This program unpacks Playstation 3 Theme files (.p3t) so that you can touch-up an existing theme to your likings or use a certain wallpaper from it (as many themes have multiple). But remember, if you use content from another theme and release it, be sure to give credit!
Download p3textractor.zip from above. Extract the files to a folder with a program such as WinZip or WinRAR. Now there are multiple ways to extract the theme.
The first way is to simply open the p3t file with p3textractor.exe. If you don’t know how to do this, right click the p3t file and select Open With. Alternatively, open the p3t file and it will ask you to select a program to open with. Click Browse and find p3textractor.exe from where you previously extracted it to. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename]. After that, all you need to do for any future p3t files is open them and it will extract.
The second way is very simple. Just drag the p3t file to p3textractor.exe. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename].
For the third way, first put the p3t file you want to extract into the same folder as p3textractor.exe. Open CMD and browse to the folder with p3extractor.exe. Enter the following: p3textractor filename.p3t [destination path]Replace filename with the name of the p3t file, and replace [destination path] with the name of the folder you want the files to be extracted to. A destination path is not required. By default it will extract to extracted.filename.
The development of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune began in 2005, and saw Naughty Dog altering their approach to development, as they sought to create a humanized video game that was distinct from their other entries, settling on an action-adventure game with platforming elements and a third-person perspective. The team regularly updated or wholly changed various aspects related to the story, coding, and the game's design which lead to delays. The development team found influence for many of the game's aesthetic elements from film, pulp magazines, and movie serials.
Extensively marketed as a PlayStation exclusive, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune received generally favorable reviews, with praise for its technical achievements, cast, characters, story, music, and production values, drawing similarities to blockbuster films. It faced some criticism for its graphical issues, short length, vehicle sections, and marked difficulty. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune sold one million copies after ten weeks of release. It was followed by the sequel Uncharted 2: Among Thieves in 2009, and was re-released on PlayStation 4 as part of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection.
Treasure hunter Nathan "Nate" Drake, accompanied by reporter Elena Fisher, recovers the coffin of his self-proclaimed ancestor Sir Francis Drake, having located it from coordinates inscribed on a family heirloom: a ring Nate wears around his neck.[4] The coffin contains Sir Francis' diary, which gives the location of El Dorado. Pirates attack and destroy Nate's boat, but Nate's friend and mentor, Victor "Sully" Sullivan, rescues the two in his seaplane. Fearing Elena's reporting will attract potential rivals, Nate and Sully abandon her at a dock.
Nate and Sully discover an alcove that once held a large statue after following the diary to the indicated spot, and realize that El Dorado is not a city but rather a golden idol.[5] They find a NaziU-boat, which contains a page from Drake's diary showing the statue was taken to an island. However, mercenaries led by criminal Gabriel Roman (Simon Templeman), to whom Sully owes a substantial debt, and his lieutenant Atoq Navarro (Robin Atkin Downes), intercept Nate and Sully. Sully is shot in the chest and collapses, but Nate manages to escape, encounters Elena, and flies with her to the island.[6]
On the way, anti-aircraft fire forces Elena and Nate to bail out and they are separated. After retrieving supplies from the wrecked seaplane, Nate heads toward an old fort to find Elena. After Nate is briefly captured by pirates led by his old associate Eddy Raja (James Sie), Elena breaks him free and they flee to the island's old customs house. After finding records showing the statue was moved further inland to the monastery, they find that Sully is somehow alive and accompanying Roman and Navarro.[7] Nate and Elena find and rescue Sully who, having survived due to Drake's diary blocking the bullet, explains he was buying time for Nate by misleading Roman.
Searching through a mausoleum, Nate overhears an argument between Roman, Navarro, and Eddy, revealing that Roman hired Eddy to capture Nate and secure the island, with the reward being a share of El Dorado. Following Nate's escape, Roman doubts Eddy's abilities and ignores his claim that something cursed on the island is killing his men, leading him to dismiss Eddy and his crew. Regrouping, Nate and Elena find a passage leading to a treasure vault, in which they find the body of Drake, assuming that he died searching for the treasure. They encounter a terrified Eddy and a crew member, shortly before they are attacked by mutated humans who kill the crew member; despite Nate's efforts, Eddy is also killed when one drags him into a pit.
Nate and Elena escape and find themselves in an abandoned German bunker. Venturing into the base, Nate discovers that the Germans had sought the statue during World War II, but like the Spaniards before them, became cursed by the statue, causing them to become mutants. Sir Francis, knowing of the statue's power, attempted to keep it on the island by destroying the ships and flooding the city, before he too was killed by the mutants.[8]
Nate returns to find Elena has been captured by Roman and Navarro. Regrouping with Sully, he fails to stop them from reaching the statue. Navarro, aware of the curse, tricks Roman into opening the statue, revealing it to be a sarcophagus containing a mummy infected with an airborne mutagenic virus. Upon Roman turning into one of the mutants, Navarro kills him and takes control of his men. Berating Nate's group for not being imaginative, he plans to sell the virus as a biological weapon.[9] Nate jumps onto the sarcophagus and rides it as it is airlifted onto a boat in the bay. He engages and defeats Navarro and manages to sink both the sarcophagus and him to the bottom of the ocean.[10] Sully arrives, and after Nate and Elena display affection towards each other, they leave the island with several chests of treasure.[11]
During combat, the player as Nate (left) can use corners and walls as cover, then use blind or aimed fire from cover against his opponents.
Gameplay in Uncharted is a combination of action-adventure gameplay elements and some 3D platforming with a third-person perspective. Platforming elements allow Nate to jump, swim, grab and move along ledges, climb and swing from ropes, and perform other acrobatic actions that allow players to make their way along the ruins in the various areas of the island that Drake explores.[12]
When facing enemies, the player can either use melee and combo attacks at close range to take out foes or can opt to use weapons.[12] Melee attacks comprise a variety of single punches, while combo attacks are activated through specific sequences of button presses that, when timed correctly, offer much greater damage; the most damaging of these is the specific "brutal combo", which forces enemies to drop twice the ammunition they would normally leave.[12] Nate can only carry one pistol and one rifle at a time, and there is a limited amount of ammunition per gun. Picking up a different firearm switches that weapon for the new one. Grenades are also available at certain points, and the height of the aiming arc is adjusted by tilting the Sixaxis controller up or down. These third-person perspective elements were compared by several reviewers to Gears of War,[3][12] in that the player can have Drake take cover behind walls, and use either blind fire or aimed fire to kill enemies. In common with the aforementioned game, Uncharted lacks an actual on-screen health bar; instead, when the player takes damage, the graphics begin to lose color. While resting or taking cover for a brief period, Drake's health level, indicated by the screen color, returns to normal.[12]
The game also includes vehicle sections, where Drake must protect the jeep he and Elena are in using a mounted turret, and where Drake and Elena ride a jet ski along water-filled routes while avoiding enemy fire and explosive barrels. While players direct Drake in driving the jet ski, they may also control Elena by aiming the gun in order to use her weapon — either the grenade launcher or the Beretta, depending on the chapter — in defense, or to clear the barrels from their path.[12]
The game also features reward points, which can be gained by collecting 60 hidden treasures in the game that glimmer momentarily[13] or by completing certain accomplishments, such as achieving a number of kills using a specific weapon, performing a number of headshots, or using specific methods of killing enemies.[14] In subsequent playthroughs of the game, the player can use these rewards points to unlock special options; these include in-game bonuses such as alternate costumes and unlimited ammunition[13] but also non-game extras, such as making-of videos and concept art.[15] There are also several references to other Naughty Dog games, especially the Jak and Daxter series; this is done through the "Ottsel" branding on Drake and Fisher's wetsuits,[16] a reference to the species that mixes otter and weasel found in the game, and the strange relic found in one of the earlier chapters, which is actually a precursor orb from the same series.
