Ubisoft has made open-world games their forte, turning the genre into a category of tropes that are often stated as ‘checking the box’ gameplay that has players roaming between various locales with little rhyme or reason until the story inevitably ends.
Add in a few collectibles throughout the environment, add a stereotypical male and a couple of dozen microtransactions, and you’ve got a stew going that Ubisoft would likely be more than happy to slap their label on.
The story of precisely why Ubisoft titles all tend to feel generic and similar has finally been revealed after Jason Schreier wrote a scathing article for Bloomberg where it underlines not only the controversy surrounding Ubisoft with their plethora of sexual assault and rape allegations but also how the studio has been developed into one single individual having the authority to greenlight titles or demand large-scale rewrites.
From the article:
Hascoët was treated almost like a member of the family. He was given ultimate authority to cancel, greenlight, or overhaul any game to his specifications.
Thus, Hascoët’s preference became the stomping grounds for Ubisoft, which is precisely why every title seems to be grounds that we’ve covered before, with some better graphics and a new mechanic or two.
From the article, it’s astonishing that we got Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag at all, although it did have a male protagonist as the individual preferred.
In Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Kassandra was to be the only playable character, a first for the main-flag of the franchise having a female protagonist. The idea was rejected as ‘Women don’t sell’, as though Tomb Raider, Portal, Bayonetta, NieR, and hundreds of other titles haven’t gone on to be amazing titles with astounding depth.
Regardless, Ubisoft has continued to make bank as they push out title after title that has echoes, at the very least, of titles that have come prior.
There is good news mired in all of this, for those that find themselves still willing to play titles from Ubisoft as the scandal continues to rock the French company with allegations of rape, drugging co-workers, and sexual assault assails the publisher from social media; upcoming Ubisoft-developed titles could actually shift the arguably stale content coming from the studio.
The upcoming Assassin’s Creed Valhalla looks to be notably similar to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey; a damnable shame considering the rich history that Ubisoft is working with, and the undeniable skill that Ubisoft has in their offices. They hold the IP to a series that has done more for encouraging history than most other titles; it’s a franchise ripe for a glow-up.
