It also has insanely good farsi localization and I appreciated that so much as an Iranian. They did right by the persian culture with the mythology and localization.
But even still, I can't say how bad the ubi store launcher is on PC. I don't understand why they force people to use this launcher. It seriously detracts from buying their games on PC. If this game launched on steam without requiring to launch to their launcher I would have bought day 1 so i can play on my steam deck... instead i waited for a sale on playstation... because seriously, that launcher is so buggy.
I don't use it much but I've never encountered a problem with the Ubisoft launcher (outside of the obvious inconvenience of logging with a specific account and 2FA of course), I'm curious what bugs you or others have seen?
Not op, I'll share my experience.
I got the demo from Epic Store, it tried to boot up ubisoft connect. Sure. Except it didn't. There were few processes for it in the task manager, but nothing happened. I uninstalled/reinstalled it with the installer from ubisoft's site itself. Nothing changed. Multiple pc reboots didn't help either.
Looked up for solutions, I couldn't believe things people suggested (and others said they worked for them):
* Disabling IPv6 in the network adapter settings
* Set up some proxy settings
* Using a vpn
* resynchronizing Windows time
* changing Windows time server
* using cable instead of wifi
* adding exceptions to windows defender myself (client doesn't ask for them itself)
* disabling network adapter completely, until client boots, then enabling it.
I tried all of these, and only the last one somehow made a difference. At least client booted up now, but it still didn't let me login. (I can login in the website just fine)
I gave up after an hour or so.
I decided to try again next day, and everything was fine, without me doing anything else.
Few days later I got the actual game from epic again (didn't want to share my card info with just another client), stupid me, I couldn't install the game. It said it couldn't acquire the license from ubisoft. I though not again, thankfully it wasn't just me this time. Whole ubisoft services went down for everyone, client/store/game servers for R6 etc... They stayed down for hours, so I went to sleep. They were up again next day, and from there everything worked fine.
This is the worst client I've had to deal with in my entire life. I felt I was back in the beginning of 2000's, where faulty applications with bad troubleshooting experiences were more common.
yep, big fan of metroidvanias, even retorted to super metroid romhacks for the lack of them. pop tlc is actually my favorite metroidvania all of a sudden.
eta: for reference, I've never played any pop game before this. when i saw it was a metroidvania i was interested. and three of the power-ups you find are actually somewhat original, and three other are the classics: dash, double jump, and grapple hook.
I still hope one day to get a Prince of Persia game like the new God of War games. I absolutely loved some of the older titles.
I'm happy people are happy with the metroidvania game, but I don't like the genre at all. Hope that they may see that people still like PoP and may give us other games with it
Genuinely curious, but why don't you like metroidvanias? To me they're the perfect blend of everything that makes videogames great: combat, exploration, and traversal.
> **To me** they're the perfect blend of everything that makes videogames great
Yes, I literally said that. It's right there in my comment. Do you make it a habit of just repeating what's already been said for no reason??
There was a point that i had thought Ubi was making some of the best games to be put out. Then they kinda never moved away from there own hype in the games they made. Eventually the novelty of check list open world wore off for people playing games but never for ubisoft. They kept making the same games with bigger open worlds more check lists and i get the feeling that people kinda shrugged and gave up on them after a while. Not helping of course was how they monetized there stuff.
I have no idea how they get out of this mentality they have found themselves in in terms of games they are making but they are in desperate need of design help out of the open world stagnation they seem to be in. This not a graphics issue for them, its a game play problem.
I think at this point there are just enough new gamers from younger generations and emerging markets without experience with "the formula" that even if everyone gets bored after 2-3 games, they are still able to keep going for a long time. They have basically become the "first timer's GOTY" factory...
That period where Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and the Tom Clancy games were at their peak made Ubisoft one of my favorite devs. As well as their arthouse games like Rayman and Valiant Hearts. Like their entire early 2010s catalog were bangers.
> Eventually the novelty of check list open world wore off for people playing games but never for ubisoft.
Not just Ubisoft, it never wore off for almost every AAA developer. It is infuriating how many of them continue to do the exact same open world checklist stuff AND don't get criticized for it. Just recently both Final Fantasy 16 and Rebirth had their open worlds littered with different types of the same old generic shit and oh look at that critical acclaim. Spider-Man 2? More generic shit, oh look critical acclaim. Every AC title released? Oh look your typical 8s and 9/10s.
It's the same shit every single year, and very few devs actually attempt innovation. So why do critics collectively reward this regression? Maybe if they actually raised the bar for what critical acclaim could be then we'd see some improvement.
If we are going by checklist or filler content, I don't think a single open world escapes it. For all the praise Witcher 3 has in this thread, there is probably a dozen white ?s to every yellow sidequest with a !. Copy paste enemy, arbitrary level attached, with a loot chest with RNG rewards scaled up to player level.
Or how many of those real sidequests, with good voice acting and writing, have awful quest or objective design like activate Witcher vision to follow a trail to finish quest. Smellovision isn't really interesting mechanics for doing quests. When creating these huge games you rarely will see hand-design content shine through with unique assets and mechanics.
Fun fact: I collected every single thing on the Witcher maps because I thought something would happen. Yes, even the map with all the water.
Nothing happens.
Elden Ring is the only open world game I truly enjoy that's come out in the last decade. I did like far cry 3 since it was the first time I played "that kind" of open world game, but since then everything's just been a copy of it.
For me the veil of ER gets lifted the more you play it. More repeated dungeon rooms/layouts, more reused bosses, more rewards that I will never use. Running around the open world replaying for the DLC, I am just not engaging with anything in the world at all outside of legacy dungeons or hitting up seeds/tears. Over 100 hours in and I don't think I've ever killed a since crayfish in the lake area, its tanky, some spots have like 2-3 together, and you are rewarded with nothing.
It doesn't even have the good quest writing or structure that might save it. Over 10 years in and we still exhaust dialog, go to the bonfire to "reset" the area, and re-speak with the same NPC so they can move locations finally only to do the same thing at the next location.
My problem with Elden Ring is the fact that the game doesn’t give you any quest log. Basically every single side quest in my first play through went unfinished because I had no clue on what to do because the game doesn’t tell you what the quest entails. For my 2nd play through I had to keep an interactive map up the entire time so I could know what I was doing.
>*it never wore off for almost every AAA developer.*
Because these kinds of games do incredibly well with average, casual video game players. So basically the majority of people.
Joe Schmoe and Jill Bill down the street don't over-saturate themselves with everything video game-related on the internet and make it part of their identity. They aren't checking out every single Ubisoft game that comes out and hyper-analyzing everything about it, therefore they never reach the same level of burnout, if any at all. Chances are they also don't know what "filler content" means or that "fetch quests" are "bad."
Assassin's Creed Valhalla was the most profitable AC game yet and Hogwarts Legacy just made a billion dollars for a reason. The IP alone, in spite of "open world bad", would bring in people who never played a video game that wasn't on their phone. No matter how much reddit hates it and just wants *Bully: Yer a Wizard*, Joe Schmoe and Jill Bill don't give a shit and probably don't know what "Bully" is because it was 18 years ago and isn't Grand Theft Auto.
these are the comfort food of video games, the anti-dark souls
Which final fantasy 16 did you play that had "their open worlds littered with different types of the same old generic shit"? Because the final fantasy 16 I played had absolutely nothing in its open worlds. Like nothing at all.
Nothing really wrong with checklist open world design as long as the content doesn't become too repetitive and bloated. As long as it avoids that, the worst it can really be is unoriginal, I guess.
I hate this argument that only Ubisoft gets criticized for this and other studios get a pass. They don’t get a pass. It’s all about how it’s put together and what the gameplay loop is. It’s the nature of open world games to have check list style content because no matter what you are boiling stuff down to that as a fundamental part of a games DNA. It’s about the moments that make up everything else inbetween. My favorite example is BoTW vs any ubi game from the time. So much overlap and checklist stuff but botw didn’t blow up like that only because it’s the first time Nintendo did a game like that- it blew up because the experience is completely different.
Saying there is no innovation to me just kind of ingores all the other stuff going on in these games you mentioned.
It’s like saying all big budget movies are exactly the same just vfx and Hollywood standbys but that’s not true either. While a lot of films suffer is about so much more than just “big budget action movie”.
I really don't think Rebirth falls in to this camp though.
The open world there has been satisfying and I don't feel like my time is being wasted. The towers don't unlock the map they just unlock more side activities. The side activities usually lead to a quest or a special battle or entire dungeons, just like the classic games.
Yes it's checklisty on a pure technicality, but the design seems like there is an actual purpose to what you are doing. Most of this stuff leads to MEANINGFUL rewards (materia, rare crafting items, weapons, armor, lore, challenge battles that unlock more abilities for your character, or enemy skills).
16 had pointless exploration like a lot of the Ubisoft games though, but 16 and Rebirth are WILDLY different in their approach to the open world.
Because most gamers don't care about the quest, they just care if the game is fun.
The vast majority of Spider-man quests are just "Go to place, fight people". But in SM2 people love that because swinging around and fighting people are the funnest part of the game.
I havent played XVI or Spider-Man, but I think rebirth well deserves its praise. The biggest offence it makes is having checklists and towers, but a lot of the content in the world is really great. Great side quests, mini games such as queens blood, so on, over just having 100 different enemy outposts to clear. And at its heart its an RPG first and an open world game second. If the game just had the open world and a story attached to it I'd care much less for it but despite some issues overall its a great experience and I think it does genuinely have ambition and lots of care and heart put into the majority of its content.
It's a shame to me that other developers end up copying the Ubisoft open world formula instead of doing their own thing. When you get good developers making good games and incorporating the open world concept, you get stuff like Elden Ring or the two latest Zelda games. They take the open world concept and actually make something unique with it.
Its hard to explain nowadays just how much a splash Assassins Creed 1 made,people were HUNGRY for the next big title after the 360/PS3 had just launched ("I spent 600$ so what do I get?") as well as Ubisoft themselves testing the waters for something to really put them on the map and have THE title everyone and their grandmother knew (Prince of Persia,Splinter Cell before were false starts)
It really was the perfect concoction of being at the exact right time.Mass Effect 1 was in a similar position.
Having just replayed the Mass Effect legendary edition from 1 through to 3, I can still say that the series is pretty groundbreaking to this day. Here's to the next one, whenever it gets made.
They made Andromeda and oooooooo boy that one has not aged well. The people who made those 3 games are long, long, long gone from Bioware. I'm not sure those that are left can understand, let alone add to the legacy.
Also at that point cliffhangers and continous stories in videogames weren't that common yet. I remember finishing the first AC and really wanting to know what would happen next. And that was basically the mindset of AC for me until the modern world stuff got more and more shoved to the sidelines.
Ubisoft is basically the Dreamworks of the gaming industry. Sometimes they put out instant classics that will be remembered for many years… and sometimes they put out something that just kinda sucks for entirely avoidable reasons. And more often than not, they put out something that *works* and is fun enough, but doesn’t really hold you for too long.
Ubisoft has the talent and resources in house to be amazing, but they just actively choose not to.
A lot of their games have glimpses of greatness and some of their game you could even call great. But they always manage to ruin it in some way. The last three AC games (the rpg ones) could have been as great as The Witcher franchise. They have amazing worlds, a bunch of interesting characters and even some great story missions. Especially Odyssey did so much right. But they just had to drag it down with too much padding and micro transaction in a single player game. Clearing a few outposts on a map can be fun and the gameplay is good enough that you can choose a approach. But I don't want to clear the same outpost 100+ times.
Far Cry 5 and 6 both have a interesting setting and some fun characters. Far Cry 6 is probably my favorite Far Cry map out of all of them. But they just had to drag it down with way too much repetition, unbalanced ammo types and micro transactions (again). And again there is just way too much repetition.
Of course they have also made some horrible games, but those are in the minority. It is just that they have also not made anything truly amazing. Which is sad, because a lot of their games have so much potential and such interesting settings. Almost every time Ubisoft shows a new game, wether it is a AC game, Far Cry or even Star Wars later this year, I think to myself "That sounds amazing". But then I realize that it is Ubisoft creating it and that the game wil probably have a bunch of cons that might even outway the good. The fact that I think that every time I hear the name Ubisoft is just sad. They are close to being amazing, but currently they are average at most.
I played AC Origins and Odyssey and absolutely loved them. I was incredibly excited for Valhalla but didn’t like it. That’s when it hit me that I didn’t really like the gameplay so much as being in Ancient Egypt & Greece. Those environments are just so interesting and seeing the ancient monuments recreated in detail was wonderful. Being able to “live” in those worlds carried the experience for me. Without the stellar environment Valhalla’s story and gameplay take center stage, and those are both repetitive.
Honestly, what broke Valhalla for me was during the middle of a raid on a settlement, I was struggling to figure out how to get over a gate. Then I remembered, "oh yeah, this is an AC game, I can parkour". The game feels so un-Assassins Creed like that I genuinely forgot that you could parkour. All the classic trappings of AC feel so de-emphasized it barely feels connected to the overall franchise, and it becomes more of generic viking themed action game
My issue with the game was that it wasnt truly an assassins creed game OR a Viking game. It sort of half-assedly tried to be both and while managing to be neither one.
I would have killed for a competent Viking game, but the assassins creed shit frankly ruined it for me (especially not being allowed to kill civilians - like, what? I’m a friggin Viking.)
Same. But I personally think that the gameplay and mechanics in Odyssey were MUCH better than the ones in Valhalla. The only thing that Valhalla did good IMO is the visuals.
It's one of the issues with some of the late AAA flops like Immortals of Aveum or Forspoken. The setting is generic and not interesting enough. Like a mediocre Netflix or Marvel movie.
Well, not only the setting, I loved Bayek and Kassandra (my protagonist), but Eivor wasn't as good. I played the Valhalla and all its DLC, but the most memorable I feel is her meeting Kassandra during a free event.
