Ubisoft might actually be doomed

 

Of all the common L's that I very much expect Ubisoft to make: lasr year has proven to my absolute shock that this industry might just have a much lower tolerance point than I assumed it had. I think we might finally be getting to a point of genuine rejection where we no longer tolerate an absolute bottom-feeding tail-chasing overbloated badly managed black hole of a company to be successful anymore. Much to my utmost shock I think the industry might have finally outgrown my sworn nemesis- at least in their current form. I still attest that Ubisoft are too big to fail and, once again, too big for anyone to seriously want them to fail. The last thing we need is an accelerated industry crash because Ubisoft went belly-up. But if Ubisoft got bought out by a company that actually knows how to publish games- maybe those massive resources the company regularly squanders could be put to genuine use? (Meh, I'm getting way too hopeful, aren't I?)

The victim today for the big U was none other: than XDefiant! That's right, the Cod-like competitive shooter that Ubisoft put out this year! The struggling live-service shooter game that soundly failed to launch in the soft-spot of the Cod train, essentially leading them to lose momentum to the famous shooter literally the same year as their historic multiplatform Game Pass deal which led to the game breaking launch records. It's no secret that XDefiant dropped the bag- that was such an inevitability that if you go back- you might remember how XDefiant actually got rebranded because of how badly it's reveal came off. People already had the thing labelled as 'uncool' giving the title an uphill struggle to traverse. But positive first hand impressions did wiggle under some skin at the beginning- it's just a shame they were too late to really make something of it.

Too late, I say, because as you might have heard- XDefiant has just been given the swift boot up the ass. After the game director coming out and belly-laughing at all those worried the game was not long for this world- as it turns out the game really isn't long for this world. Without so much as seeing the end of the year- XDefiant has had it's cord cut and is currently staring down the barrel of a cut-off date midway through 2025. Refunds are on the table at the very least for microtransactions bought within a certain period- but there's no giving back all the time people invested into giving this game a shot and hoping it would carve out a space for itself in this cursed would of ours. So ends the journey of the one Ubisoft project that some people actually kinda liked for a bit.

Then we have Skull and Bones which, impossibly, has plans for a season 2 coming into this year despite the very real fact that it... has no more potential whatsoever. If anything it might have scoured members of the pirate-fantasy searching crowd had it a couple more years to work on itself, but unfortunately between hijinks-simulator 'Sea of Thieves' and the rapidly approaching 'Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii'- I'm pretty sure that crowd has been well-and-truly sniped out of the water before they could be swooped up. Shame. Pretty much the only reason Skull and Bones is still around is because everytime Ubisoft try to wiggle out of their responsibilities they catch sight of the Singaporean leg-breaker waiting at the back of the room.

Assassin's Creed Shadow is pretty much Ubisoft's only hope and though it is obviously going to hit it's more modest sales targets and probably even score some of the higher tier ones because this is a franchise that is immune from consumer backlash- I'm not sure that Ubisoft has ever had the entire weight of it's company resting on the back of a single game's success before. I wonder if a team as large as Ubisoft's can feed itself off a single hit anymore. We're not talking a Rockstar level world-wide phenom incoming- we're talking about the kind of game that is going to be picked up day one by incumbents whilst enthusiasts scoff again at another overly safe and unambitious entry in a tired franchise limiting it's immediate-audience appeal. A hit, but not a smash.

And beyond Assassin's Creed what does Ubisoft have? Maybe another NFT disaster? It utterly boggles all sensibilities that Ubisoft put out two NFT games within the past year and both were worse than what first time Unity-dev Crypto-heads have managed to scrounge together. Sure, those lot tend to use pre-built assets, but they make stuff more playable than the card game which was utterly non-functioning for it's first weekend of life. And some games with a little more playability than the glorified flash-tier Captain Lazerhawk disaster that Ubisoft spat out later. (God, the inexplicable cultural success of 'Blood Dragon' really was a latent poison, wasn't it?) This is all Ubisoft have to pad out their back catalogue. Well, that and the demi-successes. 

Games that Ubisoft put out which cross the border of 'good' but lack the star power to land with a splash like they were angling for- demi-successes. I'm talking games with the vibe of 'Avatar: blah blah Frontier' which took the Far Cry formula and tweaked it just enough to fit the Avatar licence. People seem to think the game was pretty good- just not worth the AAA over-premium pricing that Ubisoft insist on out of some vain self-deserving belief system. 'Star Wars: Outlaws' is said to be half-decent once you scrub away at it's issues, but to put it as the same price point as the Black Myth game is a laughable proposition- who's gonna go for that? These games had strong brands and didn't really go the distance with them- they aren't pillars to hold up a large company.

Now with sharks in the water circling around Ubisoft's collapsing stock it feels like we might be looking at the final years of Ubisoft antics and I'll be honest- I'm not entirely sympathetic. I mean if they were going under I would be- but it looks like what we're looking at is a buy out and proceeding slow suffocation. No one who could do this company proud is interested in buying it- and I'd imagine we see a slow bleeding of talent over the following few years as Ubisoft shrivels up into a shell of it's former self- which is perhaps the most humane well to kill a beast like this, which has feasted on the blood of this industry for so long, without causing some kind of giant industry crash. Couldn't happen to a more deserving waste of a studio.

 

When it rains

 

Even given my time stepping back from the forefront of the news cycle to literally do anything else, somehow I find myself constantly faced with the sheer insanity of the daily goings-ons in this fair industry of ours. And wouldn't you know it- somehow Ubisoft have remained the centre of my ire even after all this time? I should rename the blog into 'The Ubisoft hate circle' for the amount of times they appear on the pages- but I guess I just can't help the fact that, for some insane reason, their management is determined to make themselves a cancer upon the industry. I'm talking- genuine danger to the health of gaming as an artform- that seems to be their biggest goal in life; beyond even making a profit. I don't even know if EA were ever this bad. Or at least, EA did a better job at hiding their active disdain for games and those who buy them.

Of course I'm referring to the recent rumour popping about (big underline with the 'rumour' part of this, the source is unnamed and i've yet to see anyone reputable back this up- it just happens to fit the Ubisoft MO so horrifically well.) Star Wars Outlaws. Apparently Ubisoft have acknowledged the flop internally and expressed a desire, alongside some other unnamed accomplices, (I imagine Sony must be one) to pressure Steam into restricting their API access. Basically they want strict provisions put around the data that the public have access to so that they can keep figures such as Player Numbers private- to what end? All this would achieve is giving Ubisoft the anonymity to gussy up a flop in front of investors- essentially giving them the authority to white lie when they want to. Which is illegal so I'm not accusing them explicitly of lying to investors- just that they happen to want to pursue the very tools that would facilitate such lying.

And I want to impress just how largely useless such a move would be. I know that companies like Ubisoft are so desperate to divest themselves of responsibility for any mistake they'll accept any old scape goat that flies through their window- but it takes a special kind of delusional to think that the observation of player numbers would drive people away from a single player open world game. A multiplayer title? Sure. I'll bet that at least some people considered buying Concord only to see it on the path to crashing and burning and decided against that purchase. Outlaws? Not a chance. More likely they saw the developer, weighed their reputation up and decided to wait for a sale. That's pretty much how I think of Ubisoft- that developer who puts out games that are never worth their RRP. And, well... that's the kind of reputation which is pretty well earned!

But that's not the only story of the day. How about FromSoftware, kings of the Souls-like, currently being hunted by Sony for an acquisition. Oh good lord, why do the horror stories never end. Sony have proven themselves ill partners in the modern age of the live service order, which has already documented at least two strictly single player studios having their arm pulled into spitting out live service prototypes- both of which proved not interesting enough to be developed to launch. FromSoft have their art nailed down to perfection, they've managed to iterate upon their own greatness and reach ridiculous heights- and they seem to be one of the only modern respected studios building themselves to be generational, so that when the current guard inevitably move on- the studio will retain that sparkling standard with the next generation. (take note Bioware.) They don't need Sony stepping on their back.

Now as far as we're aware the Sony acquisition is not entirely their own volition. They're being called to the role, as if they're saviours bearing down from up high. But that doesn't change the fact that their proven track record has been atrocious, they have themselves a FromSoftware game they've bitterly refused to work in the slightest. Not porting it to their newest consoles, let alone to other platforms, the same as with Metal Gear Solid 4 which has been trapped on it's release platform since release. (Although in fairness that one is just as much due to Konami being mean.) I don't want Playstation standing guardian over who gets to play game this big. Heck, it's been under a Sony exclusivity deal that the once biggest JRPG in the world, Final Fantasy, has floundered and failed to make the cultural impact that it- following my actually playing FFXVI- fully deserves to. That game slaps! Sony just aren't the partners they need to be right now.

And the last point of this dying embers of the year is hardly a revelation but deserves mentioning all the same. Bethesdsa just really don't seem to get any of the heat that has fallen their way. Now obviously I really liked Starfield for what it was, not for what people wanted to be or even what I hoped it was going to be. (Although to be fair, I gave up on my hopes years before launch the very second they made it clear the game wasn't going to be 'fun' sci-fi. So maybe that's just low expectations going in.) But the game honestly isn't a patch upon it's predecessors and it has nothing to do with it being a new IP that goes in a new direction that fans aren't sure about. Metaphor Refantazio dropped this very year from a pedigree that mainlined Shin Megami Tensei and Persona for decades beforehand and it might just be the single most complete, thematic strong, relatively lean and mean JRPG of all time. What's the difference? ATLUS gets it. Bethesda don't.

