Forgive my scepticism.
It is only natural that with the progression of society, technology and the world- everyone needs to pack up and move themselves along just that little bit in order to ensure they don't end up being forgotten about in the ceaseless march that is the coming future. Because as every techno-futurist bad guy cackles in the final act of every near future dystopia film- "Progress waits for no man!" And they're right. There's no putting the genie back in the bottle once AI art starts taking over and people find it some much easier than sitting down and making art for themselves. You can't just crawl back into the caves and relive the stone age all over again, unless you recreate the end of the original Deus Ex and literally EMP the entire world like the world's most paradoxically technologically savvy luddite. Which is all my way of saying that there's is no reason on the surface that any one should be surprised with the fact that Assassin's Creed Red is launching this year entirely on current gen consoles.
At least, most seem to think that 2024 is a likely release date for the game given how little we know about the title apart from the fact that it is Japan-set and thus the team are just waiting for the world designers to create a beautiful looking landscape so that the system designers can squander it all with the same heartless checklist content that Assassin's Creed cut it's teeth on all those years ago. Yes, you shouldn't worry. The world will lack character, the people personality and the story a script. Hell, if Valhalla turns out to be an indication on the direction of their writing, they may not even remember how to make storylines that guide the events of their scenarios anymore! But all that is exactly what we expect from the sheer mediocrity that is the modern Ubisoft development front- what I'm kicking the ball about today is 'innovation' What is it, how much of it does Assassin's Creed boast?
Because here's the rub- Assassin's Creed hasn't really innovated in about... ten years give or take. The technology that went behind making Black Flag what is was, with dynamic surfaces that generated real-time, was ingenious. I can't recall another Assassin's Creed which brought anything that took advantage of modern tech to that degree. Unity boasted some ascendant crowd tech that could produce emergent behaviour when stressed but... well... that never made it to the finished product. Since then all the games have been able to boast is ever bigger open worlds for the team to squander because they no idea what to fill them with. At least 'Watch Dogs Legion' has a really cool idea. The game was an unforgivably boring mess-of-a tech demo- but someone was trying at somepoint. I'm not sure that outside the work of the world artists, that can praise can be replicated for modern Assassin's Creed.
Every few years the team will change the way that the game's climbing works, jiggle about with the combat, throw in a half-baked RPG system- and the Assassin's Creed fanbase will claim without any hint of irony that this slightly differently packaged meal is the best the game has ever tasted. (Except for free running, I'm pretty sure we're all on the same page about free running feeling utterly depth-less in modern iterations.) The Ubisoft team have never had to break down the fundamentals of the franchise and figure out how to innovate and what to leave behind. You might compare this with the Bethesda rut of design which has become a topic of much discussion recently, but I'd argue Assassin's Creed is even more enclosed than even that. These games are echoes of one another, lacking that spark of individuality we pray for in franchise games. Even Yakuza have changed their games more than AC have!
And yet Assassin's Creed Red is said to be the first game so transcendent in it's ideas that past gen consoles just can't run the thing- and I struggle to understand why. I mean, first guess is probably that the team are creating all textures in native 4k- easy guess there, but what about everything else that makes a game- tick? Well, I guess they could try and up the density of their crowds (Valhalla was surprisingly reserved on that front- which I guess matches the time period. But then, even Odyssey wasn't mind blowing in that regard.) Maybe we'll be able to ride horses through cities, something that hasn't been possible since Brotherhood, but now with an SSD being a requirement that seems like something of a no-brainer. But do either of those sound worthy of a next gen jump to you? What actually would?
Personally, I would want an Assassin's Creed that pushes the gameplay systems further than they've even been before. Sprawling stealth levels, dynamic AI characters who surprise and overwhelm, dense streets packed with character and activity, giant set pieces that don't just create an illusion of scale presented in tightly conducted hallways of action. (Valhalla knows what I mean there with it's endless 'siege battles') And most of all, I want to see the current gen taken advantage of in a way I'm not expecting. This is the age of experimentation with the current gen, of pulling of things we never even considered being plausible. I don't want all that potential squandered in favour of 'ray tracing on characters eyes'- which is exactly what I already know the team are going for.
This is why I consider the coming abandonment of last gen consoles to be smokescreen and illusion. It's a headline designed to convince the world that something substantive is being conjured up in the mines of the Ubisoft content factory, when in truth their slathering new make-up brands on the same desiccated corpse of a product and praying no can peek through the layers of foundation at the flaking enamel beneath. But I've been through this enough to know, Ubisoft doesn't change. They never change! As much as I want to have hope for them, for their many franchises that I once loved, I can't just bury my head in the sand and pretend I don't see the exact same crap from them that I've seen for the past ten years. And the worst part of it all? They're successful. They sell millions each game. Which means no matter how bad things get, they'll always keep their lamentable quality standards.
What will it take to change things at Ubisoft? A rude awakening, no doubt. When that bizarre project manager quit, upon whose shoulders the blame for the repetition of Ubisoft products where placed, I knew the culture wouldn't change. The roots were set too deep, his cronies has already changed the kind of developer that Ubisoft was. That is why removing any head here or there isn't going to reboot the company any more than jumping to a new set of hardware is going to automatically revolutionise their game. No they're going to need a shock to the system. A trauma. Something they'll never recover from. They need to have a financial failure! Of course, such a failure would immediately be used an an excuse to axe 25% of the workforce, so I can't even advocate for that either. It's just a lose-lose with Assassin's Creed and Ubisoft, isn't it?
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