Madiator's CornerAssassin's Creed is a "forever brand" because Ubisoft supported huge risks with it, ex director says: "Whereas, say, EA, you get these awful execs and they never made games and they came from toothpaste companies"
Agent_Karyowww.gamesradar.com/games/assassin-s-creed/assas…
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Pot calls the kettle black?
Jerkface (any/all)
FlamekebabA story that is dragged perpetually out for money rather than concluded when it has run its course? Count me in!
caseyweederman
DaveIm curious of people’s thoughts on this. I enjoy a good Assassin’s Creed but each game is much like another, with some of them throwing in boat combat but they still feel pretty similar to me. To the point they are a bit of a comfort game for me as you know what to expect.
I also enjoy a good Assassin’s Creed. Unfortunately, they haven’t made a good one in a very long time
Yeah I agree for the most part. I don’t go into an Assassin’s Creed game expecting groundbreaking changes. It’s a formula. One that I think has degraded a little bit over the years, but still one I enjoy to a certain extent. Certainly I used to enjoy them much more when there was more history stuff involved. And when they gave more of a shit about the setting. It still scratches an itch though.
That’s basically all of Ubisoft’s games and despite the loud minority online, the games still sell really well and better in each release. That consistency is what I like about them. Their recreation of historical cities are quite pretty and the gameplay is generally enjoyable. I do wish they kept up the consistency with the story though. Shadows’ story was such a waste of a good location.
SuiXi3DSounds like a sunk cost fallacy. Invest all this money into so-so games, gotta keep doing it or else it’s all for nothing.
The last Ubisoft game I enjoyed was Black Hawk Down. I would say bought, but it’s likely I accidentally bought a Ubisoft game in the past since they became shit.
SkunkBlack flag ? Assassin’s creed 4 or pirate assassin’s creed. It’s one of the favourite of plenty of players.
There is a FPS game named black hawk down but not from Ubi. Nor is the film.
Never played them nor care to.
Black Hawk Down I played was apparently developed by Rebellion, though I remember seeing the Ubisoft logo and not the rebellion logo. It was a game I played online for 2 years competitively.
They say that about the company that has <professional sports league> <insert next calendar year> which are even more forever games because (as I understand, not really a fan of sports games either way) the changes from year to year seem to mostly be rosters.
It looks like one exec thinking he’s dunking on another and will look cool hating the hated one, but from my pov it just looks like two of the asshole kids in the playground trying to one up the other, thinking the others egging them on are laughing with them instead of at them.
Also, EA made over a billion (non-GAAP) in FY2025 while Ubisoft lost $175 million (GAAP, so not completely apples to apples, but switching to non-GAAP won’t turn that loss into a profit, let alone 1 billion worth). Not that I like EA or anything, it’s just that they are doing a much better job of what ubisoft wants to do and don’t need edgy execs trying to dunk on companies they hope are more hated than they are.
The sports games make more sense with the “forever brand” model IMO. They have more replayability, and with multi player if your friends upgrade, you have to too.
Assassins Creed is a single player, story based game. Once you’ve played it, most people don’t play it again. It has a lot of potential for new games because you can always change the time/location combination but I imagine designing huge maps is more expensive than updating rosters.
“Forever brand” really has “forever chemicals” vibes.
That and the risktaking bit give the headline two rofl’s
“This franchise will never have a meaningful conclusion, but I hope you gave up on that nonsense by the end of Black Flag”
The Assassin’s Creed franchise nowadays seems more like one of those slushy machines at the mall that perpetually move the same ingredients around in a neverending cycle of despair and stagnation.
Poetic and miserable, I may not be able to bear looking at a slushy machine the same way.
“The Assassin’s Creed franchise evolved into the household name it is thanks to rare, or at least rare-among-AAA, support for risk-taking at Ubisoft”
Fucking lol.
“No, no, hear me out. It’s exactly the same game. The same thing we make every single time. But this time, it’s in… Egypt.”
“Holy shit! What a maverick! Who is that guy? I like the way he thinks. Give him a corner office and the same budget we gave the Greece one!”
