My previous blog about the hate of a fan of the latest part of Yakuza, it normally picked up so many minuses and I thought to continue the party, since this is the case) Request in advance: leave comments, if possible, and not fall in love, because it is always interesting to hear the opinions of others on such controversial content.
Let’s get assassinated!
Well, straight to the point, I love almost all franchises and games from Ubisoft and personally consider them the most creative company in terms of game concepts, only Remedy is more creative than them, in my opinion. Well, where else have you seen a GTA clone about hacking, or a game with time manipulation like Prince of Persia, traveling with the help of an animus to ancient times and the era of Assassins creed, racing with the ability to switch between a car, a motorcycle, a boat, an airplane on the fly The crew. Even the same Driver from Ubisoft, with its original concept of a ghost flying and possessing other drivers. Yes, almost every Ubisoft franchise or game is conceptually original, the same Immortals Fenix rising. Even in DLC or small projects they manage to surprise, like Farcry – Blood Dragon or Farcry – Primal.
That is, the developers themselves are quite talented guys, but there is such a thing as corporate thinking and politics. I believe that all the troubles of Ubisoft are the fault of the management and not the developers. But this is the problem with many gaming companies. Even the beloved Project Red CDs fell victim to this policy with Cyberpunk 2077.
Sometimes, of course, there are mistakes, like the Director of Assassins creed Odyssey, Scott Phillips, he failed to take the ideas of Origins to a new level and in the end, he and his team produced a good game, but not Assassin’s creed and the world content of the previous part was too inferior (I’m talking about tombs, mini-stories and random places).
Basically, these are quite interesting concepts and games, which are often poorly implemented and optimized. This also includes the frequent deception of expectations with improved game graphics in trailers and late release of gameplay trailers. Let me briefly list all, for me personally, original and good games that I love from Yubikov and then we will look at all this in more detail. So: Assassin’s creed (except Black flag and Syndicate), The crew, Ghost recon, The division, Farcry (except 3 and 4), Immortals Fenyx rising, Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, Watch dogs (except part 2). I haven’t played Avatar or Star wars yet, but the setting of Avatar doesn’t attract me, and Star wars, I only love it until Force Unleashed, I don’t like everything that came out later, including Fallen order and Jedi survivor, although I am a fan of the universe.
Let’s take Prince of Persia and the original Assassin’s creed as an example. These two games at one time were a breakthrough for the gaming industry and other game studios drew inspiration and concepts from them, and the most interesting thing is that one game was literally born from the second. Assassins creed, it’s no secret, was supposed to be Prince of Persia: Assassin’s at the initial stage of development. But it was already too different from the series about the Prince in progress. There are games that are better played at a certain age and I played Prince of Perisa -The sands of time when I was 12 and Warrior Within when I was 16 and it was perfect. The games suited the temperament and character just right. But what a thrill it was to immerse yourself again in the prince (it sounds ambiguous) at 23, when you had already learned the harsh realities of life (the army) and after that, you returned again to this carefree and enchanting world Prince of Persia 2008. Damn, I love this game.But let’s return to Assassins and start talking about the real problems of Ubisoft games, or not only Ubisoft.
Oh those Open Worlds
Open world, oh I love games with an open world, and I can just walk around for hours, enjoy the environment and nature in these worlds. At the moment I’m replaying Dragon Age Inquisition for the third time and I’m wildly enjoying the beautiful and atmospheric locations. The concept of an open world itself originated a long time ago, the first beginnings could be seen in games of the distant 80s and in the 90s, the genre developed, especially with the second Scrolls, where there was a huge, generated world. In the 2000s, as for me, this concept was developed, and due to technology it began to look very good.
Basically such worlds were the https://eurokingclub-casino.co.uk/games/ field of RPG games like Gothic, Diablo, Oblivion, Baldarus Gate and so on. But there were, of course, pioneering games that gave birth to new genres based on this concept: like GTA, especially the third part. Assassin gave a new twist and introduced the concept (maybe I’m wrong and he’s not the first of this kind) – action in the open world. It was something new and never seen before. The world was meticulously designed, or rather the cities. And how beautiful and atmospheric they were, if they could fill the kingdom location with something interesting it would be just a fairy tale. I could run and parkour for hours in ancient Acre, and then I moved to Israel and made a video in Ezio’s costume in the real Acre) but what’s the point, everything was fine for the first attempt, but it’s empty, but there’s no additional. Missions other than collecting, but what could you want from the first game in the series?? The second part improved everything significantly: More locations, music that just gives you goosebumps, more historical places, water, ships and sailing finally! Unfortunately, the world remained empty and a bit cardboard-like, and the graphics, due to the fact that the game was released on consoles, had to be cut down a bit and became less realistic.