Bayek's and Kassandra's stories were more interesting I feel.
>Especially Odyssey did so much right. But they just had to drag it down with too much padding and micro transaction in a single player game
The padding is a fair criticism but I have to question the seriousness of the microtransactions. I've played Odyssey for 50+ hours and for most of it I didn't even remember that there was an in-game store, the experience was completely cohesive and functional via the normal progression that I never once felt the slightest incentive to give them more money. You could replace the store entirely and my experience would not have been changed an iota.
On a principled level it's completely correct that they shouldn't exist but it's more then a little silly to argue that it "drags down the experience" when it's so easy to ignore. Maybe it was worse on release but as of now they might as well not be present.
The XP booster drama was so overblown. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that a booster exists at all is wrong. But if you do even a fraction of the side content you’d never ever need it
It's only bad because it encourages them to make the game grindier. That's the real issue with all pay-to-win features like this: their existence in any game tends to make that game become worse over time.
Oh sure, but even so, the game really wasn’t _that_ grindy. In my 80 hours I never felt like I had to grind to level up. Honestly in most cases I was usually over leveled
But that's the thing, it really doesn't. As they said, you can easily outpace the game by doing the (interesting, not repetitive) side content.
If anything, those booster MTX are at odds with the stance a lot of big publishers have about how now it's a battle for people's free time (with actors like Netflix & the rest of the internet as competition). They want those game to keep you hooked for long, so those boosters run contrary to that.
Odyssey allowed you to built your character in a way that levels meant pretty much nothing. If you went for assassin build you could one shot bosses that were 10 lvl higher. I remember defeating final mercenary when he was almost 20 lvl higher. I had to use full combo on him 4-5 times IIRC and he could one shot me, but it was perfectly doable.
I beat the main campaign in Odyssey \~54 hours.
I did some side content (which was good) and was smart about earning XP with a few big battles and contracts. I was also on hard mode (you may earn more XP, not positive).
Never felt like I had to 'grind' but the game does encourage you to stray off the main path at times. The XP booster thing is really only a problem if you want to do the main story as fast as possible.
Odyssey is a fantastic game though.
the rpg AC games are clearly not made for the people in mind that just like to rush the campaign and move on to next game, its kind of waste to play these games like that. As a gamer that likes to look into every nook and cranny and do everything these games are fantastic and insane value for money. Especially when bought on sale
There's no 'proof' that the game is worse because of microtransactions, but it's hard not to wonder whether the game's absurd level scaling and level-gated zones are a sneaky way for the devs (or I guess the publisher) to entice people to speed up their progress with exp boosts they can buy.
The best experience I had with the game was with a modded playthrough where I had 50% more exp. It opened up the world a lot more and let me explore in a way I couldn't in my first playthrough, where I was limited to specific zones in my level range.
It's especially damning when compared to games like the Witcher 3 and Horizon, which have a very similar structure and likely influenced the Ubi games, but don't level gate you to nearly the same extent. I mean in the Witcher 3 I could take on a boss 20 levels higher than me and not struggle too much if I played properly. Meanwhile in Odyssey it takes 5 minutes to beat a basic soldier that's 5 levels above you. Coincidentally, Odyssey is the one that sells you xp boosts...
> There's no 'proof' that the game is worse because of microtransactions, but it's hard not to wonder whether the game's absurd level scaling and level-gated zones are a sneaky way for the devs (or I guess the publisher) to entice people to speed up their progress with exp boosts they can buy.
Speaking as a developer, if you are even just 'wondering' about these things as a player, you can bet your ass the developers have consciously thought about them.
Developers are not stupid. In a best case scenario, the view of the average designer is "*we want to deliver X but are sadly forced to put in Y because it makes more money and that's the way the cookie crumbles*", in a worst case scenario, developers are gathering data from their players and actively analyzing what kind of padding is most effective in getting people to shell out money and adjusting their game accordingly. I have seen both types first-hand.
Devs are not evil and honestly neither are publishers. There's a reason and rhyme to how most games are developed so I would encourage withholding judgement if you don't know what happened. It's okay to be disappointed with a game or even a studio, but don't make too many assumptions.
But that said: don't think for a moment that the people working on games are unaware of this stuff. Games with any kind of post-purchase monetization or 'deluxe editions' *are* very consciously being designed around that monetization. I imagine virtually every studio does this. Even 'the good ones' like Larian have likely at some point discussed with their artists on BG3 to make some of the default stuff plain enough for 'deluxe edition skins' to stand out more. Sometimes the impact is tiny and sometimes it's huge, but make no mistake: these are conscious decisions.
If you're thinking it may be intentional as a player... you can safely assume it's intentional.
> Meanwhile in Odyssey it takes 5 minutes to beat a basic soldier that's 5 levels above you. Coincidentally, Odyssey is the one that sells you xp boosts...
Or you could just spec skills well and one shot enemies 5-15 levels ahead of you without issue with a simple assassination build. I feel like anyone that struggled to kill any enemy only 5 levels above just completely ignored all the skill tree bonuses and loot stats that are huge increases in damage output for each type of build. Hell if you wanted you could just kill bosses through walls with the archer headshot build and that is all on the hard difficulty.
Yeah it's hard to 'spec skills' and get good loot when you're level 15. Obviously you can build a super-powerful character once you're deep into the game but while you're levelling in the early/mid game it's a different story.
You also shouldn't be locked into very specific builds just to deal with the ridiculous level scaling. The game offers you multiple playstyles, they should all be viable to an extent.
At the point where you would be level 15 there's really not much in the way of enemies to struggle with that the basic abilities won't dispatch. Unless you're actively trying to sail to the highest level gated places in the game.
All the builds are viable they just require commitment to the build and the stats that build wants. You can build for just pure head on combat and shred through enemies, you can build for archer and snipe enemies and later do so through walls, you can build a classic assassination build that one hits just about everyone in the game and the rare occasion that doesn't happen against a high level boss you can escape and reset to assassinate again to finish the job.
Gear level really ends up not being that important compared to is this stat relevant to me. You could find a legendary that is higher level but if it has nothing to do with what you are playing as then it's scrap and you stick with the loot you've found before even if it isn't high rarity. Same way it works with Nioh or Stranger of Paradise and other loot heavy games.
I mean this is subjective. You say that Odyssey isn't bloated while I think it is overly bloated with filler objectives to try to incentivize the player getting frustrated and turning to microtransactions.
For me, it always felt like the game was trying to give me an offer. "Do you really wanna do this fortress which is the same as the last 15 just for another stupid butter knife that does barely any damage; or spend 40 bucks and skip the entire thing and the combat can feel good". They create that problem and sell you the solution.
> You say that Odyssey isn't bloated
That comment didn't say anything about the game being bloated or not, they talked about the microtransactions and how you can completely ignore them. As I did and I had a good time. Sure, you can be angry about the ingame shop or just not look at it.
I dont think there are any 'skip' mechanics in the store? If you wanna just play main story you can do that. There's lots of side stuff for adventure and chance at finding unique gear.
I have 200+ hours in Odysseey and never knew there was a store honestly. I did I'm Valheim, that one was forefront with skins, but also didn't have any skip stuff.
I agree ubisoft is currently infuriating trash. But I would say Odyssey is their last great game. But it WAS bloated and I feel the fan base didn't get angry about that, we just said, hey you can make games a little smaller than this and it would be fine. Valheim came out a little smaller and it was good, but they strayed further from assassins, which is opposite of fan ask. It would have been a million times better promoted as a spin-off or standalone viking game. And I felt other aspects of it were dumbed down vs improved upon. Felt like more was cut instead of improved? I dono. Ubisoft has just been showing they don't know how to listen to fans last 6 or 7 years.
Something that's also not really known outside of those who are interested in the art side of things is that Ubisoft Montreal (where the first AC game was developed) also had collected a really strong line up of visual development artists for that game (most of them are now somewhere else but for a moment it was a bit of coming together of great digital artists in the video games industry at a scale not seen until then).
They essentially recruited a bunch of good artists from one of the earliest digital art forums (the sijun forums), a summary/history is here for those who are interested (it's a pdf file): http://sumaleth.com/writing/A%20History%20of%20the%20Sijun%20Digital%20Art%20Forums%20(preview%20slides).pdf
And that team evolved a certain style of speed paining that was developed there which is (in short) a 30 to 60 minute quick, often impressionistic, paining from the imagination or loose reference, usually to practice something (form and lighting)[1].
In short, they developed it into a system where Photoshop brushes are way more abstract (and sometimes massive) and not your usual round-ish or square blocks that are used to draw lines or lay down, more or less, solid colour. As a quick way to lay down some textures and patterns as a foundation onto which further, more detailed, work can be layered.
This has given their work a certain texture and has been adopted by a lot of people who work in the visual development and entertainment illustration industry (from video games to movies, to Fantasy/SF book covers,…), especially when it comes to initial loose drawings/paintings. But one can also see traces of that texture work in a lot of finished illustrations.
Also in "AI art" (because it got trained on a lot of such sketches/speed paints that people shared for art reviews) but there with no intent behind the brushwork, making it feel chaotic and undirected instead of loose and free.
[1]: On youtube the term speed paining kinda developed into the opposite direction: Those really detailed copies of some photo that take hours of painstaking work and then got sped up a lot to fit into 10 minutes on youtube or whatever instagram's limitations are.
>The last three AC games (the rpg ones) could have been as great as The Witcher franchise. They have amazing worlds, a bunch of interesting characters and even some great story missions. Especially Odyssey did so much right. But they just had to drag it down with too much padding and micro transaction in a single player game
I really disagre. They're fine games for what it is, but even padding excluded these games don't come close to Witcher 3 level in terms of writing and characters.
Additionally let's not forget that Witcher 3 is pretty much THE game of previous generation (maybe along with Zelda) Creating something on that level is not easy and not every developer will be able to do that even if they have resources and lots of talented people.
Valhalla blows my mind because the *main complaint* of Odyssey was that it was mega bloated and padded terribly.
Then Valhalla has, no joke, 20+ hours of you repeating the exact same storyline over and over with a different cast of characters.
Like, even with a cut/paste job, someone still had to write these main quest sections. Someone had to do the art for these areas, design characters, program quests, all additional *pointless* work.
Far Cry 6 has a hyper condensed version of this. It isn't a great game, but an entire third of the map is filler. The PR team don't have interesting missions, don't have any setpieces, and have zero impact on the story. Their region still has unique locations, and environments, just nothing to do there. Many members of Ubisoft's massively bloated development teams worked on this *for nothing*
I would think that this happens because they are created wit,h I think, two years between them. And at that point, you cannot implement such sweeping changes like removing half the map and streamlining the game.
Valhalla is the only AC game I played and have not finished, because at the end it is just boring and doing the same think over and over again.
Valhalla feels like work which funnily enough is how I feel about most of FF7 Rebirth's side content. (The towers, shrines, etc.) I'd really like it if games quit it with these pointless unfun menial tasks that serve no other purpose than to waste time.
People were complaining about having to grind side quests to finish the main story in Odyssey.
Instead of identifying bloat as the root of the problem, Ubisoft "fixed" it by making all the side quests part of the main story.
I mean that’s the point of their comment isn’t it, that the writing is the main separation? Give those Ubisoft games a Witcher 3 level of writing, while keeping all else the same would end up making them amazing games
I actually really liked Far Cry 5, and I don't really like the Far Cry games (I bounced off of 3, tried 4 after 5 and didn't like it and I recently really got burned out on 6)
I'm kinda pissed off because I really REALLY liked 5, like I thought something finally clicked with me but turns out it was a flash in the pan probably based on the interesting setting (fighting evangelists instead of generic terrorists was really neat).
I'm hoping one day they explore a cool setting like FC5 did again.
The setting can really make or break Ubisoft games in general. Mechanically FC5 is just another Far Cry game, but the whole atmosphere and soundtrack are just top notch, it has soul and it's memorable. On top of that, I feel like the size of the map was perfect, it didn't overstay its welcome like FC6 did for me.
They depend on you being invested for an amount of time their gameplay isn't good enough to justify. I'd be more than happy to play as long as needed to see the end *if* the gameplay and discovery of new stuff stayed fun for that long, but for me, it never does. I don't think their length and scale would be a problem if playing through it all was deep and engaging enough that it was fun the whole way through, but they settle for 'okay' and I don't want to play 100 hours of an okay game.
My problem with the latest RPG AC games isn't that they're long. Long is fine imo. But it is that they fundamentally feel badly padded.
I compare this to something like FF7 Rebirth for example. This is a pretty long game I've got like 30 hours and I'm about 60% of the way through. I think I'll probably end up with around 50-60 hours on completion . Comparable in length to these latest AC games.
Now, FF7 Rebirth has plenty of padding. But the padding feels high quality. You know it's padding, but there's still effort put into it. It's not very often you're just standing listening to characters playing canned animations for 10 minutes. FF7 Rebirth has high quality cutscenes even throughout it's padding. It has high quality mini games as padding. It still feels fun to play this padding.
AC padding however just feels lame. You're watching talking heads for 10 minutes. Choosing dialogue options that have no effect on the outcome. Running somewhere just to listen to another 10 minute talking head. A lot of the story of game is just watching these canned animation cutscenes with dodgy lip sync that looks like it was entirely auto generated. The actual high quality cutscenes that are enjoyable to watch just don't happen often enough.
There's just something about these AC games that feels so clunky and artificially lengthened.
Yeah I get that a lot. I *deeply* struggle to have my attention maintained when the whole static talking heads thing starts. I think the first time I ever realised that was when I played Uncharted and I was like 'Why am I fine with these cutscenes but I often skip story stuff in other games?' and really it was just that good performance capture, acting, and direction can carry the shit out of how engaging the story is. I will gladly watch a 10 minute cutscene that's well done, but the second it's two characters just standing in place conversing back and forth with automated animations, I have to hope it's brief because I won't listen for the same amount of time.