From the absolute barest of the bare faced peep- sure, we can look at the fan dissatisfaction with Shattered Space and conclude that people would have been happier if the game saved up some of it's free releases and dropped them with the DLC (As Todd Howard was said to to have proposed during a chat with Phil Spencer). I objectively believe that would have been partially true, even if buggies actually don't gel well with the DLC's environments specifically. But that wouldn't have been real satisfaction. That wouldn't have been solving a problem. That would be like sticking a pacifier in the mouth of a screaming child- give something to focus on for the next few minutes but not actually addressing the route issue. That issue? Shattered Space just wasn't very good. It lacked a core thesis, I don't know if they even know what sort of fantasy they were working towards providing, I personally think it's visual palette was frightfully uninspired and dull, (which is a hot take, apparently) and it stands as perhaps the least engaging full-blown DLC's that Bethesda has released for one of their mainline games ever. That should be a significant wake-up call. And it hasn't been.

Now at the tail-end of all this is a reminder that no- this hasn't been the end of everything this culture has to offer. This has been such a solid year for games that I genuinely have a dissociative moment whenever I see anyone claim otherwise. If you haven't managed to find at least one game that released in 2024 that hasn't scratched at your best-of sensibilities then I have to be honest- that is a skill issue. Unless you're a sports game fan but those folk should be used to disappointment by now. (Actually, they did get their College Football madden-style game they waited 10 years for- so even that crowd should be pleased.) But it's important to take the lumps with the porridge. To not let compliancy cloud what could be improved, what might not be going the way it should and how next year might grow to even greater heights. And man, for the companies mentioned here today (sans Ubisoft) I sincerely hope that they do. They deserve it all.

Preying on the downfall

 

Oh Ubisoft- dost thou know how oft thy name touches these lips? How thy form and art enshrouds in my dreams? Dost thou shudder with a start, with the patter of my words when I call to address? Does thou even know why? Does anyone really understand why- why they come to hate? I mean it has to be a difficult thing to accept for anyone- no? To be fair and honest perhaps even the most robust and affirmed person of sound heart and fair mind would struggle comprehending the singularly outward expression one would need to drum up to drive such a fervour as could be described being 'hated'. That's no simple distaste afterall- no sir! It takes passion, it takes effort- it takes love turned rancid and sour. To truly understand oneself enough to comprehend hatred one would need to take that very hatred into themselves, and become of it in some small way. Few are that sturdy, it surprises me little that Ubisoft is not.

But why do I speak of them? Simply because Ubisoft is up against a wall of late, as I'm sure you are at least passingly aware. I think that the direness of the situation is oft exaggerated- I don't think the U from France is really facing the abyss about to tumble off into insolvency- but I do believe they are in a bit of a pickle that is about to prelude another disastrous turn of trite that will be oh so profitable and oh so toxic in the mouths of quite literally everyone else operating this industry we love so dear. Assassin's Creed Valhalla made all the money Ubisoft could ever want and that game was a frank disaster on wheels remembered fondly only by those who dropped it after a couple of weeks or those who literally play nothing else but the franchise. Those with perspective and enough self-hatred to stick it out- know the game for the war crime it is. But still it made the money. More than that, it made all the money. Assassin's Creed Shadow will not be a flop. Doesn't matter how much controversy it digs up- it just ain't happening.

But that doesn't mean Ubisoft itself is safe- well, at least not in the way that I sure Yves and his posse would like, at least. Because Ubisoft have been on a bit of an edge of late- from disastrous decisions that made them look like total clowns in the public eye, to incredulous flops that still baffle my mind to this day. The apparent revelation that Star Wars Outlaws sold only a million copies in it's first month is nigh-on unbelievable to me- I cannot imagine a franchise like Star Wars selling so poorly with that much marketing behind it. And I mean a million sales is not bad but I can just imagine my face if I was an investor behind a Ubisoft collaboration with Star Wars looking at numbers like this and I can imagine the disbelief. (Thank all the gods I'm not.)

Ubisoft are being hounded of late, by internal forces who are absolutely the worst-case scenario for everyone involved and without- and then some, apparently welcome, investor money from China looking to swoop up ownership. And all the while fans, former and current, are looking on in fascination and in some cases, excitement that Ubisoft might be undergoing the one thing it's bitterly avoided for over ten years now: Change. For some that change comes in the form of walls being teared down and structures being rewritten- and that is an end they cheer on. And maybe some even further just want to see Ubisoft suffer and burn. Honestly, I see shades of myself in all angles of that conversation. Even the conservations who just want everything to stay the same.

But what is it- to prey on the downfall of another? Cruel? Vindictive? Twisted? All of them above, of course, and more. One such Ubisoft spokesperson commented as much in a speech that went viral on the topic. Cutting it down for the sake of brevity, he essentially bemoaned a disgust at being part of a community like ours, where Ubisoft are looked down upon and disgraced simply because they make products that aren't to our tastes. Also he claimed the discourse went beyond gamers and stretched to other industry players looking down on poor Ubisoft- he sees it himself on LinkedIn. Wait a second... on LinkedIn? What kind of non-psychopath uses LinkedIn as social media? Who is this guy?

Oh, it's the head of Ubisoft monetisation. Literally the very reason himself why Ubisoft is so despised. No wonder he would strawman an argument with all the wit of a class clown trying to argue with the teacher about why he doesn't deserve a fail for the test he refused to hand in. What kind of actual simpleton thinks Ubisoft is disgraced because of 'games that aren't made for us', Ubisoft don't make genre games- they make their titles for everyone: that's kind of the problem! The reason why Ubisoft sees hatred even from their peers, is because they are the Mister Beast of the video game world. They denigrate the entire art form with big budget, big audience, lazy wastes of talent, time and money infused with the worst practices, cementing the worst development trends and monetised like a dictator fuelling a war of conquest on the mainland. 

What makes this worse is that the man in question, the very one clutching his pearls talking about how toxic the industry he is actively trying to ruin is to him: that man is the problem. His job is one of the most important in the industry- he has to balance the extremely delicate relationship between commercialism and artistic integrity that allows this culture to thrive and survive. Yet with single player time savers, over-priced special launch editions, braindead NFT trend chasing- he and his ilk have screwed it up again and again. We're looking at a man incapable of performing his job, unworthy of continued employment, complain about unfair treatment. Buddy, if the world was fair you'd be on the streets- so wind in your chin a bit, eh?

In full honesty, I don't want Ubisoft to collapse. I think a company the size of Ubisoft suddenly going bankrupt would literally cause a crash in the game market, and I don't want that. What I want is for Ubisoft to learn and improve- but over the past years they have implicitly demonstrated an unwillingness to improve internal or external practices unless held to the fire. They would still mistreat their own workers if their conduct wasn't plastered across headlines and brought to courts, and they will still grind this market into dust if they don't fall down on their face and taste the dirt now and then. It's a shame, no one should have to fail utterly in order to learn a lesson. But when you're dealing with monsters, sometimes seeing their own reflection isn't enough to drive the lesson home- sometimes you have to rub their face with the muddy water until they get the message- and I won't apologise for that.

The Ubi-Takeover

 It's no secret that me and Ubisoft aren't exactly twilight lovers caught across a vast storm. In fact, I'd consider the company an embodiment of everything wrong with modern art exclusively within the gaming medium. The aren't the only such company, unfortunately, so I can't even give them the gratis of embodying all that poison and sparing the rest of the industry. They really just a collection of the most contemptable, ignorant little golems that manage to drag themselves across this industry based purely on the talents of those they wring dry- of whose talents it speaks greatly that they still put out viable products after being squeezed through the Ubi-grinder of mediocrity. Not that I think it saves the artistry of such games, but some people find their work bearable, and that is commendable. But what if they could be worse?

Such is the question floating around the Ubisoft conversation in the wake of some genuinely surprising downturns in their fortunes that are chumming up the waters around this monstrosity of a creative house in a manner that has me both rooting for the sharks whilst, more sensibly, praying the management at Ubi aren't cooked enough to stay in charge. They can't put together a piece of art to save their life but they've proven themselves half decent in the rare exception here and there- usually despite their own better judgement. Assassin's Creed Mirage was better than I expected, but I think that was simply because the game was forced to be constrained by a withdrawn budget rather than because it was a solid title in it's own right. And unfortunately it would seem the investors agree.

Much has been made about the stock downturn of Ubisoft and not being classically trained within the financial world myself, there's little I can actually deduce from the situation of worth beyond my own general bewilderment. I don't think Ubisoft have gotten any worse in the past few years, they've always been this much of a sty- but it doesn't take a genius to look at the graph and see their stock doesn't appear to be going in a stable direction, let alone the upward trajectory that delusional stock investors yearn for. But then I think back and remark- there really hasn't been a breakout success for the studio since Assassin's Creed Valhalla, now has there? And considering that was 4 years ago- yeah, I suppose I would be getting antsy if I had an investment or two as well.

