Assassin’s Creed: Rogue, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Valiant Hearts: The Great War, Watch Dogs, Child of Light, The Crew, and Far Cry 4 – these are some titles from Ubisoft in 2014 alone.
The developer/publisher is infamous for turning its most IPs into annual franchises – Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Prince of Persia ring a bell?
2014 saw the release of two Assassin’s Creed titles, one for current-gen and another for last-gen. However, in its pursuit to deliver both games on time, Assassin’s Creed: Unity turned out to be a poorly optimized title.
On both major consoles and PCs, the game suffered from distorted textures, hideous frame rates, among other issues. Surely Ubisoft tried all it could to flee from unwanted hatred by offering compensations, but it did not stop people from proclaiming the company as the new EA.
Despite all hate, I refuse to give up on a company which worked on games like Rayman, Child of Light, Valiant Hearts, and more, though, there is no denying that a change in strategy is of paramount importance.
With over 10 Assassin’s Creed titles released in mere 7 years, it seems fitting that the company ought to take a break from the franchise to work on something else, maybe a new Prince of Persia.
Let bygones be bygones! 2015 is looking to be a good year for the company with titles like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege, a new Assassin’s Creed (no-brainer), and of course the highly anticipated The Division.
Tom Clancy’s The Division is slowly building up its hype and is looking to be a game which can set things right, provided that Ubisoft does not mess it up as well.
One of the things for which Ubisoft is most criticized about is how the developer/publisher takes up a formula and uses it across all its games. For instance, syncing ‘View Points’ or towers to reveal parts of maps is something we have seen in Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed, and Watch Dogs.
Other than this, almost all AAA titles from Ubisoft have huge emphasis on playing with other people making them co-op-centric – take the examples of Assassin’s Creed: Unity and The Crew. And this would have been amazing if the servers would not be down near the Christmas Day or at launch for the matter.
And this is exactly my biggest fear when it comes to The Division. Although the developer has confirmed that the game can be played all by oneself, but in this case, players will be missing on a lot of content. As long as the game does not integrate the co-op or online interaction as done in The Crew, I’m totally fine with it.
I do not hold anything against the fans who like this kind of formula, but I’m a guy who has played 300+ hours of Fallout 3 and still enjoys it. Personally, I’m of opinion that the effort put in building up a game’s co-op experience can be used to improve its single player experience – take the example of Turtle Rock Studios’ EVOLVE.
Another thing to note here is that each studio has dedicated teams working on different features. All these resources can also be spent to improve the single player experience unless we are talking about games like Borderlands or Destiny. These are the games that you cannot imagine to play without other people and it works.
So is Ubisoft pulling another ‘The Crew’ with The Division or is the company going to break its long-running formula and bring out something anew?
And obviously, a stable product launch which has all the promised features is the priority above all. I am not sure if these companies undermine the importance of consumers or what but one thing is for sure, if Ubisoft continues with the same behavior as they did last year, they will have a lot of alienated fans to deal with.
So yes, I am eagerly waiting for The Division with a hope that we will get a product we deserve and not yet another disaster. How many of you want the same?
