Controversial opinion: I like comfort games these days.
The first AC came out when I was in high school, and my one of my favourite bands for a good few years released their first album around then as well. I may not have as much time or love for either now, but I still get a nice buzz when I engage with a new release - especially when it does something a bit different (even if not revolutionary) compared to previous ones.
The Assassin’s Creed franchise nowadays seems more like one of those slushy machines at the mall that perpetually move the same ingredients around in a neverending cycle of despair and stagnation.
You know how in tv shows or movies in the 90s, there were always a pair of villains or goons that worked for the main villain and were comic relief? Like the Jessie & James pair in Pokemon or the two guys in power rangers or whatever I’m thinking of.
Remember how occasionally, like if it were two guys, they’d fight between the two of them, on-screen?
Assassin’s Creed’s shift to open-world RPGs would never have happened at many companies, Alex Hutchinson says
Literally everyone and their mother could have expected this change. It’s literally the one single way AAA studios have been padding gameplay and time for a decade and a half now.
Ubisoft codified a certain style of open world design that many other AAA releases were using as a template. He’s right, you can’t deny the impact the franchise had.
It WAS a good idea when first used. And, when imported across to Far Cry, they also tried to come up with new forms of climbing and even puzzles to get you up. Then, simply because the internet made memes about it through repeat emphasis (repeating an old mechanic alone isn’t necessarily a bad thing) they responded, took the system out, and even lampshaded it in Far Cry 5 - WHILE other devs as far as Nintendo/Zelda were copying it.
Theres a lot to condemn Ubisoft for, but the towers thing always irked me. Call open worlds as a whole boring, but it suggests it’s not the sort of game to keep your interest anyway.
You say that and I can kinda agree with it, and I can see them agreeing with it... but I recently got FC5 on a discount and despite it all - it still felt like the exact same game as every previous one. So artificially gamey and forced in some interactions, so predictable in its plot and map exploration structure...
I don't think it ends up feeling that different at all. Maybe you zipline up the towers today and they just discover POIs instead of removing map fog, but it's still the same crap, just served differently
I feel like Nintendo 64 was the real OG adapter of open world RPGs. The success of Mario 64 and legend of Zelda had already proven the genre wildly profitable
Oh yeah, these terrible execs from other companies who veto female protagonists on principle, insist on implementing the same list of a thousand terrible features in all games regardless of genre, and harass their employees while being protected by HR and the CEO.
Wait, no, those are not the bad ones. You know the bad ones because they’ve worked for toothpaste companies.
Surely he knows that Fortnite is itself the clone. He has to know that they didn’t start the battle royale genre they just cutesy it up and monetize the hell out of it.
It was actually a good game when it was in beta and the building mechanics actually had some sort of point. Then they pivoted and went in the battle of royale genre and it became a microtransaction lootbox nightmare.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes people want the same kind of game with a different flavor. Maybe they don’t like the PUBG art style and would rather play Fortnite instead, or perhaps they don’t like Overwatch because of Blizzard and are okay with Marvel Rivals from NetEase instead.
I don’t believe that games should exist with no real competitors. That’s how you end up with games like Dead by Daylight, where community sentiment plummets but the developers have no real reason to do anything about it because where are the players going to go?
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