"Ubisoft Montreal has succeeded in welding a game to what once felt like a proof of concept," we said in our review of Assassin's Creed II, and the many bountiful changes the title has seen over its anaemic predecessor can be placed at the feet of its lead designer, Patrick Plourde.
A veteran of Ubisoft Montreal, beginning as a level designer on Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown and later serving as one of a team of designers on the original Assassin's Creed, Plourde oversaw the design of Assassin's Creed II and was instrumental in the decisions to add many of the things which changed the face of the series. In this interview we discuss with Plourde his aims for the game, the changes made from the original, and the challenges he faced working on a project which at one point consumed the efforts of over three hundred developers. Oh, and a little detail about Desmond's less than interactive roots.
IGN - Assassin's Creed's focus on character-driven storytelling has been buried by its RPG sandbox features, and the series is weaker for it.
A rare W opinion piece from IGN.
IMO, Ubisoft needs to setup two primary AC dev teams. 1 would focus on and release character-driven OG-style AC games for OG fans and the other would continue the current RPG-ified AC style for current fans.
Release by them Bi-annually and alternatively. There'd less fatigue and a boost to quality.
I definitely appreciate 3 more after playing it again in recent years along with the Liberation game. Back when 3 was new I was still riding high on AC2 and Brotherhood so when I played 3 I felt a bit let down. Even the ship battles grew on me.
AC2 - Yes
AC3 - Urm...I don't know
I feel they kind of dropped the ball with AC3 and with the way the story went it just didn't make sense to me at all. I felt it would have made more sense lore wise if they had it so the Red Coats were mostly Assassins and the Templars were mostly the Colonists who wanted this "new world" as a fresh start for their operations, to build a country up they'd have full control of from the start so they manufacture the war as something else while really it's just a front for the Templars vs Assassins.
It just meant that since the Red coats lose the war it explains how the Templars have gained full control of future America and how the Assassins have slowly died out by then. This entire event would have been the turning point of how things went to s**t for the Assassins and how there's not many of them left in the present.
Haythem was a lot more interesting than Connor and he should have been the main Assassin of AC3.
I thought AC2 was the greatest of the series and it is but replaying it recently, I stared to see more flaws in the game. Basically every single mission is an assassination besides a few tailing missions lol. Still, the implementation of all the new mechanics were great. The smoke bombs, disarming guards, story, hidden tombs, swimming, flying machine, multiple locations, etc. it definitely felt a bit more special to me at the time of release though
Dunno about 3, the 1st act was cool, then i couldn't tell you what happens after that. But 2 was so good! The entire acts 1-3 were al memorable, whereas i really couldn't even tell you what happens in any other AC game
Assassin's Creed 2 set the template for the series going forward, but it's harder to see it getting made today.
Lol Assassin's Creed 2 is the game that introduced most of the things people say they hate about modern Ubisoft games specifically and open world games generally.
Those elements were fresh when they came out.
The problem is not that they were introduced, the problem is how they have been repeated to stagnation.
@Elantregaless
100%, we call it the Ubisoft formula for a reason, the formula can still be fun, we just need pallet cleansers and actual side activities that offer something other than 100 bases or 50 towers to climb
ACs were nice till Syndicate. Just that they were releasing it wayy too often i.e nearly annually or some times 2 games per year i.e III + liberation same year and Unity + Revelations same year.
People complained that we're getting same AC games every year. Ubi's solution should've been to release the games every 3 years or so and abit more refined.
But instead they turned the franchise into humongous RPG fetch quests that just exacerbated the prior issues. People were fine with Origins, since it was new but got bored/overwhelmed by Valhalla.
AC should've stayed like Ezio trilogy or Unity.
Not the RPG that they've turned it into.
They know it, hence we got Mirage.
While the art was on point and the writing was okay, Origins was designed around microtransactions. It's not really a game, it's a monetization scheme. Unity is a massive fetch quest like all AC games and it has worse mission mechanics than the new ones. Good parkour doesn't hide all of its flaws. If you liked Unity, it's strange that you wouldn't like any of the others going forward.
They used a Valhalla DLC to make Mirage and it didn't sell as well as their others. IGN has it tenth, there are only 13 mainline games if I'm not mistaken and it maxed out only around 7k player peak on Steam. The "engagement numbers" out there are fake. This shows that people didn't really want a return to form DLC.
Some people get bored and some don't. Some people like the copy-paste style and some people don't. Some people like fetch questing and some people don't. But a lot of people don't like UBI turning their SP games into live-services. The problems with AC games are the monetization schemes.
Speaking of this same old shit every year, I just found this about AS Mirage. "Assassin's Creed: Mirage now playable through leaked Denuvoless debug build." As well as Dragon's Dogma 2 . Torrents are up. I'm going to guess someone at both companies leaked this out in the wild, most likely to get back at them, maybe with layoffs or other reasons. 😁
I get down votes for calling out the truth on what happened to both games LOL. Don't know how it happened I already said what my guess was. DD 2, hmm not for me, and no more AC please.
i would not play that even if it was free, there are better games out there to waste your time on
Nah ubisoft doesn't aim above "just good" titles, sequels are supposed to be refined and improved each time they released. I remember in the ps360 gen it was like that, a known sequel would definitely be a step up from the previous titles. I remember seeing an article where someone from ubisoft said players don't just want "solid" titles. You damn right sir they always just deliver the bare minimum nowadays. These consoles this gen have enough power to contribute to thoroughly made gems. Ubisoft acts blind to that
Ezio got 3 games and an animated movie, they dedicated a lot of time to him and those games. No they can't make a sequel as good, cause all they wanna do is milk the series.
i thought brotherhood was the better game of the 3 but 2 story is best and yes of course it is possible but i dont have any trust in ubisoft
Yea, Brotherhood and 2 trades punches, I loved them both equally... but the series lost its charm with the humongous RPG trilogy,
The games became too much to handle
GF365: "Oftentimes, video games have characters who are antagonistic and really not very pleasant. Here are some of the friendliest characters in games where you might not otherwise expect to find them."
This game is leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor. This game is officially Ubisoft's first AAA title. Congrats Ubi. I almost gave up on you after R6V2.
Interesting read
AC2 = GOTY 09
Nice interview ..
Great game ..
Ubisoft deserve every/any accolade for a job well done ..
I for one am very excited about Ubi's future projects ..
Man, I hated those town criers in the first game! I got my self in a lot of trouble killing those dudes just to shut them up!
now if the game wouldnt be so god damn buggy it would be perfect
i still love it though