In 1995, Steve Jobs was asked about the success of Microsoft. The visionary of Apple, Inc. had this to say,
“The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is - I don’t mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way. In the sense that they don’t think of original ideas and they don’t bring much culture to their product. And you say why is that important? Well, you know, proportionally spaced fonts come from type setting and beautiful books, that’s where one gets the idea. If it weren’t for the Mac, they would never have that in their products and so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft’s success - I have no problem with their success, they’ve earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products.”
I wouldn’t say Ubisoft makes third-rate products. They are probably firmly in the second tier of video game with a few first-rate games in their portfolio, and that’s the most frustrating thing. They have the potential to be a top-tier publisher, but they forgo that prestigious standing in order to release games that can appeal to the widest audience possible, thus making generic titles.
Assassin’s Creed
In the early years of the PS3/Xbox 360 generation, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed caught the attention of my brother and me. The early cinematic trailer just communicated “badass”. You wanted to become Altair and sneak around assassinating high level targets leaving no trace as you sunk back into the shadows/camouflage. I was a spectator for the first Assassin’s Creed game as my brother played for a few hours then did not touch it for over almost two years. The protagonist, Altair, was rather bland, the color palette was drab (stereotypical tan for the Middle-East), and the game just took a while to get going. However, once the Assassin’s Creed II trailer released and showed off the color and vibrancy of Renaissance-era Italy, we had renewed interest in the fledgling franchise and my brother jumped back into the first installment.
As Bobby progressed through the game, he came to like the natural progression of both the story and character as well as the fantasy flavor stemming from the introduction of the Apples of Eden. We blitzed through Assassin’s Creed due to anticipation for Assassin’s Creed II and it did not disappoint. AC2 was a step up in every single way. The main character, Ezio, was way more interesting and charismatic than Altair and the Italian Renaissance setting was infinitely more interesting than the Middle-East in 1191. The game had very light RPG elements where you could upgrade the character’s weapons and armor and learn abilities, but there was no concrete leveling system based on stats and experience points. Bobby and I tag-teamed AC2. He would do most of the main quests while I would do the minutiae in between which included finding viewpoints to flesh out the map’s environment, doing side missions to earn money, and buying better armor and weapons. It was a nice trade off since it kept things fresh for both of us which allowed us to complete everything in AC2 and we loved every second of it.
The love wore off with the announcement of Assassins Creed: Brotherhood and our realization that these games would come out every year. My brother could not keep up with the series since the annual NBA 2K franchise took precedent over every other game. Instead of playing it himself, Bobby bought Brotherhood for me as a birthday gift. The beginning of Brotherhood wipes all your progress from the previous game which really pissed me off. Once I realized the game was just as long and had just as many map markers and missions as AC2, I stopped playing Brotherhood and never touched it again.
The series experienced continued success and I was tempted to return when Assassin’s Creed III was shown to be set during the American Revolution and AC: Black Flag let you be a swashbuckling pirate assassin, reminding me of Sid Meier’s Pirates, a game I adore. My brother played a lot of Black Flag and loved it, but noted that he was lost in the story. I played Black Flag for a couple hours and just realized that the franchise wasn’t really for me anymore. It just felt like AC2 was re-skinned as a pirate adventure in the Caribbean.
The annualized release schedule of Assassin’s Creed caught up to Ubisoft in 2014 when they released the bug-ridden and unoriginal installments, Rogue and Unity. They released both games in November 2014 with Rogue acting as the last installment for PS3/X360 and Unity being the first for PS4/Xbox One. Critics and players began to deride the repetitive gameplay and lack of innovation of the series thus causing sales to decline. 2015’s Syndicate did not fair much better and sales declined yet again, so Ubisoft went back to the drawing board and announced there would not be an Assassin’s Creed game in 2016, the first year without an AC game since 2008.
Assassin’s Creed: Origins marked a reinvention for the franchise when it released in 2017. What better setting for a new beginning than Ancient Egypt. While the game definitely reworked a lot of the franchises mechanics, it wasn’t exactly an overhaul. Instead of being a stealth-focused game, it was now a full-blown action-adventure open-world game. Before Origins, you would have a hard time taking on multiple targets and would often have to retreat if you were overwhelmed, but now you have the combat ability of your prototypical gaming hero that can take on 5-7 enemies with no problem. Some would say this is where the franchise lost its soul or found new life. Either way, Origins was a major success, selling more than 10 million copies and returning Assassin’s Creed to prominence.
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, set in Classical Greece, followed Origins and it was bigger and, depending on who you ask, better in every way. Odyssey’s open world is massive, but ultimately rather generic. The map is filled with markers and almost every city looks the same, with the exception of major historical landmarks like Sparta and Athens. Odyssey also plunged the Assassin’s Creed franchise head-first into RPG territory. Assassin’s Creed was not about assassins or assassinations anymore. It was just another 100-hour generic open-world RPG. However, the worst part about Odyssey is the fact that story missions are level-gated meaning that the game forces you to do boring side missions and fetch quests so you can reach the proper level in order to unlock a main story mission. Nevertheless, Odyssey sold incredibly well and garnered praise from critics who glossed over its flaws because of the game’s grand ambition.