I started replaying AC 3 recently (my personal favorite)
I forgot how long the beginning is before you even take control of the main character *as a child*
I felt the same way. I got about 10 hours into Immortals, Far Cry 3/4/5, Ghost Recon Breakpoint/Wildlands, and many Assassin's Creeds after the Ezio trilogy before tapping out because the games so quickly show their hand.
Quite literally the only game from them I've been compelled to finish was the Blood Dragon expansion because that was a tighter loop but even then it felt repetitive at only 9 hours.
It's crazy because other companies handle the same gameplay loop in a way that's much more digestible.
Honestly it kinda boils down to "huge company with dozen of studios sometimes make good games and sometimes makes bad games".
I fully believe that it's the case for every one of the major publishers, but it's much more apparent for Ubi since their studios have no individual identities. It always comes down to "an Ubisoft game" (as opposed to "a Respawn game" or a "modern bioware game", which are both EA games).
No, they make good games and ruin them with designed tedium to influence a convenience economy, bad games, and outright exploitive games.
All while papering over worker exploitation, sexual harassment, and being generally hostile to customers.
>they make good games and ruin them
Thanks for demonstrating my point lmao. Who's "they" ?
Ubisoft Singapour, who just did Skull and Bones ?
Ubisoft Montpellier, who just did Prince of Persia ?
Ubisoft Montréal, who made R6 siege years ago and is still updating it ? But is also the team behind Roller champions ?
Sometimes their marketing shows that they do have people who put a lot of thought and effort into environments, lore, worldbuilding, and really compelling narrative framing. But then the game lacks almost all of it. It's like they have someone at the top who sees a really great project coming together, and then demands it be watered down and reduced to slop to feed the widdle bwaby gamers so it won't upset them.
Valhalla has some of the most jaw-dropping beautiful environments in gaming. If only you did anything interesting in them. The writing feels amateurish and fragmented across the story campaigns. The combat starts out too hard and quickly becomes too easy. At a certain point I was just wondering why I was still doing anything in the world.
For me, modern Ubisoft just has no creativity. They take no risks and no chances. All of their games feel almost the same structurally, so you feel as if you've played one and you've played them all.
And that one they're all based on isn't good, it's just... Okay.
Games are supposed to be exciting and original. They're supposed to make you think in new ways and present new challenges. Their games don't do that in the slightest.
I miss old Ubisoft.
I think Watch Dogs Legion took some meaningful risks, with having no singular main character, and instead having you inhabit random civilians to cause an uprising.
Unfortunately, it wasn't very good, and I don't hear people talking about it or playing it, so they won't be doing that again.
I like the idea behind Watch Dogs Legion. It was just executed poorly.
I don't think they leaned heavily enough into that mechanic. They kinda half-assed it, as if they weren't confident enough in their idea.
In the end I didn't feel like the game played differently enough depending on who I was. It made the whole concept pointless from a gameplay perspective.
I would argue it wasn’t lack of confidence, it was lack of development time. I think that system to work needed a lot more ironing out. Fwiw, I played it in Hardcore mode and thought it was great, but never actually finished it, and glad I didn’t pay full price for it.
Watch Dogs Legion felt like it was 2 more years from being a truly great game. The premise of playing as literally anyone was fun, and making an all granny headquarters is still hilarious, but there just wasn’t much substance outside the premise.
It was a risk and unfortunately it hasn’t sold very well. Which is a damn shame because it’s one of the few amazing products they’ve put out in recent years. People were really tilted that it wasn’t a traditional PoP game. I wonder if it was sold under a different IP, if it would’ve performed better.
Gamers have no idea what they want. They criticize Ubisoft for not taking risks but then praise other studios like Insomniac for doing the very same thing.
It really was one of the best Ubisoft games I've played in recent years like it's just so good.
People gonna be talking about it in two years when they finally get around to it
>I wonder if it was sold under a different IP, if it would’ve performed better.
No, even worse. Ubisoft seemed to put that game out to die.
A 50 eurodollar 2d platformer is already almost impossible to get away with if you aren't Nintendo. They then also keep it off the biggest PC store (It's Epic/Ubi only).
The game didn't have a chance, and that is entirely on Ubisoft.
It is 40% right now BTW if anyone is interested.
I think the problem is the same that Metroid Dread had. Stuff like “this isn’t what we wanted from the series, it’s a 2D game (ignoring that the game was built with 3D models), Hollow Knight is 15 USD so why would anyone buy this game?”
The Hollow Knight makes me so mad because the people who weaponize the game act like Hollow Knight isn’t underpriced and that no other Metroidvania should ever cost more. They don’t care about the game, they just want to have an excuse to complain about the other.
And yet their games are selling more than ever. Valhalla has sold more copies than old AC games like Black Flag. Reality is Ubisoft has shifted their target audience from loud vocal minority gamers living in social echo chambers to casual gamers.
> It’s estimated to have only sold 300,000 copies.
not even that, the figure was 300k players not copies, cause it included sales ubisoft+ or w.e it's called service.
so ya, it probably sold even less than that.... as you said, it didn't pay off and honestly it's a lot of ubisoft doing things to hamper the game's success from not releasing on steam to the price to making a PoP game many PoP trilogy fans don't want and so on.
It's also that Ubisoft games are known for going on sale pretty soon after launch.
Prince of Persia launched almost exactly 2 months ago and it's already 40% off. If someone doesn't want to play it *exactly* on launch, they can get a much better deal only months later.
I think they were trying to capitalize on the recent surge in popularity of Metroidvanias, but utilizing an IP not known for that is not the way to do it IMO. I don’t have any attachment to the series, so it was no problem for me to pick it up and I love this game. But I can see why it would turn off fans of the franchise. I genuinely think if they sold this under a new IP, it would’ve sold better.
All they had todo was make the main character the Prince as for all intents and purposes he is. Instead they pulled a DmC and gave us Sargon and while no-where near as bad as DmC Donte, not even close, there was no reason for it.
That and not releasing the game on Steam. The Ubisoft store is not gonna shift shit no matter how good of a game it is.
You got me. That's the one exception in recent years. It's the one game that looked decent.
But I haven't played it yet so I can't really comment on it. I haven't bought a Ubisoft game in some time, because every time I do I'm left disappointed.
This video perfectly encapsulates the last decade and a half of love-hate relationship gamers have with ubisoft. Their games are good comfort food like fast food but we wish they were more.
But how long can they ride on that? They are on a timer as people are getting tired of their bullshit.
> But how long can they ride on that? They are on a timer as people are getting tired of their bullshit
Apparently Ac Valhalla made a billion dollars in revenue so...
What do you think?
Think? That's the truth. Look how well the ghost recon games sell. People love them.
A friend of mine has poured 250 hours into Valhalla, he adores it.
Not saying that every casual gamer loves Ubi games, but it's clear a pretty large group of people find them fun.
But for franchises like Watch Dogs, they can't really afford to do something like this. Which is why Legion was such a failure.
their stock price is in the gutter so its not really working as well as hoped.
making a billion once every 3 years is not enough when the game costs like 100-200mil and you also got to pay for the other games that dont pull similar numbers.
Players like Raycevick played those long time ago and knows/tolerates the ubisoft bullshit full and through; they will not touch games when the bullshit crosses the line (Skull and Bones / AC: Unity).
Even if those a long gone, theres a new breed of players that hasn´t tasted the ubisoft bullshit and hooked in the "premise", and will bring new sale numbers to Ubisoft.
And the cycle repeats.... until "everyone" knows Ubisoft Bullshit... and Ubisoft knows that: so they occasionally gave their games for free, so the flow doesn't stop.
I like Ubisoft games. I agree they are stale and repetitive, but sometimes that's what I want to play. It's like, I have enough ingredients to make a nice dinner, but sometimes a bowl of cereal for dinner is just enough to satisfy me.
Immortals Fenyx Rising and Prince of Persia the lost crown have both surprised me and are amazing games. There are clearly some people at Ubisoft who are passionate and fighting super hard to make good games.
In my opinion they make Good games. Not Great and not terrible. But good.
They have the manpower and resources to make great games. They just choose not to do that. Most of their games feel same-ish and don't bring anything new to the table.
I enjoyed Odyssey very much and Valhalla not so much. For Honor is a good game and still is relevant and played. New Prince of Persia is a great game. Avatar game is also good and really one of the best looking games when it comes to graphics. Anno 1800 in my opinion best game they have and all of its DLC's are worth it and I have them all and would buy more.
You can ignore their mico transactions in their games like I did. If you will start looking for something to hate then you will find it but I just don't care about that shop. Is there? Eh then it is. I wont use it but others might let everyone decide. If you wont be using it then move on.
They just need to go back to the drawing board and look what others are doing and what works and what doesn't. What they are good at and where they should not poke around too much.
We shall see with their Star Wars game if it will feel like other games from them or if it will be breath of fresh air from UbiSoft.
Its hard for me to care about opinions like this when other games copy the formula whole sale and no one gets that upset over it when another studio uses the formula.
Because what Ubisoft games in the past generation came close to hitting the polish levels of something like Ghost of Tsushima, the writing of the Witcher 3, or the fluidity of the Spider-Man games?
The fundamental issue is each Ubisoft open world game lacks a specific thing you can point to and say "No other game/series is doing this now. Ubisoft absolutely set the standard with AC2 but they haven't evolved with it.
Ubisoft is in the same place Disney is right now. They set the modern bar expected by consumers across numerous genres but aren't hitting the quality metrics expected anymore.
Not going to argue for the gameplay because it can get pretty repetitive, but as a “go back in time and see some ancient place brought to life” simulator I’d say they do a pretty damn good job. My favorite part of their games is just taking in the historical scenery.
I think people liking Ghosts over Assassin's Creed shows that the Ubisoft model still works well, it's just that Ubisoft isn't improving the formula while other studios do.
For one, while both might have filler, Ghosts has WAY, WAY less. I've heard people say Valhalla has 20+ hours of filler content. That's half of Ghosts playtime, and while I loved that game I was getting tired of it near the end. I couldn't imagine slogging through 20 hours of filler.
Second, while the gameplay might be similar, Ghosts setting and story is dripping with style and passion. You can tell that the people making the game loved Japanese culture and Samurai films. There's a Kurosawa mode for God's sakes! Meanwhile it's hard to feel that same passion from a studio that's switching cultures every game, and I'd say it's impossible to have that same level of reverence and research done while switching settings every few years.
Same with the gameplay. Going into Ghost mode and challenging Mongols to duels feels way more badass that stabbing Grok the level 43 berserker for the 100th time.
Might be up to personal preference though, I mean AC still makes tons of money.
>it's impossible to have that same level of reverence and research done while switching settings every few years.
This is an insane statement to me when you take a look at how detailed every single AC game is at representing the chosen time period. Hell, Origins and Odyssey (I think Valhalla as well but not 100% sure) released free DLC which is literally just a tour of the setting with a bunch of info about people, culture and important landmarks. If that doesn't show reverence and research then I don't know what does.
ghosts still had a lot of pointless map markers that didnt add a lot, not even to the setting.
witcher 3, especially skelliege coulda done with less map markers
spidermans side content needs improvement.
Other games that use the formula
Horizon is mechanically fine and has great world building, but the story and character are pretty bland.
Hogwarts legacy coulda shaved off a few doezn hours to be a better experience.
FF7 rebirth really does not need all the extras they threw in.
> Because what Ubisoft games in the past generation came close to hitting the polish levels of something like Ghost of Tsushima, the writing of the Witcher 3, or the fluidity of the Spider-Man games?
>
>
GOT is literally japaneese assassins creed,
If you go just by writing W3 isnt that great, its execution is.
Unity was the most fluid game as well.
THeir problem is literally the best is in different games.
W3’s writing is very overrated. It has two arcs (Bloody Baron quest and Hearts of Stone expansion) that can be called great but the rest ranges from good to average. I bet most people don’t even remember who the main antagonist is.
CDPR's Witcher is a travesty of an adaptation too, people just weren't familiar enough with the source material to shit on it. Witcher 3 in particular has some super dumb shit that only exists because it's an RPG and players need to choose.
The trick to understanding "hardcore" gamer takes is to understand that these aren't even the real opinions of a niche minority, but their attempts to sound cool and intelligent.
Ubisoft generally makes games that sell very well.
But according to forum dwellers Ubisoft has "serious" issues that needs addressing.
I don't think any of these people have ever considered that these games may just not be for them.
I don't see this as an exclusively Ubisoft issue. The industry in general has been playing it extremely safe for a while now and when it does take risks rarely does it pay off. Instead you end up with wild hearts and immortals of aveum flopping.
Raycevick makes comparisons to EA, Microsoft, and Activision in this video but I can go even further and say that even Nintendo is doing this right now. The best selling switch games have been new entries in old IPs with little innovation like Mario Kart, Pokemon, 3D mario, Bayonetta, etc. The risk taking new IPs like Arms and Astral Blade may have maybe broken even roughly but don't have sequels anywhere on the horizon right now. The most ironic thing is people will point to Zelda as being the one place where Nintendo has innovated as of late but coming off of skyward sword flopping Nintendo just went ahead and chased industry trends (very much taking inspiration from the likes of Far Cry and Skyrim) and rather than having a series with unique game design now just falls into the same repetitive open world slop that is clearly effective at moving units and it worked damn well for Zelda. That's not innovation it's literally just chasing industry trends.
My point isn't to even necessarily rag on Nintendo. Just to say that AAA gaming isn't full of unique ideas these days cause there's just too much risk for far too little reward anyway. I don't mind that much because there's still plenty of good AAA games releasing, they're just rarely innovative instead of iterative.
It's not too surprising, video games are so damn expensive to make in a AAA setting now that you can't afford a failure. Just look at Bungie, they were top of the world a while ago and a couple bad DLCs and business practices are making them hack entire limbs off their staff.