The game is censored when playing on a Japanese console to remove blood, which normally appears when shooting enemies; this follows the trend of other censored console games in the region, such as Dead Rising and Resistance: Fall of Man.[17]
After completing Jak 3, Naughty Dog assembled their most technically talented staff members and began development of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune under the codename Big.[18][19] The game's development commenced in 2005 and it was in full production for about two years, with a small team of engineers working on the game for about a year beforehand.[20] Naughty Dog decided to create a brand new IP rather than opt to develop a PlayStation 3 Jak and Daxter game—they wanted to create a franchise suitable for the new hardware, in order to develop such ideas as realistic human characters instead of stylized ones owing to limitations of previous hardware, as well as create something "fresh and interesting", although termed as 'stylized realism'.[20] Inspiration was drawn from various sources in the action and adventure genres: pulp magazines, movie serials, and more contemporary titles like Indiana Jones and National Treasure.[21] The team felt the sources shared themes of mystery and "what-if scenarios" that romanticized adventure and aimed to include those in Uncharted.[18]
A platforming segment, showing Nathan attempting to scale the outer walls of the Fortress
The game was first unveiled at E3 2006.[22] From early previews of the game, inevitable comparisons of elements such as platforming and shooting between Uncharted and the well-known Tomb Raider series were drawn, earning the title the nickname of "Dude Raider".[21][23] However, the developers saw their game as concentrating more on third-person cover-based play, in contrast to Tomb Raider's "auto-aiming" play and greater puzzle-solving elements.[20] Other influences they cited include Resident Evil 4,[24]Kill Switch, and Gears of War.[25] Throughout the game's development the staff tried to remain flexible and detached from the original design concepts; attention was focused on the features that worked well, while features that did not work were removed.[26] The development team intended the game's main setting, the island, to play a big role in the overall experience. Feeling too many games used bleak, dark settings with monochromatic color schemes, they wanted the island to be a vibrant, believable game world that immersed the player and encouraged exploration.[18]
In designing the characters, the artists aimed for a style that was photorealistic.[21] The creators envisioned the main protagonist, Nathan Drake, as more of an everyman character than Lara Croft, shown as clearly under stress in the game's many firefights, with no special training and constantly living at the edge of his abilities.[20][23] Director Amy Hennig felt a heavily armored, "tough as nails" protagonist with a large weapon was not a suitable hero and decided a "tenacious and resourceful" character would portray more human qualities. Supporting characters (Elena Fisher and Victor Sullivan) were included to avoid a dry and emotionless story.[21] Fisher's character underwent changes during development; in early trailers for the game, the character had dark brown hair, but ultimately the color changed to blonde and the style was altered.[27][28] The writing of the story was led by Hennig with help from Neil Druckmann and Josh Scherr.[29] The lead game designer was Richard Lemarchand,[30] with the game co-designed by Hirokazu Yasuhara, a former Sega game designer best known for designing the early Sonic the Hedgehog games.[31]
The game went gold in the middle of October 2007.[20] A demo was then released on November 8 on the PlayStation Network[32] before its final release on November 19 in North America, December 6 in Australia, and December 7 in Europe.[33] The demo was first placed on the North American store, and was initially region-locked such that it would only play on a North American PS3,[34] but this was later confirmed as a mistake, as the developers were apparently unaware that people from different regions could sign up for a North American account and download the demo; a region-free demo was released soon after.[35]
Uncharted uses the Cell microprocessor to generate dozens of layered character animations to portray realistic expressions and fluid movements, which allow for responsive player control.[36] The PlayStation 3's graphics processing unit, the RSX Reality Synthesizer, employed several functions to provide graphical details that helped immerse the player into the game world: lighting models, pixel shaders, dynamic real-time shadowing, and advanced water simulation.[36] The new hardware allowed for processes that the team had never used in PlayStation 2 game development and required them to quickly familiarize themselves with the new techniques; for example, parallel processing and pixel shaders. While Blu-ray afforded greater storage space, the team became concerned with running out of room several times — Uncharted used more and bigger textures than previous games, and included several languages on the disc.[37] Gameplay elements requiring motion sensing, such as throwing grenades and walking across beams, or rear-ending massive logs up the scooter, were implemented to take advantage of the Sixaxis controller.[18] A new PlayStation 3 controller, the DualShock 3, was unveiled at the 2007 Tokyo Game Show, and featured force feedback vibration. Uncharted was also on display at the show with demonstrations that implemented limited support for vibration.[38]
Being Naughty Dog's first PlayStation 3 game, the project required the company to familiarize themselves with the new hardware and resulted in several development mistakes.[37] The switch from developing for the PlayStation 2 to the PlayStation 3 prompted the staff to implement changes to their development technology. Naughty Dog switched to the industry standard language C++ to participate in technology sharing among Sony's first-party developers—the company had previously used their own proprietary programming languageGOAL, a Lisp-based language. In rewriting their game code, they decided to create new programming tools as well. This switch, however, delayed the team's progress in developing a prototype, as the new tools proved to be unreliable and too difficult to use. Ten months into full production, the team decided to recreate the game's pipeline, the chain of processing elements designed to progress data through a system. In retrospect, Naughty Dog's Co-President Evan Wells considered this the greatest improvement to the project.[26] Additionally, the animation blending system was rewritten several times to obtain the desired character animations.[18]
The game was patched on August 4, 2008 in Europe and North America to version 1.01 to include support for the PlayStation 3's Trophy system.[39] There are 47 trophies in the game that match the medals that can already be won in the game and one further trophy, the Platinum trophy, awarded when all other trophies have been collected; Uncharted was the first Naughty Dog game to include the Platinum trophy type.[40] Similar to other PlayStation 3 titles that receive trophy support via downloaded patches, players must start a new save game to be awarded trophies, regardless of how many medals they received in previous playthroughs. This was enforced because the developers wanted to avoid the sharing of save data in order to gain trophies they did not earn.[41] The patch was described as "incredibly easy" to implement, owing to the game already containing preliminary support for Trophies via its Medals system; it was also stated that these hooks were already included due to Naughty Dog's belief that Sony would roll out the Trophy system before the game's launch in November 2007.[41] Despite mentioning that the game was developed as a franchise and that it lent itself to episodic content,[20] it was later stated that no downloadable content would be made for Uncharted.[42]
During the Closed Beta of PlayStation Home on October 11, 2008, Naughty Dog released an Uncharted themed game space for PlayStation Home. This space is "Sully's Bar" from the game. In this space, users can play an arcade mini-game called "Mercenary Madness", which during the Closed Beta, there were rewards. The rewards were removed with the release of the Home Open Beta. There are also three other rooms in this space: during the Closed Beta, users had to find out codes for the doors that accessed these rooms. The code entry to the rooms was also removed with the release of the Home Open Beta. The three other rooms are the "Artifact Room", "Archives", and "Smuggler's Den". There is an artifact viewer in the Archives and Smuggler's Den rooms. Also in the Archives, there is a video screen that previews Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The Artifact Room only features seating and different artifacts for users to look at. This space was one of the first five-game spaces of the PlayStation Home Open Beta in North America, which Home went Open Beta on December 11.[43] This space was released to the European version on November 5, 2009, almost a year after the Open Beta release. Naughty Dog has also released a game space for Uncharted's sequel on October 23, making Uncharted the first game series to have a game space for both games in its series.[44]
Best Action Game (2007), PS3 Game of the Year (2007), Best Graphics Technology (PS3 2007), Best Original Score (PS3 2007)[51]
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune received generally favorable reviews from game critics.[45]Game Informer complimented the visuals and dialogue between the characters Drake and Fisher, calling them stunning and entertaining respectively.[28] They further added that the production values appeared high, citing the level of detail and musical score.[52]PlayStation Magazine echoed similar statements about the visuals and compared them to that of Crysis.[18][53]
The overall presentation of the game received unanimous praise from critics, who recognized the game's high production values, describing them as "top-notch",[54] "incredible"[15] or comparing them to those found in Hollywood.[14] When combined with the overall style of the game, this led many reviewers to compare Uncharted to summer blockbuster films,[3][55][56] with the action and theme of the game drawing comparisons to the Indiana Jones film series and Tomb Raider.[15][55] As part of the presentation, the game's story and atmosphere were also received well.[3][55] The depth of the characters was praised, each having "their own tone".[55] The voice acting was also received well, as the cast "nails its characterizations"; overall, the voice acting was described as a "big-star performance",[14] "superb"[56] and "stellar".[3] Game designer Tim Schafer, well known as the creator of the early LucasArts adventure games such as The Secret of Monkey Island, has also lauded the game, saying he "liked it a lot", and jokingly thanked it for teaching him a new fashion tip (Nathan Drake's "half-tucked" shirt).[57]
The technical achievements in creating this presentation were also lauded. The graphics and visuals were a big part of this, including appreciation of the "lush" jungle environments,[3][12][15] with lighting effects greatly adding to them.[56] The game's water effects were also appreciated.[54] Overall, many reviewers commented that, at the time, it was one of the best-looking PlayStation 3 games available.[48] Further to the graphical aspects, both facial animation and the animation of characters,[16][56] such as Nate's "fluid" animations as he performs platforming sections were noted,[3] although the wilder animations of enemies reacting to being shot were over-animated "to perhaps a laug
This program unpacks Playstation 3 Theme files (.p3t) so that you can touch-up an existing theme to your likings or use a certain wallpaper from it (as many themes have multiple). But remember, if you use content from another theme and release it, be sure to give credit!
Download p3textractor.zip from above. Extract the files to a folder with a program such as WinZip or WinRAR. Now there are multiple ways to extract the theme.
The first way is to simply open the p3t file with p3textractor.exe. If you don’t know how to do this, right click the p3t file and select Open With. Alternatively, open the p3t file and it will ask you to select a program to open with. Click Browse and find p3textractor.exe from where you previously extracted it to. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename]. After that, all you need to do for any future p3t files is open them and it will extract.
The second way is very simple. Just drag the p3t file to p3textractor.exe. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename].
For the third way, first put the p3t file you want to extract into the same folder as p3textractor.exe. Open CMD and browse to the folder with p3extractor.exe. Enter the following: p3textractor filename.p3t [destination path]Replace filename with the name of the p3t file, and replace [destination path] with the name of the folder you want the files to be extracted to. A destination path is not required. By default it will extract to extracted.filename.
This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Compilation. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.
Pearl Jam is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. The band's lineup consists of founding members Jeff Ament (bass guitar), Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), Mike McCready (lead guitar), and Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar), as well as Matt Cameron (drums), who joined in 1998. Keyboardist Boom Gaspar has also been a touring/session member with the band since 2002. Former members include Dave Krusen (an original member), Matt Chamberlain, Dave Abbruzzese, and Jack Irons, all of whom were the band's drummers from 1990 to 1998. Pearl Jam has outsold and outlasted many of its contemporaries from the early 1990s, and is considered one of the most influential bands from that decade,[1] dubbed "the most popular American rock and roll band of the '90s".[2]
Formed after the demise of Gossard and Ament's previous bands, Green River and Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream with their debut album, Ten, in 1991. Ten stayed on the Billboard200 chart for nearly five years, and has gone on to become one of the highest-selling rock records ever, going 13× Platinum in the United States. Released in 1993, Pearl Jam's second album, Vs., sold over 950,000 copies in its first week of release, setting the record for most copies of an album sold in its first week of release at the time. Their third album, Vitalogy (1994), became the second-fastest-selling CD in history at the time, with more than 877,000 units sold in its first week.
One of the key bands in the grunge movement of the early 1990s, Pearl Jam's members often shunned popular music industry practices such as making music videos or participating in interviews. The band had also sued Ticketmaster, claiming it had monopolized the concert-ticket market. In 2006, Rolling Stone described the band as having "spent much of the past decade deliberately tearing apart their own fame".[3]
Pearl Jam had sold more than 85million albums worldwide by 2018, including nearly 32million albums in the United States by 2012,[4] making them one of the best-selling bands of all time. Pearl Jam was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017 in its first year of eligibility.[5] They were ranked eighth in a readers' poll by Rolling Stone magazine in its "Top Ten Live Acts of All Time" issue.[6] Throughout its career, the band has also promoted wider social and political issues, such as abortion rights sentiments and opposition to George W. Bush's presidency. Vedder acts as the band's spokesman on these issues.
Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament were members of Seattle-based grunge band Green River during the mid-1980s. Green River toured and recorded to moderate success, but disbanded in 1987 due to a stylistic division between the pair and bandmates Mark Arm and Steve Turner.[7]
In late 1987, Gossard and Ament began playing with Malfunkshun vocalist Andrew Wood, eventually organizing the band Mother Love Bone. In 1988 and 1989, the band recorded and toured to increasing interest. PolyGram signed the band in early 1989. Mother Love Bone's debut album, Apple, was released in July 1990, four months after Wood died of a heroin overdose.[8]
Ament and Gossard were devastated by the death of Wood and the resulting demise of Mother Love Bone. Gossard spent his time afterwards writing material that was harder-edged than what he had been doing previously.[9] After a few months, Gossard started practicing with fellow Seattle guitarist Mike McCready, whose band, Shadow, had broken up; McCready in turn encouraged Gossard to reconnect with Ament.[3] After practicing for a while, the trio sent out a five-song demo tape in order to find a singer and a drummer. They gave former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons the demo to see if he would be interested in joining the band and to distribute the demo to anyone he felt might fit the lead vocal position.[9]
Irons passed on the invitation but gave the demo to his friend Eddie Vedder.[10] Vedder was the lead vocalist for the San Diego band Bad Radio and worked part-time at a gas station. He listened to the tape shortly before going surfing, where lyrics came to him.[9] He then recorded the vocals to three of the songs ("Alive", "Once", and "Footsteps") in what he later described as a "mini-opera" titled Mamasan.[11] Vedder sent the tape with his vocals back to the three Seattle musicians, who were impressed enough to fly Vedder up to Seattle for an audition. Within a week, Vedder had joined the band.[9]
With the addition of Dave Krusen on drums, the band took the name Mookie Blaylock, in reference to the then-active basketball player.[12] The band played its first official show at the Off Ramp Café in Seattle on October 22, 1990.[13] They opened for Alice in Chains at the Moore Theatre in Seattle on December 22, 1990,[14] and served as the opening act for the band's Facelift tour in 1991.[15][16] Mookie Blaylock soon signed to Epic Records and renamed themselves Pearl Jam.[2] In an early promotional interview, Vedder said that the name "Pearl Jam" was a reference to his great-grandmother Pearl, who was married to a Native American and had a special recipe for peyote-laced jam.[17] In a 2006 cover story for Rolling Stone, Vedder admitted that this story was "total bullshit", but added that he did have a great-grandmother named Pearl. Ament and McCready explained that Ament came up with "pearl", and that the band later settled on Pearl Jam after attending a Neil Young concert in which he extended his songs as improvisations (i.e. "jams") of 15–20 minutes in length.[3]
Pearl Jam entered Seattle's London Bridge Studios in March 1991 to record its debut album Ten.[18] McCready said that "Ten was mostly Stone and Jeff; Eddie and I were along for the ride at that time."[19] Krusen left the band in May 1991 after checking himself into rehabilitation for alcoholism;[20] he was replaced by Matt Chamberlain, who previously played with Edie Brickell & New Bohemians. After playing only a handful of shows, one of which was filmed for the "Alive" video, Chamberlain left to join the band for Saturday Night Live.[12] Chamberlain suggested Dave Abbruzzese as his replacement. Abbruzzese joined the group and played the rest of Pearl Jam's live shows supporting Ten.[12]
Released on August 27, 1991, Ten (named after Mookie Blaylock's jersey number)[17] contained 11 tracks dealing with dark subjects like depression, suicide, loneliness, and murder. Ten's musical style, influenced by classic rock, combined an "expansive harmonic vocabulary" with an anthemic sound.[21] The album was slow to sell, but by the second half of 1992 it became a breakthrough success, being certified gold and reaching number two on the Billboard charts.[18]Ten produced the hit singles "Alive", "Even Flow", and "Jeremy". Originally interpreted as an anthem by many,[9] Vedder later revealed that "Alive" tells the semi-autobiographical tale of a son discovering that his father is actually his stepfather, and his mother's grief turns her to sexually embrace her son, who strongly resembles the biological father. In this lyric, even though Vedder originally looked at "being alive as a curse", as the sadness the speaker in the song suggests, "But as fans quickly turned the title phrase into a self-empowering anthem", particularly at Pearl Jam concerts, Vedder said: "they lifted the curse. The audience changed the meaning for me", he told VH1 Storytellers in 2006.[22]
The song "Jeremy" and its accompanying video were inspired by a true story in which a high school student shot himself in front of his classmates.[23]Ten stayed on the Billboard charts for nearly five years, going 13× platinum.[24]
With the success of Ten, Pearl Jam became a key member of the Seattle grunge explosion, along with Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Soundgarden. The band was criticized in the music press; British music magazine NME wrote that Pearl Jam was "trying to steal money from young alternative kids' pockets".[25]
Pearl Jam toured relentlessly in support of Ten. Ament stated that "essentially Ten was just an excuse to tour", adding: "We told the record company, 'We know we can be a great band, so let's just get the opportunity to get out and play.'"[26] The band's manager Kelly Curtis stated: "Once people came and saw them live, this lightbulb would go on. Doing their first tour, you kind of knew it was happening and there was no stopping it."[19] Early on in Pearl Jam's career, the band became known for its intense live performances. Looking back at this time, Vedder said that "playing music and then getting a shot at making a record and at having an audience and stuff, it's just like an untamed force... But it didn't come from jock mentality. It came from just being let out of the gates."[27]
The band members grew uncomfortable with their success, with much of the burden of Pearl Jam's popularity falling on frontman Vedder.[9] While Pearl Jam received four awards at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards for its video for "Jeremy", including Video of the Year and Best Group Video, the band refused to make a video for "Black" in spite of pressure from the label. This action began a trend of the band refusing to make videos for its songs. Vedder felt that the concept of music videos robbed listeners from creating their own interpretations of the song, stating that "Before music videos first came out, you'd listen to a song with headphones on, sitting in a beanbag chair with your eyes closed, and you'd come up with your own visions, these things that came from within. Then all of a sudden, sometimes even the first time you heard a song, it was with these visual images attached, and it robbed you of any form of self-expression."[32] "Ten years from now", Ament said, "I don't want people to remember our songs as videos."[9]
Pearl Jam headed into the studio in early 1993 facing the challenge of following up the commercial success of its debut. McCready said: "The band was blown up pretty big and everything was pretty crazy."[33] Released on October 19, 1993, Pearl Jam's second album, Vs., sold 950,378 copies in its first week of release and outperformed all other entries in the Billboard top ten that week combined.[34] The album set the record for most copies of an album sold in its first week of release, which it held until broken by Garth Brooks' 1998 album Double Live.[35]Vs. included the singles "Go", "Daughter", "Animal", and "Dissident". Paul Evans of Rolling Stone stated: "Few American bands have arrived more clearly talented than this one did with Ten; and Vs. tops even that debut." He added: "Like Jim Morrison and Pete Townshend, Vedder makes a forte of his psychological-mythic explorations... As guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready paint dense and slashing backdrops, he invites us into a drama of experiment and strife."[36] The band decided, beginning with the release of Vs., to scale back its commercial efforts.[37] The members declined to produce any more music videos after the massive success of "Jeremy" and opted for fewer interviews and television appearances. Industry insiders compared Pearl Jam's tour that year to the touring habits of Led Zeppelin in that the band "ignored the press and took its music directly to the fans".[38] During the Vs. Tour, the band set a cap on ticket prices in an attempt to thwart scalpers.[39]
By 1994, Pearl Jam was "fighting on all fronts" as its manager described the band at the time.[40] Reporter Chuck Philips broke a series of stories showing that Ticketmaster was gouging Pearl Jam's customers.[41] Pearl Jam was outraged when, after it played a pair of charity benefit shows in Chicago, it discovered that ticket vendor Ticketmaster had added a service charge to the tickets. Pearl Jam was committed to keeping their concert ticket prices down but Fred Rosen of Ticketmaster refused to waive the service charge. Because Ticketmaster controlled most major venues, the band was forced to create from scratch its own outdoor stadiums in rural areas in order to perform. Pearl Jam's efforts to organize a tour without the ticket giant collapsed, which Pearl Jam said was evidence of Ticketmaster's monopoly. An analysis of journalist Chuck Philips' investigative series[42][43][44][45][46][47] in a well known legal monograph[48] concluded that it was hard to imagine a legitimate reason for Ticketmaster's exclusive contracts with venues and contracts to cover such a lengthy period of time. The authors wrote: "The pervasiveness of Ticketmaster's exclusive agreements, coupled with their excessive duration and the manner in which they are procured, supported a finding that Ticketmaster had engaged in anticompetitive conduct under section 2 of the Sherman Act."
The United States Department of Justice was investigating the company's practices at the time and asked the band to create a memorandum of its experiences with the company. Band members Gossard and Ament testified at a subcommittee investigation on June 30, 1994, in Washington, D.C.[49] Pearl Jam alleged that Ticketmaster used anti-competitive and monopolistic practices to gouge fans. After Pearl Jam's testimony before Congress, Congressman Dingell (D-Mich.) wrote a bill requiring full disclosure to prevent Ticketmaster from burying escalating service fees. Pearl Jam's manager said he was gratified that Congress recognized the problem as a national issue.[50]
The band eventually canceled its 1994 summer tour in protest.[51] After the Justice Department dropped the case, Pearl Jam continued to boycott Ticketmaster, refusing to play venues that had contracts with the company.[52] The band tried to work around Ticketmaster's exclusive contracts by hosting charities and benefits at major venues because the exclusive contracts often contained a clause allowing charity event promoters to sell their own tickets.[53] Music critic Jim DeRogatis noted that, along with the Ticketmaster debacle, "the band has refused to release singles or make videos; it has demanded that its albums be released on vinyl; and it wants to be more like its 1960s heroes, the Who, releasing two or three albums a year". He also stated that sources said that most of the band's third album Vitalogy was completed by early 1994, but that either a forced delay by Epic or the battle with Ticketmaster was to blame for the delay.[40]
Pearl Jam wrote and recorded while touring behind Vs. and the majority of the tracks for Vitalogy were recorded during breaks on the tour. Tensions within the band had increased by this time. Producer Brendan O'Brien said: "Vitalogy was a little strained. I'm being polite—there was some imploding going on."[19][54] After Pearl Jam finished the recording of Vitalogy, drummer Dave Abbruzzese was fired. The band cited political differences between Abbruzzese and the other members; for example, Abbruzzese disagreed with the Ticketmaster boycott.[19][54] He was replaced by Jack Irons, who had connected Vedder to the rest of the band some four years prior. Irons made his debut with the band at Neil Young's 1994 Bridge School Benefit, but he was not announced as the band's new drummer until its 1995 Self-Pollution satellite radio broadcast, a four-and-a-half-hour-long pirate broadcast out of Seattle which was available to any radio stations that wanted to carry it.[55]
Vitalogy was released first on November 21, 1994, on vinyl and then two weeks later on December 6, 1994, on CD and cassette. The CD became the second-fastest-selling in history, with more than 877,000 units sold in its first week.[13]Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic stated that "thanks to its stripped-down, lean production, Vitalogy stands as Pearl Jam's most original and uncompromising album".[56] Many of the songs on the album appear to be inspired by the pressures of fame.[57] The song "Spin the Black Circle", an homage to vinyl records, won a Grammy Award in 1996 for Best Hard Rock Performance. Vitalogy also included the songs "Not for You", "Corduroy", "Better Man", and "Immortality". "Better Man" (sampleⓘ), a song originally written and performed by Vedder while in Bad Radio, reached number one on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, spending a total of eight weeks there. Considered a "blatantly great pop song" by producer Brendan O'Brien, Pearl Jam was reluctant to record it and initially rejected it from Vs. due to its accessibility.[19][54]
The band continued its boycott against Ticketmaster during its 1995 tour for Vitalogy, but was surprised that virtually no other bands joined.[58] Pearl Jam's initiative to play only at non-Ticketmaster venues effectively, with a few exceptions, prevented it from playing shows in the United States for the next three years.[59] Ament later said: "We were so hardheaded about the 1995 tour. Had to prove we could tour on our own, and it pretty much killed us, killed our career."[19][54] In the same year, Pearl Jam backed Neil Young, whom the band had noted as an influence, on his album Mirror Ball. Contractual obligations prevented the use of the band's name anywhere on the album, but the members were all credited individually in the album's liner notes.[2] Two songs from the sessions were left off Mirror Ball: "I Got Id" and "Long Road". These two tracks were released separately by Pearl Jam in the form of the 1995 EP Merkin Ball.