The very same year as Valhalla was predated by two absolute disasters, Hyperscape- the short lived live service competitive shooter they let die and 'Watch_Dogs: Legion'- one of the lingering plagues god sent to haunt mankind. Immortals Fenyx Rising was a big title from them that reviewed well but sold poorly. Far Cry 6 was a collapse in terms of faith of the franchise but it still sold decently enough to be regarded a success- if not a breakout hit. Their 'Rainbox Six: Extraction' spinoff pretty much faded from the limelight in no time flat, 'Mario and Rabbids: Sparks of Hope' went commercially underappreciated, I only just now found out that there was a Valiant Hearts sequel last year... Great job marketing that one, Ubisoft! A sequel to a BAFTA winner swept under the rug? Assassin's Creed Mirage sold well in comparison to the relatively low development cost, rather than in comparison to the size of the company as a whole. Frontiers of Pandora doesn't appear to be a flop but they don't seem to brag about it's success either so I'm assuming it performed modestly. And this year has seen two well received but largely slept on Prince of Persia spin-offs, an embarrassing resolution to a fourteen year hostage situation called 'Skull and Bones', and now the surprisingly under-performing 'Star Wars Outlaws'. So far this really hasn't been Ubisoft's generation.

Now the big news coming out of the house of Guillemot is an open letter of revolt from their shareholders that are demanding a direct shakeup in the way that the company is run in hopes of facilitating what might shake up to be extreme shakeups. Calls for the company to be taken private (Which sucks, I was hoping to buy the dip...) and 'restructuring' might sound good in the ears of luddites like myself who have been calling for a Ubisoft shakeup for years- but that's only because we don't speak fluent 'Financial'. Those with a bit savvier heads on their shoulders warn that what is meant here is- "We want to strip this company bear and see if it can still stand on it's toes."

That's the problem with the commercial world leeching off of art- they are near incompatible world views in all the most frustrating ways. Artists struggle to make a living off their work in just about any field and financial vampires struggle to comprehend that their logistical view of the world cannot parse down the complexities of art to raw figures. Disney have been trying to crack the mathematical code to consistent cinematic success and to my utmost surprise they've demonstrated a spotty record of late. Their godawful 'safe bet' movies- the live action remake travesties- are starting to wane from the public interest and some are in danger of actually flopping! (Flopping by Movie Standards of course being having less than 1.5 times the budget back- none threaten to not break even or anything yet.) And this is a philosophy as true in gaming as it is in any other artform. You can't math art.

My alarm bells rang as much as everyone else's when I read, among with the many other complaints in that scathing open letter, a comparison in size between Ubisoft and other much more successful developers out there. It is true, Ubisoft is one of the biggest game companies in the world yet deposits a pitiful track record of major games and a stronger, but subtler, collection of small games. This is justification they're looking for. Justification to take a scythe to the Ubisoft departments in order to 'cut away the chafe'. Put people like this in charge and they won't just exacerbate the situation, they will gut Ubisoft of everything it had of value, their actual talented staff, and leave a barely functional husk that, upon failing to deliver the first couple of games out to a decent standard, will be shut down.

What irks me about Ubisoft is the unbelievable potential that they have, if under real leadership that actually knew what they were doing I genuinely believe this studio could be on the heels of companies like Rockstar- I am not exaggerating. But those that have spoken us today, those clueless toadies from the Hamptons? Yeah, scum like that are best off keeping their voice out of conversations like this, let they remind all around how much better they'll serve the world once they've shuffled on to full-time positions as professional fertiliser come their time, and left the actual creators to do what they do best. At the very least, I hope this is a wake-up call to Yves that either he needs to make changes or the worst people you know are going to ruin his legacy before his eyes.

Outlaws is the real criminal here.

 

I haven't spoken much about Star Wars Outlaws on this blog despite the fact that I still very much love the video game side of the Star Wars franchise as the one bright spot in a general overmilked product and do you know why that is? It's because I have very little interest in the thing. The same for Star Wars Rivals, the mobile game that came and vanished at some point in the past year or so; when something like that means so very little to my world I just can't help but pass it over. Also, the reason why the game hold no interest to me despite being "The first open world Star Wars game of all time": (Pretty sure there are a couple of MMO's that would beg to differ there) it because it is a Ubisoft game. You know me- Ubisoft don't get by me without a scrutiny check and Outlaws ain't done a good job passing mine.

But the thing with Ubisoft is that they don't really need my endorsement and support. They don't even need to get the majority of the gamer public on their side- because Ubisoft are one of those companies that have grown to such a pre-eminent level that they've become something of 'the face of gaming'. Someone just looking up big games are going to come across Ubisoft titles, and casual observers will pick up the latest Ubisoft game, blast through it and then complain how all big games are generic and uninspired based on that sole experience. I'm not kidding- you even have indie developers falling down that hole nowadays. Because I supposed Baldur's Gate 3, Space Marine 2, Helldivers 2: they're all just chopped liver or something?

Which was why I pretty much felt like the book on Outlaws was open and closed long before the game actually hit shelves. It looked pretty unambitious, and reviews all seem to salivate over the visuals, as they do for every Ubisoft game, and handwave the wanting- everything else. I figured it would be typical Ubisoft open world slop. A tired formula stretched over the rotting corpse of another brand, maybe plugged with a half-digested idea or two which sounds like it might have been a little novel if Ubisoft had the guts to commit to anything outside the core structure they love so dearly. (RIP literally every non-generic idea 'Mists of Pandora' once had.) Something that would be a hit being both a Ubisoft game and a Star Wars branded title and we'd all lament another undeserving rainfall for the world's least creative creative studio.

And it did. Make money, that is. Star Wars Outlaws landed with the typical average score specially reserved for Ubisoft middle of road titles, (70) and people flocked to buy the thing. But then something very interesting and unexpected happened. You see- people didn't really like the game. The actual user on the street- the average everybody with a passing interest in the medium- yeah, they largely thought it kinda sucked- as evidence by the mid 50 average on Metacritic. Yeah- turns out the game wasn't just boring and uninspired- it was actually pretty messy as well. Buggy and unpolished might slide by a reviewer who plays dozens of games every month but an average joe- they didn't spend their hard earned cash for a game with a leaky brain.

Of course then when you get past the bugginess, I hear Consoles are actually pretty well put together (lucky them) then you have a game that just... doesn't really have much to it. The looks are good, but the plays are weak. Isn't that just Ubisoft in an absolute nut shell? When was the last time they put out an experience as all-around satisfying as God of War? As singularly refined as Horizon Zero Dawn? When was the last time they displayed a mastery for anything other than visuals? Visuals are fine and all- but this isn't a 3D art industry, this is a gaming industry- and it might be starting to catch up to people that no matter what package you put on it- no matter how you wrap it up. A Ubisoft is always, regrettably, a Ubisoft game.

Beyond that the core systems are actually pretty weak. It's one thing being generic, it's another having a core aspect of the design vertical be largely non-functional. Stealth isn't the easiest thing to get right, but most games at least start at a place of competency- which Outlaws struggles to reach. And gunplay is fine but that's not really enough to carry you through an entire video game worth of content- now is it?  Hellblade 2's combat is fine- but that is one of the least ways in which the audience interacts with the game- Outlaws has to stand up and try to defend it's single weapon, limited pick-up based arcade shooter vibes. It's just not very good.

And then you have the reputation system which, I'm going to be honest, reeks of a little thing I like to call 'Lack of ambition'. (It always comes back to that, doesn't it?) It really is a matter of passion to create something like a reputation system- it takes effort to consider the scope and ramifications, the intricacies of managing relationships with conflicting factions and the consequences of letting those relationships slide. Not many have the gall to pull it off. And Outlaws executes theirs like they really didn't want to do one. Very binary 'enemy or not' tickers with a supremely simple 'solve' method in order to rebuild reputation because they didn't have the balls to stick to their model. It's just a bit of shame to be honest.

There's this quote that keeps jumping around my head from an Internet Wierdo a few years ago "A game that isn't for everyone shouldn't be made". Yeah, I know how inherently stupid that sounds but it gets to me because this is one of those 'games for everyone'. A fence-sitting 'doesn't know what it wants to be' unwilling to commit sigh. The game is just a sigh. From a studio that used to, somehow, regularly get Game of the Year nominations. Now probably going to be outdone by themselves later this very year. Ubisoft stock has shivered unfavourably at the icy reception and once more the Ubisoft formula has made another game just that little bit lesser than it could have been with a proper studio, a director with vision and, most importantly, some proper development time. What a waste.

Assassin´s Creed Mirage Quick Review

 

I've had something of a rough relationship with the Assassin's Creed franchise of late. I always thought the games were verging on 'Soulless' as they slowly circled the drain but it wasn't until we reached the RPG age were we really saw the bubble begin to burst and the limits of creativity start to cease. From Origin's beautiful but lazy world which lost the personality of previous world spaces, to Odyssey's outrageous padding to extortionate lengths to Valhalla's everything. I'm not kidding either- Valhalla's length, pathetically miniscule narrative, eye brow raising acting from core members of the supporting cast, lack of focus- all Valhalla has going for it is half decent combat- which still doesn't feel as satisfying as the Ezio days in their prime. I really thought that Ubisoft had truly lost the plot and was absolutely not willing to offer them the benefit of any doubt when the kowtowing began begging people to give them another chance for Mirage.

