You have to be pretty deep in the Kool-Aid to think that ubisoft has "taken risks" with Assassins Creed.
this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
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I dont see it. Mario is a forever brand that is handled well. Sonic is a forever brand that is handled a little less well, but its hanging on. Ubisoft had a forever brand, possibility with rayman, but handled it like shit. Forever brand is a mascot and something that associates with the company. AC is an open world action game with little relatability between each title. What is AC's character? What distinguishes it from FarCry?
Sneaky wrist knives + parkour, the franchise.
It's been a while, but Rayman Origins and Legends were pretty solid titles.
They killed it after black flag, it has been a flop every single time. Only origin was a bit fun.
"The Assassin's Creed franchise evolved into the household name it is thanks to rare, or at least rare-among-AAA, support for risk-taking at Ubisoft"
Fucking lol.
"No, no, hear me out. It's exactly the same game. The same thing we make every single time. But this time, it's in... Egypt."
"Holy shit! What a maverick! Who is that guy? I like the way he thinks. Give him a corner office and the same budget we gave the Greece one!"
It’s exactly the same game.
This is what kills me. There's so much squandered potential in AC with this kind of thinking. Instead, Ubisoft just wants to be EA by re-selling the same game every year, but doesn't have the sports licenses to pull it off.
The Egypt one was definitely one where they changed it a lot. So much so that I no longer enjoyed playing them.
You know what I would buy? Hitman set in ancient Egypt.
Infiltrating a workgang forced to build a pyramid, putting a spitting cobra into a nasty enforcer's chamber pot because he owes the Potiphar some serious myrrh?
Sign me up.
Honestly, not a bad idea. Synthesizing and iterating, taking things out of context, combining elements you haven't before - that's how you get something interesting.
Ubi's problem is that their gameplay loops are completely stale. There just isn't enough new and different, the stories are trite, the dialogue is shit, and everything is boring and predictable.
I somewhat enjoyed the first Assassin's Creed, but was a little bitter it wasn't the Prince of Persia game they'd intended the engine for. I didn't find "walking slowly to blend in with a crowd" to be as fun as the intense combat and tight platforming of Sands of Time. But I cannot for the life of me understand how the series blew up into a juggernaut of a dozen releases over two decades.
I'm actually playing The Lost Crown now and - not that I'm the first to observe this - but I feel like it's the best thing Ubi has done since The Two Thrones twenty years ago. This is the kind of risk that Ubi should be taking. Modest games, smaller budgets, new genres. Diversify and let the creatives create. Let small projects succeed and give them a sequel. If small projects fail, it doesn't break the bank. But for christ's sake stop releasing the same three giant boring games over and over.
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"Forever brand" really has "forever chemicals" vibes.
"This franchise will never have a meaningful conclusion, but I hope you gave up on that nonsense by the end of Black Flag"
That and the risktaking bit give the headline two rofl’s
Sure, it's a forever brand, can't wait for it to be forever shelved after someone buys it as a piece of Ubisoft's corpse.
Ubisoft has practically only produced confusing Open World games of the same IPs for the past decade. My definition of risk and innovation is slightly different 😅
And that’s just because Open World games are easy to mass produce. You just change assets and few minor things and reuse more or less the whole game
Ubisoft took one risk back in the mid-late 2000s and have been riding that safety wave ever since with asscreed. They're not the last people who should be pointing fingers at other publishers for playing it too safe and releasing formulaic games, but damn if they aren't next-in-line for that honor.
Seeing the success of Prince of Persia, it wasn't much of a risk...
Assassin's Creed's shift to open-world RPGs would never have happened at many companies, Alex Hutchinson says
Literally everyone and their mother could have expected this change. It's literally the one single way AAA studios have been padding gameplay and time for a decade and a half now.
And the series is worse for it
I feel like Nintendo 64 was the real OG adapter of open world RPGs. The success of Mario 64 and legend of Zelda had already proven the genre wildly profitable
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Oh yeah, these terrible execs from other companies who veto female protagonists on principle, insist on implementing the same list of a thousand terrible features in all games regardless of genre, and harass their employees while being protected by HR and the CEO.
