The Assassin's Creed Template

Ubisoft have been releasing a whole lot of games just recently. In the past few months we've had The Division, Far Cry Primal and Rainbow Six Siege to name a few. All great games in my opinion (especially Siege) but it's hard not to notice that Ubisoft have got a template they like to use. Something I like to call the Assassin's Creed template.

The Assassin's Creed template is as follows - big open world, pretty graphics, lots of quest markers, and somewhere among all of that is the narrative. Now the narrative is usually quite simple in most Ubisoft games and serves as nothing more than exposition during the beginning of the experience, moulding players into the rinse and repeat gameplay that they will spend countless hours doing.

I myself, along with a lot of other people, doubt Ubisoft's creative abilities. In an industry that is filled with publishers cutting corners, Ubisoft seems to be king of them all. The fact that they used Far Cry 4's map as an overlay for Primal is evident of this, and also pretty cheeky. I'm not here to slag Ubisoft off though as I've noticed something recently.

My girlfriend has become much more active on my PlayStation 4 during the past few weeks. She even gets upset when I take it home from her house. She purchased me Far Cry Primal as a birthday present. It's a pretty damn good game, but between starting a new job and being a journalist, I've just not had the time to play it.

She decided to give it a try as she is a bit of a hippie (I'll get slapped for that) and absolutely loves animals. Primal is the perfect game for animal lovers: you get to tame a freaking sabre-toothed tiger and ride it - what more do you need in life, seriously? But as I watched her play it, I started realising something; Ubisoft games are a brilliant for casual, low commitment players.

My girlfriend works in healthcare, so she can have pretty demanding hours some weeks. She can't really commit herself to one game, instead playing a few she can dip in and out of (Mario Kart is her favourite). It's for this reason that Primal makes absolute sense to her. She can sit for a few hours, complete some of the quest markers, do a few story missions, and feel like she's had a genuine sense of progression. But the story has such a small role on the gameplay that she can not play the game for a week, and still come back to it as enthusiastic as she was before.

I absolutely love Dark Souls, also not forgetting Demon Souls and Bloodborne. The Souls series is probably my favourite of all time next to Zelda - Did I mention how much I like Souls games? Okay good, I'm glad we have that cleared up. For someone like my girlfriend or any other casual players, Souls would be utter rubbish.

A lot of it is obviously the difficulty, they are really hard games; apart from Dark Souls 2, that game was a walk in the park. The real killer would be the lack of progression and the general vague nature of its story. If someone only has a couple of hours to play a game during the evening, they want to feel like they have achieved something. I've spent an entire evening on Dark Souls and achieved absolutely nothing; I'm looking at you Ornstein and Smough. Far Cry Primal, Assassin’s Creed and The Division all offer an accessible gameplay experience; players constantly progress because there is always something to collect or complete.

It's for this reason that I feel Ubisoft and their game catalogue are valuable; no matter how much you think hardcore gamers are worth to the industry, casual gamers are likely worth twice that amount and more.

Yeah, it's annoying to see Ubisoft cutting corners, as a journalist, it infuriates me. But every now and again we need to remember that us hardcore gamers are not the only market that developers target, so for every Dark Souls, you are always going to have an Assassin's Creed or Far Cry.