Valhalla was their most successful entry ever, afterall- and given that monetary gains is literally the only north star for a studio as creatively bankrupt as Ubisoft, there was little reason to believe the disgusted reaction of those who care for quality touched literally anyone at the studio. But... I should have taken into account the fact that Ubisoft would love to make similar profits for less effort- those introducing smaller side games as mainline entries that are quicker to make does fit into that profit margin. But would making the game smaller be enough to rekindle what was once genuinely unique about the Assassin's Creed franchise like the developers insisted? Or are we just circling the drain yet again fooling ourselves that this is a high value franchise?

Mirage does indeed strip away a lot of the superfluous fluff that has come to dog this franchise, from the hopelessly lost modern day narrative that nowadays meanders with pointlessness- (it isn't gone exactly, but all the set-up was done at the end of Valhalla for those who actually stuck out that 130hr snooze fest. All thirty of us.) all open world side objectives are tired directly towards reinforcing the gameplay loop in some significant fashion, and the 'Investigation' style story telling method they inherited from the RPG saga of games is centralised around a single target with only five branches- meaning you can actually keep abreast of clues. The actual character introductions are still prototypically weak for a Ubisoft game so you can't actually figure it out like you could with Odyssey- (which is what made the investigation tab so good in that game) but I could follow the thread of the plot. I appreciate that.

Speaking of little things I appreciate- goodness I forgot how much I missed the codex entries! Part of the charm of these games was visiting some far off culture and reading small write-ups about how significant this particular building was or how that aspect of life functioned. All that had been relegated to the optional 'educational mode' since Origins- but I'm so glad it's been brought back for Mirage. I genuinely love these tiny bite-sized lessons into aspects of the world I'm actively invested in and find the aspect of these being real-world info pockets all the more interesting. There's none of the flavour of the Ezio saga data entries- but I get they're trying to find their feet again- I'll give them space to figure it out.

Mirage's mantra seems to be 'bringing stealth back to Assassin's Creed' after that style of play had become whittled down in Odyssey and straight up discouraged in Valhalla- and to this end the team actually did a respectable job. Nerfing healing avenues and gutting combat are supremely inelegant ways to force stealth as the viable playstyle, but actually developing patrol routes for areas, multiple entry angles and giving us tools that aid a ghost-like approach actually work pretty well. I think the team might be a little rusty with how they handle such tools, however, because the smoke bomb is insanely overpowered and probably should have been reconsidered on the design floor. When you can easily wipe out an entire room of already aggroed enemies by dropping a single smoke bomb- maybe there's a balance concern or two.

Actually the biggest problem this game's stealth really has is the fact that this entire title has been built on the bones of Valhalla- a game clearly not made to facilitate stealth. You'll enter full blown fights with a couple of guards and brutally murder them in vibrant slashes a single corner away from another guard who simply didn't hear any of it. You can alert a pick-pocket victim, jump into a haybale right in front of them and just wait the two minutes of guard searching before doing the exact same action again with everyone haven forgotten you. They've even regressed in the way they handle the all important 'escape' pillar of gameplay- back in the Ezio days you'd have guards rush out ahead of you and preparing chest swipes to catch you running past- in Mirage I literally jogged away from full-notoriety chases whilst fiddling about on my computer playing Dying Light as the same time- there's clearly some wanting developments in the stealth department.

Where the experience is most focused, however, are the returning 'Black box' missions as they were once coined for Unity. Essentially pitched as playgrounds with a major target you are free to hunt down anyway you like- like a typical Immersive Sim would do it- Mirage realises this in perhaps the least impressive fashion this series could manage. Essentially you have the freedom to approach some targets with two or three options, but a single cinematic tailor-made assassination opportunity the game wants you to use. Otherwise you can just jog up and clumsy slap them until they fall over- those are your options. I like the idea- but unless you have level designers with the kind of fire in them that the Hitman developers at IO boast- it can end up as a bit of a wet fart in execution. 

Overall I am actually shocked to say that I enjoyed my time with Assassin's Creed Mirage far more than nearly every other title in the Assassin's Creed franchise over the past 10 years- and that is because this game didn't linger long enough to get on my bad side. Other than several horrific crashes I suffered through this game gets exactly to the point, executes it's mission and sods off on a decently high note. I miss the days of lean Assassin's Creed and recall how the best paced game in the franchise was actually the slick Brotherhood- for which this title is a pale comparison- but I can see the rough inspirations. I would actually go so far as to give this a C+ Grade, against all belief. I shock even myself. Still- nothing truly interesting from a narrative standpoint- particularly given that the twist is well known by anyone who endured Valhalla- it was only ever a question of how they were going to pull it. I guess the only thing I really learned is that apparently Basim knew the entire time, which clarifies a bit of Valhalla's two hours of actual narrative I suppose. Here's hoping someone on the team really notices the power of not overstaying your welcome.

The early access debacle

 

I think if there is one sensation that consuming gamers are most sensitive to, a feeling which we react the strongest against, it would be the inkling that at some point a decision to be lazy was made with the products that we pay money to access. And I think it bears emphasising the monetary investment that gamers commit into these relationships before continuing, just in case the knee-jerk cry of 'entitlement' is made. (Never could understand how that term entered the Game Journalist lexicon so long ago.) And this comes to blows greatly with publishers who long to half-ass everything about the game creation and marketing process to the best of their collective abilities. It's a great game of checks and balances for which both sides are guilty of letting the ball drop every now and then.

One of the more recent slip-ups that I can think of on behalf of us has been the way we've fully allowed the 'Early Access' meta to take hold. Essentially we're talking about situations where brand new games that are entirely finished have their release date held off by a couple of days so that those fresh thirty six hours can be bundled on top of a special edition and sold out. Now that sounds hugely cynical and weak- except for the fact that these publishers know very well how to exploit the audience to get what they want. Maybe you have an audience that would very much like to play this game during the weekend, but you delay the global launch to Wednesday? See the arm twist, watch the ants scramble to their wallets. It's the way of this twisted world.

But it's lazy to try and squeeze extra money out of people like this. Even more lazy than the typical Ubisoft method of cutting out a couple of missions, throwing together a random skin and calling that thirty extra dollars worth of content. You're literally trying to package time away from people. How utterly pathetic. Still, at least it's relatively harmless. I mean- you really have to posses no control over your faculties to really be pushed into spending 1.5 times the price you are usually willing to over a three-day head start for a single player game. And as for the developers themselves this is totally easy money that they would have to be utterly gibbering morons to screw up. Wait... oh, how long until Ubisoft screw this up? Wait- they did already. Didn't they?

That's right! Remember how the formula is supposed to work? You sell the illusion of early access by a few days or even a week to people by really delaying the global launch and letting people pay to access the real launch day. That's how you handle this if you're not a dangerously incompetent buffoon. But what if I told you that Ubisoft- the butt of evolution themselves- actually gave people access to the early unfinished build of Star Wars Outlaw and watched it sincerely bite them in the ass? How could a company be that unbelievably stupid? And what kind of light in this going to end up shining in what I honestly consider to be the industries least destructive modern grift- monetising time?

First off you should know that giving out early access to games ain't anything new. Reviewers are never given completed builds of games but rather get the gold version before the final finishing touches that are stapled onto release via a day one patch. Might not be the ideal 'completionists' way to finish a project but it's the way that modern game design has worked for at least the last ten to fifteen years by now. This period of time between gold and release is a haven for bugs, crashes, optimisation issues and all the other things that journalist have to choose whether or not to include in their reviews as the studio promises all will be right by launch day. This is what you don't let the consumers see. It's less than finished- this isn't viewing ready.

You see where I'm going with this- Ubisoft let customers into this period of time with their expensive early access bundle and in doing so subjected their heaviest spending customers to a litany of bugs and mismatched polish to sour their experience. Ontop of that, they managed to defeat the entire purpose of a 'headstart' by publishing a day one patch so transformative that anyone who did play the game in that window would be required to totally erase that save and start from scratch or else face fatal progression bugs that could and would leave them incapable of finishing the game. Taking back the time that they sold without compensation. Totally ruining the deal. Ubisoft just pulled off a scam of incompetence. How very like them.

Now steps have been made to 'make things right' in the loosest sense of those words. Ubisoft first just handed out a 'sorry' message, before having their arm twisted by the backlash into actually doing something tangible about what was essentially a grift. Now they offer- 100 dollars worth of within ecosystem currency- which is utterly hilarious. Essentially Ubisoft have offered literally nothing up, currency that can only be spent within their digital environment, and are calling that a boon. A mercy. Instead of giving people, oh I don't know, a differential refund? That extra thirty I spent to waste my time would definately look better in my bank account- but oh no- Ubisoft would prefer you spend that on digital cosmetics please! What a total disgrace.

I can only imagine the distrust this will engender towards early access schemes which may even see them shrivel and become less common- which sucks because I honestly don't think this is anywhere near the worst grift trend that the industry has pulled. Taking advantage of the impatient to play a game two days early for twice the price of admission is meaningless to the everyday person and a great way to reel in whales with more money than sense- it takes nothing of value out of the game itself and keeps the ghouls in charge still feeling like their stealing from their customers: which is all they strive for out of life. Leave it up to the utter wases of sentience at Ubisoft to screw it all up by being unfathomably  useless cosmic jokes on humanity.

Skull and Bones- still trucking?

