Video games are often filled with incredible journeys, near-impossible achievements and epic quests. It’s part of their appeal. And then you have the missions in the game that got signed off at 6pm on a Friday evening because everyone wanted to go home.
Assassin’s Creed 3 has a Homestead Mission called ‘Silk Errand’ that falls firmly into the latter class.
It’s not like this at all. (Image sourced from: Wikipedia)
Having invited seamstress Ellen to your fledging community, the first task she sets you is to recover the bolts of silk she left with her awful husband back in New York.
Okay, no problems. Arriving in New York, you send Connor to the marked location, where Ellen’s ex-husband is drunkenly stumbling around harassing passers-by for news on his wife. Seeing Connor the husband… runs away.
Okay, that’s fair enough and he shows more brains in that moment than 90% of Connor’s potential opponents.
So you’re left trying to find the silk. You’re told to find the empty crate, which is on the other side of a fence. ‘Analysing’ this clue, Connor’s mystic Assassin Sense sees through time to when the husband found the highly valuable bolts of silk.
At this point, I’m seeing the next steps as having to chase the husband, or tail him until he leads you to his stash, or having to go a shop and barter for them, or something that would make me feel appropriately badass Assassin.
Instead, the husband throws the bolt of silk over the fence into the yard you just came from. Returning that yard, you can see the bolt of silk lying there, apparently completely missed by Connor’s eagle eyesight the first time despite walking right past that spot.
Great detective work there Connor. It’s my second favourite bit of useless errand-ing in this title, just behind Norris’ “women, how do they work?” Homestead storyline.
A video of the mission is below.
World Class Villains 
yes, it feels exaclty like Friday afternoon work.
On sidenote, I have AC2 to play, but … neither gamepad, nor kb+mouse work good for me. Both feel clunky. And the story doesn’t seem too good either to actually put up with controls. Parkour bits are killing me.
Too bad.
I enjoy the AC games. Even AC3, which is meant to be the weakest game in the series to date, had a number of things I enjoyed. Being a ship’s captain was fun. Having to wait for half the game before you really get started and dealing with psychic British soldiers on missions where any detection was a failure wasn’t.
But I completely get the issues with this series. If you want to see what happens in the game, just watch some YouTube videos.