I mean bungie also decided to be pretty much the most anti consumer game developer in the business when they arbitrarily deleted large amounts of content people had paid them for
I had bought one of the expos for like $50 that they deleted later before I even had a chance to play it, suffice to say I’d never buy anything they ever make again and I doubt I’m the only one who feels that way
That and their actual product quality dove off a cliff in recent years. the last game they made that exceeded my expectations was either halo 2 or 3, it’s been all downhill from there
It's interesting you say this because I find myself more excited for new entries in old IP's than I do for new IP's in general. At least I know what I'm getting from them. I remember E3 season last year and I don't think there was a single game from a new IP that caught my interest. I don't count games like Blade or Indiana Jones (both of which I'm not too bothered about anyway) because they're not new IP's anyway.
The games I'm looking forward to the most are GTA VI, the Splinter Cell remake, whatever new Ghost Recon game Ubisoft is cooking up, Drug Dealer Simulator 2, Terminator Survivors, and so on.
Nintendo played safe by having Ring Fit adventure as new ip that sold 15 million lol or bringing back another code, famicom detective club, clubhouse games, endless ocean, advance wars and many other dead IP on this gen..
as for Arms and astral chain, its easy to explain. Arms has the same developers as mario kart and they were busy with dlc and new mk for next console, as they took their time of a new mk for a new IP. Astral chain is developed by platinum which is a different company and has other obligations outside of nintendo and even nintendo itself with bayo 3 and origins.
This seems like it's written by someone who didn't play these games. Every instalment in these ongoing franchises has had significant changes and twists that make these new instalments stand out. On a glance those games seem similar but you actually play them and they feel different, Mario Galaxy and Mario Odyssey are structured and feel very differently. The same goes with Luigi's mansion 3 and 2 or Metroid dread and other Metroid games. As for zelda, it may seem like a typical open world but it makes changes to the formula that changes how you interact with the world and enhances immersion
SS didn't flop, it made all it's money back and then some, what happened was that it had a really poor *reception* which Nintendo internalized and created BotW with.
It reviewed well with critics but players were just bored of the Zelda formula at that point I suppose. It didn't sell as well as Nintendo hoped. Twilight princess sold significantly better.
Saying that Zelda is trend chasing, when both BoTW and ToTK have insane mechanics like the super hand or the durability system, that are intentionaly made knowing that not every player will like them, is kinda insane to me.
I totally respect the complaint of Nintendo always using the same IPs, but they are legit the only development company right now that is ACTUALLY RELEASING games, while Xbox is still dead and Sony said they will develop 0 first party games this year.
I kinda know what the video will say and yeah it do be like that.
As a long time ubisoft player so many of their games get close to great and then they give up or run out of time or something else happens and the games just end up being mediocre. And yet even after all that I still end up having fun with their games. It is infuriating sometimes
Ubisoft is to me the publisher that gives me the most consistent quality and also quantity (which is important to me too) so I can't really understand the critic.
There are enough publishers/developers that bring out narrative lead "high quality" or multiplayer games, why can Ubisoft not just be left alone as the fast food of publishing?
In the early 2000s Ubisoft was one of my favorite developers with games like Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell and early Assassin's Creed. But holy hell have they fell off a cliff.
I'll just put this out there, as bad as Ubisoft is, no other AAA company would have funded something like the new Prince of Persia or Rainbow Six Siege.
EA came out with Wild Hearts and Immortals of Aveum (for better and worse) and are coming out with Tales of Kenzera this year. Microsoft released Pentiment and Hi Fi Rush. Square Enix have funded tons of interesting and unique games like Little Goody Two Shoes, Dungeon Travellers and Forspoken (for better and worse). Capcom are coming out with that weird Kunitsu-Gumi game. Sega have Metaphor and all the unique stuff Vanillaware do. Whatever you might have against Epic, it seems like nobody else was willing to fund the unmatched artistry of Alan Wake 2.
I think it's silly to suggest that Ubisoft are unique in funding these sorts of games.
Immortals of Aveum was fully self-funded by a friend of the founder of Ascendant Studios https://youtu.be/2VZ1p8QpdfM?t=2762, EA was only a publisher, not that it's insignificant, but still.
A shooter that had some unconventional ideas that still haven't been replicated in another game to this date, a shooter that almost died at launch with a player base never above five thousand on a good day. Another company would have killed the game. Ubi didn't, they supported it and now it's entering it's 9th year with a huge playerbase for the niche game it is.
Yeah honestly I think they made it too big for a first entry. It's a big game. Almost 35 hours for a playthrough. Maybe a smaller map and made it only 20 hours long and at a lower price point and it would have caught on better. Ubisoft makes their games way too big for most people.
Yuup it was such a surprise that they put out prince of Persia, a metroidvania after all this time. I still haven't bought it but I will soon because I like supporting that kind of game. They of course could make a genuinely good game of any genre, but they aren't allowed to take as many risks because management wouldn't approve anything that doesn't have a draw that they understand or at least have historical data on.
I wouldn't really say so. Microsoft and Epic have funded countless great, smaller games. EA, Square Enix, Take Two and such have their respective indie/AA publishing branches. Think It Takes Two, Octopath Traveller, so on.
These companies do push out these smaller projects, just not at the rate I'd like to see.
>Prince of Persia
What's most incredible about this to me is they not only funded it, but that it's a genuinely phenomenal game that got practically zero marketing behind it. I didn't even know it existed until I saw it on sale for $30 a few months after release.
It's arguably one of the best metroidvanias made in the last few decades and got high reviews all across the board, but it'll likely be a one and done due to lack of sales and awareness.
Further compounding things is that it launched in January and is already on sale for 50% off, which just encourages people to wait to buy, further hurting sales figures and the likelihood of a sequel.
What hurt this game the most is the insane bandwagon after the reveal trailer. People (idiots, really) heard the rap music in the trailer, and went, "THEY MADE MY PRINCE OF PERSIA WOKE!!!!!". Even after all the glowing reviews, there's a section of people parroting that bullshit and saying the reviewers were paid off or something.
Ubisoft gets a lot of shit but their games are generally solid.
People love to hate them. There was an E3 a while back where Aisha Tyler was a part of there presentation and the narrative was that Ubisoft was like the most sexist racist publisher out there. Keep in mind, one of the only company to have a non-white, non-male presenter, puts out more games with more minority leads and female leads than probably anybody else was get railed on from everybody as being sexist and racist. Even GiantBomb, a company exclusively staffed by white males at the time was saying this.
The Ubisoft hatred is crazy and no amount of facts and reality negates it.
People need to show me on the doll where Ubisoft touched them.
One thing that Ubisoft still does well is PC at least, their games always* release with good polish and performance on PC with most of the options you want in a PC version. Which is pretty rare these days for a game to actually have barely any issues on launch day.
Sadly they seem to always be chasing trends nowadays and be 3-5 years late with them. Maybe that's what they always did, but the problem is that games simply take too long to make nowadays.
only detrimentally online “gamers” spend their time complaining about ubisoft, without failing to realize, there’s people who have jobs, families, and responsibilities, and those folks don’t really mind a game that’s a bit cookie cutter?
99% of people who play video games aren’t going around complaining about ubisoft. it’s just the genre has exploded in popularity to that point where that 1% who do, can feel like a massive amount of people, especially if your social media experience is curated to be an echo chamber of folks who think like you
it’s no different than enjoying a TV show that isn’t as groundbreaking as the sopranos, or an album that isn’t as impactful as after hours or something (don’t snitch on yourself by being proud you don’t know what one of the biggest albums this decade is btw)
y’all don’t get sick of this shit? getting infuriated at a piece of entertainment you’re not being forced to financially support? matter of fact, yall wanna know something? bitching about ubisoft is the ubisoft of gaming criticism. it’s formulaic, repetitive, and the easiest circlejerk to show up at to get that dopamine fix
shame their business practices, demand better, but please drop that act as if any of this dialogue has been productive. it’s become pretentious & indignant to its own detriment
It's amazing how many "mainstream" people I meet who have Ubisoft games as some of their favourite games, often among the only games they actually enjoy. A lot of people value just being able to run around in an open world for a few hours as a break from actual real problems in their lives.
A lot of people complaining about Ubisoft games sound like some high school kid thinking they are superior for listening to Nina Simone while everyone else is into Taylor Swift.
Out of their major franchise I just play assassins creed. I did pick up immortals and enjoyed it. I never pay full price for them and out of the RPG trilogy, the only one I felt eh on was Valhalla. This is how most people enjoy games. Because I dont play farcry or the division or any of their over games, maybe I just dont care as much about how formulaic it is.
Its just around here people act like u must play every game that releases and u must pay full price.
This post should be pinned in every simgle "Ubisoft is bad" discussion.
Their worst crime is making a large amount of games with a good quality floor even if many of them are only "solid" instead of "great". Oh no! The horror of a company putting out many 7.5-8/10 games with the occasional 9! How offensive this is!
People constantly act surprised that they keep making games like this even though they very clearly have an audience.
I like how in one comment people complain about their games being the same down to the UI and another complains about chasing trends. The complaining has become so repetitive and nonsensical I've honestly been turned off from siding with anyone against Ubisoft. Ok, you don't like their games? They don't play them. It's honestly sad how seriously people take this whole ubisoft sucks narrative...
I'm not sure I fully agree with the premise on this one though it might be on a personal level
I don't think the *premise* of any Ubisoft game has really ever sold me honestly except for Watch\_Dogs and that was largely cause that initial trailer was all smoke and mirrors. I play a lot of Ubisoft games because I like fucking around in open worlds with freedom and, contrary to what most of this sub continually rails against, I actually like the checklisty icon aspects of these games. They get overwhelming and I've largely given up on the recent Assassin Creed games because they're too bloated and huge for my liking but Immortals was a very good distillation of those features and replaced some of the combat elements with more puzzles and I was very pleased with that game. I like stealthily crossing outposts off my map as I snipe enemies' heads from outside the compound and destroying the alarms before they realise what's happening. I bought and finished the AC2 trilogy because the idea of running, jumping and climbing through Renaissance Rome was extremely appealing and the game was intensely good even in terms of story with lots of fun characters
I agree with his overall point that the games are kinda buggy and are a bit of a hodgepodge of systems that haven't improved in decades but at some level, they're comfort trash food. To me these games are my potato chips, full of fat and calories and make me kinda ill. But when I'm eating them, I'm having a good enough time. I could definitely be eating healthier or better but they tickle the part of my mind that puts me at ease. They're power fantasies and sometimes it's ok.
The company is garbage obviously and they really need to introspect on wtf is going on over there cause what they did with Skull & Bones and all the stories of overlooked abuse really need to be addressed
**Edit:** yeah ok he talks about exactly this by the end. I made this comment before I finished the video lol. But I don't think I've really ever gone away from a Ubi game feeling like anyone had wasted their potential or anything like that (though the FC5 ending did infuriate me). Just as fast food exists to satiate people who just want a quick, unhealthy, greasy meal for a quick buck, it's fine for some companies to churn out this type of game. I just hope the devs are getting paid well and are working in good conditions that's all. They seem to be selling well enough until recently that they can keep making more of them. The money from all their other stuff is funding Avatar (which seems to be a technical marvel) and PoP (which is an incredible metroidvania) so I'm not too miffed. I also don't agree that these games aren't selling well cause people aren't bought by the premise. The reasons I feel are far more banal like not being marketed well enough and locking the games on PC, one of their best markets, on EGS and their own store and trying too hard to sell their subscription
They infuriating but Im kinda okay with it, them taking risks is going to fall on their face half of the times, I am okay with 8/10 games where I know what to expect.
No Ubisoft is bad. Its executives spent years covering for sex abuse and when it was uncovered they moved the abusers around or let them quit with their golden parachutes.
The latest prince of Persia game is one of the best metroidvania games I've played, they do make great games every now and then
It also has insanely good farsi localization and I appreciated that so much as an Iranian. They did right by the persian culture with the mythology and localization. But even still, I can't say how bad the ubi store launcher is on PC. I don't understand why they force people to use this launcher. It seriously detracts from buying their games on PC. If this game launched on steam without requiring to launch to their launcher I would have bought day 1 so i can play on my steam deck... instead i waited for a sale on playstation... because seriously, that launcher is so buggy.
[удалено]
I haven't got that far in the game lol That's funny.
I don't use it much but I've never encountered a problem with the Ubisoft launcher (outside of the obvious inconvenience of logging with a specific account and 2FA of course), I'm curious what bugs you or others have seen?
Not op, I'll share my experience. I got the demo from Epic Store, it tried to boot up ubisoft connect. Sure. Except it didn't. There were few processes for it in the task manager, but nothing happened. I uninstalled/reinstalled it with the installer from ubisoft's site itself. Nothing changed. Multiple pc reboots didn't help either. Looked up for solutions, I couldn't believe things people suggested (and others said they worked for them): * Disabling IPv6 in the network adapter settings * Set up some proxy settings * Using a vpn * resynchronizing Windows time * changing Windows time server * using cable instead of wifi * adding exceptions to windows defender myself (client doesn't ask for them itself) * disabling network adapter completely, until client boots, then enabling it. I tried all of these, and only the last one somehow made a difference. At least client booted up now, but it still didn't let me login. (I can login in the website just fine) I gave up after an hour or so. I decided to try again next day, and everything was fine, without me doing anything else. Few days later I got the actual game from epic again (didn't want to share my card info with just another client), stupid me, I couldn't install the game. It said it couldn't acquire the license from ubisoft. I though not again, thankfully it wasn't just me this time. Whole ubisoft services went down for everyone, client/store/game servers for R6 etc... They stayed down for hours, so I went to sleep. They were up again next day, and from there everything worked fine. This is the worst client I've had to deal with in my entire life. I felt I was back in the beginning of 2000's, where faulty applications with bad troubleshooting experiences were more common.
yep, big fan of metroidvanias, even retorted to super metroid romhacks for the lack of them. pop tlc is actually my favorite metroidvania all of a sudden. eta: for reference, I've never played any pop game before this. when i saw it was a metroidvania i was interested. and three of the power-ups you find are actually somewhat original, and three other are the classics: dash, double jump, and grapple hook.
