What is it about Ubisoft Open World games that make them feel like they are designed by robots?

[NuclearCake]

This happens every time. I always see Ubisoft games and think they look pretty, then I start playing them, and they just start feeling like an assembly line almost immediately. So I quit about an hour or two in, and two weeks later I completely forget that the game exists or that I played it until someone tells me that it exists.

I dunno it's very hard to explain. Maybe it's just how focused tested they are and how they seem designed to be about as disposable as possible. I get no sense of creative vision behind any of it. The formula is so worn out.

Thoughts?

Edit: Should have said, I quit a handful of hours in and not one or two hours in.

 

[Alexalder]

Maybe AAA games are designed to minimize development costs and maximize playtime catering to the most ignorant player base?

 

[Nere]

Because they are very formulaic, each one build on a specific pattern, once you play one you have kinda played all of them. Also they feel very "gamey", there is no chance of immersion or anything unexpected to happen.

 

[Evuk]

In my opinion, if you've only played an hour or two of an open world ubisoft game then you havent scratched the surface of the game

usually the first hour or two is a tutorial so it might feel more like a robot-based design

 

[Mechaplum]

For me the UI definitely helps reinforce that impression. They're all so...sterile.

 

[Bishop89]

Checklists

 

[skeezx]

it's the trade off, otherwise you'd be getting like 1 asscreed, far cry ect every 5+ years (think elder scrolls, GTA ect)

 

[nsilvias]

shared design elements

 

[Charcoal]

Repetition.

 

[Veil]

Trick question, they are designed by robots

 

[Masagiwa]

Its there to waste your time these days
I couldn't open a single house door in AC Valhalla normally, I had to solve a 10 min puzzle each time
that is like specifically planned to bloat playtime

 

[KingParappa]

it's the trade off, otherwise you'd be getting like 1 asscreed, far cry ect every 5+ years (think elder scrolls, GTA ect)

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I'm ok with this.

 

[Toma]

Any of these games are going to feel amazing if its the first game of this type that you play.
It feels robotic because we've played the exact same game 20 times by now. The first few times were magical.

 

[Ravio-li]

I started Far Cry 5 this weekend and for me the immediate feeling was one of "I did all of this in other Ubigames", despite not having played any of the far cry games before.

 

[RPGam3r]

I would agree that at an hour or two your still in tutorial mode. Also, I would say all open world games have copy and pasted content and checklists. Why this is only leveled at Ubisoft here has always been funny to me.

 

[entremet]

I like the term formulaic here.

 

[Kaivan]

I would agree that at an hour or two your still in tutorial mode. Also, I would say all open world games have copy and pasted content and checklists. Why this is only leveled at Ubisoft here has always been funny to me.

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Sony open world games followed Ubisoft formula to the core, but at least they have pretty graphics and more polish so all is forgotten.

 

[Nameless]

Their games do incorporate this sort of "assembly line' development approach, which is what allows them to make AAA games with 1-2 year turn around times.

 

[ciddative]

Stagnation.

Back when Far Cry 3 or AC1 (and even 2) came out, it was clever stuff. Unfortunately, they never moved on in a meaningful way and just sat on a winning formula. It wasn't until Witcher 3 came out and up-ended the genre that they made significant changes with AC Origins, but that was 5 years ago now and right now they're stagnant again.

 

[MonadL]

Pretty much all open world games feel that way after about 10 hours save for something like Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring (and ER completely falls apart in the second half or so). It's just the nature of these games because of the time and resources needed to craft even medium scale open world games.

 

[azfaru]

Yup. Happened to me with Valhalla and Far Cry 6. I thought damn it looks pretty good but it quickly devolved into a bland pile of gunk of gameplay mechanics. I think AC odyssey had the most pull for me.

It felt the most loose and fun out of all the recent Ubisoft games.

 

[Dan Thunder]

These are games made by 1000's of people across a number of countries and continents. To get them out in a reasonable time frame there's going to be a lot of design by committee and building on previous games.

Look at something like Days Gone. That was a big open world title but took another 3 years after the first reveal before it finally came out. Ubi's game, especially the AC series, are generally a lot bigger than Bend's title and have to be out in a much shorter time-frame for a specific date. You just can't spend the time finessing the tick-box list of things to do in their timeframes.

 

[Manta_Breh]

They are extremely formulaic. They have a similar structure, all of their games borrow elements from each other making them blend into one another, which is why it feel's extremely samey. There is no expression of creativity, personality or a "personal" touch because they're pretty much following an assembly line sort of way in developing their games.