The Egypt one was definitely one where they changed it a lot. So much so that I no longer enjoyed playing them.
You know what I would buy? Hitman set in ancient Egypt.
Infiltrating a workgang forced to build a pyramid, putting a spitting cobra into a nasty enforcer’s chamber pot because he owes the Potiphar some serious myrrh?
Sign me up.
Honestly, not a bad idea. Synthesizing and iterating, taking things out of context, combining elements you haven’t before - that’s how you get something interesting.
Ubi’s problem is that their gameplay loops are completely stale. There just isn’t enough new and different, the stories are trite, the dialogue is shit, and everything is boring and predictable.
I somewhat enjoyed the first Assassin’s Creed, but was a little bitter it wasn’t the Prince of Persia game they’d intended the engine for. I didn’t find “walking slowly to blend in with a crowd” to be as fun as the intense combat and tight platforming of Sands of Time. But I cannot for the life of me understand how the series blew up into a juggernaut of a dozen releases over two decades.
I’m actually playing The Lost Crown now and - not that I’m the first to observe this - but I feel like it’s the best thing Ubi has done since The Two Thrones twenty years ago. This is the kind of risk that Ubi should be taking. Modest games, smaller budgets, new genres. Diversify and let the creatives create. Let small projects succeed and give them a sequel. If small projects fail, it doesn’t break the bank. But for christ’s sake stop releasing the same three giant boring games over and over.
I’m still sad they killed the 2008 Prince of Persia after the DLC, top of my list from them. (Lost Crown isn’t far)
Also TBF, Origins isn’t the best example to blame them for making a stale loop, since that’s precisely the game where they updated the AC formula to make it a lot more RPG.
Heavily historical setting fairly accurate about settings that a lot of people are interested about. Nothing easier. You can literally throw a dart at a map and a timeline and make something interesting with a shit story. People will buy a million of them, doesn’t matter if they’re all the same game. It’s a goddamn mystery that no one is doing anything like that with their own engine, absolute lack of imagination.
This is what kills me. There’s so much squandered potential in AC with this kind of thinking. Instead, Ubisoft just wants to be EA by re-selling the same game every year, but doesn’t have the sports licenses to pull it off.
Oh yeah, these terrible execs from other companies who veto female protagonists on principle, insist on implementing the same list of a thousand terrible features in all games regardless of genre, and harass their employees while being protected by HR and the CEO.
Wait, no, those are not the bad ones. You know the bad ones because they’ve worked for toothpaste companies.
Ubisoft has practically only produced confusing Open World games of the same IPs for the past decade. My definition of risk and innovation is slightly different 😅
And that’s just because Open World games are easy to mass produce. You just change assets and few minor things and reuse more or less the whole game
Assassin’s Creed is about equivalent to Colgate, I guess.
I’m clueless, what happened to Colgate?
Some scandal. A Colgategate, if you will.
Literally everyone and their mother could have expected this change. It’s literally the one single way AAA studios have been padding gameplay and time for a decade and a half now.
Even From and Zelda went open world.
Zelda is classically open world though - since the og nintendo
Ubisoft codified a certain style of open world design that many other AAA releases were using as a template. He’s right, you can’t deny the impact the franchise had.
And the series is worse for it
I feel like Nintendo 64 was the real OG adapter of open world RPGs. The success of Mario 64 and legend of Zelda had already proven the genre wildly profitable
They came from toothpas?
Looks like the title got cut off.
And the title should have been much shorter.
Yup, it should be “Ubisoft claims Assassin’s Creed games are innovative.”
C’est frainçaise
You have to be pretty deep in the Kool-Aid to think that ubisoft has “taken risks” with Assassins Creed.
Weird, Assassin’s Creed died with 2 when they fired the creator.
Okay but Black Flag slapped. Maybe not as an AC game per se, but Black Flag was still a greater game.
Black Flag was a mediocre Assassin’s Creed game, at best. It was a phenomenal pirate game
Agreed. Black Flag was awesome. Never finished the story though. Just sailing, singing shanties.