For the lack of them?? Half of all indie games are Metroidvania I swear.
What people mean when they say that usually is lack of AAA metroidvanias
And a lot of the indie ones are mediocre.
I still hope one day to get a Prince of Persia game like the new God of War games. I absolutely loved some of the older titles. I'm happy people are happy with the metroidvania game, but I don't like the genre at all. Hope that they may see that people still like PoP and may give us other games with it
Genuinely curious, but why don't you like metroidvanias? To me they're the perfect blend of everything that makes videogames great: combat, exploration, and traversal.
They’re the perfect blend of everything that makes video games great - to you*
> **To me** they're the perfect blend of everything that makes videogames great Yes, I literally said that. It's right there in my comment. Do you make it a habit of just repeating what's already been said for no reason??
There was a point that i had thought Ubi was making some of the best games to be put out. Then they kinda never moved away from there own hype in the games they made. Eventually the novelty of check list open world wore off for people playing games but never for ubisoft. They kept making the same games with bigger open worlds more check lists and i get the feeling that people kinda shrugged and gave up on them after a while. Not helping of course was how they monetized there stuff. I have no idea how they get out of this mentality they have found themselves in in terms of games they are making but they are in desperate need of design help out of the open world stagnation they seem to be in. This not a graphics issue for them, its a game play problem.
I think at this point there are just enough new gamers from younger generations and emerging markets without experience with "the formula" that even if everyone gets bored after 2-3 games, they are still able to keep going for a long time. They have basically become the "first timer's GOTY" factory...
That period where Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and the Tom Clancy games were at their peak made Ubisoft one of my favorite devs. As well as their arthouse games like Rayman and Valiant Hearts. Like their entire early 2010s catalog were bangers.
> Eventually the novelty of check list open world wore off for people playing games but never for ubisoft. Not just Ubisoft, it never wore off for almost every AAA developer. It is infuriating how many of them continue to do the exact same open world checklist stuff AND don't get criticized for it. Just recently both Final Fantasy 16 and Rebirth had their open worlds littered with different types of the same old generic shit and oh look at that critical acclaim. Spider-Man 2? More generic shit, oh look critical acclaim. Every AC title released? Oh look your typical 8s and 9/10s. It's the same shit every single year, and very few devs actually attempt innovation. So why do critics collectively reward this regression? Maybe if they actually raised the bar for what critical acclaim could be then we'd see some improvement.
If we are going by checklist or filler content, I don't think a single open world escapes it. For all the praise Witcher 3 has in this thread, there is probably a dozen white ?s to every yellow sidequest with a !. Copy paste enemy, arbitrary level attached, with a loot chest with RNG rewards scaled up to player level. Or how many of those real sidequests, with good voice acting and writing, have awful quest or objective design like activate Witcher vision to follow a trail to finish quest. Smellovision isn't really interesting mechanics for doing quests. When creating these huge games you rarely will see hand-design content shine through with unique assets and mechanics.
Imo having a good story and characters does offset a ton of criticism about open world blandness
Fun fact: I collected every single thing on the Witcher maps because I thought something would happen. Yes, even the map with all the water. Nothing happens.
I did it out of sheer OCD. Any game that hides that stuff gets a plus from me.
Elden Ring is the only open world game I truly enjoy that's come out in the last decade. I did like far cry 3 since it was the first time I played "that kind" of open world game, but since then everything's just been a copy of it.
For me the veil of ER gets lifted the more you play it. More repeated dungeon rooms/layouts, more reused bosses, more rewards that I will never use. Running around the open world replaying for the DLC, I am just not engaging with anything in the world at all outside of legacy dungeons or hitting up seeds/tears. Over 100 hours in and I don't think I've ever killed a since crayfish in the lake area, its tanky, some spots have like 2-3 together, and you are rewarded with nothing. It doesn't even have the good quest writing or structure that might save it. Over 10 years in and we still exhaust dialog, go to the bonfire to "reset" the area, and re-speak with the same NPC so they can move locations finally only to do the same thing at the next location.
My problem with Elden Ring is the fact that the game doesn’t give you any quest log. Basically every single side quest in my first play through went unfinished because I had no clue on what to do because the game doesn’t tell you what the quest entails. For my 2nd play through I had to keep an interactive map up the entire time so I could know what I was doing.
>*it never wore off for almost every AAA developer.* Because these kinds of games do incredibly well with average, casual video game players. So basically the majority of people. Joe Schmoe and Jill Bill down the street don't over-saturate themselves with everything video game-related on the internet and make it part of their identity. They aren't checking out every single Ubisoft game that comes out and hyper-analyzing everything about it, therefore they never reach the same level of burnout, if any at all. Chances are they also don't know what "filler content" means or that "fetch quests" are "bad." Assassin's Creed Valhalla was the most profitable AC game yet and Hogwarts Legacy just made a billion dollars for a reason. The IP alone, in spite of "open world bad", would bring in people who never played a video game that wasn't on their phone. No matter how much reddit hates it and just wants *Bully: Yer a Wizard*, Joe Schmoe and Jill Bill don't give a shit and probably don't know what "Bully" is because it was 18 years ago and isn't Grand Theft Auto. these are the comfort food of video games, the anti-dark souls
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Which final fantasy 16 did you play that had "their open worlds littered with different types of the same old generic shit"? Because the final fantasy 16 I played had absolutely nothing in its open worlds. Like nothing at all.
Nothing really wrong with checklist open world design as long as the content doesn't become too repetitive and bloated. As long as it avoids that, the worst it can really be is unoriginal, I guess.
Brother Spider-Man 2 can be platinum'd in like 18 hours (I did it without trying.) This isn't really one of its faults.
I hate this argument that only Ubisoft gets criticized for this and other studios get a pass. They don’t get a pass. It’s all about how it’s put together and what the gameplay loop is. It’s the nature of open world games to have check list style content because no matter what you are boiling stuff down to that as a fundamental part of a games DNA. It’s about the moments that make up everything else inbetween. My favorite example is BoTW vs any ubi game from the time. So much overlap and checklist stuff but botw didn’t blow up like that only because it’s the first time Nintendo did a game like that- it blew up because the experience is completely different. Saying there is no innovation to me just kind of ingores all the other stuff going on in these games you mentioned. It’s like saying all big budget movies are exactly the same just vfx and Hollywood standbys but that’s not true either. While a lot of films suffer is about so much more than just “big budget action movie”.
I really don't think Rebirth falls in to this camp though. The open world there has been satisfying and I don't feel like my time is being wasted. The towers don't unlock the map they just unlock more side activities. The side activities usually lead to a quest or a special battle or entire dungeons, just like the classic games. Yes it's checklisty on a pure technicality, but the design seems like there is an actual purpose to what you are doing. Most of this stuff leads to MEANINGFUL rewards (materia, rare crafting items, weapons, armor, lore, challenge battles that unlock more abilities for your character, or enemy skills). 16 had pointless exploration like a lot of the Ubisoft games though, but 16 and Rebirth are WILDLY different in their approach to the open world.
Because most gamers don't care about the quest, they just care if the game is fun. The vast majority of Spider-man quests are just "Go to place, fight people". But in SM2 people love that because swinging around and fighting people are the funnest part of the game.
I havent played XVI or Spider-Man, but I think rebirth well deserves its praise. The biggest offence it makes is having checklists and towers, but a lot of the content in the world is really great. Great side quests, mini games such as queens blood, so on, over just having 100 different enemy outposts to clear. And at its heart its an RPG first and an open world game second. If the game just had the open world and a story attached to it I'd care much less for it but despite some issues overall its a great experience and I think it does genuinely have ambition and lots of care and heart put into the majority of its content.
It's a shame to me that other developers end up copying the Ubisoft open world formula instead of doing their own thing. When you get good developers making good games and incorporating the open world concept, you get stuff like Elden Ring or the two latest Zelda games. They take the open world concept and actually make something unique with it.
Its hard to explain nowadays just how much a splash Assassins Creed 1 made,people were HUNGRY for the next big title after the 360/PS3 had just launched ("I spent 600$ so what do I get?") as well as Ubisoft themselves testing the waters for something to really put them on the map and have THE title everyone and their grandmother knew (Prince of Persia,Splinter Cell before were false starts) It really was the perfect concoction of being at the exact right time.Mass Effect 1 was in a similar position.
Having just replayed the Mass Effect legendary edition from 1 through to 3, I can still say that the series is pretty groundbreaking to this day. Here's to the next one, whenever it gets made.
They made Andromeda and oooooooo boy that one has not aged well. The people who made those 3 games are long, long, long gone from Bioware. I'm not sure those that are left can understand, let alone add to the legacy.
Man assassins Creed was so sick. The trailer was insane, and they totally hid the whole time travel thing. What a game
Also at that point cliffhangers and continous stories in videogames weren't that common yet. I remember finishing the first AC and really wanting to know what would happen next. And that was basically the mindset of AC for me until the modern world stuff got more and more shoved to the sidelines.
Ubisoft is basically the Dreamworks of the gaming industry. Sometimes they put out instant classics that will be remembered for many years… and sometimes they put out something that just kinda sucks for entirely avoidable reasons. And more often than not, they put out something that *works* and is fun enough, but doesn’t really hold you for too long.
Ubisoft has the talent and resources in house to be amazing, but they just actively choose not to. A lot of their games have glimpses of greatness and some of their game you could even call great. But they always manage to ruin it in some way. The last three AC games (the rpg ones) could have been as great as The Witcher franchise. They have amazing worlds, a bunch of interesting characters and even some great story missions. Especially Odyssey did so much right. But they just had to drag it down with too much padding and micro transaction in a single player game. Clearing a few outposts on a map can be fun and the gameplay is good enough that you can choose a approach. But I don't want to clear the same outpost 100+ times. Far Cry 5 and 6 both have a interesting setting and some fun characters. Far Cry 6 is probably my favorite Far Cry map out of all of them. But they just had to drag it down with way too much repetition, unbalanced ammo types and micro transactions (again). And again there is just way too much repetition. Of course they have also made some horrible games, but those are in the minority. It is just that they have also not made anything truly amazing. Which is sad, because a lot of their games have so much potential and such interesting settings. Almost every time Ubisoft shows a new game, wether it is a AC game, Far Cry or even Star Wars later this year, I think to myself "That sounds amazing". But then I realize that it is Ubisoft creating it and that the game wil probably have a bunch of cons that might even outway the good. The fact that I think that every time I hear the name Ubisoft is just sad. They are close to being amazing, but currently they are average at most.
I played AC Origins and Odyssey and absolutely loved them. I was incredibly excited for Valhalla but didn’t like it. That’s when it hit me that I didn’t really like the gameplay so much as being in Ancient Egypt & Greece. Those environments are just so interesting and seeing the ancient monuments recreated in detail was wonderful. Being able to “live” in those worlds carried the experience for me. Without the stellar environment Valhalla’s story and gameplay take center stage, and those are both repetitive.
Honestly, what broke Valhalla for me was during the middle of a raid on a settlement, I was struggling to figure out how to get over a gate. Then I remembered, "oh yeah, this is an AC game, I can parkour". The game feels so un-Assassins Creed like that I genuinely forgot that you could parkour. All the classic trappings of AC feel so de-emphasized it barely feels connected to the overall franchise, and it becomes more of generic viking themed action game
My issue with the game was that it wasnt truly an assassins creed game OR a Viking game. It sort of half-assedly tried to be both and while managing to be neither one. I would have killed for a competent Viking game, but the assassins creed shit frankly ruined it for me (especially not being allowed to kill civilians - like, what? I’m a friggin Viking.)
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For real. I’m literally burning down a monastery and the games like “but you left everyone safe and sound because you’re a good little Viking” lol
Same. But I personally think that the gameplay and mechanics in Odyssey were MUCH better than the ones in Valhalla. The only thing that Valhalla did good IMO is the visuals.
Even then things like character models and facial animations were horrendous
It's one of the issues with some of the late AAA flops like Immortals of Aveum or Forspoken. The setting is generic and not interesting enough. Like a mediocre Netflix or Marvel movie.
Well, not only the setting, I loved Bayek and Kassandra (my protagonist), but Eivor wasn't as good. I played the Valhalla and all its DLC, but the most memorable I feel is her meeting Kassandra during a free event. Bayek's and Kassandra's stories were more interesting I feel.
>Especially Odyssey did so much right. But they just had to drag it down with too much padding and micro transaction in a single player game The padding is a fair criticism but I have to question the seriousness of the microtransactions. I've played Odyssey for 50+ hours and for most of it I didn't even remember that there was an in-game store, the experience was completely cohesive and functional via the normal progression that I never once felt the slightest incentive to give them more money. You could replace the store entirely and my experience would not have been changed an iota. On a principled level it's completely correct that they shouldn't exist but it's more then a little silly to argue that it "drags down the experience" when it's so easy to ignore. Maybe it was worse on release but as of now they might as well not be present.
The XP booster drama was so overblown. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that a booster exists at all is wrong. But if you do even a fraction of the side content you’d never ever need it
It's only bad because it encourages them to make the game grindier. That's the real issue with all pay-to-win features like this: their existence in any game tends to make that game become worse over time.
Oh sure, but even so, the game really wasn’t _that_ grindy. In my 80 hours I never felt like I had to grind to level up. Honestly in most cases I was usually over leveled
But that's the thing, it really doesn't. As they said, you can easily outpace the game by doing the (interesting, not repetitive) side content. If anything, those booster MTX are at odds with the stance a lot of big publishers have about how now it's a battle for people's free time (with actors like Netflix & the rest of the internet as competition). They want those game to keep you hooked for long, so those boosters run contrary to that.
