Following the all-too-common “rush to retail and patch it later” business plan that has practically defined the HD consoles this generation, Ubisoft has announced a day one patch for Assassin’s Creed III that they are describing as “highly recommended”.
The patch fixes 44 known bugs in the finished game. Many are fairly harmless glitches, however, there are several that could be game breaking. All the fixes are listed below but there are several spoilers in there, so you might want to just blind patch if you want to remain completely in the dark on the game’s story.
Granted Assassin’s Creed III‘s day one patch is not anywhere near the length of last week’s Medal of Honor: Warfighter patch, however, in these cases I always think about the millions of consoles out there that are not hooked up to the Internet and therefore can’t update broken games. Programming bugs are a fact of life, but publishers should be focusing on making sure that their software is as complete as possible before they start pressing discs.
Nobody is every going to catch everything, but every possible effort should be made to make sure that those who can’t download a patch can still enjoy the game they purchased. Sadly, it doesn’t look like Assassin’s Creed III is meeting that basic standard.
Bug Fix
– Animus Synching tutorial, fixed an issue where the player could think he’s stuck in an infinite loading when getting to Boston after the end credits
– Fixed a bug where counter-killing with the bow does not always work
– NPCs spawned too far away could end up being of the wrong type
– Camera could remain stuck after the player being respawned
– Player could remain stuck after diving from a waterfall
– Player could remain stuck if he exits a slopped hay stack at a certain angle
– player would always get immediately detected when performing an unarmed stealth assassination in another guard’s back
– Under rare circumstances, the crowd would stop spawning
– Fixed an animation glitch when interrupting the reception from high profile jump
– Fixed various occurrences of missing sounds
– In some cases, the Animus Database sound ambiance was not stopped when exiting
– Various stats and leaderboards were not showing up properly
– Online shop could sometimes appear empty if fetching the data from Xbox Live is taking too long
– Mission “RETURN TO ABSTERGO” – fixed a bug where the player would lose control over Desmond during a fight if he lures and kills some guards in the wrong area
– Mission “A DEADLY PERFORMANCE” – Mission would not continue if the player decides to climb the wall instead of using the ladder
– Mission “JOHNSON’S ERRAND” – fixed a bug where the game would remain stuck if the player runs during the black screen that occurs after exiting the tavern
– Mission “THE SURGEON” – Charles Lee could fall in the water and die while following the player, causing the mission to fail, if the player decides to take a certain path that involves jumping over the water
– Mission “THE SURGEON” – fixed a bug where we would show the desync effect if the player throws one of the target in the water, even though the mission is not really failed
– Mission “WELCOME TO BOSTON” – The courier side-quest next to the general store would not start properly
– Mission “EXECUTION IS EVERYTHING”, fixed a bug where the mission would not continue if the NPCs you are eavesdropping react to a dead body
– Mission “THE BRADDOCK EXPEDITION” – Mission would not continue if the player kills all enemies in the camp, killing the required target last, without triggering open conflict
– Mission “FEATHERS AND TREES” – NPC’s would not detect beams properly, preventing them from performing the trunk around move
– Mission “FEATHERS AND TREES” – Mission would not continue if the player doesn’t follow the expected path
– Mission “HUNTING LESSONS” – Mission giver could not be there if the player goes away and comes back
– Mission “SOMETHING TO REMEMBER”, fixed a bug where the screen could become all white or black for the remainder of the mission if the player set his brightness option to anything else than the default value
– Mission “ON JOHNSON’S TRAIL”, fixed a bug that could cause the optional objective “Use powder kegs to destroy smuggled cargo” to not be saved properly if the player reloads during the mission
– Mission “THE TEA PARTY” – Optional objective “Dump crates of tea in the water” could not be completed if the player threw all crates before having killed all guards
– Mission “THE MIDNIGHT RIDE” – Mission could not be completed if the player interacts with the delivery quest giver along the way
– Mission “BRIDEWELL PRISON”, Player could remain stuck prison cells
– Mission “PUBLIC EXECUTION” – Crowd NPCs could be spawned in or walk through a cart during a cinematic
– Mission “SOMETHING ON THE SIDE” – Optional objective “Perform a successful static eavesdrop” could not be completed.
– Mission “MISSING SUPPLIES” – Optional objective “Do not hide in the hay cart while following the convoy” not being saved properly if the game is reloaded during second part of the missionCrash Fix
– Possible crash that could happen if the player blends in a crowd group where some NPCs haven’t spawned yet, and while blended performs a kill.
– Possible crash that could happen if the player triggered a loading while being in a covert escort formation with his brotherhood trainees
– Possble crash that could happen when calling a brotherhood trainee with the snipe abilityNaval Mission
– “OAK ISLAND” – Player could pass through the ground when diving into the cave
– “OAK ISLAND” – Wolves could stop attacking the player and remain stuck
– Possible crash if the player spams the swivel guns with the semi-automatic cheat enabledHomestead
– Mission “HAPPY EXPECTATIONS” – Game could remain stuck on a white screen when starting the mission
– On the Homestead, fixed a bug where the player could remain stuck if he performs a corner pose on the left side of Norris’ cave’s entranceSide Quest
– Brawler Challenges 3 – Task “Own every weapon available in the stores” would not complete when the player expects it to.
– Fort Monmouth and Fort Division – Quest objectives would fail too early without the fort resetting properly
– New York delivery mission – Game asked for a different item (deer heart) than what was showed to the player (venison)
– New York Liberation Missions – Possible that the game would wrongly display that 2 of the districts were completely liberated when it’s not the case yet
Source: Ubisoft, via Destructiod