 

[oni-link]

it's the trade off, otherwise you'd be getting like 1 asscreed, far cry ect every 5+ years (think elder scrolls, GTA ect)

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I'd settle for this, or just make them as they are now by scale the maps back, give me a new Ass Creed with all the same mechanics but make it smaller

A SP that can be beaten in 20 hours and 100% completed in 50 hours, not a main campaign that lasts 80 hours and 200 hours to 100%

 

[bitcloudrzr]

A SP that can be beaten in 20 hours and 100% completed in 50 hours, not a main campaign that lasts 80 hours and 200 hours to 100%

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The Origins and Odyssey campaigns lasted 30-35 hours, and the Valhalla one took 48.5 even with a region levelling bug that delayed my access to the story.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Checklists

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Those exist in all open world games though

 

[Kyuuji]

They're fine with a long enough break between them I find. I started Odyssey up last week and have been having a fun time with it, playing with markers off until discovered and medium level scaling.

 

[oni-link]

The Origins and Odyssey campaigns lasted 30-35 hours, and the Valhalla one took 48.5 even with a region levelling bug that delayed my access to the story.

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That's not too bad then, I think Origins took me 50, with the DLC bumping that to 80, and Odyssey took me 80, with the DLC pushing me to 115

I didn't even get close to 100% completion either, and I didn't even explore all of the map in either game

I loved them both but I hear Valhalla is even bigger so I'm gonna play that much later on

My point was I'd be fine if they just halved the size of the map in these games. There must have been another 20 odd hours of well written side content in Odyssey I just skipped

That said, the DLC in the two I played were not as good as the main game, so maybe I'll just play the main story of Valhalla

 

[RPGam3r]

Pretty much all open world games feel that way after about 10 hours save for something like Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring (and ER completely falls apart in the second half or so). It's just the nature of these games because of the time and resources needed to craft even medium scale open world games.

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ER and BotW have the same problem, the only difference is the checklist isn't given to you up front. It's like going to an amusement park and they ran out of guides, it's still an amusement park.

 

[Aangster]

Editorial direction.

 

[Zephy]

Counter point to some arguments given in this thread :

Yakuza games also come out frequently, reuse a lot of the same assets, gameplay elements and activities, are also quite long to beat... And yet every one of them feels genuine and full of heart. No one says "you've played one, you've played them all", even though they use practically the same setting every time while AC has a completely new world.

I share OP's interrogation, I've long struggled to find a satisfying explanation to why these games feel so soulless, despite often having good characters, interesting settings, and being full of art (I mean, just check out an AC art book, the music is also great, the games offer some fantastic vistas...).

 

[Kwigo]

it's the trade off, otherwise you'd be getting like 1 asscreed, far cry ect every 5+ years (think elder scrolls, GTA ect)

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So basically decent dev cycles with quality games vs. checklist borefests

 

[bitcloudrzr]

That's not too bad then, I think Origins took me 50, with the DLC bumping that to 80, and Odyssey took me 80, with the DLC pushing me to 115

I didn't even get close to 100% completion either, and I didn't even explore all of the map in either game

I loved them both but I hear Valhalla is even bigger so I'm gonna play that much later on

My point was I'd be fine if they just halved the size of the map in these games. There must have been another 20 odd hours of well written side content in Odyssey I just skipped

That said, the DLC in the two I played were not as good as the main game, so maybe I'll just play the main story of Valhalla

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I think the ease of getting side tracked racks up hours for many people, but I tend to really focus on the main story unless there are major side quests. Considering AC does not really have these like Bioware game or Witcher, it is easy to ignore them while it adds to play time for others. The Ireland and Ragnarok dlc for Valhalla are pretty good, and Paris is ok.

 

[Taleboules]

This happens every time. I always see Ubisoft games and think they look pretty, then I start playing them, and they just start feeling like an assembly line almost immediately. So I quit about an hour or two in, and two weeks later I completely forget that the game exists or that I played it until someone tells me that it exists.

I dunno it's very hard to explain. Maybe it's just how focused tested they are and how they seem designed to be about as disposable as possible. I get no sense of creative vision behind any of it. The formula is so worn out.

Thoughts?

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The truth: It depends on so many factors like the team behind, the scope, the budget, the deadline, the target audience, the context (when the company was is a good shape, they made great open world games), etc. With almost the same people behind, sometimes it hits, Ghost Recon Wildlands, sometimes it misses, Ghost Recon Breakpoint. No one at Ubisoft wants to ship a bad/blank open world game that looks like it was shaped by bad AI. It's just hard mate and Because there are +20K employees at Ubisoft, they have to release at least two big budget game every year (usually two AAA open world) to stay sustainable. The past few years, they probably haven't had the time to experiment to renews their process, their internal organization, their management across different studios, their scope, etc. That's why their open world games started looking like the same recipe served but without a talented cook behind.

