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.
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.
You know what I would buy? Hitman set in ancient Egypt.
Infiltrating a workgang forced to build a pyramid, putting a spitting cobra into a nasty enforcer’s chamber pot because he owes the Potiphar some serious myrrh?
Honestly, not a bad idea. Synthesizing and iterating, taking things out of context, combining elements you haven’t before - that’s how you get something interesting.
Ubi’s problem is that their gameplay loops are completely stale. There just isn’t enough new and different, the stories are trite, the dialogue is shit, and everything is boring and predictable.
I somewhat enjoyed the first Assassin’s Creed, but was a little bitter it wasn’t the Prince of Persia game they’d intended the engine for. I didn’t find “walking slowly to blend in with a crowd” to be as fun as the intense combat and tight platforming of Sands of Time. But I cannot for the life of me understand how the series blew up into a juggernaut of a dozen releases over two decades.
I’m actually playing The Lost Crown now and - not that I’m the first to observe this - but I feel like it’s the best thing Ubi has done since The Two Thrones twenty years ago. This is the kind of risk that Ubi should be taking. Modest games, smaller budgets, new genres. Diversify and let the creatives create. Let small projects succeed and give them a sequel. If small projects fail, it doesn’t break the bank. But for christ’s sake stop releasing the same three giant boring games over and over.
I’m still sad they killed the 2008 Prince of Persia after the DLC, top of my list from them. (Lost Crown isn’t far)
Also TBF, Origins isn’t the best example to blame them for making a stale loop, since that’s precisely the game where they updated the AC formula to make it a lot more RPG.
But I cannot for the life of me understand how the series blew up into a juggernaut of a dozen releases over two decades.
Heavily historical setting fairly accurate about settings that a lot of people are interested about. Nothing easier. You can literally throw a dart at a map and a timeline and make something interesting with a shit story. People will buy a million of them, doesn’t matter if they’re all the same game. It’s a goddamn mystery that no one is doing anything like that with their own engine, absolute lack of imagination.
This is what kills me. There’s so much squandered potential in AC with this kind of thinking. Instead, Ubisoft just wants to be EA by re-selling the same game every year, but doesn’t have the sports licenses to pull it off.
Ubisoft has practically only produced confusing Open World games of the same IPs for the past decade. My definition of risk and innovation is slightly different 😅
And that’s just because Open World games are easy to mass produce. You just change assets and few minor things and reuse more or less the whole game
while its hilarious that he is trying this again, that website not only popped a text box that opened my keyboard automatically and then did another pop up after that.
I mean, drop shipping does feel like it could be easily profitable for someone with clout and a following to peddle his upcharged wares to. At least he’s doing better than last time when he was immediately shut down because the product was illegal (included roms), or when he bought an atari nft that he thought meant he owned atari. I really want to know how much he paid for that nft that he thought he owned the entire company
Ubisoft took one risk back in the mid-late 2000s and have been riding that safety wave ever since with asscreed. They’re not the last people who should be pointing fingers at other publishers for playing it too safe and releasing formulaic games, but damn if they aren’t next-in-line for that honor.
If you look at the picture from Soulja Boy’s site, it’s clearly just the Retroid image run through an AI Image-to-image filter to make sure it’s not exactly the same. The buttons have random symbols on them, some of them seem to bend, the D-pad is misshapen and from a distance, the whole thing just looks like a slightly less detailed copy of the original Retroid image.
I really liked the first AC game but when I played Odyssey I was disappointed. Beautiful game, fun mini-games, nice subsystems like upgrading the ship and whatnot. After the initial couple of hours I started to feel like everything is a chore.
Need a map? No way to buy, you have to run/ride and climb the chore tower.
Want to use equipment? Grind chore for the XP to meet the level requirement.
Want to beat a quest handed to you early? Grind XP
Want to complete side quests? All of the boilerplate fetch/kill quests.
Just please, give me a starting weapon that’s good enough and I can just stealth kill my way through the main quest. Also, just allow me to buy the map.
After the initial couple of hours I started to feel like everything is a chore.
Exactly. I don’t know what I expected, but that was my experience as well. The game more or less told me this:
“Hey, did you enjoy the first chapter? Well guess what? We’re going to throw that at you x20 with the occasional plot beat thrown in for variety. Have fun!”
For the obvious boatload of cash poured into Odyssey’s development, I feel like half as much game done twice as well would have been a better experience. Instead, we get something that is seemingly padded for play-time, in the same way a 4th grader adds extra blank lines to hit the required page count on a book report.
Want to use equipment? Grind chore for the XP to meet the level requirement.
Want to beat a quest handed to you early? Grind XP
Want to complete side quests? All of the boilerplate fetch/kill quests.
I mean this respectfully, but you were holding it wrong.
First off, Odyssey was too big, but I enjoyed it! The voiced side quests were great, especially those heavily involving Kassandra. The Atlantis DLC was sublime. But:
You don’t worry about equipment beyond your level!
Leave future quests in the journal!
Fetch quest? If you’re bored, skip it! TBH I Cheat Engined some money in.
Odyssey requires no grinding, as it has waaay too much filler as is. It is a game that’s utterly miserable if you give into completionist impulses, but pretty neat if you don’t.
…Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t particularly enjoy the combat, and the main story is so dull I don’t even remember it, aside from the Atlantis bits. It’s not a masterpiece. But I remember the experience of trekking across Greece quite fondly.
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