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kaputt

Ubisoft needs to stop making the same game over and over again

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I just played The Crew beta, and I'm still baffled that Ubisoft used, again, the same formula that have been present in its franchises.  It's kind of ridiculous because, well, it's a racing game, they totally didn't need to go for that. But they seem to be crazy about this lately.

 

Well, basically this formula makes every game open world with unlockable skills, power-ups, etc., it has been like this for a while, so, in regard to game design and gameplay, this is pretty well known. But now they also added as mandatory the same "you killed my wife and child" storyline.

 

If I recall correctly, this storyline was present in Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood and III. It also had its place in Far Cry 3 and Watch Dogs. And now, in -*/The Crew. 

 

They also seem to get worse on it every single time. In Watch Dogs the scene in which your relative dies (is right at the beginning of the game, and was also advertised int he trailer, so not actually a spoiler) is terribly done, and in The Crew it's even worse. It makes no sense at all.

 

I really don't understand this. I mean, it's fine to copy a sucessfull strategy for a new game, but they're taking it to another level.

 

Can't wait to play Just Dance - You Killed my Wife and Child on Dancefloor Edtion 

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I dunno man, I spent like 40 hours in Watch Dogs and I didn't even think it was that good. I got all of the achievements in ACII. People LOVE Far Cry 3.

 

I really don't know any reason why they would stop.

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AC2's family murder is father and brothers, not wife and child. FWIW. Not that that changes the spirit of what you're saying. I agree with you but for gameplay reasons, not story reasons. But also I continue to play and enjoy them so everything is terrible!

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I hear the next rayman will open with the murder of his arms and legs

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I dunno man, I spent like 40 hours in Watch Dogs and I didn't even think it was that good. I got all of the achievements in ACII. People LOVE Far Cry 3.

 

I really don't know any reason why they would stop.

I stopped playing Watch Dogs because of the story, I just didn't see the point of going through all of it just to see how Aiden's drama would end. But I have mixed feelings about the game itself, don't think it was bad.

I also don't have an issue with the open world formula and etc. I just feel that they're trying too hard to replicate their successful titles.

Oh, and I loved Far Cry 3. It's just that I saw the same character motivation in the Crew and was like, come on, Ubi.

I hear the next rayman will open with the murder of his arms and legs

 

Yeah, it will be called Rayman Origins... Oh. What a missed opportunity.

By the way, Rayman Origins have a great story/premise.

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I stopped playing Watch Dogs because of the story, I just didn't see the point of going through all of it just to see how Aiden's drama would end. But I have mixed feelings about the game itself, don't think it was bad.

 

 

I am a sucker for narrative, so I played it to the end, but I found that actually I had a lot of fun afterwards - I wasn't feeling pressured to complete the story missions, just wandering around, unlocking CtOS towers and picking up collectables. There were so many side tasks in there - in fact, a slightly ridiculous number. Like, putting chess and poker in there? And connecting solving ten chess puzzles to a skill that allows for longer slo-mo aiming? That's quite an incentive. Not to mention the drinking contests, and the "digital trips", which were effectively several indie games dropped onto the map of Chicago...

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I agree with kaputt, I've basically lost all interest in the main-line Ubisoft games, I'm sure it won't take forever before others feel the same and they stop selling the homogeneous design. How long that takes though, I have no clue.

 

 

I hear the next rayman will open with the murder of his arms and legs

 

Can we just murder Rayman instead and promote one of the other characters?

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I deeply regretted the time I took to play Watchdogs, the story didn't pay off at all and Aiden was basically a non-character despite it all being based on his pathos. Really weird. He is condemned to the same abyss as Connor the assassin for the sequel it sounds like but why would I even play that. I'd love to be proved wrong and have a vastly superior second game like they did with AC, but man, not feeling hopeful.

 

Still going to play the shit out of Far Cry 4 and hope it isn't TOO racist.

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Each of Ubisoft's main outings since Far Cry 2 have basically been chocolate covered turds.

 

They look apealing, but under the the facade, well they are just shit.

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You know what's not visually appealing? A chocolate-covered turd.

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You know what's not visually appealing? A chocolate-covered turd.

 

Depends! If it's shaped like a Snickers, then it's pretty visually appealing. 

 

Also, Splinter Cell: Black List was a pretty decent game. Nothing amazing, but certainly no chocolate turd. 

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Do you have to climb towers to see the area on the map in The Crew? because if it has Crackdown style wall driving I'm a lot more interested in it.