There's nothing more sad than a failed shot at glory that just doesn't die. Failure is it's own hit, sharp and lingering, but it grows on you. Grows with you. In time, a failure can be the bedrock of success. I mean... it's never really been that way for me but- that's what people say, right? But when you dangle it on the end of your nose and wave it about pretending it's the prime belladonna of the party- then you have people around you staring and asking the tough questions. Such as- is the Singaporean government making you do this? You'd think they have enough on their plate with everything going on over there, but apparently even with a total upheaval of government steaming Ubisoft's hams is just too good to forget about. I get it. If I had them on a leash like that I'd definitely make them dance. 

Of course I speak of 'Skull and Bones' Ubisoft's answer to... the very idea of competency, I guess. Entering a Pirate game landscape holding burnished goods that vaguely resembled the fantasy people flock to these myths for, only to be outdone by the untimely release of it's vastly superior competitor... Six years beforehand. Seriously, what kind of chunk out of the market did Ubisoft really expect to bite? A Live Service (Oh those are always winners!) ship only (because Pirates are just anthro-ships when you break it down) grind driven (delicate gameplay systems cobbled together by half-addled rhinos) MMO-lite. Or you could just get Sea of Thieves, the swashbuckling pirate sandbox game- now on Playstation too. I wonder how much attention these games rake in on Twitch... right now Sea of Thieves is looking at a just shy of 4,000 viewers and Skull and Bones has... 13. Huh. Yeah, I don't think this made the splash they thought it would.

Skull and Bones was already a poor proposition off the bat, but Ubisoft went out of their way to ensure the game would do the absolute worst by limiting it's reach on the platform that was probably the most interested- PC. How? Why, by selling it exclusively on a platform that wasn't the single biggest PC retailer on the market. Now, Ubisoft have held their games hostage on Uplay long enough that they do actually have a sizeable audience of PC players that are trained like beaten dogs to limp to their servers come new game release- but that audience was never going to be strong enough to compete with Steam- hence why they've been slowly releasing their older and newer games on the real platform, and hence why the very same is happening with Skull and Bones.

That's right- the realm of the dreaded 'User review' is going to be getting their hands on Skull and Bones and this could turn into the greatest moment of exposure for a game that literally no one cares about- it could be the very moment it achieves that tiny core audience who lack enough respect for themselves to leech onto the game- or it could be a moment of PR disaster where all the world is alerted to just how dismissive Skull and Bones is. Now we know the power of user reviews on publishers, you can bet that an unsatisfied public are going to get vocal- but that's just the gamble that Ubisoft need to make if they're going to squeeze one last bit of profit out of this game before it slithers off the timeline like a particularly Vitamin C-starved serpent. (That last simile was rough even for me.)

And here's the thing- we know where all of this is going to end. Skull and Bones was never the kind of property with legs under it. The very idea of a pirate themed MMO only ever appealed to a small subset of players who, for some reason, trusted Ubisoft to see it to fruition. Others went 'sure, but what are you going to do differently', and Ubisoft never could answer that. Different map? Assassin's Creed Rogue already did that. Different gameplay? Ubisoft spent the next half-dozen games slowly worsening ship combat in pursuit of exactly that. It was only when we got our hands on the game that it became clear- all Skull and Bones offered over Assassin's Creed Black Flag was a worse grind. Which is... I mean it sure fits the MMO spirit to be sure- but I'm not sure that was what people expected when it came to 'enriching' the experience.

So Skull and Bones is going to be pulled before it's time. We've seen it happen countless times with this age of the Live Service- and even though I think Skull and Bones might have secured a few more sales than it rightly deserved- it still landed with an minuscule blip of a splash. Hardly anyone covers the game, the official reddit is dead most times of the day (8 members online on a Friday afternoon? Seriously?) and the most discourse you see on the game in the public space is people wandering exactly what I am- why is this game still alive? Although to be fair, I guess game preservationists would laud the effort to keep the servers running given that premature game delisting is something they so vehemently abhor. 

Until then the game is actually going through at least one full support cycle, with updates and events and the whole nine yards- which is kinda funny when you think about it. Modern RPG Assassin's Creed games are treated like Live Services with similar incessant support structures, but the tailor-made Live Service gets less engagement with the exact same level of interaction- it makes one wonder why they even bother. To which I have no answers, merely speculation, that ol' daddy Singapore is waiting still with a baseball bat outside their offices making sure this deal is seen through to completion. Tell me I'm wrong, Ubisoft- Tell me I'm wrong. 

Just kill it

The missing Cell

Given it is owned by one of the most prolific developers and publishers in the world it really is starkly perplexing that we are still missing a new Splinter Cell game since the release of 2013's Blacklist 11 years ago. Of course I don't feel that absence quite as acutely as most given that I only got to playing through the series a few years ago for this very blog- but I do acknowledge what a genuinely solid series of games that was which really is going by the wayside for seemingly no reason whatsoever. What, do Ubisoft suddenly realise they don't like money? Are they afraid of their own potential to succeed? Or is something wholly more Ubisoft happening here that is just all too typical for the world's least innovative big developer? I bet you know which way I'm leaning with this one!

First it should probably be said that Splinter Cell was a trailblazer back in it's heyday. Taking the military political fiction of Tom Clancy's work and transposing it into a video game setting- the original Splinter Cell brought us a new face of action we'd not see pulled off to any success within the West. Whilst I feel we can still credit Kojima for the creation of the genre within the mainstream space, Splinter Cell's contributions to Stealth cannot be overlooked. Smashing lights to decrease visibility is still a wondrously versatile system that few stealth games even attempt to this very day! And Splinter Cell piled that atop of non lethal takedowns, sound manipulation, body dragging- just about every single tool that a competent stealth game would grown green with envy to covet. 

As the game's went on Ubisoft did start to buckle under the pressure of what 'the market' demanded in terms of their games- and given this was back in the day where niches weren't really big enough to be considered a market of their own I will relent on this point that Ubisoft are not perhaps fully to blame. In this rare circumstance. They tried to make Sam Fisher more of an action movie hero, just as Square attempted to do with Agent 47. In fact, both Absolution and Splinter Cell: Conviction feature pretty much the exact same 'tag and execute' move to allow characters to wipe out a room. Although I have to argue that it feels more fitting in Splinter Cell, given how exactingly precise and ghostlike Agent 47 is typically expected to be. And to be honest- I don't actually think the action influences ruined the franchise like some others argue.

Sure, the heart of Splinter Cell was built around the complexity of it's stealth through masterfully laid-out levels and with the shift towards 'room to room clear and sweep' a lot of that nuance and depth was lost- but I don't actually think that style of game misfit the franchise at all, honestly. There was an almost Arkham-level of fun to be had in stalking through arenas like a predator picking off the unawares and leaving their team-mates in states of increasing terror. It plays to a very primordial gamer desire that I'm a downright sucker for. It's a different face of Stealth, one that was uniquely Sam's for a while whilst the man was still active.

Since then, however, our man has been downright AWOL. I mean sure, we've seen some fleshpuppet wearing Sam's face show up in both Ghost Recon open world games, and I'm told he had a cameo in that Ubisoft cartoon thing, but as for the actual sneaky man we love? No even a dickey bird. We've been so abandoned by the franchise that for some reason when fans demand forced Ubisoft to turn around- they started blabbing about a remake like the franchise had run off a cliff or something! Umm- excuse me- there was an ongoing story with a cliffhanger and everything! Sure, it was the exact same cliffhanger as Conviction's- but it demanded a follow-up!

Stealth as a genre was built up by the dual talents of Metal Gear and Splinter Cell- such to the point that both are now considered grandfather's of the genre. With Snake finally being put to rest with what is quite simply the single greatest stealth game ever made as his swan song- what we need isn't some halcyon return to an outdated political thriller that struggles to nail basic concepts like 'light based stealth' all over again! We need something that reminds us why Splinter Cell was once considered in the same conversations as it's peers. Splinter Cell really needs to bring back it's best days- what we need is Chaos Theory levels of detail- complex levels, decent story, charming writing- shoot for the heyday, not the genesis.

Which is yet another issue I have with Ubisoft- they don't understand their own series. They know fans want another game but they don't understand why. People wanted a new Prince of Persia and Ubisoft, having replaced that franchise with Assassin's Creed, shrugged their shoulders in confusion and greenlit a remake. Like we needed a remake- the original game is fine- just remaster it you dunderheads! The same is true with Splinter Cell. We love the style of Splinter Cell, the makeup, the layout- there's nothing special about the original that simply must be recaptured: it's not even the widely praised fan favourite! It's the kind of move made by a faceless corpo who never once played this franchise, or a game in general, trying to capitalise on a fandom he has no care for.

I want there to be a return to Splinter Cell- and I would prefer if it tried something new. Although many remakes have certainly shaken things up in ways no one could have expected- but do we really expect Resident Evil 4 levels of mastery out of a Ubisoft game? They have trouble reigning in entirely new projects, god forbid them try the same with a total restructure-remake to the scale of Capcoms! But even if it all falls through- that will be fine because the great thing about Splinter Cell: it ages fine. Every single one of those games (save 'Double Agent' and perhaps 'Pandora Tomorrow', I never played 'PT' so I can't say) is a blast to experience and I'm sure a team who understands that would be able to secure a decent bit of pocket change without all the unnecessary effort they're currently flushing down the wrong drain. Make a new Splinter Cell, Ubisoft- that's what we've been nagging you for!