But despite all this, the atmosphere itself makes me go through this part again and again. As for me, the series reached the peak of the open world in Unity, you will not see such a living Paris anywhere except Paris in reality. All this crowd technology, huge full-size buildings, just gorgeous, viva la France! But here Ubisoft went downhill and simply added some unrealistic number of badges and collecting. This infuriated me even in Black flag, which, ironically, as a fan of the series, I like least of all. An empty, cardboard world with a ton of chests, bottles and so on, except for the plot and a dozen quests for assassins, legendary ships and sunken treasures, as for me, there is nothing to do there, and the setting, personally, didn’t really appeal to me. With the release of Origins and its transition to Action/RPG rails, the world began to resemble the worlds in ordinary RPG games, only much more. The strong influence of The Witcher 3 was felt, borrowing a number of mechanics and ideas from there, which is not a bad thing, everyone is inspired by something. But, it was from this game that the open worlds of Ubisoft became really huge, or as they are popularly called “empty grinds”.
But is it really so? Let’s figure it out, in general, all games in open worlds are always built similarly, the only difference is in the content and content. All open worlds have quests central to the story, additional. Quests, points of interest on the map (secrets, chests, camps, and other things), lore places or notes (if there are any). So are the worlds of Ubisoft emptier than the worlds of other famous studios?? Let’s take the same Witcher 3, this is my favorite game of all time, but now on my fourth playthrough I noticed, after many Ubisoft games, that they are essentially not much different in terms of content. Yes, the quality of quests and places of interest in The Witcher is much higher, but the bottom line is that in addition to additional. Quests and gwent, fights, races, nothing. Let me explain, yes we have a lot of question marks, but they are mainly divided into several types: bandit lair, monster lair (different), treasure, power stones and empty settlement. This can also be called grind and uninteresting places. Even on the second playthrough, knowing how these points of interest and questions work, what they hide, it becomes much more boring to go through them. On the fourth playthrough I became really too lazy to do them. And besides this, there is nothing like that in the world, even the phrase about 40 seconds does not work, while walking around Velen I could walk for more than a minute along the path between the fields and nothing happened.
And there isn’t much fauna in The Witcher, besides monsters, which doesn’t bother me at all, but still. In the same Farcry 3, the fauna in the games reached a new level, the interaction between animals and the world was wonderful, of course, not as detailed as in the same Red dead redemption 2, but still very detailed and varied. The same fauna in Origins simply amazed me at the time, flocks of Flamingos and various birds, a bunch of animals.
Returning to the very concept of the open world, there is certainly no certain repetition and monotony here, after all, the technologies are not yet the same. In the same Red dead redemption 2, the second game after The Witcher 3 in my top most favorite games, you can find fault with the fact that all the activities are monotonous, came to shoot, caught up, tied up. And I often had random encounters. So monotony occurs in almost every game of this type and this is normal.
Grinding is another topic, many games have fallen victim to this, the same Dragon age Inquisition, so I’m playing it now and I’m completely missing out on all these astralaria and skulls and a bunch of trash extras. Quests. Fortunately, for the third time, I already know where to look for something interesting. And in Ubisoft games the grind infuriates me where it interferes with play. That is, when in Assassin’s creed Odyssey, I saw that in order to start the next story mission I had to level up another 8 levels, I was burned out, because by that time, most of the interesting additional. I’ve already completed the quests and what’s left is the boring clearing of camps and maps, which gives little experience, especially after level 25.
And it’s things like this that really infuriate me. In the same Inquisition, grinding is not so mandatory. But in some case, Watch dogs legion, it’s completely optional, the game itself is easy and I completed it quickly, had fun and cleared the map only when I wanted to (because it was a thrill to walk and ride around beautiful London). This is the keyword "desire", grinding can be, but if it is optional, there are many players who like to protect the entire map, and I, as I wrote above, have also recently begun to like this. I personally had the most pleasure in clearing the entire map in Ghost of tsushima, although the activities there are also not the height of variety, but they are made much more creative than just chests in Unity, odyssey. But besides the latest Assassins, Avatar and Farcry 6, in fact, Ubisoft no longer has games with mandatory grinding. I’m enjoying both of the latest parts of Ghost Recon and there are a lot of things that are optional. Although, the game is structured in such a way that you walk around the map, get information and guns in different places. But the games can be completed with the first set of weapons without problems. And Bolivia in Ghost Recon wildlands, for me, is one of the best open worlds of Ubisoft, it really feels like a real country, with great attention to detail. There is so much stuff there and notes in each village about the culture of these places and plot audio recordings that immerse you in the lore and even road signs everywhere throughout the map are correctly placed, which is a small thing but nice.