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Each of Ubisoft's main outings since Far Cry 2 have basically been chocolate covered turds.

 

They look apealing, but under the the facade, well they are just shit.

 

That's a bit harsh.

I've quite enjoyed several of the Assassin Creed games as well as some of their smaller stuff. The problem isn't that the games are bad, it's that they're so highly iterative. I got bored by the Assassins Creed series because the third one I played was more or less the same as the previous two, and I had fairly recently finished the second one.

 

It's the same thing as Arkham Origins which I also very much enjoyed. For people who had already played the first two, Origins was just more of the same, while I had never played any of the previous Arkham games and thought it was pretty damn great.

 

As the thread title suggests, Ubi just needs to stop making their big titles into the same game every single time.

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i can empasise with this. a few years back, maybe i was just naive, but it seemed to me like ubisoft were one of the more creative AAA studios. Maybe they still are, I mean their Rayman/Child of Light/Valiant Hearts teams have been quite an obvious push for Ubisoft trying to be more than money grabbing monopoly men to some degree but their constant format of upgrade systems, , unlocking towers, collectibles everywhere, quest systems and the story tropes you spoke of have all been rather prevalent in Assasins Creed, Far Cry, Watchdogs. (Regardless some of my favourite games still come under this format)

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 I mean their Rayman/Child of Light/Valiant Hearts teams have been quite an obvious push for Ubisoft trying to be more than money grabbing monopoly men to some degree

 

I might be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the teams working on the Ubiart games you mentioned are the same as the ones working on the big titles. Pretty sure Child of Light was by the Far Cry team - which is crazy.

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Thinking about it, one of the interesting things about Watch_Dogs - and I think this is somewhat deliberate - is that the mission structure gives you a choice about how big a douche you want to be, but only by locking yourself out of some missions. Like, it's almost impossible to do the fixer race missions without killing or at least injuring civilians, because you have to drive irresponsibly to get to the waypoints in time. On the other hand, the gang hideouts, CtOS towers, suitcases, serial killer investigations, QR codes etc are all doable without impacting the civilian population meaningfully, and often reward you with extra narrative, which may make them quasi- or pseudo-canonical. 

 

In the limited terms of the game's morality system, this doesn't matter too much - you can always heal your reputation by stopping a few crimes - but in terms of how you construct your own narrative within the open world it's quite interesting. In the same way that you can choose not to hack the bank accounts of people the profiler identifies as being on the run from abusive spouses or saving for life-saving surgery - it has no mechanical impact, but it gives you that Walking Dead option of how you feel about your character.

 

Of course, that's complicated by the core narrative, where

Aiden is kind of a wad. I mean, he ends up doing some good, in the sense that he probably straight up murders most of the criminal element of Chicago, and he does disrupt the human lady sale, but on the other hand he is pretty much wholly responsible for the chain of events that leads to the death of his niece and thus the beginning of his quest for vengeance. And then his sister, whose daughter his niece actually was, keeps asking him to let it go, move on, help her to raise her son, and he totally ignores her, while also not warning her that she might be at risk as a result of his quest for vengeance, since he has already screwed up fatally vis a vis his family once. Leading to her being kidnapped and terrorized, and his nephew probably being permanently traumatized, or retraumatized. And then this poor kid has to be uprooted from his home - the only stability he has had - because Aiden Pearce can neither conceal nor protect him in Chicago.

 

Basically, Aiden Pearce moves through the moral world of Watch_Dogs like a Looney Tunes character moves through a room full of rakes. Which I realise is somewhat deliberate, in a Far Cry "ah, but what if the real monster.... IS YOU?" way, but also makes me feel like every time I hit a cutscene he's going to do something ethically and logistically deeply unwise. He's like a celebrity software developer talking about feminism on Twitter - totally out of his depth, but apparently convinced that being good at hacking phones also qualifies him to make judgment calls about other people's lives.
 

Whereas once the campaign is finished I can settle down and explore this really attractive city simulation and the various things it lets me do, without feeling the traditional dissonance of hanging up on a phone call where the urgency of the core narrative is asserted, then deciding to take on a fixer mission and a CtOS breach and maybe take a digital trip because, hey, they're nearby.

 

I think my favorite part of the Creeds is always finding very tall historic buildings and climbing up them, which feels like the same instinct, except with handholds instead of CCTV cameras.

