10 Risky Changes That Would Make Assassin's Creed Great Again
It'll be difficult... but not impossible.
For the past few games, it’s hard not to agree that Assassin’s Creed is stagnating - if not on life support. Falling into the same cookie cutter problems that so often affect the games industry,despite their attempts to revitalise the series, Ubisoft have been fighting an uphill battle.
From the dull bore of Connor’s monotone stunt as an assassin, to the buggy arrogance of Arno, it hasn’t exactly been plain sailing. And its no easy task reliving the original Assassin's Creed and the brilliance of the Ezio trilogy, either.
But with Ubisoft postponing their next Assassin’s Creed for at least another year, maybe we are seeing some room for much-needed improvement in the series. Regardless, there are several ways to improve Assassin's Creed from top to bottom, and instead of tiny tweaks to the formula, I’m suggesting Ubisoft go big and risk everything to bring the series back to the its true glory.
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10. Overhaul How The Map Is Unlocked
Bear with me on this one. Assassin’s Creed spearheaded the sandbox trope of climbing towers to reveal portions of the map. Which isn’t a bad method of revealing specific events on the map and giving the player a look at the surrounding scenery. Viewpoints are one of the most satisfying things in the game. The sweeping camera and beautiful landscape of history and rousing music is sensational.
But with that, comes the map. Each viewpoint reveals everything in that area. Everything. There is no exploration, only choosing the next thing to do. You end up just picking your next objective and running for it, not actually exploring and discovering the deep and intricate world Ubisoft have built.
I say, get rid of that map. Keep the viewpoints, but have them only reveal points of interest, buildings and the such. Give the player a reason to walk through the streets and find some being robbed, before discovering that the thieves are part of a massive underground syndicate, starting a side-mission to dislodge their control.
Don’t show everything. Let us have those moments of surprise encounters and unique scenarios. Unity and Syndicate took steps towards this with random encounters in the city as you were running around, but even that was pretty pitiful. Random groups of guards aren’t random encounters Ubisoft…