Everyone says I don’t want to, but you buy an elephant
Now about game stores. Not only Ubisoft is guilty of this, the same evil office EA inserted loot boxes even before Ubisoft, the same one, just adopted the fashion. And all of their games can be completed without any monetary investment. Even the most stuffy one in terms of levels and story quests Odyssey. I hate these stores in games, but this is already a reality that will not change, just don’t buy anything in these stores and that’s it. Here is such a short paragraph)
Floral/Rainbow period in games
Let’s get to the tasty stuff now. About LGBT* in games. Ubisoft is doing fine here, as for me. At least before Assassin’s creed Syndicate, she never forcibly pushed a representative of these communities into games. The only gay representative in old Ubisoft games was Leonardo da Vinci in the Ezio trilogy. But he was historically known in this regard and even during his lifetime received charges of Sodomy. After the Syndicate, where there was a transgender person, Ubisoft joined this trend, which doesn’t really bother me.
Especially against the backdrop of some recently released Dragon age veilguard, where you can not only create “Them”, but also choose scars from gender reassignment surgery, where they also shove dialogues about it in the game itself. Characters sit by the fire and one teaches the other that they should be addressed as “they” in the fantasy world of the Middle Ages! In contrast, I haven’t seen many Transgender developers at Ubisoft or those who would be proud of pushing LGBT characters into the game. Rather, this is also part of corporate policy. But this doesn’t bother me in Ubisoft games to this day. In the end, such characters exist only in the latest Assassins, and then it all ends with choosing who to have an affair with and that’s it. No one in Ubisoft games pushes LGBT policies on you, as happens in other games. Sometimes it gets to the point of insanity, I don’t remember in which series of games, but there was a character who was straight, and then in the new part he suddenly became Gay. And Ubisoft in other franchises like Farcry, Ghost Recon, the division, watch dogs, there are no particularly LGBT characters in the plot. And in some of these games, this is not the case at all.
The main problem of Ubisoft games
Their main problem is that they absolutely do not know how to support their games: Rainbow six Siege or The Honor are proof of this. I haven’t played these games, but close friends have played and said that these are two different games, after a couple of years of “support” Ubisoft managed to worsen a lot of things, from balance to bugs or connection problems. For my part, I can add that the same thing happened to me with Assassin’s creed Valhalla, after playing, after the next installation of the latest version, I felt that the enemies began to feel thicker, there were fewer crafting details and the bugs were still there, in general, I just deleted it, installed the game on my old ps4 pro from the disk, and when the update started downloading, I paused it and never download it. The situation is even sadder with the first The crew, I started playing the series in reverse order and when I got to the first part I discovered that I couldn’t download it. Ubisoft, without permission, and without even asking the players, removed this game from stores and stopped online support, who the hell does that??? This is their main disadvantage for me.
Let’s summarize
In general, although this is a subjective blog, for me, objectively, Ubisoft has good games and I play through them with pleasure and even replay them. Just like your favorite Witchers, RDR and all sorts of Tsushimas with Horizons and God of Thieves. Yes, sometimes they can be worse, and animation is generally a sore subject in many Ubisoft games, but not all games need to be bought, like the same farcry 6, which I will never buy, even though I really love the fifth part. Well, another main disadvantage of Ubisoft, which I described above, is that they do not know how to support games and over the years of support they only make them worse or delete them.
Their games have plenty of advantages: it is an open, beautiful and often realistic world, stunning fauna, often beautiful, complementary ambient, interesting additional. tasks, interesting mechanics in games. For me, Watch dogs is much better and more interesting in terms of mechanics than GTA, the new Assassins are better than the same Dragon age Inquisition and Veilguard, Farcry is better than most open-world action games, Ghost Recon Breakpoint is one of the best tactical arcade shooters (I don’t mean all sorts of squad, escape from Tarkov, ready or not, there are really real tactics and hardcore with realism). The same The division 1.2 is the best looter-shooter with one of the most creative post-apocalyptic settigs, and The crew, with terrible physics, is still one of the best arcade races and better than all the latest NFS (except for 15, that one was great in my opinion) second only to Forza Horizon. Of course, I always look at new Ubisoft games with caution, like Star Wars Outlaws, which I decided not to buy, despite my fanaticism for Star Wars and the desire to get high-quality games in the universe. So play games, love games and don’t listen to anyone if you like a certain game or company that others don’t like, even almost everyone.
* The activities of the international LGBT social movement are recognized as extremist and prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation