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i can empasise with this. a few years back, maybe i was just naive, but it seemed to me like ubisoft were one of the more creative AAA studios. Maybe they still are, I mean their Rayman/Child of Light/Valiant Hearts teams have been quite an obvious push for Ubisoft trying to be more than money grabbing monopoly men to some degree but their constant format of upgrade systems, , unlocking towers, collectibles everywhere, quest systems and the story tropes you spoke of have all been rather prevalent in Assasins Creed, Far Cry, Watchdogs. (Regardless some of my favourite games still come under this format)

Yeah, I appreciate this initiative of Ubisoft to release these "indie-like" games. In fact, I think that Ubisoft is the best publisher of the big three ones. However, they need to use the creativity of these smaller games in their big franchises add well.

Thinking about it, one of the interesting things about Watch_Dogs - and I think this is somewhat deliberate - is that the mission structure gives you a choice about how big a douche you want to be, but only by locking yourself out of some missions. Like, it's almost impossible to do the fixer race missions without killing or at least injuring civilians, because you have to drive irresponsibly to get to the waypoints in time. On the other hand, the gang hideouts, CtOS towers, suitcases, serial killer investigations, QR codes etc are all doable without impacting the civilian population meaningfully, and often reward you with extra narrative, which may make them quasi- or pseudo-canonical.

In the limited terms of the game's morality system, this doesn't matter too much - you can always heal your reputation by stopping a few crimes - but in terms of how you construct your own narrative within the open world it's quite interesting. In the same way that you can choose not to hack the bank accounts of people the profiler identifies as being on the run from abusive spouses or saving for life-saving surgery - it has no mechanical impact, but it gives you that Walking Dead option of how you feel about your character.

Of course, that's complicated by the core narrative, where

Aiden is kind of a wad. I mean, he ends up doing some good, in the sense that he probably straight up murders most of the criminal element of Chicago, and he does disrupt the human lady sale, but on the other hand he is pretty much wholly responsible for the chain of events that leads to the death of his niece and thus the beginning of his quest for vengeance. And then his sister, whose daughter his niece actually was, keeps asking him to let it go, move on, help her to raise her son, and he totally ignores her, while also not warning her that she might be at risk as a result of his quest for vengeance, since he has already screwed up fatally vis a vis his family once. Leading to her being kidnapped and terrorized, and his nephew probably being permanently traumatized, or retraumatized. And then this poor kid has to be uprooted from his home - the only stability he has had - because Aiden Pearce can neither conceal nor protect him in Chicago.

Basically, Aiden Pearce moves through the moral world of Watch_Dogs like a Looney Tunes character moves through a room full of rakes. Which I realise is somewhat deliberate, in a Far Cry "ah, but what if the real monster.... IS YOU?" way, but also makes me feel like every time I hit a cutscene he's going to do something ethically and logistically deeply unwise. He's like a celebrity software developer talking about feminism on Twitter - totally out of his depth, but apparently convinced that being good at hacking phones also qualifies him to make judgment calls about other people's lives.

Whereas once the campaign is finished I can settle down and explore this really attractive city simulation and the various things it lets me do, without feeling the traditional dissonance of hanging up on a phone call where the urgency of the core narrative is asserted, then deciding to take on a fixer mission and a CtOS breach and maybe take a digital trip because, hey, they're nearby.

I think my favorite part of the Creeds is always finding very tall historic buildings and climbing up them, which feels like the same instinct, except with handholds instead of CCTV cameras.

When you talk like this, actually it sounds like a way better game. I just wished that the story incorporated this dissonance, by portraying Aiden as a character whose feelings and beliefs led to those dissonance, with an ending that had this aspect in focus (it doesn't, does it? You can spoil the game for me).

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It's funny, because didn't EA promise ALL their games were going to be built in the same proprietary engine? Then Ubi just slides it out there. whomp whomp! 

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Yeah, I appreciate this initiative of Ubisoft to release these "indie-like" games. In fact, I think that Ubisoft is the best publisher of the big three ones. However, they need to use the creativity of these smaller games in their big franchises add well.

When you talk like this, actually it sounds like a way better game. I just wished that the story incorporated this dissonance, by portraying Aiden as a character whose feelings and beliefs led to those dissonance, with an ending that had this aspect in focus (it doesn't, does it? You can spoil the game for me).

 

Well...

 

The ending of the game feels like it's closing off all the narrative elements introduced into the game, almost in reverse order. So, Aiden rescues and sends away his family to start a new life where not even he can find them. He kills Iraq. He kills Lucky Quinn. He finds out that Clara was in fact the fixer who located him, and thus was responsible for his niece's death, and had been trying to redeem herself by helping him. Except that by helping him, she has in fact enabled him in alienating himself first emotionally and then physically from his remaining family. Oh, and Lucky Quinn's last act is to call a hit on her, which Pearce is too late to stop, so that's another death.