Following the round of touring for Vitalogy, the band went into the studio to record No Code. Vedder said: "Making No Code was all about gaining perspective."[60] Released in 1996, No Code was seen as a deliberate break from the band's sound since Ten,[61] favoring experimental ballads and noisy garage rockers. David Browne of Entertainment Weekly stated that "No Code displays a wider range of moods and instrumentation than on any previous Pearl Jam album."[62] The lyrical themes on the album deal with issues of self-examination,[63] with Ament stating: "In some ways, it's like the band's story. It's about growing up."[63] Although the album debuted at number one on the Billboard charts, it quickly fell down the charts. No Code included the singles "Who You Are" (sampleⓘ), "Hail, Hail", and "Off He Goes". As with Vitalogy, very little touring was done to promote No Code because of the band's refusal to play in Ticketmaster's venue areas. A European tour took place in the fall of 1996. Gossard stated that there was "a lot of stress associated with trying to tour at that time" and that "it was growing more and more difficult to be excited about being part of the band".[19][54]
Following the short tour for No Code, the band went into the studio in 1997 to record its follow-up. The sessions for the band's fifth album represented more of a team effort among all members of the group, with Ament stating that "everybody really got a little bit of their say on the record... because of that, everybody feels like they're an integral part of the band".[64] On February 3, 1998, Pearl Jam released Yield. The album was cited as a return to the band's early, straightforward rock sound.[65] Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly stated that the band has "turned in an intermittently affecting album that veers between fiery garage rock and rootsy, acoustic-based ruminations. Perhaps mindful of their position as the last alt-rock ambassadors with any degree of clout, they've come up with their most cohesive album since their 1991 debut, Ten."[66] Lyrically, Yield continued with the more contemplative type of writing found on No Code,[67] with Vedder saying: "What was rage in the past has become reflection."[68]Yield debuted at number two on the Billboard charts, but like No Code soon began dropping down the charts.[69] It included the singles "Given to Fly" and "Wishlist". The band hired comic book artist Todd McFarlane to create an animated video for the song "Do the Evolution" from the album, its first music video since 1992.[70] A documentary detailing the making of Yield, Single Video Theory, was released on VHS and DVD later that year.
In April 1998, Pearl Jam again changed drummers. Jack Irons left the band due to dissatisfaction with touring and was replaced with former Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron on a temporary basis,[71] but he soon became a permanent replacement for Irons. Pearl Jam's 1998 Yield Tour in North America marked the band's return to full-scale touring. The band's anti-trust lawsuit against Ticketmaster had proven to be unsuccessful and hindered live tours. Many fan
Pearl Jam is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. The band's lineup consists of founding members Jeff Ament (bass guitar), Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), Mike McCready (lead guitar), and Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar), as well as Matt Cameron (drums), who joined in 1998. Keyboardist Boom Gaspar has also been a touring/session member with the band since 2002. Former members include Dave Krusen (an original member), Matt Chamberlain, Dave Abbruzzese, and Jack Irons, all of whom were the band's drummers from 1990 to 1998. Pearl Jam has outsold and outlasted many of its contemporaries from the early 1990s, and is considered one of the most influential bands from that decade,[1] dubbed "the most popular American rock and roll band of the '90s".[2]
Formed after the demise of Gossard and Ament's previous bands, Green River and Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream with their debut album, Ten, in 1991. Ten stayed on the Billboard200 chart for nearly five years, and has gone on to become one of the highest-selling rock records ever, going 13× Platinum in the United States. Released in 1993, Pearl Jam's second album, Vs., sold over 950,000 copies in its first week of release, setting the record for most copies of an album sold in its first week of release at the time. Their third album, Vitalogy (1994), became the second-fastest-selling CD in history at the time, with more than 877,000 units sold in its first week.
One of the key bands in the grunge movement of the early 1990s, Pearl Jam's members often shunned popular music industry practices such as making music videos or participating in interviews. The band had also sued Ticketmaster, claiming it had monopolized the concert-ticket market. In 2006, Rolling Stone described the band as having "spent much of the past decade deliberately tearing apart their own fame".[3]
Pearl Jam had sold more than 85million albums worldwide by 2018, including nearly 32million albums in the United States by 2012,[4] making them one of the best-selling bands of all time. Pearl Jam was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017 in its first year of eligibility.[5] They were ranked eighth in a readers' poll by Rolling Stone magazine in its "Top Ten Live Acts of All Time" issue.[6] Throughout its career, the band has also promoted wider social and political issues, such as abortion rights sentiments and opposition to George W. Bush's presidency. Vedder acts as the band's spokesman on these issues.
Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament were members of Seattle-based grunge band Green River during the mid-1980s. Green River toured and recorded to moderate success, but disbanded in 1987 due to a stylistic division between the pair and bandmates Mark Arm and Steve Turner.[7]
In late 1987, Gossard and Ament began playing with Malfunkshun vocalist Andrew Wood, eventually organizing the band Mother Love Bone. In 1988 and 1989, the band recorded and toured to increasing interest. PolyGram signed the band in early 1989. Mother Love Bone's debut album, Apple, was released in July 1990, four months after Wood died of a heroin overdose.[8]
Ament and Gossard were devastated by the death of Wood and the resulting demise of Mother Love Bone. Gossard spent his time afterwards writing material that was harder-edged than what he had been doing previously.[9] After a few months, Gossard started practicing with fellow Seattle guitarist Mike McCready, whose band, Shadow, had broken up; McCready in turn encouraged Gossard to reconnect with Ament.[3] After practicing for a while, the trio sent out a five-song demo tape in order to find a singer and a drummer. They gave former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons the demo to see if he would be interested in joining the band and to distribute the demo to anyone he felt might fit the lead vocal position.[9]
Irons passed on the invitation but gave the demo to his friend Eddie Vedder.[10] Vedder was the lead vocalist for the San Diego band Bad Radio and worked part-time at a gas station. He listened to the tape shortly before going surfing, where lyrics came to him.[9] He then recorded the vocals to three of the songs ("Alive", "Once", and "Footsteps") in what he later described as a "mini-opera" titled Mamasan.[11] Vedder sent the tape with his vocals back to the three Seattle musicians, who were impressed enough to fly Vedder up to Seattle for an audition. Within a week, Vedder had joined the band.[9]
With the addition of Dave Krusen on drums, the band took the name Mookie Blaylock, in reference to the then-active basketball player.[12] The band played its first official show at the Off Ramp Café in Seattle on October 22, 1990.[13] They opened for Alice in Chains at the Moore Theatre in Seattle on December 22, 1990,[14] and served as the opening act for the band's Facelift tour in 1991.[15][16] Mookie Blaylock soon signed to Epic Records and renamed themselves Pearl Jam.[2] In an early promotional interview, Vedder said that the name "Pearl Jam" was a reference to his great-grandmother Pearl, who was married to a Native American and had a special recipe for peyote-laced jam.[17] In a 2006 cover story for Rolling Stone, Vedder admitted that this story was "total bullshit", but added that he did have a great-grandmother named Pearl. Ament and McCready explained that Ament came up with "pearl", and that the band later settled on Pearl Jam after attending a Neil Young concert in which he extended his songs as improvisations (i.e. "jams") of 15–20 minutes in length.[3]
Pearl Jam entered Seattle's London Bridge Studios in March 1991 to record its debut album Ten.[18] McCready said that "Ten was mostly Stone and Jeff; Eddie and I were along for the ride at that time."[19] Krusen left the band in May 1991 after checking himself into rehabilitation for alcoholism;[20] he was replaced by Matt Chamberlain, who previously played with Edie Brickell & New Bohemians. After playing only a handful of shows, one of which was filmed for the "Alive" video, Chamberlain left to join the band for Saturday Night Live.[12] Chamberlain suggested Dave Abbruzzese as his replacement. Abbruzzese joined the group and played the rest of Pearl Jam's live shows supporting Ten.[12]
Released on August 27, 1991, Ten (named after Mookie Blaylock's jersey number)[17] contained 11 tracks dealing with dark subjects like depression, suicide, loneliness, and murder. Ten's musical style, influenced by classic rock, combined an "expansive harmonic vocabulary" with an anthemic sound.[21] The album was slow to sell, but by the second half of 1992 it became a breakthrough success, being certified gold and reaching number two on the Billboard charts.[18]Ten produced the hit singles "Alive", "Even Flow", and "Jeremy". Originally interpreted as an anthem by many,[9] Vedder later revealed that "Alive" tells the semi-autobiographical tale of a son discovering that his father is actually his stepfather, and his mother's grief turns her to sexually embrace her son, who strongly resembles the biological father. In this lyric, even though Vedder originally looked at "being alive as a curse", as the sadness the speaker in the song suggests, "But as fans quickly turned the title phrase into a self-empowering anthem", particularly at Pearl Jam concerts, Vedder said: "they lifted the curse. The audience changed the meaning for me", he told VH1 Storytellers in 2006.[22]
The song "Jeremy" and its accompanying video were inspired by a true story in which a high school student shot himself in front of his classmates.[23]Ten stayed on the Billboard charts for nearly five years, going 13× platinum.[24]
With the success of Ten, Pearl Jam became a key member of the Seattle grunge explosion, along with Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Soundgarden. The band was criticized in the music press; British music magazine NME wrote that Pearl Jam was "trying to steal money from young alternative kids' pockets".[25]
Pearl Jam toured relentlessly in support of Ten. Ament stated that "essentially Ten was just an excuse to tour", adding: "We told the record company, 'We know we can be a great band, so let's just get the opportunity to get out and play.'"[26] The band's manager Kelly Curtis stated: "Once people came and saw them live, this lightbulb would go on. Doing their first tour, you kind of knew it was happening and there was no stopping it."[19] Early on in Pearl Jam's career, the band became known for its intense live performances. Looking back at this time, Vedder said that "playing music and then getting a shot at making a record and at having an audience and stuff, it's just like an untamed force... But it didn't come from jock mentality. It came from just being let out of the gates."[27]
The band members grew uncomfortable with their success, with much of the burden of Pearl Jam's popularity falling on frontman Vedder.[9] While Pearl Jam received four awards at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards for its video for "Jeremy", including Video of the Year and Best Group Video, the band refused to make a video for "Black" in spite of pressure from the label. This action began a trend of the band refusing to make videos for its songs. Vedder felt that the concept of music videos robbed listeners from creating their own interpretations of the song, stating that "Before music videos first came out, you'd listen to a song with headphones on, sitting in a beanbag chair with your eyes closed, and you'd come up with your own visions, these things that came from within. Then all of a sudden, sometimes even the first time you heard a song, it was with these visual images attached, and it robbed you of any form of self-expression."[32] "Ten years from now", Ament said, "I don't want people to remember our songs as videos."[9]
Pearl Jam headed into the studio in early 1993 facing the challenge of following up the commercial success of its debut. McCready said: "The band was blown up pretty big and everything was pretty crazy."[33] Released on October 19, 1993, Pearl Jam's second album, Vs., sold 950,378 copies in its first week of release and outperformed all other entries in the Billboard top ten that week combined.[34] The album set the record for most copies of an album sold in its first week of release, which it held until broken by Garth Brooks' 1998 album Double Live.[35]Vs. included the singles "Go", "Daughter", "Animal", and "Dissident". Paul Evans of Rolling Stone stated: "Few American bands have arrived more clearly talented than this one did with Ten; and Vs. tops even that debut." He added: "Like Jim Morrison and Pete Townshend, Vedder makes a forte of his psychological-mythic explorations... As guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready paint dense and slashing backdrops, he invites us into a drama of experiment and strife."[36] The band decided, beginning with the release of Vs., to scale back its commercial efforts.[37] The members declined to produce any more music videos after the massive success of "Jeremy" and opted for fewer interviews and television appearances. Industry insiders compared Pearl Jam's tour that year to the touring habits of Led Zeppelin in that the band "ignored the press and took its music directly to the fans".[38] During the Vs. Tour, the band set a cap on ticket prices in an attempt to thwart scalpers.[39]
By 1994, Pearl Jam was "fighting on all fronts" as its manager described the band at the time.[40] Reporter Chuck Philips broke a series of stories showing that Ticketmaster was gouging Pearl Jam's customers.[41] Pearl Jam was outraged when, after it played a pair of charity benefit shows in Chicago, it discovered that ticket vendor Ticketmaster had added a service charge to the tickets. Pearl Jam was committed to keeping their concert ticket prices down but Fred Rosen of Ticketmaster refused to waive the service charge. Because Ticketmaster controlled most major venues, the band was forced to create from scratch its own outdoor stadiums in rural areas in order to perform. Pearl Jam's efforts to organize a tour without the ticket giant collapsed, which Pearl Jam said was evidence of Ticketmaster's monopoly. An analysis of journalist Chuck Philips' investigative series[42][43][44][45][46][47] in a well known legal monograph[48] concluded that it was hard to imagine a legitimate reason for Ticketmaster's exclusive contracts with venues and contracts to cover such a lengthy period of time. The authors wrote: "The pervasiveness of Ticketmaster's exclusive agreements, coupled with their excessive duration and the manner in which they are procured, supported a finding that Ticketmaster had engaged in anticompetitive conduct under section 2 of the Sherman Act."
The United States Department of Justice was investigating the company's practices at the time and asked the band to create a memorandum of its experiences with the company. Band members Gossard and Ament testified at a subcommittee investigation on June 30, 1994, in Washington, D.C.[49] Pearl Jam alleged that Ticketmaster used anti-competitive and monopolistic practices to gouge fans. After Pearl Jam's testimony before Congress, Congressman Dingell (D-Mich.) wrote a bill requiring full disclosure to prevent Ticketmaster from burying escalating service fees. Pearl Jam's manager said he was gratified that Congress recognized the problem as a national issue.[50]
The band eventually canceled its 1994 summer tour in protest.[51] After the Justice Department dropped the case, Pearl Jam continued to boycott Ticketmaster, refusing to play venues that had contracts with the company.[52] The band tried to work around Ticketmaster's exclusive contracts by hosting charities and benefits at major venues because the exclusive contracts often contained a clause allowing charity event promoters to sell their own tickets.[53] Music critic Jim DeRogatis noted that, along with the Ticketmaster debacle, "the band has refused to release singles or make videos; it has demanded that its albums be released on vinyl; and it wants to be more like its 1960s heroes, the Who, releasing two or three albums a year". He also stated that sources said that most of the band's third album Vitalogy was completed by early 1994, but that either a forced delay by Epic or the battle with Ticketmaster was to blame for the delay.[40]
Pearl Jam wrote and recorded while touring behind Vs. and the majority of the tracks for Vitalogy were recorded during breaks on the tour. Tensions within the band had increased by this time. Producer Brendan O'Brien said: "Vitalogy was a little strained. I'm being polite—there was some imploding going on."[19][54] After Pearl Jam finished the recording of Vitalogy, drummer Dave Abbruzzese was fired. The band cited political differences between Abbruzzese and the other members; for example, Abbruzzese disagreed with the Ticketmaster boycott.[19][54] He was replaced by Jack Irons, who had connected Vedder to the rest of the band some four years prior. Irons made his debut with the band at Neil Young's 1994 Bridge School Benefit, but he was not announced as the band's new drummer until its 1995 Self-Pollution satellite radio broadcast, a four-and-a-half-hour-long pirate broadcast out of Seattle which was available to any radio stations that wanted to carry it.[55]
Vitalogy was released first on November 21, 1994, on vinyl and then two weeks later on December 6, 1994, on CD and cassette. The CD became the second-fastest-selling in history, with more than 877,000 units sold in its first week.[13]Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic stated that "thanks to its stripped-down, lean production, Vitalogy stands as Pearl Jam's most original and uncompromising album".[56] Many of the songs on the album appear to be inspired by the pressures of fame.[57] The song "Spin the Black Circle", an homage to vinyl records, won a Grammy Award in 1996 for Best Hard Rock Performance. Vitalogy also included the songs "Not for You", "Corduroy", "Better Man", and "Immortality". "Better Man" (sampleⓘ), a song originally written and performed by Vedder while in Bad Radio, reached number one on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, spending a total of eight weeks there. Considered a "blatantly great pop song" by producer Brendan O'Brien, Pearl Jam was reluctant to record it and initially rejected it from Vs. due to its accessibility.[19][54]
The band continued its boycott against Ticketmaster during its 1995 tour for Vitalogy, but was surprised that virtually no other bands joined.[58] Pearl Jam's initiative to play only at non-Ticketmaster venues effectively, with a few exceptions, prevented it from playing shows in the United States for the next three years.[59] Ament later said: "We were so hardheaded about the 1995 tour. Had to prove we could tour on our own, and it pretty much killed us, killed our career."[19][54] In the same year, Pearl Jam backed Neil Young, whom the band had noted as an influence, on his album Mirror Ball. Contractual obligations prevented the use of the band's name anywhere on the album, but the members were all credited individually in the album's liner notes.[2] Two songs from the sessions were left off Mirror Ball: "I Got Id" and "Long Road". These two tracks were released separately by Pearl Jam in the form of the 1995 EP Merkin Ball.
Following the round of touring for Vitalogy, the band went into the studio to record No Code. Vedder said: "Making No Code was all about gaining perspective."[60] Released in 1996, No Code was seen as a deliberate break from the band's sound since Ten,[61] favoring experimental ballads and noisy garage rockers. David Browne of Entertainment Weekly stated that "No Code displays a wider range of moods and instrumentation than on any previous Pearl Jam album."[62] The lyrical themes on the album deal with issues of self-examination,[63] with Ament stating: "In some ways, it's like the band's story. It's about growing up."[63] Although the album debuted at number one on the Billboard charts, it quickly fell down the charts. No Code included the singles "Who You Are" (sampleⓘ), "Hail, Hail", and "Off He Goes". As with Vitalogy, very little touring was done to promote No Code because of the band's refusal to play in Ticketmaster's venue areas. A European tour took place in the fall of 1996. Gossard stated that there was "a lot of stress associated with trying to tour at that time" and that "it was growing more and more difficult to be excited about being part of the band".[19][54]
Following the short tour for No Code, the band went into the studio in 1997 to record its follow-up. The sessions for the band's fifth album represented more of a team effort among all members of the group, with Ament stating that "everybody really got a little bit of their say on the record... because of that, everybody feels like they're an integral part of the band".[64] On February 3, 1998, Pearl Jam released Yield. The album was cited as a return to the band's early, straightforward rock sound.[65] Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly stated that the band has "turned in an intermittently affecting album that veers between fiery garage rock and rootsy, acoustic-based ruminations. Perhaps mindful of their position as the last alt-rock ambassadors with any degree of clout, they've come up with their most cohesive album since their 1991 debut, Ten."[66] Lyrically, Yield continued with the more contemplative type of writing found on No Code,[67] with Vedder saying: "What was rage in the past has become reflection."[68]Yield debuted at number two on the Billboard charts, but like No Code soon began dropping down the charts.[69] It included the singles "Given to Fly" and "Wishlist". The band hired comic book artist Todd McFarlane to create an animated video for the song "Do the Evolution" from the album, its first music video since 1992.[70] A documentary detailing the making of Yield, Single Video Theory, was released on VHS and DVD later that year.
In April 1998, Pearl Jam again changed drummers. Jack Irons left the band due to dissatisfaction with touring and was replaced with former Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron on a temporary basis,[71] but he soon became a permanent replacement for Irons. Pearl Jam's 1998 Yield Tour in North America marked the band's return to full-scale touring. The band's anti-trust lawsuit against Ticketmaster had proven to be unsuccessful and hindered live tours. Many fan
The first Assassin's Creed game was released in 2007, and the series has featured thirteen main installments in total, the most recent being Assassin's Creed Mirage in 2023. Main games in the Assassin's Creed series are set in an open world and played from the third-person view. Gameplay revolves around combat, stealth, and exploration, including the use of parkour to navigate the environment. The games feature both main and side missions, and some titles also include competitive and cooperative multiplayer game modes.
A new story and occasionally new time periods are introduced in each entry, with the gameplay elements also evolving. There are three overarching story arcs in the series. The first five main games follow Desmond Miles, a descendant of several important Assassins throughout history, who uses a machine called the Animus to relive his ancestors' memories and find powerful artifacts called Pieces of Eden in an attempt to prevent a catastrophic event, referencing the 2012 phenomenon. From Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag to Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Assassin initiates and employees of Abstergo (a company used as a front by the modern-day Templars) record genetic memories using the Helix software, helping the Templars and Assassins find new Pieces of Eden in the modern world. The next three games, Assassin's Creed Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, follow ex-Abstergo employee Layla Hassan on her own quest to save humanity from another disaster.
