Ubisoft seem to be running out of ideas if their best bet is remaking a relatively recent game. They should leave the Assassin’s Creed franchise resting for a bit if they lack innovative ideas for it.
Maybe doing a feudal Japan AssCreed is still valid as there’s fan demand for it, but if they do they better nail it because they’ll be inevitably compared to Ghost of Tsushima.
Based on everything we’ve seen recently, it seems like their sales are declining, but rather than follow through with ideas that make sense like actually fixing the sexual harassment problem at the company and making good games instead of shoving dumb gimmicks into mainstay franchises, management has decided to tell the employees to work harder and just announced a brand new blockchain game.
I mean if there is one company that took risks with their largest franchises it’s Unisoft. Origins literally changed massive parts of the game, arguably even changing the genre. IMO as someone who tried to go back to some of the older games like Syndicate and Black Flag they are really dated in a lot of ways.
They changed the overall game design in Assassin’s Creed Origins, but not out of goodness of their hearts. The game’s new direction was more compatible with microtransactions.
Was it? The primary thing they’re selling through MTX is player and weapon “skins”, which were already a thing in the past games (they didn’t sell them, IIRC, but realistically they could’ve). I guess the booster packs and stuff like that wouldn’t really work without the RPG leveling, although I question how profitable those really are.
Adjust the “grindness” of the gameplay, requiring the player to kill a lot of enemies on sidequests to actually start being a threat to normal enemies. If the player rushes to the story missions without level grinding, enemies will feel like damage sponges.
Make the previously insta-kill hidden dagger ineffective if the level of the player character is too lower that the enemy level. They do this so the player don’t have lethal options if they bypass the grinding.
Introduce a loot-based economy, with crafting mechanics sprinkled on top. This is another aspect of grindness to make the player waste time before going to the main event (the story missions).
All previous points offer clear avenues for Ubisoft to sell MTX: XP boosts, premium loot though MTX, etc.
I don’t dispute that they’re running out of ideas, but Black Flag was released in 2013. That was ten years ago, and if they’re still just in the planning stage, we won’t see the remake for another 3-5 years at least. I don’t think it’s gonna be recent by then.
I’d much rather like to see a sequel/prequel/some form of extending work than a remake though. I like Black Flag more than the entire rest of the Assassin’s Creed series so I’m hella excited, but idk if a remake would add that much.
Ubisoft seem to be running out of ideas if their best bet is remaking a relatively recent game. They should leave the Assassin’s Creed franchise resting for a bit if they lack innovative ideas for it.
Maybe doing a feudal Japan AssCreed is still valid as there’s fan demand for it, but if they do they better nail it because they’ll be inevitably compared to Ghost of Tsushima.
Based on everything we’ve seen recently, it seems like their sales are declining, but rather than follow through with ideas that make sense like actually fixing the sexual harassment problem at the company and making good games instead of shoving dumb gimmicks into mainstay franchises, management has decided to tell the employees to work harder and just announced a brand new blockchain game.
I mean if there is one company that took risks with their largest franchises it’s Unisoft. Origins literally changed massive parts of the game, arguably even changing the genre. IMO as someone who tried to go back to some of the older games like Syndicate and Black Flag they are really dated in a lot of ways.
They changed the overall game design in Assassin’s Creed Origins, but not out of goodness of their hearts. The game’s new direction was more compatible with microtransactions.
Was it? The primary thing they’re selling through MTX is player and weapon “skins”, which were already a thing in the past games (they didn’t sell them, IIRC, but realistically they could’ve). I guess the booster packs and stuff like that wouldn’t really work without the RPG leveling, although I question how profitable those really are.
This new RPG approach allows them to:
Adjust the “grindness” of the gameplay, requiring the player to kill a lot of enemies on sidequests to actually start being a threat to normal enemies. If the player rushes to the story missions without level grinding, enemies will feel like damage sponges.
Make the previously insta-kill hidden dagger ineffective if the level of the player character is too lower that the enemy level. They do this so the player don’t have lethal options if they bypass the grinding.
Introduce a loot-based economy, with crafting mechanics sprinkled on top. This is another aspect of grindness to make the player waste time before going to the main event (the story missions).
All previous points offer clear avenues for Ubisoft to sell MTX: XP boosts, premium loot though MTX, etc.
I don’t dispute that they’re running out of ideas, but Black Flag was released in 2013. That was ten years ago, and if they’re still just in the planning stage, we won’t see the remake for another 3-5 years at least. I don’t think it’s gonna be recent by then.
I’d much rather like to see a sequel/prequel/some form of extending work than a remake though. I like Black Flag more than the entire rest of the Assassin’s Creed series so I’m hella excited, but idk if a remake would add that much.