8 Video Game Genres We're All Sick Of
3. The "Ubisoft Formula"
Ubisoft is a studio difficult to criticise; they make good games, often. However, you could quite easily accuse many of their core franchises from beginning to feel indistinct, as they all follow a similar formula. They all feature a huge world to mess about in, are littered with repeatable activities that are largely base invasions, assassination targets, races or collectables, and passable narratives.
The worst part of this formula is the waypoint system. Each major entry in most of their franchises has featured some form of watchtower that delays exploration of the rest of the map.
Whether it's radio towers to reactivate like Far Cry 3, towers to crash through in The Crew or the nests found at the top of assorted climbable buildings in Assassin's Creed, the tower system is a frustrating way of gating off certain areas of the map arbitrarily.
Ubisoft do seem to be aware of this problem, which is promising. Far Cry 5 tied each district of its map to a different member of the Seed family, feeding the player individual stories which encouraged full completion of single sections, rather than encouraging absolute free reign. As long as each franchise is driving players to play in ways which they can't elsewhere, they can start to remedy this problem.