What Watch_Dogs could have been

 

Watch_Dogs has something of a special rose tinted place in my heart. Not Watch_Dogs 2- no tint needed there, that game just slaps. Always did, always will. And definitely not Legion- that game was a complete miscarriage with all the tragedy and sadness perfectly preserved in the package. I'm talking the original story of revenge and... nah, it really doesn't get any deeper than a revenge plot, does it? I was going to throw in 'conspiracy' but I think the ultimate reveal is so exceedingly disappointing that it single-handily undoes all the conspiratorial build up the game dedicated itself to beforehand. That first game really was something, wasn't it? Maybe not a masterpiece, but not a disaster piece either. I wouldn't even call it an average game- but I would certainly understand pushback against calling it one of the greats. It was a game of significance, I think we call agree on that much- which is more than can be said for a lot of Ubisoft titles.

And I think a big part of that topsy-turvy state of being comes from the fact that Watch_Dogs is rather transparently a very ambitious game that bites it's own tongue so very often- but not often enough that you don't see the glimmers of what it once was shine out every now and then. I'll just say it straight, you don't pull out all the stops to make a third person shooter play that good unless you have big plans- and I'd go so far as to say bigger plans than what ended up on the disc. Of course these suspicions would have remained only that until my imagination was sparked by learning about the impressive Watch_Dogs 'Living City' mod which aims to achieve much of the latent potential it feels the game always had, albeit through the hands of 'modding' babes.

In many ways what the Living City attempts to do is make the world, missions and player experience more reactive to the narrative- not in that vague marketing way where random variables are tied to the odd player input- but in the really tangible way that the pulse of the city quickens and slacks with the pace of the plot in a manner that is true to the spirit that Watch_Dogs was trying to evoke, rather than just true to the lethargic principles of open world design that Ubisoft stick to like a holy text. Even simple things like restoring an apparently cut feature where hackers hunting for Aiden, the most wanted vigilante in the state mind you, would set up fake contracts to lead the player into an ambush- that kind of stuff contributes to selling the world.

Watch_Dogs was ostensibly built around the idea of the death of digital privacy in a world where the wrong people with the right tools can peel apart the world from the touch of a button on a smartphone half a block away. It's a world of false safety and paper-thin civility draped over a pulsing underworld of the cities worst- a world that Aiden is embroiled in. It should be dangerous, poignant, paranoia inducing and unrelenting- as you dive deeper into the guts of the beast and rile up even more of Chicago's filth. Aiden is built up as this one-man army taking on a city of corruption, collusion and collateral chaos. But in the base game, none of these ideals exist beyond the page of the script they're written on- and that's just not how you design effective works of art. Not in the gaming medium.

Watch_Dogs could have leaned into the consequence that was clearly supposed to be of some significance during that infamous E3 trailer. The way that people would recognise you and try to discreetly call the police, in reaction to the inherent violent actions the player could partake in reflected the human cost of a war waged in blood across residential streets. The fact that in the pursuit of vengeance in resolve to a very human reaction to loss, Aiden would divest himself from the average citizens he believed he was fighting for (to some degree) would reflect gorgeously upon the general themes of the franchise. Just as we surrender our security for the sake of security, Aiden surrenders his humanity in search of humanity. It was right there!

Whatsmore, all of this would have served better in making Aiden this tragic tortured character who never managed to get over the loss and guilt like Ubisoft clearly wanted him to be by the events of Legion. No, instead they just kind of jumped awkwardly to that conclusion without taking the small amount of effort to set it up, resulting in jarring discontent of story. In their version of Aiden, the only thing he really has to feel guilty about is getting Clara killed because he was a dick to her, only she was conveniently left out of his flashbacks forgoing that slight amount of guilt- I suspect because they didn't want to try and source her voice actress again. Ubisoft are just the kings of never following through and it ruins the potential of so many of their works!

Don't even get me started on the failings of the main narrative. Clara Lille, the female supporting character who never got a chance to develop into anything because Ubisoft killed her off in the third act for cheap pity points before she got the chance to become a character important enough to where that death would mean something. Imagine if they killed off T-Bone in Watch_Dogs 2- a character they actually developed! Imagine how people would have felt about that! But no, in this 'brutal world' of vigilantes and corruption the story never has the courage to go that one step further- and perhaps that was what led to the franchise giving up on that angle and instead going the 'rainbow attitude' route for the sequel.

Watch_Dogs had potential to be a very different side of the Ubisoft formula- doing away with the gimmicky nature of it's style and showcasing just how well this style of development can reinforce themes and plot. Instead it became a disappointment, then a redemption too late and finally a disgrace upon game design as a whole. At the end of the day I'm starting to think that the idea of Watch_Dogs wasn't the problem, and I still find the whole 'Aiden hate' to be deeply routed in ancillary distaste for Ubisoft that somehow manifested itself in generalised protagonist bashing. The problem was a lack of conviction. Maybe some day we'll get something similar with the right hearts leading the project to show us the true face of what Watch_Dogs could have been.

Put Assassin's Creed back in the Shadows

 

Lookie, lookie- once again we've got ourselves an Assassin's Creed game sniffing up our rears and once again all of the Ubisoft agnostics that found themselves so utterly repelled by Valhalla are coming around raising their tail spouting the same old routine dialogue lines of a patrolling guard after their aggro has dropped. ("Huh, Must have imagined things." They say whilst nursing the arrow sticking out of their throat and hobbling back to the campfire, where now sits the corpses of the drinking buddies they left with.) And to be fair- I get it. It simply can't be worse than Assassin's Creed Valhalla- a game so utterly barren of purpose and narrative that even their most full-throated cult members say they needed to cool it down a bit. If even those lobotomised circus seals are on your case- you must have screwed up big!

'We've made the map smaller' they insist, as though it was the struggle to fill up that bulging England map which scuppered their considerable talents- as though 90% of that map wasn't just swamp-clogged country wastes populated by nothing but sheep, fields and the Welsh. 'Oh, we're focusing much more on character this time around!' is that why we're being split between two protagonists despite the fact you struggle making a three dimensional character out of one with 100 plus hours of screentime? 'We're toning down the grind this time!' You literally said that exact thing in regards to Valhalla after people whined about Odyssey- yet it seems those words left the mouth before the brain checked in to it's office because Valhalla might just be the single most 'bogged down by crap' institution since Mussolini's Italy! Don't believe the lies!

But it's only fair to judge the latest Assassin's Creed gameplay footage for it's own merits because already people who should know better are calling it the comeback of the franchise. Why? Because they gave one of the characters a hood and told everyone she's the 'stealthy character'. Hard to consider a character the 'stealthy one' in a game that has stealth mechanics so old they're entering their senior year and head-hunting for college. Ubisoft's idea of stealth are detection cones and waist-high tufts of grass placed at the sides of roads. They think 'free form level design' is making one highly tailored route into a fortified location... and then simply giving players the choice to ignore that path and clamber over everything with their decidedly too liberal free running tools. Their brand of stealth isn't stale, it isn't even rotting, it's disintegrated into dust- and remember that is one of the key pillars not just of Assassin's Creed, but literally every single one of their franchises because Ubisoft just make the same game over and over! I would be embarrassed.

I'm getting off track- what does Shadows do that no other game did before? It gives us the choice to choose between going in violently and going in quietly. Hmm... pretty sure that's literally the choice that every Assassin's Creed game has ever offered- only this time those 'playstyles' (as I'm sure they internally referred to them) are split between the two protagonists. If you want to be loud, you play Yusuke and play through the half decent hack and slash mechanics that Ubisoft have been trail and erroring since Origins, quiet lovers will familiarise themselves with Naoe and her... well she has... Oh, she can go prone now! Yes, this has been a stealth franchise for seventeen years and they only just figured out a way to incorporate crawling into the level design. (Better late than never.) Oh, and she can destroy light sources to move around easier! Which puts this game's dynamic stealth systems on par with the original Splinter Cell from 2002. (That was actually also a Ubisoft game, by the way. Guess that little innovation got lost along the way for a couple decades, eh?)

To be fair I like that there's some degree of player choice, even if the two vectors of approach lack the dynamism that makes truly great stealth games so heart pounding. Needing to switch on the dime to react to what comes your way is what gives this genre it's bite, without that I worry our pre-chosen builds could veer on being too restrictive. What if Yusuke gets overwhelmed? What if the atrociously designed open worlds they regularly make dumps an entire battalion on his head whilst trying to just walk down a road? Can Yusuke run fast enough to get away? Is he even capable of sneaking? Naoe can defend herself, but can she strike like a predator in a last hail mary ditch attempt when her back is against the wall? If this were any development company truly dedicated to their craft I would just take these ideas for granted as obvious considerations that any sensible developer would take into account. But we're not dealing with normal people. We're dealing with Ubisoft developers. 

I just can't help but shake the sensation that Ubisoft are a little bit, how do you say, hopelessly late to the party with this game. That is to say- everyone and their mother has made a Samurai game and everyone else was manned by Japanese teams or at least teams with close enough ties to Japanese influences to do the material justice. Like a Dragon Ishin may have been a remake, but it soared all the same. Rise of the Ronin did great things for Team Ninja's brand, I'm told. And, of course, Ghost of Tsushima blows away literally everything that Shadow's is promising to achieve- from gameplay complexity to visual artistry to respect. Yeah, I think Sucker Punch has more respect than Ubisoft, the team who thought Egypt and Greece were such dull places they had to be spiced up with badly interjected mythology tangents that they never quite managed to justify. (Still no one can explain to me why Hades lives in a facsimile he openly construes as 'The afterlife'.)