Wait, no, those are not the bad ones. You know the bad ones because they've worked for toothpaste companies.
They came from toothpas?
Looks like the title got cut off.
"Whereas, say, EA, you get these awful execs and they never made games and they came from toothpaste companies"
And the title should have been much shorter.
Yup, it should be "Ubisoft claims Assassin's Creed games are innovative."
C'est frainçaise
Syndicate is the last AC game that felt like AC and that’s where my Assassins creed journey ends.
I’ve tried origins but I found it to be a mess and I didn’t like it at all
The Assassin's Creed franchise nowadays seems more like one of those slushy machines at the mall that perpetually move the same ingredients around in a neverending cycle of despair and stagnation.
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I really liked the first AC game but when I played Odyssey I was disappointed. Beautiful game, fun mini-games, nice subsystems like upgrading the ship and whatnot. After the initial couple of hours I started to feel like everything is a chore.
Need a map? No way to buy, you have to run/ride and climb the chore tower.
Want to use equipment? Grind chore for the XP to meet the level requirement.
Want to beat a quest handed to you early? Grind XP
Want to complete side quests? All of the boilerplate fetch/kill quests.
Just please, give me a starting weapon that's good enough and I can just stealth kill my way through the main quest. Also, just allow me to buy the map.
Want to use equipment? Grind chore for the XP to meet the level requirement.
Want to beat a quest handed to you early? Grind XP
Want to complete side quests? All of the boilerplate fetch/kill quests.
I mean this respectfully, but you were holding it wrong.
First off, Odyssey was too big, but I enjoyed it! The voiced side quests were great, especially those heavily involving Kassandra. The Atlantis DLC was sublime. But:
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You don’t worry about equipment beyond your level!
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Leave future quests in the journal!
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Fetch quest? If you’re bored, skip it! TBH I Cheat Engined some money in.
Odyssey requires no grinding, as it has waaay too much filler as is. It is a game that's utterly miserable if you give into completionist impulses, but pretty neat if you don’t.
…Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t particularly enjoy the combat, and the main story is so dull I don’t even remember it, aside from the Atlantis bits. It’s not a masterpiece. But I remember the experience of trekking across Greece quite fondly.
After the initial couple of hours I started to feel like everything is a chore.
Exactly. I don't know what I expected, but that was my experience as well. The game more or less told me this:
"Hey, did you enjoy the first chapter? Well guess what? We're going to throw that at you x20 with the occasional plot beat thrown in for variety. Have fun!"
For the obvious boatload of cash poured into Odyssey's development, I feel like half as much game done twice as well would have been a better experience. Instead, we get something that is seemingly padded for play-time, in the same way a 4th grader adds extra blank lines to hit the required page count on a book report.
Weird, Assassin's Creed died with 2 when they fired the creator.
Okay but Black Flag slapped. Maybe not as an AC game per se, but Black Flag was still a greater game.
Black Flag was a mediocre Assassin's Creed game, at best. It was a phenomenal pirate game
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Is that why the third one never concluded the series as it was originally intended?
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Controversial opinion: I like comfort games these days.
The first AC came out when I was in high school, and my one of my favourite bands for a good few years released their first album around then as well. I may not have as much time or love for either now, but I still get a nice buzz when I engage with a new release - especially when it does something a bit different (even if not revolutionary) compared to previous ones.
Life's too short to avoid something you actually enjoy just because other people told you it's not good enough.
Toothpas?
Like gamepass, but tooth
Most self-aware Ubisoft employee quoted in post title
You know how in tv shows or movies in the 90s, there were always a pair of villains or goons that worked for the main villain and were comic relief? Like the Jessie & James pair in Pokemon or the two guys in power rangers or whatever I'm thinking of.
Remember how occasionally, like if it were two guys, they'd fight between the two of them, on-screen?
I don't know why this memory popped up. Curious...
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