Destructoid - One of the biggest things about the new Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is its promise of a big, emergent, seamless open world. Granted, pass Assassin's Creed games have offered huge environments before, but this is something more. Something similar to that of Far Cry 3's world.
As Ashraf Ismail, game director on Black Flag, described all the major points about the new game to me, I couldn't help but compare it to Far Cry. And as it turns out, the first-person tropical shooter influenced some of the new design decisions, to the point of even bringing some of the team that worked on Far Cry 3 on board.
Prototype footage from several of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed titles has leaked, revealing early stages of their development.
BY JASON MONROE: The very best pirate-themed video games that you should play instead of the disappointment that is Skull and Bones.
PoE: Deadfire, Unless you have a or PS5 or an SSD don't bother, loading times are insane. A minute and a half to go into a room to investigate a desk in an inn and then an additional 1 1/2 minutes to leave the room and then load to leave the inn???
And they never fixed it.
Ubisoft has just released Skull and Bones on PC and consoles. And, from the looks of it, the game wasn’t received well by some gamers. Not only that but it appears that Skull and Bones can be worse than Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, a game that came out a decade ago.
I wanted a Black Flag sequel so bad. It's still my favorite AC entry. The fact that they ignored everything that we loved about that game in this "spiritual successor" is making me enjoy watching this game crash and burn quite a bit. Either do it right or don't do it at all. (I understand the legal binding they got themselves into with the Singapore government to release this game at all costs)
/grabs popcorn
My thing is, if the Singapore govt was forcing you to do it at all cost, why not make what people wanted? How did ubi delay it for 5yrs, then again for 1yr and not just make a similar experience to black flag? How do you spend so much time and make so little?
Ubisoft did make a sequel, Assassin's Creed: Rogue. It has a short campaign, and its packed with filler side quests for upgrades, but it's still a decent time.
It released on the same day as Assassin's Creed: Unity, so it was mostly forgotten.
11 years of development. Multiple restarts. All the while people have been saying they don't want some pirate game where you can't even get off your ship. 11 years of people telling Ubisoft all they want is a pirate game that's basically Black Flag without any of the assassin or animus stuff. Yet they still served up this trash that no one wanted, charged $70 for it, and had the balls to call it AAAA.
The Guillemot family honestly needs to be forced out of Ubisoft. They've doubled down on everything players don't like about their games, they want AI to create "rough drafts" of their stories rather than letting their writers do their jobs, and they literally do not give a shit what their playerbase actually wants. 5-6 years ago their stock was worth more than 4x what it's currently worth. The company is dying.
What has happened to developers? How can you possible make a worse looking game 11 years later? It’s honestly mind boggling.
It's because the older developers were better at it. The new generation pass most of their exams by copying code from around the web so are not nearly as good at understanding what they are developing.
No, here's the truth:
https://www.channelnewsasia...
This was made in Singapore and it's the first game of this scale to be made there. Ubisoft would probably cancel it normally since it clearly wasn't shaping up well but they were getting government grants to try build up the industry there.
Do you really think game developers are radically different than just 10 years ago? And this game has been development since Black Flag released.
Using one crap game to trash a whole industry of developers is stupid. It's like saying "Alien Colonial Marines proves that game developers suck now."
It's the multiplayer aspect of the world. MP games look worse than single player games, period. Every comparison we keep seeing are for games like Gotham Knights, Suicide Squad and Skull and Bones. They all have multiplayer focusses.
Enough has been said about this game already. The gaming world shrugged when it was announced so many years ago, and instead of listening to all the criticisms from the community back then, Ubi just sailed on and kept making a game nobody really wanted. What a waste of money and effort.
Not a bad game to pull from. IMO Far Cry 3 is one of the best shooters I've played. FC3 got the open world concept right. Not too much that it's overwhelming, but just enought to keep you going.
Like Ismail says, "Far Cry 3 had that awesome element of completely distracting the player and having you pulled off the main path." One of my favorite parts of the game. And I'm someone who really didn't like either of the previous games in the series.
This is my hope. AC3 was a money grab and a run at new mechanics. They know it sells well and has to be released yearly so they put it out and it did. They are still the best in the biz at creating immersive worlds. They stated that they worked on Ac3 for 4 yrs during brotherhood and revelations. If this is true, they may have also been working on this for next gen too. They introduce ship mechanic to rave reviews in AC3.
Now, my criticism of AC3 (spoiler!) isnt the long tutorial or not being Connor or getting the robes. It isnt his lack of character as the protagonist. It isnt the story either. Its the entire lack of involvement, as if u r playing through a movie. First, the combat is fluid and engaging but not in the least bit challenging. Its good to see that they r using an old rpg trope of blocking off certain areas of an open world using difficulty. Second, there is no leveling. Your character gets new weapons, 90% which are worthless but he never improves in any manner. It would be better to have him level in some way. Maybe there are stats and u can either be a better assassin or tank or ranged weapons etc., allowing, like far cry, to approach areas differently. This way, if u want to be a true assassin, u can (maybea trophy or 100% synch for doing this). There must be some type of leveling to involve the player, to watch him het stronger and smarter etc.
I loved the homeatead. I actually grew to care about the town i helped build and its ppl, so keep that. Now, Far Cry 3 wasnt better because of its environment or story. Its because it had great combat and leveling. U alsi love the idea of going anywhere. In AC3, they could have made characters in Boston the easiest (broken in quadrants), the same with the frontier, culminating with New York.
Maybe its because i am an rpg fan but no one will be invested in their character if its simply doing one thing after another. Difficulty and levwling r imperative to an actiin game.
Hey we don't want this beautiful FC3 island to go to waste, nor this ship battle mechanic, so let's make a game that recycles both!
Any game that takes inspiration from FC3 is a plus in my book.