If you're searching for a good Ubisoft open world game, I strongly recommend to start a non-lethal run in Watch Dogs 2. IMO with Wildlands, it was the peak Ubi open world games.

 

[Transistor]

It's bloat, I think. Looking at the map for Immortals: Fenyx Rising, it's really as if there was some code that fired off a red flag if there wasn't something to do every eight feet.

 

[Mars People]

They are boring as fuck.

 

[GaussianMultivariate]

Not all Ubisoft games are alike. I'll insist Wildlands and The Division (1 or 2, depending on who you ask) are among the most accomplished open-world games out there. Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Breakpoint, Watchdogs are a different thing even though they share a lot of RNA.

 

[kurahador]

Their games feels like checklist first, activity second.

 

[ShinUltramanJ]

This is such a generic take on UbiSoft's games. Feels like it was copy pasted by a robot.

 

[snausages]

Content focused approach I guess, netflix style of just getting as much IP out the door in an expedient fashion.

Based on reports it also sounds like a leadership problem, where certain decision makers are so difficult to question that this stultifying design pattern is difficult to escape from for some of the Ubisoft creatives working there. Possibly? At least, it's something I remember a paragraph being dedicated to in those abuse allegations, I think it was Serge Hascoet who would shoot down anything which strayed outside his own limited interests (like a playable female lead in an action game) and nobody could question the dude until he got ousted.

I don't really think it's unique to Ubisoft though (the formulaicness I mean, not speaking about the abuse). I think right now Capcom are kinda phoning it in a bit with so many Resident Evil games, the formula there is still really good compared with AC/FC/WD but they're draining every drop out of it right now and Village just felt a bit samey to me. My point not being to launch into an opinion about a different company but when something is successful in AAA it's going to have this happen to it over time, constant iteration and diminishing sense of improvement installment to installment.

 

[plow]

Honestly i don't know why, they are pretty generic and don't provide anything special, but they are all really solid games with amazing presentation and a decent Story. They are also fun to play.

My main complaint that i have with Ubi game is the ( sometimes ) insane level gating that they have. I seriously don't understand why it's even there in an Open World game. I think it's really bad game design, if you force peope to do SIDEquests . They scaled it down by a lot in Valhalla ( Or they masked the Side stuff ) so there is hope for future games.

 

[Rassilon]

It's bloat, I think. Looking at the map for Immortals: Fenyx Rising, it's really as if there was some code that fired off a red flag if there wasn't something to do every eight feet.

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idk

the fan-made interactive maps for RDR2 look similar, but the game feels natural in it's delivery (imo)

perhaps because so many of the points of interest etc etc are time-specific and integrated into the world

 

[1-D_FE]

I like the term formulaic here.

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It's funny, that's the derogatory name some movies used to get. Now it seems nostalgic. Nowadays it seems like many movies are designed by algorithms that even the most cynical, formulaic movie creator couldn't have achieved in their wet dreams. I hate our new algorithmic overlords.

 

[Linus815]

idk

the fan-made interactive maps for RDR2 look similar, but the game feels natural in it's delivery (imo)

perhaps because so many of the points of interest etc etc are time-specific and integrated into the world

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no, its because if you zoom out far enough any videogame map will look like that lol

 

[Igniz12]

Dont forget the "color coded" enemies in every goddamn Ubi game......ungh.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Ubisoft Games feel like they have zero actual intent behind them. They have a CONCEPT (vikings, etc) but there's no intent behind "just make a really big game about [x]". There's no meaningful story being told, there's no clever or thoughtful theming or narrative, they are by definition the most gamey games that exist. It's all about providing a gameplay skeleton to last as long as possible with token effort placed into providing context for said gameplay skeleton.

 

[Rassilon]

no, its because if you zoom out far enough any videogame map will look like that lol

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hahaha good point

 

[TheBaldwin]

I think for me it's the amount of content but the fact that it's all labelled for you so you constantly feel like your going from one check mark to the other

I'm sure if they just turned off waypoints/markers (aside from main quests) and just let you run around stumbling into stuff, it would feel so much more organic

 

[Zeal543]

This applies to almost every modern western AAA game

 

[ghostcrew]

idk

the fan-made interactive maps for RDR2 look similar, but the game feels natural in it's delivery (imo)

perhaps because so many of the points of interest etc etc are time-specific and integrated into the world

Click to shrink...

All of those interactive maps look like this in open world games. Until you drill down and start specifiying what you want to show, they all look like a ridiculous mess of busy work. I don't know as if any of this is specific to Ubisoft games.