a way to lose the enemies and you cross a boundary line before the mission eventually gets to acknowledging that you finished the mission, the mission "warps out" and you restart. The boundaries are very tight around the active area, this wasn't really thought out at all or they didn't care or the beancounters said it was time to pack it up, who the fuck cares what the reason was.

I had a look at various photos of the time in London, and it looks like big letter signs were not used as much in Victorian London as they are in Syndicate. Certainly not like this one shown. A lot of the signs in Syndicate are generic, like "BOOKS." One of the big letter signs just reads "OFFICES." I suppose one could pretend that meant "OFFICES FOR RENT" but that's not the sort of thing you advertise with a giant metal/lit-up sign.