By what mast do I hoist such a damning flag? Well how about the way the marketing has gone, sending bizarre merch with reportedly misspelt Kanji and mismatched clan emblems imprinted here and there? Maybe Ubisoft are actually trying to tell us something hidden in all this, like a physical manifestation of how little they care anymore for a franchise that once teetered on the verge of respectable historical fiction. (Then they said Aliens. The franchise never really recovered from the aliens, did it?) Then there's the little distinction in how the character's battle themes go. Naoe's are woodwinds, obviously. She's Japanese and those are the only Japanese instruments that their team have ever heard of. Yusuke? Well, he's black so... Japanese music in the style of hip hop? Sure, why not! What do you mean this predates not even the invention of hip-hop, but the founding of America and the formation of the identity known as African American? Those sound like the kinds of things someone who cares would react to... And we all know what effect that has on a team like Ubisoft!

So yes, despite the many years we waited for Assassin's Creed to get off their high chair of pretence which was scrapped over all the way back in those security logs for the second game, I cannot summon any less possible excitement for this game than I currently have. It is like a blackhole of potential sucking out my lifeforce just by it, and it's damnable parents, breathing the same cursed air as me- it's drains me to even think about. And the worst part of it all? The game will make money. Oh, it will make gangbusters. And it will be messy in a ton of supremely obvious ways that many of the industry leaders will scratch their heads at and silently wonder how this could have shipped like that. And Ubisoft will offer plenty of empty platitudes and bow before the penitent shrine, cusp their hands around the throned handle of Mea Culpa- and do it all over again next game. And no one, absolute no one at all, will be, in the least bit, surprised. 

Ubisoft Star Wars- not impressed

 

And with that the pact has been sealed. Ubisoft has done all they possibly can to try and shill Star Wars Outlaws before it's release- and I honestly wonder why they bothered so much. Why all the trailers? Why all the coverage? Why stick this on the side of buses? It's not like the marketing is doing anything more for the optics of a Star Wars game made by Ubisoft. Both are brands so ugly and garish that people just flock their way with cash-in-hand regardless of what they get in return. Ubisoft could be selling bottled farts labelled with the Republic's insignia and make a mint in the process. All that marketing effort could have gone into supporting something that could have actually used it- like, I dunno... The Division 2? (But I digress.)

Outlaws is a Star Wars property (urg) being published by Ubisoft (Urg, brother) that is an open world. (Brother, URG! What's that brother?) I cannot imagine a more detestable combination of ingredients plopped into a single cauldron if I tried... actually yes I can. They didn't make it a Live Service that is NFT powered. (I imagine that took great restraint on Ubisoft's end.) The Star Wars brand has been dragged through the mud in recent years, as Disney milk it dry with piddling TV show after TV show, squeezing out the last goodwill they can whilst all potential and promise fans once saw in the series sizzles and drys out under the boot of executives complaining about how 'hard' and 'expensive' it would be to make something ambitious and interesting. (I've heard really worrying things about that Acolyte show- and I'm not talking about from the typical chuds.) Ubisoft, on the otherhand, are the bottom-feeding wastes of the Games' industry- it is any surprise why I find the paring of them physically detestable?

Then again, Star Wars games do have a tendency to be on the whole better. The Jedi Series is one of the better Souls-like games on the market that has a rapport with it's audience enough that we actively like to seek out and consume content with these characters in it- which is quiet the high praise for Star Wars content! And we even get some high budget experimental games like Star Wars Squadrons which brought flight-simulator rules to the Star Wars mythos. Unfortunately the game didn't quite sell as well as everyone might have liked- but those who did play the thing attest to it's quality! Of course, then we also have the mobile game which recently released, Hunters, which was every bit the over-monetised waste of potential we all knew it would be. So just as in the Star Wars universe, the brand holds the potential for great good or great evil.

Ubisoft already set us of to a poor start by trying to suck our wallets out through our eyes through merely watching the trailer and selling their pitifully understuffed deluxe editions for an arm and several more legs than can grow on a single human. For prices like that you'd think the company earns them, and aren't just the laughing stock generic-factory of the AAA gaming sector. These are the kind of prices that Rockstar can, and largely do (if you count their eye-watering shark cards for GTA Online) get away with. But after giving us a significant showing of gameplay, and inviting journalists around to see some behind the doors goodies- (simply to try and ingratiate themselves with such an important community vector) maybe the game is finally that one step up and forward that Ubisoft have been hesitating to take all these years. Afterall, this isn't just a Ubisoft game. It's a "Wicked Wicked" Ubisoft Massive title.

Perhaps the most prevailing sense that this new game gives off- both to me and to those unlucky enough to sit down and see the curated 'behind curtains' preview- is that of dire unoriginality. Say what you will about the open world genre AAA gaming, how they all kind of ape that Uncharted feeling of exploration, dot a little bit of forgettable busywork to keep you interested and linger on just those few hours too long- but at least most of them have something unique to spice them up just that little bit. The incredibly fun saber combat of the Jedi games make it a blast to master, Hogwarts Legacy carried the tourist-friendly appeal that kept people playing, Horizon has it's very unique world concept and spectacular machine hunts- and Outlaws has... well you see in Outlaws you can...

The idea of Outlaws is to try and make the Smuggler style of story work in Star Wars without chucking in any lightsabers- and that's an idea that can really work if you put forethought into it. Disseminate the archetypal smuggler to their base-most form and you get an anti-hero in a cowboy movie- then all you need to do is find a way to bring that feeling to life in a way that doesn't ape at Red Dead 2 because even after all these years that is a fight Ubisoft will never, ever, win. Instead what we've seen is just... generally serviceable. There are the Ubisoft stealth sections, said to be as pointless as always because general mayhem is all-around more reliable. There is the uninspired wall climbing which at this point has become such a headscratching trope I genuinely think it would be a surprise to come across a game character not capable of supporting their entire weight with an iron grip. And apparently there is a sprinkle of Space Combat too, but I've never seen Ubisoft do a space fighting game before and the team are functionally incapable of creating a decent mechanic that hasn't been regurgitated through the guts of five previous attempts- so I'm guessing it's dull as dishwater.

Is there any point of praise I can raise? Well, technically there is- but it's the exact same thing I say about every Ubisoft game such that it doesn't even feel like a compliment anymore. It's like a lingering, festering curtsey we perform in front of the ailing wad of distended tissue we once deemed a sovereign, paying some false shadow of gratitude and respect upon a station long-since alien to it. Performance for the sake of routine alone, serving neither us nor them. Indeed- Outlaws looks pretty. Actually, 'pretty' isn't a full enough picture. It looks like 'Star Wars' and all the baggage that carries. Typical alien landscapes of vaguely terran-looking worlds with maybe a palette swap, that exact same style of interior which seems to be the uniform of every cantina in the galaxy, that unimpressive palette smudge of 'frontier grime'- it fails to excite by brand alone as it once did. I guess that goes for Star Wars as a whole though, doesn't it?

Now to be clear, even if this is the single most made-by-numbers video game in Ubisoft's entire history it wouldn't be their worst and I don't wish to imply that's what I'm saying. That crown is still rested pretty squarely on the head of Legion. I just think that once again Ubisoft are treading waters and getting rewarded for the effort. Just as they did when they created a serviceable, but systematically cannibalistic Avatar game, or a vastly expanded but clumsy and fat-fingered Ghost Recon Wildlands follow up. To quoteth the bard: "They'll never change. They'll never change. Always the same. Ever since 07, couldn't slap a coherent game design doc together to save their lives. But couldn't be Ubisoft, not our precious Ubisoft! Robbing them blind. And they get to sell the game for $130? What a sick joke!"  

So now Siege has a subscription service...

 

You know my thoughts about Ubisoft. Ain't no secret that me and they don't see eye to eye on a lot. Or anything, for that matter. There's probably enough content out there showcasing me moaning about the leech-like quality of that absolute dumpster of a development pit that I could actually be considered a tertiary suspect in the second act of a crime novel where the detective starts to piece together deeply ideological motivations behind the bodies left in the wake of the killer. Of course then I'd be detained and another string of murders would occur and the police would be forced to let me go and I'd quip something smug and cryptic on my way out to drop a bit of a red herring implying I'm in on the grander plan, only for it to come out later that I had absolutely nothing to do with it and I had no reason whatsoever to bait the line like that but the writer simply forgot he'd ever given me that dialogue to begin with. Where was I?

Oh yeah, if there's one single ongoing game within the Ubisoft stable of development that even I cannot call a travesty upon the world of gaming as much as I hate it's publishers- it's Rainbow Six Siege. Siege is a unique and enduring competitive tactical hero-based shooter that has preserved it's place within the top most played games of that style deftly over the years. Even through prolonged periods of abject disinterest from the Ubisoft heads, where the game has gone large stretches of time being entirely broken thanks to rampant cheating, still people cling to that life-raft of a game with desperation whenever cries to bury the ravenous, industry eroding, interdimensional grey ooze of Ubisoft is called. Which is fair. Burying the grey ooze only poisons the land anyway according to Colour Out of Space, need to send that parasite back to the cosmos it landed from.