And Rogue. I rarely hear Rogue mentioned but it’s my favourite. I find the story the most appealing, and it comes with so much moral ambiguity.
Gameplay-wise, Rogue is even better than Black Flag. Narratively, Rogue is a disaster fueled by Shay being painfully stupid.
Being released at the same time as the significantly more modern (and unpopular) Unity didn’t do Rogue any favors.
Is that why the third one never concluded the series as it was originally intended?
Probably more to do with boatloads of money to be made
Sad because 2 is where it hit its stride
Most self-aware Ubisoft employee quoted in post title
Toothpas?
Like gamepass, but tooth
Ubisoft took one risk back in the mid-late 2000s and have been riding that safety wave ever since with asscreed. They’re not the last people who should be pointing fingers at other publishers for playing it too safe and releasing formulaic games, but damn if they aren’t next-in-line for that honor.
Seeing the success of Prince of Persia, it wasn’t much of a risk…
I dont see it. Mario is a forever brand that is handled well. Sonic is a forever brand that is handled a little less well, but its hanging on. Ubisoft had a forever brand, possibility with rayman, but handled it like shit. Forever brand is a mascot and something that associates with the company. AC is an open world action game with little relatability between each title. What is AC’s character? What distinguishes it from FarCry?
Sneaky wrist knives + parkour, the franchise.
It’s been a while, but Rayman Origins and Legends were pretty solid titles.
Controversial opinion: I like comfort games these days.
The first AC came out when I was in high school, and my one of my favourite bands for a good few years released their first album around then as well. I may not have as much time or love for either now, but I still get a nice buzz when I engage with a new release - especially when it does something a bit different (even if not revolutionary) compared to previous ones.
Life’s too short to avoid something you actually enjoy just because other people told you it’s not good enough.
Syndicate is the last AC game that felt like AC and that’s where my Assassins creed journey ends.
I’ve tried origins but I found it to be a mess and I didn’t like it at all
🎶 Assassin’s Creed is a good franchise 🎶
Sure, it’s a forever brand, can’t wait for it to be forever shelved after someone buys it as a piece of Ubisoft’s corpse.
I really liked the first AC game but when I played Odyssey I was disappointed. Beautiful game, fun mini-games, nice subsystems like upgrading the ship and whatnot. After the initial couple of hours I started to feel like everything is a chore.
Need a map? No way to buy, you have to run/ride and climb the chore tower.
Want to use equipment? Grind chore for the XP to meet the level requirement.
Want to beat a quest handed to you early? Grind XP
Want to complete side quests? All of the boilerplate fetch/kill quests.
Just please, give me a starting weapon that’s good enough and I can just stealth kill my way through the main quest. Also, just allow me to buy the map.
I mean this respectfully, but you were holding it wrong.
First off, Odyssey was too big, but I enjoyed it! The voiced side quests were great, especially those heavily involving Kassandra. The Atlantis DLC was sublime. But:
You don’t worry about equipment beyond your level!
Leave future quests in the journal!
Fetch quest? If you’re bored, skip it! TBH I Cheat Engined some money in.
Odyssey requires no grinding, as it has waaay too much filler as is. It is a game that’s utterly miserable if you give into completionist impulses, but pretty neat if you don’t.
…Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t particularly enjoy the combat, and the main story is so dull I don’t even remember it, aside from the Atlantis bits. It’s not a masterpiece. But I remember the experience of trekking across Greece quite fondly.
Exactly. I don’t know what I expected, but that was my experience as well. The game more or less told me this:
“Hey, did you enjoy the first chapter? Well guess what? We’re going to throw that at you x20 with the occasional plot beat thrown in for variety. Have fun!”
For the obvious boatload of cash poured into Odyssey’s development, I feel like half as much game done twice as well would have been a better experience. Instead, we get something that is seemingly padded for play-time, in the same way a 4th grader adds extra blank lines to hit the required page count on a book report.
They killed it after black flag, it has been a flop every single time. Only origin was a bit fun.
🥱
Give me a proper remake of Koudelka or Galerians, and make Fighting Layer (1998) available officially, who cares about this uninspired slop.