Flagging Energy
by Lorna
After a long few weeks, Assassin’s Creed is over. Despite thoroughly enjoying the game, I can’t say I’m not relieved, but only as far as the flags go. The Assassin’s Creed flags are something that I have always heard about but never really known much about or experienced…until now. Now I understand the reasons for the bitterness and frustrated rants, and sadly, can see why some gamers have allowed the rest of a good game to become tainted. They are a bastard. Even with maps. They are especially irksome if, like I did, you breeze through the first portion of the game, snatching up a few flags here and there and slaying random Templars without marking them off or taking note. I now shudder at my offhand ‘I’ll just remember’ remarks while I was too busy spilling tea over the carpet or stuffing birthday cake to pay much attention.
I paid for it. Later on, come flag collecting time, my blasé approach blew up spectacularly in my face when I finally began diligently scouring the Kingdom for the flags with a map from Assassinscreed-maps.com, marking them off as I went. At first, all seemed to go well. It was with a weary grin that I got to the last unchecked flag location on my map, sprinted to the spot…and found nothing. It was gone. It seemed that I had already collected it. This left me with a nerve shredding 99/100 flags, no achievement, and every spot checked off my bedraggled printout map.
The first thought for anyone upon discovering that hours of hard work have been wasted
So, after my initial scream of rage, I took some headache tabs with several deep breaths and with gritted teeth, began to backtrack, checking and triple checking locations where perhaps I had missed one and mistakenly marked it off. After many hours spread over several evenings, I had to give up. I was starting to second guess myself by going back repeatedly to areas which I knew I had been to, rather like the way people will insist on drifting forlornly back to the table where they are sure they left their keys or mobile, despite having checked it half a dozen times already.
From the incredible resource of assassinscreed-maps.com
One flag (possibly 91, since I never scooped it up unless it was backed into during a scrap) was either glitched or had been overlooked…either way, I would be better served by starting again and marking them off in order as I went – at least this way I would know whether I had actually found them. This, alas, was not as easy as simply getting past the tutorial and diving in as I had first thought, since the famous central pillar flag in the old ruins can only be reached by both an almighty jump and using the grab technique to catch the lip. Only you don’t unlock the grab technique until memory block 4, so I had to play through the game again until that point. Only I didn’t…
You see, my sad tale didn’t end with just a missing flag, but somewhere along the way, I had also missed a Templar in the kingdom in all my jaunty wanderings. So in order to takedown all the Templars again, including the missing one, I needed access to every area in the city - which meant doing all the assassinations again bar the last (thank fuck). I was basically replaying the entire game, albeit at a speedrun without doing all the fiddly bits. It’s a good thing I enjoyed it otherwise I would perhaps have committed suicide with a Slanket. So off I went. At memory block 4, with a cup of tea and Neurofen to hand, I began my flag hunt. The relief when I finally snagged the last with no problems was immense and my grin would have put Tim Curry to shame.
beautiful
With that sweet victory behind me, only the last few Templars remained, and after a few assassinations later, they too fell beneath my swift blade and the achievement was mine. Alright, so the last one fell off a roof chasing me and died, somewhat robbing me of my moment, but by this time, I was so weary that I couldn’t complain, which for me is bloody rare.
So it is done. Altair’s story is sadly over, the last achievements have been collected and displayed on my little piece of the dashboard, and a deserved donation made to the creator of assassinscreed-maps.com, because without his hard work, myself and countless others would have been, for want of a better word, screwed. Now the disk has been safely tucked away and the Neurofen retired (for now), I know what everyone was whinging about and can nod sagely when the word ‘flag’ is hissed through gritted teeth in gaming circles. However, I won’t let such a mammoth collection task and a few self-induced problems taint what is a wonderful game as others perhaps have, because to do so would be as shameful and short sighted as not marking off flags when you collect them. Indeed. Who would do such a thing…answers on a Slanket.
Last five articles by Lorna
- Flagging Heart
- Where Have All the Hours Gone?