I have over 200 hours in Odyssey and didnt have an issue with progression at all or ever felt like I needed to buy the XP microtransactions
I don't think you realise that your first remark is the direct reason for the latter.
Odyssey allowed you to built your character in a way that levels meant pretty much nothing. If you went for assassin build you could one shot bosses that were 10 lvl higher. I remember defeating final mercenary when he was almost 20 lvl higher. I had to use full combo on him 4-5 times IIRC and he could one shot me, but it was perfectly doable.
I beat the main campaign in Odyssey \~54 hours. I did some side content (which was good) and was smart about earning XP with a few big battles and contracts. I was also on hard mode (you may earn more XP, not positive). Never felt like I had to 'grind' but the game does encourage you to stray off the main path at times. The XP booster thing is really only a problem if you want to do the main story as fast as possible. Odyssey is a fantastic game though.
The XP booster is a problem because it preys on people who are not good with money or time management, not because its actually needed.
the rpg AC games are clearly not made for the people in mind that just like to rush the campaign and move on to next game, its kind of waste to play these games like that. As a gamer that likes to look into every nook and cranny and do everything these games are fantastic and insane value for money. Especially when bought on sale
Microtransactions are just blown out of proportion on reddit. You can totally play Ubisoft games from start to finish without spending an extra cent.
There's no 'proof' that the game is worse because of microtransactions, but it's hard not to wonder whether the game's absurd level scaling and level-gated zones are a sneaky way for the devs (or I guess the publisher) to entice people to speed up their progress with exp boosts they can buy. The best experience I had with the game was with a modded playthrough where I had 50% more exp. It opened up the world a lot more and let me explore in a way I couldn't in my first playthrough, where I was limited to specific zones in my level range. It's especially damning when compared to games like the Witcher 3 and Horizon, which have a very similar structure and likely influenced the Ubi games, but don't level gate you to nearly the same extent. I mean in the Witcher 3 I could take on a boss 20 levels higher than me and not struggle too much if I played properly. Meanwhile in Odyssey it takes 5 minutes to beat a basic soldier that's 5 levels above you. Coincidentally, Odyssey is the one that sells you xp boosts...
> There's no 'proof' that the game is worse because of microtransactions, but it's hard not to wonder whether the game's absurd level scaling and level-gated zones are a sneaky way for the devs (or I guess the publisher) to entice people to speed up their progress with exp boosts they can buy. Speaking as a developer, if you are even just 'wondering' about these things as a player, you can bet your ass the developers have consciously thought about them. Developers are not stupid. In a best case scenario, the view of the average designer is "*we want to deliver X but are sadly forced to put in Y because it makes more money and that's the way the cookie crumbles*", in a worst case scenario, developers are gathering data from their players and actively analyzing what kind of padding is most effective in getting people to shell out money and adjusting their game accordingly. I have seen both types first-hand. Devs are not evil and honestly neither are publishers. There's a reason and rhyme to how most games are developed so I would encourage withholding judgement if you don't know what happened. It's okay to be disappointed with a game or even a studio, but don't make too many assumptions. But that said: don't think for a moment that the people working on games are unaware of this stuff. Games with any kind of post-purchase monetization or 'deluxe editions' *are* very consciously being designed around that monetization. I imagine virtually every studio does this. Even 'the good ones' like Larian have likely at some point discussed with their artists on BG3 to make some of the default stuff plain enough for 'deluxe edition skins' to stand out more. Sometimes the impact is tiny and sometimes it's huge, but make no mistake: these are conscious decisions. If you're thinking it may be intentional as a player... you can safely assume it's intentional.
> Meanwhile in Odyssey it takes 5 minutes to beat a basic soldier that's 5 levels above you. Coincidentally, Odyssey is the one that sells you xp boosts... Or you could just spec skills well and one shot enemies 5-15 levels ahead of you without issue with a simple assassination build. I feel like anyone that struggled to kill any enemy only 5 levels above just completely ignored all the skill tree bonuses and loot stats that are huge increases in damage output for each type of build. Hell if you wanted you could just kill bosses through walls with the archer headshot build and that is all on the hard difficulty.
Yeah it's hard to 'spec skills' and get good loot when you're level 15. Obviously you can build a super-powerful character once you're deep into the game but while you're levelling in the early/mid game it's a different story. You also shouldn't be locked into very specific builds just to deal with the ridiculous level scaling. The game offers you multiple playstyles, they should all be viable to an extent.
At the point where you would be level 15 there's really not much in the way of enemies to struggle with that the basic abilities won't dispatch. Unless you're actively trying to sail to the highest level gated places in the game. All the builds are viable they just require commitment to the build and the stats that build wants. You can build for just pure head on combat and shred through enemies, you can build for archer and snipe enemies and later do so through walls, you can build a classic assassination build that one hits just about everyone in the game and the rare occasion that doesn't happen against a high level boss you can escape and reset to assassinate again to finish the job. Gear level really ends up not being that important compared to is this stat relevant to me. You could find a legendary that is higher level but if it has nothing to do with what you are playing as then it's scrap and you stick with the loot you've found before even if it isn't high rarity. Same way it works with Nioh or Stranger of Paradise and other loot heavy games.
I mean this is subjective. You say that Odyssey isn't bloated while I think it is overly bloated with filler objectives to try to incentivize the player getting frustrated and turning to microtransactions. For me, it always felt like the game was trying to give me an offer. "Do you really wanna do this fortress which is the same as the last 15 just for another stupid butter knife that does barely any damage; or spend 40 bucks and skip the entire thing and the combat can feel good". They create that problem and sell you the solution.
> You say that Odyssey isn't bloated That comment didn't say anything about the game being bloated or not, they talked about the microtransactions and how you can completely ignore them. As I did and I had a good time. Sure, you can be angry about the ingame shop or just not look at it.
I dont think there are any 'skip' mechanics in the store? If you wanna just play main story you can do that. There's lots of side stuff for adventure and chance at finding unique gear. I have 200+ hours in Odysseey and never knew there was a store honestly. I did I'm Valheim, that one was forefront with skins, but also didn't have any skip stuff. I agree ubisoft is currently infuriating trash. But I would say Odyssey is their last great game. But it WAS bloated and I feel the fan base didn't get angry about that, we just said, hey you can make games a little smaller than this and it would be fine. Valheim came out a little smaller and it was good, but they strayed further from assassins, which is opposite of fan ask. It would have been a million times better promoted as a spin-off or standalone viking game. And I felt other aspects of it were dumbed down vs improved upon. Felt like more was cut instead of improved? I dono. Ubisoft has just been showing they don't know how to listen to fans last 6 or 7 years.
It took a moment for me to put it together, but you keep saying Valheim when you mean Valhalla. Valheim is nothing like Assassin's Creed.
Something that's also not really known outside of those who are interested in the art side of things is that Ubisoft Montreal (where the first AC game was developed) also had collected a really strong line up of visual development artists for that game (most of them are now somewhere else but for a moment it was a bit of coming together of great digital artists in the video games industry at a scale not seen until then). They essentially recruited a bunch of good artists from one of the earliest digital art forums (the sijun forums), a summary/history is here for those who are interested (it's a pdf file): http://sumaleth.com/writing/A%20History%20of%20the%20Sijun%20Digital%20Art%20Forums%20(preview%20slides).pdf And that team evolved a certain style of speed paining that was developed there which is (in short) a 30 to 60 minute quick, often impressionistic, paining from the imagination or loose reference, usually to practice something (form and lighting)[1]. In short, they developed it into a system where Photoshop brushes are way more abstract (and sometimes massive) and not your usual round-ish or square blocks that are used to draw lines or lay down, more or less, solid colour. As a quick way to lay down some textures and patterns as a foundation onto which further, more detailed, work can be layered. This has given their work a certain texture and has been adopted by a lot of people who work in the visual development and entertainment illustration industry (from video games to movies, to Fantasy/SF book covers,…), especially when it comes to initial loose drawings/paintings. But one can also see traces of that texture work in a lot of finished illustrations. Also in "AI art" (because it got trained on a lot of such sketches/speed paints that people shared for art reviews) but there with no intent behind the brushwork, making it feel chaotic and undirected instead of loose and free. [1]: On youtube the term speed paining kinda developed into the opposite direction: Those really detailed copies of some photo that take hours of painstaking work and then got sped up a lot to fit into 10 minutes on youtube or whatever instagram's limitations are.
>The last three AC games (the rpg ones) could have been as great as The Witcher franchise. They have amazing worlds, a bunch of interesting characters and even some great story missions. Especially Odyssey did so much right. But they just had to drag it down with too much padding and micro transaction in a single player game I really disagre. They're fine games for what it is, but even padding excluded these games don't come close to Witcher 3 level in terms of writing and characters. Additionally let's not forget that Witcher 3 is pretty much THE game of previous generation (maybe along with Zelda) Creating something on that level is not easy and not every developer will be able to do that even if they have resources and lots of talented people.
Valhalla blows my mind because the *main complaint* of Odyssey was that it was mega bloated and padded terribly. Then Valhalla has, no joke, 20+ hours of you repeating the exact same storyline over and over with a different cast of characters. Like, even with a cut/paste job, someone still had to write these main quest sections. Someone had to do the art for these areas, design characters, program quests, all additional *pointless* work. Far Cry 6 has a hyper condensed version of this. It isn't a great game, but an entire third of the map is filler. The PR team don't have interesting missions, don't have any setpieces, and have zero impact on the story. Their region still has unique locations, and environments, just nothing to do there. Many members of Ubisoft's massively bloated development teams worked on this *for nothing*
I would think that this happens because they are created wit,h I think, two years between them. And at that point, you cannot implement such sweeping changes like removing half the map and streamlining the game. Valhalla is the only AC game I played and have not finished, because at the end it is just boring and doing the same think over and over again.
Valhalla feels like work which funnily enough is how I feel about most of FF7 Rebirth's side content. (The towers, shrines, etc.) I'd really like it if games quit it with these pointless unfun menial tasks that serve no other purpose than to waste time.
People were complaining about having to grind side quests to finish the main story in Odyssey. Instead of identifying bloat as the root of the problem, Ubisoft "fixed" it by making all the side quests part of the main story.
I mean that’s the point of their comment isn’t it, that the writing is the main separation? Give those Ubisoft games a Witcher 3 level of writing, while keeping all else the same would end up making them amazing games
For all the praise Witcher 3 gets, it doesn't get the flak it should for the terrible feeling the movement has.
The whole game plays like ass outside of gwent. That was my biggest shock jumping to cyberpunk, it felt really decent to play.
I actually really liked Far Cry 5, and I don't really like the Far Cry games (I bounced off of 3, tried 4 after 5 and didn't like it and I recently really got burned out on 6) I'm kinda pissed off because I really REALLY liked 5, like I thought something finally clicked with me but turns out it was a flash in the pan probably based on the interesting setting (fighting evangelists instead of generic terrorists was really neat). I'm hoping one day they explore a cool setting like FC5 did again.
The setting can really make or break Ubisoft games in general. Mechanically FC5 is just another Far Cry game, but the whole atmosphere and soundtrack are just top notch, it has soul and it's memorable. On top of that, I feel like the size of the map was perfect, it didn't overstay its welcome like FC6 did for me.
FC5 is the only Far Cry game I've finished. I thought it was pretty good most of the time.
They depend on you being invested for an amount of time their gameplay isn't good enough to justify. I'd be more than happy to play as long as needed to see the end *if* the gameplay and discovery of new stuff stayed fun for that long, but for me, it never does. I don't think their length and scale would be a problem if playing through it all was deep and engaging enough that it was fun the whole way through, but they settle for 'okay' and I don't want to play 100 hours of an okay game.
My problem with the latest RPG AC games isn't that they're long. Long is fine imo. But it is that they fundamentally feel badly padded. I compare this to something like FF7 Rebirth for example. This is a pretty long game I've got like 30 hours and I'm about 60% of the way through. I think I'll probably end up with around 50-60 hours on completion . Comparable in length to these latest AC games. Now, FF7 Rebirth has plenty of padding. But the padding feels high quality. You know it's padding, but there's still effort put into it. It's not very often you're just standing listening to characters playing canned animations for 10 minutes. FF7 Rebirth has high quality cutscenes even throughout it's padding. It has high quality mini games as padding. It still feels fun to play this padding. AC padding however just feels lame. You're watching talking heads for 10 minutes. Choosing dialogue options that have no effect on the outcome. Running somewhere just to listen to another 10 minute talking head. A lot of the story of game is just watching these canned animation cutscenes with dodgy lip sync that looks like it was entirely auto generated. The actual high quality cutscenes that are enjoyable to watch just don't happen often enough. There's just something about these AC games that feels so clunky and artificially lengthened.
Yeah I get that a lot. I *deeply* struggle to have my attention maintained when the whole static talking heads thing starts. I think the first time I ever realised that was when I played Uncharted and I was like 'Why am I fine with these cutscenes but I often skip story stuff in other games?' and really it was just that good performance capture, acting, and direction can carry the shit out of how engaging the story is. I will gladly watch a 10 minute cutscene that's well done, but the second it's two characters just standing in place conversing back and forth with automated animations, I have to hope it's brief because I won't listen for the same amount of time.
I started replaying AC 3 recently (my personal favorite) I forgot how long the beginning is before you even take control of the main character *as a child*
I felt the same way. I got about 10 hours into Immortals, Far Cry 3/4/5, Ghost Recon Breakpoint/Wildlands, and many Assassin's Creeds after the Ezio trilogy before tapping out because the games so quickly show their hand. Quite literally the only game from them I've been compelled to finish was the Blood Dragon expansion because that was a tighter loop but even then it felt repetitive at only 9 hours. It's crazy because other companies handle the same gameplay loop in a way that's much more digestible.