 

Then he has to stop Damien, in the process of which he is also attacked by a heel-turned Jordi Chin, and finally revisits the scene at the start with Maurice, except this time around you get the agency that was denied in the first scene fake-out, and can either kill him or leave him. That choice I think is taken in the game's narrative to be a statement on whether Pearce has fallen into moral nihilism as a result of the death or exile of basically everyone he has ever cared about.

 

He does a fair bit of voice-overed soul-searching after his sister and nephew leave, where he basically acknowledges that everything he has done up to this point has made things worse for them and for him, and that he should probably have just moved on, but at this point he is in too deep, and feels morally and practically obligated to tidy up the various bad guys controlling Chicago, since they all want to kill him. That characteristic of Pearce as a man who cannot stand aside and watch - even when it is in his own and everyone else's best interest for him to do so - is consistent, I guess.

 

There's also a subplot based around who a mysterious woman in an encrypted video (which turns out to be what Lucky Quinn thought Pearce and Damian were trying to get hold of, and why he called the hit), who feels a bit Kai Leng if you haven't picked up all the audio logs, IYSWIM...

 

So, I think it does attempt to address the futility of Pearce's plot for revenge in some ways, and the way it has functioned as a maladaptive coping mechanism for his grief, but it has the problem that if you are not making Far Cry 2 or Spec Ops: The Line or similar you have to be careful of telling the player that their labor has been misdirected. So, even if Pearce's grief response is identified as problematic, he has still cleaned up the town. And the scene is being set somewhat for a sequel, also...

 

I think it's complicated, but IMHO the plot could probably have done with at least one less key player, and maybe one less group of antagonists, and some more on Pearce's inner life and how he has been dealing with the death of his niece up to that point. That said, that would make it more like Gone Home, which may be a good thing for me but is probably not what Ubisoft were aiming for.

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Re: Watch Dogs ending

 

I really don't know what the value of Clara dying was. It felt needless and just an act for the purpose of shock value, not something substantive to the narrative. Ugh.

 

I do think a lot of the other story stuff was actually better than most people give it credit for, but not in the "this is award-winning writing!" way that they want but instead a "this is adequate!" way.

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I think Sean summed Ubi's development structure quite aptly, saying it's a 'paint-by-numbers game design'. The more games they make, the more apt it becomes.

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The most striking moment of that for me was when I went from basically marathonning AC:B, AC:R and ACIII and then went to play Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon having never played FC3 (or any FC for that matter, although that's less relevant because pre-FC3 was from before the Great Ubisoft Monotony Movement).

 

They're the same fucking game! Open world, enemy outposts to conquer, random collectible sidequests, mission structure. IT'S ALL THE SAME! Except one is a parkour-'em-up and one if a shooter. 

 

It's not like the games are un-fun (in my opinion!), but the fact that it's all the same world structure every time they do an open world game is... KINDA ABSURD YEAH.

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JonCole:

 

Yeah, Clara's death felt a little like... well, like we hadn't had a woman riddled with bullets in slow motion up to that point. It would have been unnecessary writing and animation overhead, I know, but I think it would have been super interesting to have the option, when you found the email from Quinn saying "yes, kill her", to choose to be all HOOOOOOLLLLLLLYYYYYYYY SHHIIIIIIIIITTTT (as my mother would say), drop everything and burn rubber to get to her and save her, then find out that Quinn had died of a heart attack on the news afterwards.

 

In some ways, Clara is kind of a sexy lady hacker archetype, but there are elements of her role that become interesting only after that point. Like, you can now see her actions up to this point as being convulsed with guilt about the death of Lena - trying to help Pearce, but also worried about what this terrifying mass-murderer will do if he finds out that she was involved in Lena's death. How two people, both of whom feel guilty about the death of a child neither of them actually killed, could relate to each other after that would be an interesting little narrative. Whereas instead she finds expiation in a piece of go-big symbolism, dying on Lena's grave.

 

On a mechanical level, of course, she's also part of a board-clearing: all Pearce's contacts and enemies have to be cleared off the board so their absence in the open-roaming section after the game story ends is not conspicuous. But she could have taken up her promise and disappeared, with a promise to check in on Pearce in a few years. i.e. Watch_Dogs 2.

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