- I Heart... Overlord
- Life Goes On: Done to Death - Review
- Welcome to Spoilerville, Please Despise Your Stay
Kudos to you! I just don’t have the patience for this kind of thing :/ Saying that I did go and find all the Riddler stuff in Batman so perhaps I could crumble to an obsessive hunt!
When I started my flag and templar hunt it was from my previously completed game. I chose the kingdom to start with, not realising the size of the map. I had 55 flags collected from when I played the game some time ago. I used the same map you displayed above until very early in the double digits. It just wasn’t detailed enough as so I went to Youtube.
There, I found a video guide for the kingdom with Altair running from flag to flag and picking off any templara along the way. The video started it was to be used in conjunction with the maps but it wasn’t necessary. I’m glad I started with the kingdom as the other flags were in the cities and therefore a smaller map, with the bonus of being split into the areas of wealth.
The flags never tainted my view of the game, what did however, was how the game ended. The story was unfinished, I know this is because the story was planned as a trilogy, but to have your captors walk out of the room and be left to either wander the room or go back flag hunting in the animus didn’t feel like an end to me.
Nice write Doodette!! (as ever!)
I’ve been toying with the idea of getting the first Assassin’s Creed :o) I may still do as it appeals a lot!!
No I’ve been forewarned about flags I’ll most likely just blunder along in my own inimitable fashion and get a way through and let the Meh take over!! hehe
It’s not put me off though so that’s a good thing :oD
With the first game coming in at about a tenner now, it is a fantastic buy and I highly recommend it!
I think I’ll need to follow your example with the neurofen, as the last time I attempted a flag run I suffered a migraine before I even got a quarter of the way through tha damn things.
kudos on your utter perseverance… I’m impressed.
Good utter god. What you just described has brought me out in a cold sweat. I had a look at the maps for the flags and the Templars. I tried to use the map for the first section of the game, to get the first 20 flags. And when I could not find the last flag, after a mammoth THREE HOUR SESSION, I just thought, this is not meant to be.
But I got that bug with the pigeons in GTA IV. That had become an obsession and I made the familiar mistake of picking some pigeons off, during the normal course of the game, without any thought as to the problems it might cause later. And it caused problems later.
If you have never bothered to sit down to collect a humungous amount of collectibles, you will not know the pain of getting ot the end of a list and finding that you have found 199 out of 200 pigeons. In a digitised city which apparently is something ridiculous like 200 square miles in size. And having missed a single pigeon is enough to drive a man insane. When I got to that part, I let out a torrent of swear words that Penilee did not even knew existed. But I just had to start again.
And don’t even get me started on Crackdown and those bloody orbs. My biggest failure in mygaming life.
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Oh hi Lorna, welcome to my pain, I’ve saved you a seat.
This fucking game…. I swear it took about 10hrs to beat the story mode and then another 30 to do all the fucking maps. Black flags hidden in shadows… who’s fucking idea was that?
Well I asked the Fragdoll-esque Ubisoft rep at a retro event and she said that the producer (Mr Cunty McCuntcunt) put them in as a joke. Hngggghhhh.
I wrote a thing about this too…
http://www.peoww.co.uk/achievements-whore-asscreed-immune-deficiency-syndrome/
“Completing the game without doing the side quests takes just a few hours but I still had to complete the second worst type of achievement ‘Collect all the *insert bastard items here*’. In AssCreed, these items are flags. There are four hundred and twenty of them. The are mostly black, two-dimensional like Parappa The Rapper and the gameworld is enormous. Pins. Haystacks. Cunts. Cuntstacks.”
The flags are back in Brotherhood Lorna, I’m so very sorry
I had a problem like this with gta4, I was one chuffin pigeon shy of 100% back when rockstar were send everybody with the 100% achievement a key to the city, I looked everywhere for weeks bit no joy
then two days after the contest closed I seen it, sat on the roof, across from the safe house in broker. Mad was I.