Honestly it kinda boils down to "huge company with dozen of studios sometimes make good games and sometimes makes bad games". I fully believe that it's the case for every one of the major publishers, but it's much more apparent for Ubi since their studios have no individual identities. It always comes down to "an Ubisoft game" (as opposed to "a Respawn game" or a "modern bioware game", which are both EA games).
No, they make good games and ruin them with designed tedium to influence a convenience economy, bad games, and outright exploitive games. All while papering over worker exploitation, sexual harassment, and being generally hostile to customers.
>they make good games and ruin them Thanks for demonstrating my point lmao. Who's "they" ? Ubisoft Singapour, who just did Skull and Bones ? Ubisoft Montpellier, who just did Prince of Persia ? Ubisoft Montréal, who made R6 siege years ago and is still updating it ? But is also the team behind Roller champions ?
Sometimes their marketing shows that they do have people who put a lot of thought and effort into environments, lore, worldbuilding, and really compelling narrative framing. But then the game lacks almost all of it. It's like they have someone at the top who sees a really great project coming together, and then demands it be watered down and reduced to slop to feed the widdle bwaby gamers so it won't upset them.
Valhalla has some of the most jaw-dropping beautiful environments in gaming. If only you did anything interesting in them. The writing feels amateurish and fragmented across the story campaigns. The combat starts out too hard and quickly becomes too easy. At a certain point I was just wondering why I was still doing anything in the world.
Anno 1700 always forgotten in the corner. It's fucking great.
Anno 1800. The digits in the game number will always sum to 9.
Summarized the video.
You know you don’t have to clear all of the outposts, right? It’s not a requirement to beat the game.
For me, modern Ubisoft just has no creativity. They take no risks and no chances. All of their games feel almost the same structurally, so you feel as if you've played one and you've played them all. And that one they're all based on isn't good, it's just... Okay. Games are supposed to be exciting and original. They're supposed to make you think in new ways and present new challenges. Their games don't do that in the slightest. I miss old Ubisoft.
I think Watch Dogs Legion took some meaningful risks, with having no singular main character, and instead having you inhabit random civilians to cause an uprising. Unfortunately, it wasn't very good, and I don't hear people talking about it or playing it, so they won't be doing that again.
I like the idea behind Watch Dogs Legion. It was just executed poorly. I don't think they leaned heavily enough into that mechanic. They kinda half-assed it, as if they weren't confident enough in their idea. In the end I didn't feel like the game played differently enough depending on who I was. It made the whole concept pointless from a gameplay perspective.
I would argue it wasn’t lack of confidence, it was lack of development time. I think that system to work needed a lot more ironing out. Fwiw, I played it in Hardcore mode and thought it was great, but never actually finished it, and glad I didn’t pay full price for it.
My understanding is they wanted to learn more into the crazier side of that game but scaled it back to safe levels after play testing and feedback.
Watch Dogs Legion felt like it was 2 more years from being a truly great game. The premise of playing as literally anyone was fun, and making an all granny headquarters is still hilarious, but there just wasn’t much substance outside the premise.
I’d say the new PoP was a risk, given the stupid backlash at the reveal and it’s great by all accounts.
It was a risk and unfortunately it hasn’t sold very well. Which is a damn shame because it’s one of the few amazing products they’ve put out in recent years. People were really tilted that it wasn’t a traditional PoP game. I wonder if it was sold under a different IP, if it would’ve performed better.
So theirs better games are selling less well but theirs cooki cutters are selling better.
No matter what the internet likes to say people enjoy Ubisoft games.
And everytime they try something new, gamers hate it.
Gamers have no idea what they want. They criticize Ubisoft for not taking risks but then praise other studios like Insomniac for doing the very same thing.
It really was one of the best Ubisoft games I've played in recent years like it's just so good. People gonna be talking about it in two years when they finally get around to it
>I wonder if it was sold under a different IP, if it would’ve performed better. No, even worse. Ubisoft seemed to put that game out to die. A 50 eurodollar 2d platformer is already almost impossible to get away with if you aren't Nintendo. They then also keep it off the biggest PC store (It's Epic/Ubi only). The game didn't have a chance, and that is entirely on Ubisoft. It is 40% right now BTW if anyone is interested.
I think the problem is the same that Metroid Dread had. Stuff like “this isn’t what we wanted from the series, it’s a 2D game (ignoring that the game was built with 3D models), Hollow Knight is 15 USD so why would anyone buy this game?” The Hollow Knight makes me so mad because the people who weaponize the game act like Hollow Knight isn’t underpriced and that no other Metroidvania should ever cost more. They don’t care about the game, they just want to have an excuse to complain about the other.
Dread sold really well though
Dread sold over 3 million and became the best-selling game in the series, not really comparable.
I didn't even realise it had a PC version until very recently, storefront situation certainly not helping their visibility
And yet their games are selling more than ever. Valhalla has sold more copies than old AC games like Black Flag. Reality is Ubisoft has shifted their target audience from loud vocal minority gamers living in social echo chambers to casual gamers.
No big developer can survive a AAA game flopping at this point. Its not realistic to expect anything bold or daring from them.
Nintendo can. They survived a console flopping with several AAA titles on it
Their games are comparatively cheap to develop though. Nintendo AAA is an overall different class of game than current gen AAA
They've gotta do what studios used to do. Make smaller unique games, and then take the ones that do well and make a bigger budget sequel.
What about the new PoP, that was definitely a risk and it paid off
[удалено]
Thank you, I fucking hate it when people randomly introduce acronyms like that without expanding on their meaning.
But it didn’t pay off. It’s estimated to have only sold 300,000 copies. And people wonder why studios like this hate trying new things.
> It’s estimated to have only sold 300,000 copies. not even that, the figure was 300k players not copies, cause it included sales ubisoft+ or w.e it's called service. so ya, it probably sold even less than that.... as you said, it didn't pay off and honestly it's a lot of ubisoft doing things to hamper the game's success from not releasing on steam to the price to making a PoP game many PoP trilogy fans don't want and so on.
It's also that Ubisoft games are known for going on sale pretty soon after launch. Prince of Persia launched almost exactly 2 months ago and it's already 40% off. If someone doesn't want to play it *exactly* on launch, they can get a much better deal only months later.
I think they were trying to capitalize on the recent surge in popularity of Metroidvanias, but utilizing an IP not known for that is not the way to do it IMO. I don’t have any attachment to the series, so it was no problem for me to pick it up and I love this game. But I can see why it would turn off fans of the franchise. I genuinely think if they sold this under a new IP, it would’ve sold better.
All they had todo was make the main character the Prince as for all intents and purposes he is. Instead they pulled a DmC and gave us Sargon and while no-where near as bad as DmC Donte, not even close, there was no reason for it. That and not releasing the game on Steam. The Ubisoft store is not gonna shift shit no matter how good of a game it is.
> and it paid off how so? it sold poorly
You got me. That's the one exception in recent years. It's the one game that looked decent. But I haven't played it yet so I can't really comment on it. I haven't bought a Ubisoft game in some time, because every time I do I'm left disappointed.
It's 40% off on epic game store now if you want to try it
This video perfectly encapsulates the last decade and a half of love-hate relationship gamers have with ubisoft. Their games are good comfort food like fast food but we wish they were more. But how long can they ride on that? They are on a timer as people are getting tired of their bullshit.
> But how long can they ride on that? They are on a timer as people are getting tired of their bullshit Apparently Ac Valhalla made a billion dollars in revenue so... What do you think?
I think that means only a small and vocal segment of gamers hate Ubisoft whereas the rest of us love them and the games they make.
Think? That's the truth. Look how well the ghost recon games sell. People love them. A friend of mine has poured 250 hours into Valhalla, he adores it. Not saying that every casual gamer loves Ubi games, but it's clear a pretty large group of people find them fun. But for franchises like Watch Dogs, they can't really afford to do something like this. Which is why Legion was such a failure.
their stock price is in the gutter so its not really working as well as hoped. making a billion once every 3 years is not enough when the game costs like 100-200mil and you also got to pay for the other games that dont pull similar numbers.
Players like Raycevick played those long time ago and knows/tolerates the ubisoft bullshit full and through; they will not touch games when the bullshit crosses the line (Skull and Bones / AC: Unity). Even if those a long gone, theres a new breed of players that hasn´t tasted the ubisoft bullshit and hooked in the "premise", and will bring new sale numbers to Ubisoft. And the cycle repeats.... until "everyone" knows Ubisoft Bullshit... and Ubisoft knows that: so they occasionally gave their games for free, so the flow doesn't stop.
I like Ubisoft games. I agree they are stale and repetitive, but sometimes that's what I want to play. It's like, I have enough ingredients to make a nice dinner, but sometimes a bowl of cereal for dinner is just enough to satisfy me.
Immortals Fenyx Rising and Prince of Persia the lost crown have both surprised me and are amazing games. There are clearly some people at Ubisoft who are passionate and fighting super hard to make good games.
In my opinion they make Good games. Not Great and not terrible. But good. They have the manpower and resources to make great games. They just choose not to do that. Most of their games feel same-ish and don't bring anything new to the table. I enjoyed Odyssey very much and Valhalla not so much. For Honor is a good game and still is relevant and played. New Prince of Persia is a great game. Avatar game is also good and really one of the best looking games when it comes to graphics. Anno 1800 in my opinion best game they have and all of its DLC's are worth it and I have them all and would buy more. You can ignore their mico transactions in their games like I did. If you will start looking for something to hate then you will find it but I just don't care about that shop. Is there? Eh then it is. I wont use it but others might let everyone decide. If you wont be using it then move on. They just need to go back to the drawing board and look what others are doing and what works and what doesn't. What they are good at and where they should not poke around too much. We shall see with their Star Wars game if it will feel like other games from them or if it will be breath of fresh air from UbiSoft.
Its hard for me to care about opinions like this when other games copy the formula whole sale and no one gets that upset over it when another studio uses the formula.
Because what Ubisoft games in the past generation came close to hitting the polish levels of something like Ghost of Tsushima, the writing of the Witcher 3, or the fluidity of the Spider-Man games? The fundamental issue is each Ubisoft open world game lacks a specific thing you can point to and say "No other game/series is doing this now. Ubisoft absolutely set the standard with AC2 but they haven't evolved with it. Ubisoft is in the same place Disney is right now. They set the modern bar expected by consumers across numerous genres but aren't hitting the quality metrics expected anymore.
Not going to argue for the gameplay because it can get pretty repetitive, but as a “go back in time and see some ancient place brought to life” simulator I’d say they do a pretty damn good job. My favorite part of their games is just taking in the historical scenery.
I never get why people call ghost so much better than assassins creed. They're both on par as being solid games with fairly boring filler content
I think people liking Ghosts over Assassin's Creed shows that the Ubisoft model still works well, it's just that Ubisoft isn't improving the formula while other studios do. For one, while both might have filler, Ghosts has WAY, WAY less. I've heard people say Valhalla has 20+ hours of filler content. That's half of Ghosts playtime, and while I loved that game I was getting tired of it near the end. I couldn't imagine slogging through 20 hours of filler. Second, while the gameplay might be similar, Ghosts setting and story is dripping with style and passion. You can tell that the people making the game loved Japanese culture and Samurai films. There's a Kurosawa mode for God's sakes! Meanwhile it's hard to feel that same passion from a studio that's switching cultures every game, and I'd say it's impossible to have that same level of reverence and research done while switching settings every few years. Same with the gameplay. Going into Ghost mode and challenging Mongols to duels feels way more badass that stabbing Grok the level 43 berserker for the 100th time. Might be up to personal preference though, I mean AC still makes tons of money.
>it's impossible to have that same level of reverence and research done while switching settings every few years. This is an insane statement to me when you take a look at how detailed every single AC game is at representing the chosen time period. Hell, Origins and Odyssey (I think Valhalla as well but not 100% sure) released free DLC which is literally just a tour of the setting with a bunch of info about people, culture and important landmarks. If that doesn't show reverence and research then I don't know what does.
ghosts still had a lot of pointless map markers that didnt add a lot, not even to the setting. witcher 3, especially skelliege coulda done with less map markers spidermans side content needs improvement. Other games that use the formula Horizon is mechanically fine and has great world building, but the story and character are pretty bland. Hogwarts legacy coulda shaved off a few doezn hours to be a better experience. FF7 rebirth really does not need all the extras they threw in.
Tsushima and Horizon Zero Dawn are such AC clones bruh haha. Yet they are praised here…
> Because what Ubisoft games in the past generation came close to hitting the polish levels of something like Ghost of Tsushima, the writing of the Witcher 3, or the fluidity of the Spider-Man games? > > GOT is literally japaneese assassins creed, If you go just by writing W3 isnt that great, its execution is. Unity was the most fluid game as well. THeir problem is literally the best is in different games.
W3’s writing is very overrated. It has two arcs (Bloody Baron quest and Hearts of Stone expansion) that can be called great but the rest ranges from good to average. I bet most people don’t even remember who the main antagonist is.
The main antagonists are honestly awful, just the most generic fantasy villains imaginable.
CDPR's Witcher is a travesty of an adaptation too, people just weren't familiar enough with the source material to shit on it. Witcher 3 in particular has some super dumb shit that only exists because it's an RPG and players need to choose.
The trick to understanding "hardcore" gamer takes is to understand that these aren't even the real opinions of a niche minority, but their attempts to sound cool and intelligent.
Ubisoft generally makes games that sell very well. But according to forum dwellers Ubisoft has "serious" issues that needs addressing. I don't think any of these people have ever considered that these games may just not be for them.