The upcoming release of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla seems to be the final nail in the series’ coffin of homogeneity. Valhalla is an open-world RPG trying to pack as many hours into as large a world as possible purely for content’s sake. There is no fluidity to the combat as the heavy animations makes combatants‘ limbs look like they are teleporting. The characters do not have personality and their limited facial animations fail to let characters properly emote. The main character, Eivor, is as wooden as the ships that transported his/her people from Norway to England. In creating such a massive open-world with so many quests (most of them boring), Ubisoft forsakes any type of personality for the characters that inhabit the open-world. Valhalla just recycles the assets used in Odyssey for another generic 100-hour game that will no doubt sell around 10 million copies because 100 hours of 7.5/10 gameplay for $60 is pretty good value for most consumers.
Watch Dogs
I remember watching the infamous Watch Dogs portion of Ubisoft's 2012 E3 conference. The Chicago-setting looked so alive, with graphics rivaling 2018’s Red Dead Redemption 2, and the idea of being able to hack into the electrical grid of an entire city seemed sure to give you a god-complex. I did not play Watch Dogs until 2016 and I was sorely disappointed. The graphics at the E3 press conference were just dreams. The final product was a major graphical downgrade and Ubisoft thus garnered a (well-deserved) reputation for not following through on promises shown in trailers or “gameplay footage”. Watch Dogs was added to the massive list of failed GTA clones. The main character is a jerk, and the story is very uninteresting and full of cliches. Hacking is a cool feature, but it gets old because of the lack of challenge that comes with hacking - 80% of the time, you just hit a button and you hacked into somebody’s phone. Near-future Chicago was incredibly lifeless which just had been begging to go back to San Andreas in GTA V.
I did not play Watch Dogs 2, but my brother said it was a lot better than the first installment because it was actually gun. The upcoming Watch Dogs: Legion does give me some hope about the direction of the franchise. It seems to be embracing the zaniness and absurdity of the game’s gimmick: You’re a hacker with the ability to take over a city. In Legion, you play as a ton of different characters because you can recruit up to 20 people to be a part of your “resistance” and if any of them die, they are dead forever and you move on to another person in your team. According to the developers, you can play as anyone and they all have unique backstories. They’ve shown construction workers, a John Wick-esque professional killer, or even a frail old lady. All of this looks promising, but I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop when Ubisoft announces that they had to roll back some of the game‘s features.
The Positives
Ubisoft is not a bad developer/publisher. They clearly make games that people like and want to buy. The sales numbers speak for themselves,
Assassin’s Creed - 140 million copies
Far Cry (since Far Cry 2) 50 million copies
Just Dance - 70 million copies
Watch Dogs - 20 million copies
Ubisoft has also shown a willingness to stick by their games. When they released Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, the game was criticized for a lack of content, numerous bugs, its progression system, and (surprise!) the presence of microtransactions. Sales suffered early on, but Ubisoft utilized a games-as-a-service model to support the game. Through free updates and DLC, the player base grew exponentially and the game currently has more than 45 million registered players.
After the disastrous launch of the incomplete Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Ubisoft made the difficult but necessary decision of delayed multiple games, including Watch Dogs: Legion, into its 2020-2021 fiscal year to make sure they weren’t rushed like Breakpoint. Their stock price took a massive dive, but that decision could pay off beautifully if they really put the time and effort into making those delayed games better.
The Negatives
Ubisoft tries to release 5-7 AAA big-budget games per year and they have 15,895 employees who work at studios based in some of the most expensive cities in the world to live in (Montreal, Paris, San Francisco, etc.). The company has leveraged itself to the point that one game’s failure severely impaired its finances. Companies like Take-Two Interactive, Electronic Arts, and Activision Blizzard have moved away from releasing so many big-budget games per year due to consumer trends. Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 sold 24 million copies from October 2018 to May 2019 which was 5 million more copies than all of Ubisoft’s games in the entire previous fiscal year. That’s one game from a Take-Two subsidiary. Instead of releasing Valhalla, Watch Dogs: Legion, and Far Cry 6 in a span of five months, they need to space these out over the course of a year and a half. They can still release a Tom Clancy title like The Division or Rainbow Six each year much like the Call of Duty franchise, but they should stagger the release dates of their other franchises. For example:
2022 - Tom Clancy title, Assassin’s Creed title
2023 - Tom Clancy title, Watch Dogs title
2024 - Tom Clancy title, Far Cry title
In Review
Echoing Steve Jobs, I do not fault Ubisoft for having success. They have earned their success, but they have very little taste. Their most popular franchises are clones of better franchises and are second-rate products, frankly. I want to play the best games. If I‘m going to play an open-world RPG for 80-100 hours, I’ll play Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, or Red Dead Redemption 2 because those are 9.5/10 or 10/10 games. A 100-hour game that is a 7.5-8/10 is simply not worth my time because there are games that did it better. Why would I play Watch Dogs when I can play GTA V or GTA Online? The most frustrating part is that they have the potential to make amazing games like Assassin’s Creed II or Far Cry 3, but they seem to be more interested in the factory-like production of pumping out games and sequels as fast as possible thus compromising their “art”. Furthermore, intentionally releasing broken and buggy games just shows that you don’t care, so why should we?
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