But know well that the success of Siege is not due to the parentage of Ubisoft, but rather in spite of it. Like drug addict parents who's child starts a success Tea Cake company that still suffers abuse and condemnation from the homestead that cripples the heart. Players form callouses around themselves to persist within the Ubisoft ecosystem, enduring the unending streams of monetisation raining down upon them from the endless store offerings, the battle pass, the banner ads shoved in your face like this is a mobile game. You might say that self respect would tell you that as a seriously player you don't belong in a place where the property holders expect blood money every other week. But those calloused hearted players tough it out, year after year, to enjoy the new operators, maps, fixes and tweaks and everything else enabled by the seedier elements of 'the Ubisoft cycle'.

Yet I guess we all have our breaking points. And for a lot of the community that breaking point came during an in-person announcement (because apparently Ubisoft do live shows for their games?) wherein the 9th year of content was discussed in the lead-up to season 2- despite the actual lack of overall new additions the game is getting beyond one new operator. (Feel like that would be a reason not to hold an in person event, were I the Ubisoft decision maker... But I guess ticket sales are important for the starving artists over at the industry's most loquacious insane asylum.) It was during this event that fans first got details on the reworking of the basic 'Rookie' class from the OG lineup which I feel like had been teased for months now- which has landed with a bit of a dud. Not least of all because it's treating the Rookie as an operator now, meaning you can only select one a match. (Which is genuinely moronic when you might have more than 1 person in a match that wants to get to grips with basic movement and maps before committing to a powered role that someone else might be better suited for. Almost like Ubisoft are trying to cause community friction.) But would you believe it, that wasn't even nearly the most frustrating part for people.

What earned the universal boos of an entire room full of fans was the announcement of a brand new subscription service that is being chucked atop the Rainbow Six game entirely unceremoniously. This is entirely unrelated, of course, to the subscription service that is already presented by Uplay, (or whatever the hell Ubisoft are calling it these days- Ubisoft Plus, Ubisoft next- who can keep track of this crap?) and marks yet another step in Ubisoft's master plan to remove the concept of ownership from gaming entirely. I'm not even being facetious there, Ubisoft's 'director of subscriptions' himself coined the concept of gamers getting 'comfortable not owning their games', which was met with a rather sound "sod off" from the community. And now that philosophy has landed with a wet thud at the door of Rainbow Six? Great...

It should be pointed out that Siege has not exactly been hard up for monetisation all these years either. They have a store front absolutely dripping with cosmetics for people to sink hundreds of dollars into, ranging from operator skins to weapons skins to unique head gear to victory dances to operator cards to gadget skins to weapon charms. And that isn't even taking into account the battlepass which demands the attention of the player regularly in order to score a list of exclusive items. The subscription service, 10 dollars a month by the way, gives you the ability to skip 10 of those battlepass levels- which saves barely any time whatsoever- but otherwise the two systems kind of sit at direct odds to one another as competing money injection sites across the same game.

And perhaps most laughable of all is what is actually offered by this pact with the subscription devil. On a very subjective level, Siege hasn't really offered the most interesting and exciting skins in the past. It's not like Fortnite where you can find totally creative and transformative models from any franchise on the earth, they have to make do squashing and morphing everything in a manner that somewhat fits a tactical shooter. You'll stick get your totally moronic Halo Crossovers which present armour that makes Frost stand-out like a sore thumb against pretty much any background, but most people don't proliferate stuff like that for obvious reasons. (Don't reinforce bad behaviour.) Objectively, the subscription service presents an ugly-ass exclusive skin, a single Bravo pack (one!) and one weapon skin. They couldn't even pretend to offer anything worthwhile, it is honestly shameful.

And it bears pointing out that Siege is not a free game. It never was. Thus piling monetisation upon monetisation like this only serves to remind players more and more about how little value they're getting out of the odd pack they do give up and shell out for. Ubisoft are a company of absolute vultures stalking about their player bases and opportunistic dive bombing every spare penny which glints off the moon, and the ugliness is becoming more and more apparent with each passing year. Even at their absolute best Ubisoft's mere presence is a blight upon their games and the sooner their audience finally has enough and starts abandoning them- the better for all this accused industry.

Assassin's Creed Japan

 

I'm sure there are many out there who heard about the recent announcement, paid a little glance over the shoulder at it and faintly smiled in the dreamy way we acknowledge that old wayward car tire lodged in the gnarled body of the park's local tree that has been there since childhood. An ugly thing objectively, overdue for correction, but some halcyon sliver of the thing we call 'Nostalgia' confines errant respect for the thing that reminds us of simpler, uncluttered days. Not many out there have been tuned in on the barking and cawing the creative suction well that represents Ubisoft studio to see what this actually says about the Assassin's Creed brand- because for whatever dark reason it is the words of the Ubisoft from yester year haunt the recess' of my mind like the knell of the dead clocking ever closer with each fraught night. With the announcement of this game, confirmed beyond a shadow by the reveal trailer, Ubisoft have finally admitted that they are out of ideas.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "Ubisoft are out of ideas? What was your first clue- did you even play the 100+ hour sleepwalk that was Valhalla?" But I've been tracking their decent into mediocrity much longer than that, seeing their collapse into the mid masters that now defines modern Ubisoft so spectacularly that it is a common sight to see any member of the community with any amount of investment in the industry scoff at the sight of their name. Just look at the like/to dislike ratio sitting under any of their YouTube announcements, the tide has turned- Ubisoft are being recognised for the backwards dinosaurs they dedicated the past decade congealing into. Now their entire business model is to serve as blackened coal fuelling the most most lazy and derivative aspects of the industry so slavishly that they were the first big studio to actively posit their dreams of throwing AI into the mix to do the devs jobs for them. (As if Watch_Dogs Legion didn't prove their games are soulless enough with active developers!)

You see, I remember all the way back in the halcyon, and long buried, days of Assassin's Creed 2 when we still used to think this was a franchise with direction and purpose worth speculating about. Do you remember that? When the creators still had grand plans about what the franchise represented, how it would explore itself going forward and what fans could expect. Yves even claimed the franchise had an expiry date, like the liar he's always been, implying that ever entry would serve as a stepping stone on an ultimate journey to completion. In that I remember very clearly an easter egg placed within the game by the developers hinting at directions they wouldn't take the franchise because they would be 'too obvious', and I'm sure you can see where this is going.

First off they've been very clear about how they don't want to go to any era in history overstuffed with Guns. Rebecca famously spouts how boring shooting is, and in the brief moments throughout the franchise we've dabbled in World War 1 and 2, the player has never been strapped up to the nines. Cars are also a no-no, as explained in some diatribe about how the trance-state of driving interferes with the animus data recall process of some other such trite- they don't want to get to modern, is what I'm getting at. And what else? Well they don't want to go to any time period that has been done to death such as- Feudal Japan. Because that would be a sign that this series which is based around exploring the wonders of history with a fantastical story stitched atop it- is losing it's touch and going for the low hanging fruit. Whelp- Ubisoft meet fruit.

Assassin's Creed codename red was revealed as 'Assassins Creed Shadows' in a CG trailer that I just can't bring myself to watch. Ubisoft stopped making interesting trailers around about the time of Unity, they've been wastes of time ever since. The point of the matter is it's going to star the Blue Eyed Black Samurai, as featured in the recent anime of that name, and a Kunoichi- because Kunoichi are awesome. (Unsure how historically accurate they are, but since when has Modern AC dev teams ever cared about 'historical accuracy'?) And you can bet your bottom dollar this reveal came with another patented Ubisoft collectors edition worth over a £100 because Yves hates us all and he wants us to know it. (Don't worry man, the feeling is mutual.) And needless to say, I have some thoughts.

First off, I couldn't care less to even engage with the miniscule outrage about the depiction of a black samurai- I've seen a tiny smidge of people even commenting on that and those who feed that nothing of a minority are actually doing more harm than they are even capable of when just ignored. Besides, such discourse distracts from the real concerns, such as- is this an actual game this time? I have to ask because the last such title, Valhalla, was a exercise in virtual torture stretched across over a 100 torturous hours of mind numbing nothingness. There was about 5 hours of narrative sprinkled across that disastrously bloated corpse of a game, and that was supposed to be the teams response to people's grumbles about how overstuffed Odyssey was! This one might just kill me off! (If I even get around to it. Don't even know if I can stomach this crap anymore, to be honest.)

And on a more nuanced note- splitting up the combat and the stealth gameplay between two protagonists is a mightily ambitious move for a team that historically struggle to make any single play style feel substantive even when they come as a package. The last time they tried this, for Syndicate, both Evie and Jacob ended playing near identically to one another aside from functionally arbitrary weapon restriction. What has transpired within the development of then to now that they feel comfortable trying it all again? I don't trust them. Unless they've brought their systems so far up to scratch we're looking at Phantom Blood level of AI advancement- I can already taste the half-assed disappointment.

Some part of me took solace in the quiet between Mirage and now, hoping that the franchise had finally given up and we'd get a few years off at the very least. Of course that wouldn't be the case. Of course Shadows is out later this year. Of course it comes with prototypical Ubisoft nickle and diming. Of course it's going to be a disappointment. Only this time around this game has plenty of competition to contend with in it's genre so we can contrast and compare all the ways this feudal Japan will feel wanting. Ghost of Tsushima, Rise of the Ronin, hell- even Like a Dragon Ishin! I'll eat my hat if Ubisoft's Japan is anywhere close to as detailed as those that came before.