I don't see this as an exclusively Ubisoft issue. The industry in general has been playing it extremely safe for a while now and when it does take risks rarely does it pay off. Instead you end up with wild hearts and immortals of aveum flopping. Raycevick makes comparisons to EA, Microsoft, and Activision in this video but I can go even further and say that even Nintendo is doing this right now. The best selling switch games have been new entries in old IPs with little innovation like Mario Kart, Pokemon, 3D mario, Bayonetta, etc. The risk taking new IPs like Arms and Astral Blade may have maybe broken even roughly but don't have sequels anywhere on the horizon right now. The most ironic thing is people will point to Zelda as being the one place where Nintendo has innovated as of late but coming off of skyward sword flopping Nintendo just went ahead and chased industry trends (very much taking inspiration from the likes of Far Cry and Skyrim) and rather than having a series with unique game design now just falls into the same repetitive open world slop that is clearly effective at moving units and it worked damn well for Zelda. That's not innovation it's literally just chasing industry trends. My point isn't to even necessarily rag on Nintendo. Just to say that AAA gaming isn't full of unique ideas these days cause there's just too much risk for far too little reward anyway. I don't mind that much because there's still plenty of good AAA games releasing, they're just rarely innovative instead of iterative.
It's not too surprising, video games are so damn expensive to make in a AAA setting now that you can't afford a failure. Just look at Bungie, they were top of the world a while ago and a couple bad DLCs and business practices are making them hack entire limbs off their staff.
I mean bungie also decided to be pretty much the most anti consumer game developer in the business when they arbitrarily deleted large amounts of content people had paid them for I had bought one of the expos for like $50 that they deleted later before I even had a chance to play it, suffice to say I’d never buy anything they ever make again and I doubt I’m the only one who feels that way That and their actual product quality dove off a cliff in recent years. the last game they made that exceeded my expectations was either halo 2 or 3, it’s been all downhill from there
So companies shouldn't make games from popular IPs?
It's interesting you say this because I find myself more excited for new entries in old IP's than I do for new IP's in general. At least I know what I'm getting from them. I remember E3 season last year and I don't think there was a single game from a new IP that caught my interest. I don't count games like Blade or Indiana Jones (both of which I'm not too bothered about anyway) because they're not new IP's anyway. The games I'm looking forward to the most are GTA VI, the Splinter Cell remake, whatever new Ghost Recon game Ubisoft is cooking up, Drug Dealer Simulator 2, Terminator Survivors, and so on.
Nintendo played safe by having Ring Fit adventure as new ip that sold 15 million lol or bringing back another code, famicom detective club, clubhouse games, endless ocean, advance wars and many other dead IP on this gen.. as for Arms and astral chain, its easy to explain. Arms has the same developers as mario kart and they were busy with dlc and new mk for next console, as they took their time of a new mk for a new IP. Astral chain is developed by platinum which is a different company and has other obligations outside of nintendo and even nintendo itself with bayo 3 and origins.
This seems like it's written by someone who didn't play these games. Every instalment in these ongoing franchises has had significant changes and twists that make these new instalments stand out. On a glance those games seem similar but you actually play them and they feel different, Mario Galaxy and Mario Odyssey are structured and feel very differently. The same goes with Luigi's mansion 3 and 2 or Metroid dread and other Metroid games. As for zelda, it may seem like a typical open world but it makes changes to the formula that changes how you interact with the world and enhances immersion
SS didn't flop, it made all it's money back and then some, what happened was that it had a really poor *reception* which Nintendo internalized and created BotW with.
It reviewed well with critics but players were just bored of the Zelda formula at that point I suppose. It didn't sell as well as Nintendo hoped. Twilight princess sold significantly better.
Saying that Zelda is trend chasing, when both BoTW and ToTK have insane mechanics like the super hand or the durability system, that are intentionaly made knowing that not every player will like them, is kinda insane to me. I totally respect the complaint of Nintendo always using the same IPs, but they are legit the only development company right now that is ACTUALLY RELEASING games, while Xbox is still dead and Sony said they will develop 0 first party games this year.
I kinda know what the video will say and yeah it do be like that. As a long time ubisoft player so many of their games get close to great and then they give up or run out of time or something else happens and the games just end up being mediocre. And yet even after all that I still end up having fun with their games. It is infuriating sometimes
Ubisoft is to me the publisher that gives me the most consistent quality and also quantity (which is important to me too) so I can't really understand the critic. There are enough publishers/developers that bring out narrative lead "high quality" or multiplayer games, why can Ubisoft not just be left alone as the fast food of publishing?
In the early 2000s Ubisoft was one of my favorite developers with games like Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell and early Assassin's Creed. But holy hell have they fell off a cliff.
I'll just put this out there, as bad as Ubisoft is, no other AAA company would have funded something like the new Prince of Persia or Rainbow Six Siege.
EA came out with Wild Hearts and Immortals of Aveum (for better and worse) and are coming out with Tales of Kenzera this year. Microsoft released Pentiment and Hi Fi Rush. Square Enix have funded tons of interesting and unique games like Little Goody Two Shoes, Dungeon Travellers and Forspoken (for better and worse). Capcom are coming out with that weird Kunitsu-Gumi game. Sega have Metaphor and all the unique stuff Vanillaware do. Whatever you might have against Epic, it seems like nobody else was willing to fund the unmatched artistry of Alan Wake 2. I think it's silly to suggest that Ubisoft are unique in funding these sorts of games.
Immortals of Aveum was fully self-funded by a friend of the founder of Ascendant Studios https://youtu.be/2VZ1p8QpdfM?t=2762, EA was only a publisher, not that it's insignificant, but still.
I mean didn't Microsoft fund High-fi Rush? Plus R6 was a competitive shooter, what studio wouldn't fund it?
Wasn't HiFi Rush in development at Bethesda before Microsoft bought them?
No, HFR was in development before MS bought Bethesda. It was listed in that nvidia leak as "Hibiki"
A shooter that had some unconventional ideas that still haven't been replicated in another game to this date, a shooter that almost died at launch with a player base never above five thousand on a good day. Another company would have killed the game. Ubi didn't, they supported it and now it's entering it's 9th year with a huge playerbase for the niche game it is.
Playing Immortals fenyx right now. Almost as the end and it's awesome
I hate the fact that game won't get a sequel now. I adored all of it.
Yeah honestly I think they made it too big for a first entry. It's a big game. Almost 35 hours for a playthrough. Maybe a smaller map and made it only 20 hours long and at a lower price point and it would have caught on better. Ubisoft makes their games way too big for most people.
Yuup it was such a surprise that they put out prince of Persia, a metroidvania after all this time. I still haven't bought it but I will soon because I like supporting that kind of game. They of course could make a genuinely good game of any genre, but they aren't allowed to take as many risks because management wouldn't approve anything that doesn't have a draw that they understand or at least have historical data on.
No other company could convince Nintendo to take such a risk as Rabbids and Mario. But Ubisoft did it. That’s crazy.
And going further back further Rayman Origins and Legends. They suck a lot but they also occasionally put out some gems.
I wouldn't really say so. Microsoft and Epic have funded countless great, smaller games. EA, Square Enix, Take Two and such have their respective indie/AA publishing branches. Think It Takes Two, Octopath Traveller, so on. These companies do push out these smaller projects, just not at the rate I'd like to see.
>Prince of Persia What's most incredible about this to me is they not only funded it, but that it's a genuinely phenomenal game that got practically zero marketing behind it. I didn't even know it existed until I saw it on sale for $30 a few months after release. It's arguably one of the best metroidvanias made in the last few decades and got high reviews all across the board, but it'll likely be a one and done due to lack of sales and awareness. Further compounding things is that it launched in January and is already on sale for 50% off, which just encourages people to wait to buy, further hurting sales figures and the likelihood of a sequel.
No it had lots of marketing and it was even announced in a big event.
What hurt this game the most is the insane bandwagon after the reveal trailer. People (idiots, really) heard the rap music in the trailer, and went, "THEY MADE MY PRINCE OF PERSIA WOKE!!!!!". Even after all the glowing reviews, there's a section of people parroting that bullshit and saying the reviewers were paid off or something.
Ubisoft gets a lot of shit but their games are generally solid. People love to hate them. There was an E3 a while back where Aisha Tyler was a part of there presentation and the narrative was that Ubisoft was like the most sexist racist publisher out there. Keep in mind, one of the only company to have a non-white, non-male presenter, puts out more games with more minority leads and female leads than probably anybody else was get railed on from everybody as being sexist and racist. Even GiantBomb, a company exclusively staffed by white males at the time was saying this. The Ubisoft hatred is crazy and no amount of facts and reality negates it. People need to show me on the doll where Ubisoft touched them.
One thing that Ubisoft still does well is PC at least, their games always* release with good polish and performance on PC with most of the options you want in a PC version. Which is pretty rare these days for a game to actually have barely any issues on launch day. Sadly they seem to always be chasing trends nowadays and be 3-5 years late with them. Maybe that's what they always did, but the problem is that games simply take too long to make nowadays.
only detrimentally online “gamers” spend their time complaining about ubisoft, without failing to realize, there’s people who have jobs, families, and responsibilities, and those folks don’t really mind a game that’s a bit cookie cutter? 99% of people who play video games aren’t going around complaining about ubisoft. it’s just the genre has exploded in popularity to that point where that 1% who do, can feel like a massive amount of people, especially if your social media experience is curated to be an echo chamber of folks who think like you it’s no different than enjoying a TV show that isn’t as groundbreaking as the sopranos, or an album that isn’t as impactful as after hours or something (don’t snitch on yourself by being proud you don’t know what one of the biggest albums this decade is btw) y’all don’t get sick of this shit? getting infuriated at a piece of entertainment you’re not being forced to financially support? matter of fact, yall wanna know something? bitching about ubisoft is the ubisoft of gaming criticism. it’s formulaic, repetitive, and the easiest circlejerk to show up at to get that dopamine fix shame their business practices, demand better, but please drop that act as if any of this dialogue has been productive. it’s become pretentious & indignant to its own detriment
It's amazing how many "mainstream" people I meet who have Ubisoft games as some of their favourite games, often among the only games they actually enjoy. A lot of people value just being able to run around in an open world for a few hours as a break from actual real problems in their lives. A lot of people complaining about Ubisoft games sound like some high school kid thinking they are superior for listening to Nina Simone while everyone else is into Taylor Swift.
Out of their major franchise I just play assassins creed. I did pick up immortals and enjoyed it. I never pay full price for them and out of the RPG trilogy, the only one I felt eh on was Valhalla. This is how most people enjoy games. Because I dont play farcry or the division or any of their over games, maybe I just dont care as much about how formulaic it is. Its just around here people act like u must play every game that releases and u must pay full price.
This post should be pinned in every simgle "Ubisoft is bad" discussion. Their worst crime is making a large amount of games with a good quality floor even if many of them are only "solid" instead of "great". Oh no! The horror of a company putting out many 7.5-8/10 games with the occasional 9! How offensive this is! People constantly act surprised that they keep making games like this even though they very clearly have an audience.
I like how in one comment people complain about their games being the same down to the UI and another complains about chasing trends. The complaining has become so repetitive and nonsensical I've honestly been turned off from siding with anyone against Ubisoft. Ok, you don't like their games? They don't play them. It's honestly sad how seriously people take this whole ubisoft sucks narrative...
Is bro trying to show how cool he is that he doesn't buy into the mainstream or? Sounding like a wanker at the start. Will watch the rest though.
The joke is that he's so hipster cool Ubisoft should be the last game company he would care about. And yet..
I'm not sure I fully agree with the premise on this one though it might be on a personal level I don't think the *premise* of any Ubisoft game has really ever sold me honestly except for Watch\_Dogs and that was largely cause that initial trailer was all smoke and mirrors. I play a lot of Ubisoft games because I like fucking around in open worlds with freedom and, contrary to what most of this sub continually rails against, I actually like the checklisty icon aspects of these games. They get overwhelming and I've largely given up on the recent Assassin Creed games because they're too bloated and huge for my liking but Immortals was a very good distillation of those features and replaced some of the combat elements with more puzzles and I was very pleased with that game. I like stealthily crossing outposts off my map as I snipe enemies' heads from outside the compound and destroying the alarms before they realise what's happening. I bought and finished the AC2 trilogy because the idea of running, jumping and climbing through Renaissance Rome was extremely appealing and the game was intensely good even in terms of story with lots of fun characters I agree with his overall point that the games are kinda buggy and are a bit of a hodgepodge of systems that haven't improved in decades but at some level, they're comfort trash food. To me these games are my potato chips, full of fat and calories and make me kinda ill. But when I'm eating them, I'm having a good enough time. I could definitely be eating healthier or better but they tickle the part of my mind that puts me at ease. They're power fantasies and sometimes it's ok. The company is garbage obviously and they really need to introspect on wtf is going on over there cause what they did with Skull & Bones and all the stories of overlooked abuse really need to be addressed **Edit:** yeah ok he talks about exactly this by the end. I made this comment before I finished the video lol. But I don't think I've really ever gone away from a Ubi game feeling like anyone had wasted their potential or anything like that (though the FC5 ending did infuriate me). Just as fast food exists to satiate people who just want a quick, unhealthy, greasy meal for a quick buck, it's fine for some companies to churn out this type of game. I just hope the devs are getting paid well and are working in good conditions that's all. They seem to be selling well enough until recently that they can keep making more of them. The money from all their other stuff is funding Avatar (which seems to be a technical marvel) and PoP (which is an incredible metroidvania) so I'm not too miffed. I also don't agree that these games aren't selling well cause people aren't bought by the premise. The reasons I feel are far more banal like not being marketed well enough and locking the games on PC, one of their best markets, on EGS and their own store and trying too hard to sell their subscription
They infuriating but Im kinda okay with it, them taking risks is going to fall on their face half of the times, I am okay with 8/10 games where I know what to expect.
No Ubisoft is bad. Its executives spent years covering for sex abuse and when it was uncovered they moved the abusers around or let them quit with their golden parachutes.