10 Things Assassin's Creed Must Learn From Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain

2. A World That Feels Alive

Considering how absolutely thoroughly gorgeous Unity and Syndicate look on a base level (not when Arno's face was falling off), they also feel bizarrely empty. See, there's more to doing an open-world city than just ramming it with as many pedestrians as possible, as when it comes to gameplay they're just going to get in the way anyway. If there was one thing Watch_Dogs actually did remarkably well, it was NPC animations. Obviously that game was set in a present day context, but things like stumbling across a couple of teenagers playing football, others having animated conversations under bridges or cops sprinting after criminals gave it a vibe that Assassin's Creed never has. In AC it's up to you to chase down a wayward mugger as a random objective, and it's only ever you that the law enforcement of the land seem to have a problem with. For a game loaded with set dressing, it only has one actor; a 'world' by definition that feels as though it only moves when you do. Phantom Pain on the other hand features full troop patrol patterns, individual bases switching up their guard duty routes, the ranks thinning or bolstering depending on the time of day and the environment itself. Things like sandstorms or vicious torrential rainstorms will affect both you and the enemy simultaneously, and as your targets are free to do everything from going for a nap to hopping in a jeep and burning off down the next road, it connotes that Hitman-like sense of dynamism, before building on it in every direction.