The main games in the Assassin's Creed franchise have received generally positive reviews for their ambition in visuals, game design, and narratives, with criticism for the yearly release cycle and frequent bugs, as well as the prioritising of role-playing mechanics in later titles. The series has received multiple awards and nominations, including multiple Game of the Year awards. It is commercially successful, selling over 200 million copies as of September 2022[update], becoming Ubisoft's best-selling franchise and one of the highest selling video game franchises of all time. While main titles are produced for major consoles and desktop platforms, multiple spin-off games have been released for consoles, mobiles, and handheld platforms. A series of art books, encyclopedias, comics, and novels have also been published. A live-action film adaptation of the series, titled Assassin's Creed, was released in 2016.
While the games in the series have had several narrative arcs, Ubisoft views the series as currently having three periods of development and design philosophy. Until 2015's Assassin's Creed Syndicate, the franchise was structured around single-player content, and while centering on open world spaces and several role-playing elements, were more action-adventure and stealth-oriented. Period two, covering from Assassin's Creed Origins to Assassin's Creed Mirage, brought in more role-playing elements and live-service features to increase player engagement. Period three will launch with Assassin's Creed Shadows, using lessons from the second period of development to make engrossing single-player games similar to the original titles but with features to allow players to share achievements and content with others, all to be backed by the Infinity hub system.[1]
The first Assassin's Creed game originated out of ideas for a sequel for Ubisoft's video game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, aiming for the seventh generation of video game consoles. The Ubisoft Montreal team decided to take the gameplay from The Sands of Time into an open-world approach, taking advantage of the improved processing power to render larger spaces and crowds. Narratively, the team wanted to move away from the Prince being someone next in line for the throne but to have to work for it; combined with research into secret societies led them to focus on the Order of Assassins, based upon the historical Hashashin sect of Ismaili, who were followers of Shia Islam, heavily borrowing from the novel Alamut.[2][3] Ubisoft developed a narrative where the player would control an Assassin escorting a non-playable Prince, leading them to call this game Prince of Persia: Assassin,[4] or Prince of Persia: Assassins.[5] Ubisoft was apprehensive to a Prince of Persia game without the Prince as the playable character, but this led the marketing division to suggest the name Assassin's Creed, playing off the creed of the Assassins, "nothing is true; everything is permitted". Ubisoft Montreal ran with this in creating a new intellectual property, eliminating the Prince, and basing it around the Assassins and the Knights Templar in the Holy Land during the 12th century. Additionally, in postulating what other assassinations they could account for throughout history, they came onto the idea of genetic memory and created the Animus device and modern storyline elements. This further allowed them to explain certain facets of gameplay, such as accounting for when the player character is killed, similar to The Sands of Time.[5]
After Assassin's Creed was released in 2007, Ubisoft Montreal said they looked to "rework the global structure" in developing the sequel, Assassin's Creed II. They felt that parkour was underutilized in the first game and designed the world in the sequel to feature freerun highways to make it easier to enter into parkour moves, for example using rooftops to escape pursuits.[6] The change in setting meant that the game would feature a new cast of characters, including a new protagonist, Ezio Auditore da Firenze. Assassin's Creed II also brought in more use of crowds to hide in plain sight that the developers had seen used in Hitman: Blood Money, adding more to the concept of social stealth as a gameplay option.[6] Finally, Ubisoft Montreal completely reworked the repetitive mission structure from the first game through numerous side activities, collectibles, and secrets. These additions became a central part of the series going forward as well as other Ubisoft games like Watch Dogs, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon.[6]Assassin's Creed II was followed by two sequels, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed: Revelations, which also featured Ezio as the main protagonist and introduced the ability for players to recruit NPCs as Assassins and manage them in missions.[6]
Assassin's Creed III originated from both Ubisoft Montreal, who wanted to progress the series' narrative forward in time, and to an unattached project that had been developed at Ubisoft Singapore and featured naval ship combat. As the main team had settled into the American Revolution period for the game, they found the ship-to-ship combat system fitted with the story and redesigned the setting to incorporate it further. Another major change in Assassin's Creed III was transitioning the parkour and freerun systems to work in the natural woodlands of 18th-century Massachusetts and New York. This further allowed the adding of trees and other vegetation within the city areas themselves, not just as part of the parkour systems, but to add more varied environments, which would continue as part of the series' ongoing design.[6]
For Assassin's Creed III's sequel, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, the Ubisoft team built upon the foundation of its predecessor, particularly with regards to the naval gameplay, merging it seamlessly with the land-based gameplay.[6] The team also used the game as a chance to address aspects of the series' storyline. Choosing to focus on an outsider's perspective to the Assassin–Templar conflict, they set the game around the Golden Age of Piracy, with the protagonist, Edward Kenway, starting out as a pirate who initially becomes involved in the conflict with the prospect of wealth. Similarly, after the conclusion of Desmond Miles' story arc in Assassin's Creed III, the modern-day segments put players in the role of a nameless individual controlled from a first-person perspective. The team chose this approach because they believed it allowed players to more easily identify themselves in their character.[6] This trend would continue in the series until Assassin's Creed Syndicate.[6]
Development of Assassin's Creed Unity began shortly after the completion of Brotherhood in 2010,[7] with the core development team splitting off during the early stages of development on Assassin's Creed III.[8] As the first game in the series to be released exclusively for the eighth generation of video game consoles, Unity featured a graphical and gameplay overhaul. The setting chosen for the game was Paris during the early years of the French Revolution, with players taking control of a new Assassin named Arno Dorian.[7][8] After Unity, Ubisoft released Assassin's Creed Syndicate in 2015.[6]
After Syndicate, Ubisoft decided that the series needed a major reinvention across both gameplay and narrative. It was decided to make the next game, Assassin's Creed Origins, closer to a role-playing video game than a stealth-action game, which would also bring a game with many more hours of play than previous titles. Some long-standing features of the series were eliminated for this purpose, such as the social stealth mechanic. This changed how missions were presented — rather than being linearly directed through the Animus, the player character could meet various quest givers in the game's world to receive missions.[6] From the narrative side, Ubisoft placed the game before the formation of the Assassin Brotherhood in Ancient Egypt to make the player character, Bayek of Siwa, a medjay that people would respect and seek the help of.[6] The modern-day storyline also shifted back to a single character, Layla Hassan. The developers limited the number of playable sequences for her character compared to previous games but gave them more meaning, such as allowing the player to explore Layla's laptop with background information on the game's universe.[6]
Origins was followed in 2018 by Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which shifted the setting to Classical Greece and followed a similar approach to its predecessor but with more emphasis on the role-playing elements.[6] 2020's Assassin's Creed Valhalla, set in Medieval England and Norway during the Viking Age, continued the same style as Origins and Odyssey. The developers recognized feedback from the previous two games and brought back the social stealth elements, as well as the concept of a customizable home base that was first introduced in Assassin's Creed II.[6]
In 2023, Ubisoft released Assassin's Creed Mirage, a smaller title which sought to pay tribute to the franchise's earlier installments by focusing on stealth and assassinations over its predecessors' role-playing elements. The game started development as an expansion for Valhalla before being turned into a standalone release, and was set in 9th-century Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age, a decade before the events of Valhalla, to which it served as a prequel.[9][10]
In 2022, Ubisoft announced several additional games for the series. Assassin's Creed Infinity has been described by its executive producer, Marc-Alexis Côté, as a "new design philosophy" for the series,[1][11] as well as a hub that will provide the releases of future games.[12] The first two games to be included in Infinity will be Assassin's Creed Shadows, set in Japan during the Sengoku period,[9] and Assassin's Creed: Codename Hexe, rumoured to be set in Central Europe during the 16th century.[13]
The Assassin's Creed games are centered around one or more fictional members of the Order of the Assassins. Their memories are experienced by an in-game character in the modern-day period through a device called the Animus and its derivations. The Animus allows the user to explore these memories passed down via genetics. Within the context of the game, this provides a diegetic interface to the real-world player of the game, showing them elements like health bars, a mini-map, and target objectives as if presented by the Animus. Additionally, should the player cause the historical character to die or fail a mission, this is rectified as desynchronization of the genetic memory, allowing the player to try the mission again. Through the Animus interface, the player can retry any past mission already completed; for example, in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, the player achieves better synchronization results by performing the mission in a specific manner, such as by only killing the mission's target. The Animus also imparts special abilities to the modern-day character that helps them to see their target in a crowd or other unique points of interest.[14][15]
While playing as the Assassin characters, the games are generally presented from a third-person view in an open world environment, focusing on stealth and parkour. The games use a mission structure to follow the main story, assigning the player to complete an assassination of public figureheads or a covert mission. Alternatively, several side missions are available, such as mapping out the expansive cities from a high perch followed by performing a leap of faith into a haystack below, collecting treasures hidden across the cities, exploring ruins for relics, building a brotherhood of assassins to perform other tasks, or funding the rebuilding of a city through purchasing and upgrading of shops and other features. At times, the player is in direct control of the modern-day character who, by nature of the Animus use, has learned Assassin techniques through the bleeding effect, as well as their genetic ability of Eagle Vision, which separates friend, foe, and assassination targets by illuminating people in different colors.[16][17]
The games use the concept of active versus passive moves, with active moves, such as running, climbing the sides of buildings, or jumping between rooftops, more likely to alert the attention of nearby guards. When the guards become alerted, the player must either fight them or break their line of sight and locate a hiding place, such as a haystack or a well, and wait until the guards' alert is reduced. The combat system allows for a number of unique weapons, armor, and moves, including the use of a hidden blade set in a bracer on the Assassin's arm, which can be used to perform surreptitious assassinations.[18]
The Assassin's Creed games primarily revolve around the rivalry and conflict between two ancient secret societies: the Order of Assassins, who represent freedom, and the Knights Templar, who represent order. Versions of these societies have existed for centuries, with the Assassins seeking to stop the Templars from gaining control of Pieces of Eden, artifacts that can override free will to control people.[19]
These artifacts are remnants of an ancient species pre-dating humanity called the Isu, or Precursors, which created humanity to live in peace alongside them. The Isu ensured humans could not rise against them by creating the Pieces of Eden to control them. When the first hybrid Isu-human beings emerged, named Adam and Eve, they were immune to the effects of the Pieces of Eden. They stole the Pieces of Eden, which led to a great war that ended when a massive solar flare devastated the surface of the Earth. The Isu began to die out while humanity thrived. Three Isu—Minerva, Juno, and Jupiter—attempted to prepare humanity for a solar flare they knew would come centuries later. Minerva and Jupiter prepared vaults from which humanity could activate a protective shield around Earth with the Pieces of Eden and the Eye, a means to communicate how to find and use these vaults; however, Juno saw humanity as a threat and attempted to sabotage Minerva and Jupiter's plan. Minerva and Jupiter were forced to destroy Juno, unaware she had hidden her consciousness to wake upon activation of the Eye. All that remained of the Isu were the traces of their memories in the world's mythologies, and religions, while the Pieces of Eden were lost to time.[19]
The series takes place in the modern era, in which the Templars have established the mega-corporation Abstergo Industries. Abstergo has developed a device, the Animus, whose user can relive the memories of their ancestors through their genetic material. Abstergo has kidnapped people who are descendants of past Assassins to locate the missing Pieces of Eden via the Animus.[19] A user of the Animus can move about in simulated memories as their ancestor, but performing actions outside the bounds of what their ancestor did can lead to desynchronization of the memory.[14][15] Extended use of the Animus creates a bleeding effect that gives users some of the skills and capabilities they experienced with their ancestor.[20]
The first five main games in the series focus on Desmond Miles, a bartender who learns he is a descendant of several important Assassins throughout history, including Altaïr Ibn-LaʼAhad from the Middle East during the Third Crusade; Ezio Auditore da Firenze from the Italian Renaissance during the late 15th and early 16th centuries; and Ratonhnhaké:ton (better known as Connor), a half-Mohawk, half-British Assassin during the American Revolution. Desmond is used by Abstergo to find Pieces of Eden but is freed by Lucy Stillman, an undercover agent for the Assassins. Lucy takes Desmond to meet Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane, two other members of the modern-day Assassins. The group is joined later by William Miles, Desmond's father. They continue to explore Desmond's memories and eventually discover the Eye and Minerva's warning of another possible solar flare. They also inadvertently free Juno, who then kills Lucy, revealed to be a double agent for the Templars. The group continues to find the vaults across the globe via Desmond's memories, and Desmond ultimately activates them in time to block the solar flare, at the cost of his own life.[19]
Starting with Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, William goes into exile, while Shaun and Rebecca continue to monitor Abstergo by posing as employees of one of their spin-off companies, Abstergo Entertainment. Abstergo has refined the Animus technology to allow anyone to experience genetic memories from the DNA material of another person, allowing Abstergo to continue their search for the Pieces of Eden under the guise of creating entertainment products. In Black Flag, the player assumes the role of an unnamed Abstergo employee tasked with scanning the memories of Edward Kenway, a privateer-turned-pirate during the Golden Age of Piracy and Connor's grandfather. During their investigation, the player is blackmailed into helping a fellow employee, John Standish, recover sensitive information and deliver it to the Assassins. John is later revealed to be a Sage, a human reincarnation of Juno's husband Aita, who is trying to resurrect her, though he is killed by Abstergo before his plan can come to fruition.[19] In Assassin's Creed Rogue, the player controls another Abstergo employee who is recruited by the Templars to clean their servers after the Assassins breach them and recover data on the life of Shay Patrick Cormac, an Assassin-turned-Templar from the 18th century. The Assassins are ultimately forced to go underground once more, and the player character is invited to join the Templars.[19]
By the time of Assassin's Creed Unity, Abstergo distributes its Animus product via a video game console named Helix, tapping into an extensive, unaware player base to help them locate more Pieces of Eden and determine the fates of various Sages as part of the Phoenix Project, an attempt to recreate the genetic structure of the Isu. The game's opening has players control an unnamed Templar during the downfall of the Templar Order, while the different "time anomalies" take them to Paris during the Belle Époque, World War II, and the Hundred Years' War. The Assassins locate select players and bring them in as Initiates to help their cause. In Unity, the player character is contacted by an Assassin named Bishop and asked to experience the memories of Arno Dorian, an Assassin active during the French Revolution, so that the modern-day Assassins can locate the body of a Sage and hide it from Abstergo.[19] Despite the Assassins' efforts, Abstergo collects enough samples of other Sages by the start of Assassin's Creed Syndicate to move forward with the Phoenix Project. Again, Bishop contacts the Initiate and asks them to explore the memories of Jacob and Evie Frye, twin Assassins from Victorian England, to locate a Piece of Eden known as the Shroud, which Abstergo needs to complete the process of recreating the Isu genetic structure. Although the Initiate manages to locate the Shroud, the Templars beat the Assassins to it.[19]
A new storyline is introduced in Assassin's Creed Origins focusing on Abstergo researcher Layla Hassan. Initially tasked with locating historical artifacts in Egypt, Layla stumbles upon the mummified corpses of the medjay Bayek and his wife Aya, co-founders of the Hidden Ones, the precursor organizati
The first Assassin's Creed game was released in 2007, and the series has featured thirteen main installments in total, the most recent being Assassin's Creed Mirage in 2023. Main games in the Assassin's Creed series are set in an open world and played from the third-person view. Gameplay revolves around combat, stealth, and exploration, including the use of parkour to navigate the environment. The games feature both main and side missions, and some titles also include competitive and cooperative multiplayer game modes.
A new story and occasionally new time periods are introduced in each entry, with the gameplay elements also evolving. There are three overarching story arcs in the series. The first five main games follow Desmond Miles, a descendant of several important Assassins throughout history, who uses a machine called the Animus to relive his ancestors' memories and find powerful artifacts called Pieces of Eden in an attempt to prevent a catastrophic event, referencing the 2012 phenomenon. From Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag to Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Assassin initiates and employees of Abstergo (a company used as a front by the modern-day Templars) record genetic memories using the Helix software, helping the Templars and Assassins find new Pieces of Eden in the modern world. The next three games, Assassin's Creed Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, follow ex-Abstergo employee Layla Hassan on her own quest to save humanity from another disaster.
The main games in the Assassin's Creed franchise have received generally positive reviews for their ambition in visuals, game design, and narratives, with criticism for the yearly release cycle and frequent bugs, as well as the prioritising of role-playing mechanics in later titles. The series has received multiple awards and nominations, including multiple Game of the Year awards. It is commercially successful, selling over 200 million copies as of September 2022[update], becoming Ubisoft's best-selling franchise and one of the highest selling video game franchises of all time. While main titles are produced for major consoles and desktop platforms, multiple spin-off games have been released for consoles, mobiles, and handheld platforms. A series of art books, encyclopedias, comics, and novels have also been published. A live-action film adaptation of the series, titled Assassin's Creed, was released in 2016.
While the games in the series have had several narrative arcs, Ubisoft views the series as currently having three periods of development and design philosophy. Until 2015's Assassin's Creed Syndicate, the franchise was structured around single-player content, and while centering on open world spaces and several role-playing elements, were more action-adventure and stealth-oriented. Period two, covering from Assassin's Creed Origins to Assassin's Creed Mirage, brought in more role-playing elements and live-service features to increase player engagement. Period three will launch with Assassin's Creed Shadows, using lessons from the second period of development to make engrossing single-player games similar to the original titles but with features to allow players to share achievements and content with others, all to be backed by the Infinity hub system.[1]
The first Assassin's Creed game originated out of ideas for a sequel for Ubisoft's video game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, aiming for the seventh generation of video game consoles. The Ubisoft Montreal team decided to take the gameplay from The Sands of Time into an open-world approach, taking advantage of the improved processing power to render larger spaces and crowds. Narratively, the team wanted to move away from the Prince being someone next in line for the throne but to have to work for it; combined with research into secret societies led them to focus on the Order of Assassins, based upon the historical Hashashin sect of Ismaili, who were followers of Shia Islam, heavily borrowing from the novel Alamut.[2][3] Ubisoft developed a narrative where the player would control an Assassin escorting a non-playable Prince, leading them to call this game Prince of Persia: Assassin,[4] or Prince of Persia: Assassins.[5] Ubisoft was apprehensive to a Prince of Persia game without the Prince as the playable character, but this led the marketing division to suggest the name Assassin's Creed, playing off the creed of the Assassins, "nothing is true; everything is permitted". Ubisoft Montreal ran with this in creating a new intellectual property, eliminating the Prince, and basing it around the Assassins and the Knights Templar in the Holy Land during the 12th century. Additionally, in postulating what other assassinations they could account for throughout history, they came onto the idea of genetic memory and created the Animus device and modern storyline elements. This further allowed them to explain certain facets of gameplay, such as accounting for when the player character is killed, similar to The Sands of Time.[5]
After Assassin's Creed was released in 2007, Ubisoft Montreal said they looked to "rework the global structure" in developing the sequel, Assassin's Creed II. They felt that parkour was underutilized in the first game and designed the world in the sequel to feature freerun highways to make it easier to enter into parkour moves, for example using rooftops to escape pursuits.[6] The change in setting meant that the game would feature a new cast of characters, including a new protagonist, Ezio Auditore da Firenze. Assassin's Creed II also brought in more use of crowds to hide in plain sight that the developers had seen used in Hitman: Blood Money, adding more to the concept of social stealth as a gameplay option.[6] Finally, Ubisoft Montreal completely reworked the repetitive mission structure from the first game through numerous side activities, collectibles, and secrets. These additions became a central part of the series going forward as well as other Ubisoft games like Watch Dogs, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon.[6]Assassin's Creed II was followed by two sequels, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed: Revelations, which also featured Ezio as the main protagonist and introduced the ability for players to recruit NPCs as Assassins and manage them in missions.[6]
Assassin's Creed III originated from both Ubisoft Montreal, who wanted to progress the series' narrative forward in time, and to an unattached project that had been developed at Ubisoft Singapore and featured naval ship combat. As the main team had settled into the American Revolution period for the game, they found the ship-to-ship combat system fitted with the story and redesigned the setting to incorporate it further. Another major change in Assassin's Creed III was transitioning the parkour and freerun systems to work in the natural woodlands of 18th-century Massachusetts and New York. This further allowed the adding of trees and other vegetation within the city areas themselves, not just as part of the parkour systems, but to add more varied environments, which would continue as part of the series' ongoing design.[6]
For Assassin's Creed III's sequel, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, the Ubisoft team built upon the foundation of its predecessor, particularly with regards to the naval gameplay, merging it seamlessly with the land-based gameplay.[6] The team also used the game as a chance to address aspects of the series' storyline. Choosing to focus on an outsider's perspective to the Assassin–Templar conflict, they set the game around the Golden Age of Piracy, with the protagonist, Edward Kenway, starting out as a pirate who initially becomes involved in the conflict with the prospect of wealth. Similarly, after the conclusion of Desmond Miles' story arc in Assassin's Creed III, the modern-day segments put players in the role of a nameless individual controlled from a first-person perspective. The team chose this approach because they believed it allowed players to more easily identify themselves in their character.[6] This trend would continue in the series until Assassin's Creed Syndicate.[6]
Development of Assassin's Creed Unity began shortly after the completion of Brotherhood in 2010,[7] with the core development team splitting off during the early stages of development on Assassin's Creed III.[8] As the first game in the series to be released exclusively for the eighth generation of video game consoles, Unity featured a graphical and gameplay overhaul. The setting chosen for the game was Paris during the early years of the French Revolution, with players taking control of a new Assassin named Arno Dorian.[7][8] After Unity, Ubisoft released Assassin's Creed Syndicate in 2015.[6]
After Syndicate, Ubisoft decided that the series needed a major reinvention across both gameplay and narrative. It was decided to make the next game, Assassin's Creed Origins, closer to a role-playing video game than a stealth-action game, which would also bring a game with many more hours of play than previous titles. Some long-standing features of the series were eliminated for this purpose, such as the social stealth mechanic. This changed how missions were presented — rather than being linearly directed through the Animus, the player character could meet various quest givers in the game's world to receive missions.[6] From the narrative side, Ubisoft placed the game before the formation of the Assassin Brotherhood in Ancient Egypt to make the player character, Bayek of Siwa, a medjay that people would respect and seek the help of.[6] The modern-day storyline also shifted back to a single character, Layla Hassan. The developers limited the number of playable sequences for her character compared to previous games but gave them more meaning, such as allowing the player to explore Layla's laptop with background information on the game's universe.[6]
Origins was followed in 2018 by Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which shifted the setting to Classical Greece and followed a similar approach to its predecessor but with more emphasis on the role-playing elements.[6] 2020's Assassin's Creed Valhalla, set in Medieval England and Norway during the Viking Age, continued the same style as Origins and Odyssey. The developers recognized feedback from the previous two games and brought back the social stealth elements, as well as the concept of a customizable home base that was first introduced in Assassin's Creed II.[6]
In 2023, Ubisoft released Assassin's Creed Mirage, a smaller title which sought to pay tribute to the franchise's earlier installments by focusing on stealth and assassinations over its predecessors' role-playing elements. The game started development as an expansion for Valhalla before being turned into a standalone release, and was set in 9th-century Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age, a decade before the events of Valhalla, to which it served as a prequel.[9][10]
In 2022, Ubisoft announced several additional games for the series. Assassin's Creed Infinity has been described by its executive producer, Marc-Alexis Côté, as a "new design philosophy" for the series,[1][11] as well as a hub that will provide the releases of future games.[12] The first two games to be included in Infinity will be Assassin's Creed Shadows, set in Japan during the Sengoku period,[9] and Assassin's Creed: Codename Hexe, rumoured to be set in Central Europe during the 16th century.[13]
The Assassin's Creed games are centered around one or more fictional members of the Order of the Assassins. Their memories are experienced by an in-game character in the modern-day period through a device called the Animus and its derivations. The Animus allows the user to explore these memories passed down via genetics. Within the context of the game, this provides a diegetic interface to the real-world player of the game, showing them elements like health bars, a mini-map, and target objectives as if presented by the Animus. Additionally, should the player cause the historical character to die or fail a mission, this is rectified as desynchronization of the genetic memory, allowing the player to try the mission again. Through the Animus interface, the player can retry any past mission already completed; for example, in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, the player achieves better synchronization results by performing the mission in a specific manner, such as by only killing the mission's target. The Animus also imparts special abilities to the modern-day character that helps them to see their target in a crowd or other unique points of interest.[14][15]
While playing as the Assassin characters, the games are generally presented from a third-person view in an open world environment, focusing on stealth and parkour. The games use a mission structure to follow the main story, assigning the player to complete an assassination of public figureheads or a covert mission. Alternatively, several side missions are available, such as mapping out the expansive cities from a high perch followed by performing a leap of faith into a haystack below, collecting treasures hidden across the cities, exploring ruins for relics, building a brotherhood of assassins to perform other tasks, or funding the rebuilding of a city through purchasing and upgrading of shops and other features. At times, the player is in direct control of the modern-day character who, by nature of the Animus use, has learned Assassin techniques through the bleeding effect, as well as their genetic ability of Eagle Vision, which separates friend, foe, and assassination targets by illuminating people in different colors.[16][17]
The games use the concept of active versus passive moves, with active moves, such as running, climbing the sides of buildings, or jumping between rooftops, more likely to alert the attention of nearby guards. When the guards become alerted, the player must either fight them or break their line of sight and locate a hiding place, such as a haystack or a well, and wait until the guards' alert is reduced. The combat system allows for a number of unique weapons, armor, and moves, including the use of a hidden blade set in a bracer on the Assassin's arm, which can be used to perform surreptitious assassinations.[18]
The Assassin's Creed games primarily revolve around the rivalry and conflict between two ancient secret societies: the Order of Assassins, who represent freedom, and the Knights Templar, who represent order. Versions of these societies have existed for centuries, with the Assassins seeking to stop the Templars from gaining control of Pieces of Eden, artifacts that can override free will to control people.[19]
These artifacts are remnants of an ancient species pre-dating humanity called the Isu, or Precursors, which created humanity to live in peace alongside them. The Isu ensured humans could not rise against them by creating the Pieces of Eden to control them. When the first hybrid Isu-human beings emerged, named Adam and Eve, they were immune to the effects of the Pieces of Eden. They stole the Pieces of Eden, which led to a great war that ended when a massive solar flare devastated the surface of the Earth. The Isu began to die out while humanity thrived. Three Isu—Minerva, Juno, and Jupiter—attempted to prepare humanity for a solar flare they knew would come centuries later. Minerva and Jupiter prepared vaults from which humanity could activate a protective shield around Earth with the Pieces of Eden and the Eye, a means to communicate how to find and use these vaults; however, Juno saw humanity as a threat and attempted to sabotage Minerva and Jupiter's plan. Minerva and Jupiter were forced to destroy Juno, unaware she had hidden her consciousness to wake upon activation of the Eye. All that remained of the Isu were the traces of their memories in the world's mythologies, and religions, while the Pieces of Eden were lost to time.[19]
The series takes place in the modern era, in which the Templars have established the mega-corporation Abstergo Industries. Abstergo has developed a device, the Animus, whose user can relive the memories of their ancestors through their genetic material. Abstergo has kidnapped people who are descendants of past Assassins to locate the missing Pieces of Eden via the Animus.[19] A user of the Animus can move about in simulated memories as their ancestor, but performing actions outside the bounds of what their ancestor did can lead to desynchronization of the memory.[14][15] Extended use of the Animus creates a bleeding effect that gives users some of the skills and capabilities they experienced with their ancestor.[20]
The first five main games in the series focus on Desmond Miles, a bartender who learns he is a descendant of several important Assassins throughout history, including Altaïr Ibn-LaʼAhad from the Middle East during the Third Crusade; Ezio Auditore da Firenze from the Italian Renaissance during the late 15th and early 16th centuries; and Ratonhnhaké:ton (better known as Connor), a half-Mohawk, half-British Assassin during the American Revolution. Desmond is used by Abstergo to find Pieces of Eden but is freed by Lucy Stillman, an undercover agent for the Assassins. Lucy takes Desmond to meet Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane, two other members of the modern-day Assassins. The group is joined later by William Miles, Desmond's father. They continue to explore Desmond's memories and eventually discover the Eye and Minerva's warning of another possible solar flare. They also inadvertently free Juno, who then kills Lucy, revealed to be a double agent for the Templars. The group continues to find the vaults across the globe via Desmond's memories, and Desmond ultimately activates them in time to block the solar flare, at the cost of his own life.[19]
Starting with Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, William goes into exile, while Shaun and Rebecca continue to monitor Abstergo by posing as employees of one of their spin-off companies, Abstergo Entertainment. Abstergo has refined the Animus technology to allow anyone to experience genetic memories from the DNA material of another person, allowing Abstergo to continue their search for the Pieces of Eden under the guise of creating entertainment products. In Black Flag, the player assumes the role of an unnamed Abstergo employee tasked with scanning the memories of Edward Kenway, a privateer-turned-pirate during the Golden Age of Piracy and Connor's grandfather. During their investigation, the player is blackmailed into helping a fellow employee, John Standish, recover sensitive information and deliver it to the Assassins. John is later revealed to be a Sage, a human reincarnation of Juno's husband Aita, who is trying to resurrect her, though he is killed by Abstergo before his plan can come to fruition.[19] In Assassin's Creed Rogue, the player controls another Abstergo employee who is recruited by the Templars to clean their servers after the Assassins breach them and recover data on the life of Shay Patrick Cormac, an Assassin-turned-Templar from the 18th century. The Assassins are ultimately forced to go underground once more, and the player character is invited to join the Templars.[19]
By the time of Assassin's Creed Unity, Abstergo distributes its Animus product via a video game console named Helix, tapping into an extensive, unaware player base to help them locate more Pieces of Eden and determine the fates of various Sages as part of the Phoenix Project, an attempt to recreate the genetic structure of the Isu. The game's opening has players control an unnamed Templar during the downfall of the Templar Order, while the different "time anomalies" take them to Paris during the Belle Époque, World War II, and the Hundred Years' War. The Assassins locate select players and bring them in as Initiates to help their cause. In Unity, the player character is contacted by an Assassin named Bishop and asked to experience the memories of Arno Dorian, an Assassin active during the French Revolution, so that the modern-day Assassins can locate the body of a Sage and hide it from Abstergo.[19] Despite the Assassins' efforts, Abstergo collects enough samples of other Sages by the start of Assassin's Creed Syndicate to move forward with the Phoenix Project. Again, Bishop contacts the Initiate and asks them to explore the memories of Jacob and Evie Frye, twin Assassins from Victorian England, to locate a Piece of Eden known as the Shroud, which Abstergo needs to complete the process of recreating the Isu genetic structure. Although the Initiate manages to locate the Shroud, the Templars beat the Assassins to it.[19]
A new storyline is introduced in Assassin's Creed Origins focusing on Abstergo researcher Layla Hassan. Initially tasked with locating historical artifacts in Egypt, Layla stumbles upon the mummified corpses of the medjay Bayek and his wife Aya, co-founders of the Hidden Ones, the precursor organizati
This program unpacks Playstation 3 Theme files (.p3t) so that you can touch-up an existing theme to your likings or use a certain wallpaper from it (as many themes have multiple). But remember, if you use content from another theme and release it, be sure to give credit!
Download p3textractor.zip from above. Extract the files to a folder with a program such as WinZip or WinRAR. Now there are multiple ways to extract the theme.
The first way is to simply open the p3t file with p3textractor.exe. If you don’t know how to do this, right click the p3t file and select Open With. Alternatively, open the p3t file and it will ask you to select a program to open with. Click Browse and find p3textractor.exe from where you previously extracted it to. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename]. After that, all you need to do for any future p3t files is open them and it will extract.
The second way is very simple. Just drag the p3t file to p3textractor.exe. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename].
For the third way, first put the p3t file you want to extract into the same folder as p3textractor.exe. Open CMD and browse to the folder with p3extractor.exe. Enter the following: p3textractor filename.p3t [destination path]Replace filename with the name of the p3t file, and replace [destination path] with the name of the folder you want the files to be extracted to. A destination path is not required. By default it will extract to extracted.filename.
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