168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a great game, and my favourite of the modern entries thanks to its strong characters and sprawling open world that is never afraid to put its own spin on Greek mythology. But it is also incredibly big, and, like a lot of recent games in the series, a bit too big for its 🤡own good. You tire of 🌼it long before reaching the end, which is a problem.
Valhalla was similarly massive to the point that I got bored long before reaching the end of the narrative, let alone the multiple, also very large, expansions Ubisoft released for it. Every title is a gargantuan effort I need to be in the right mood for, and I know if I put too much time into it too qu💜ickly I will eventually walk away unsatisfied. Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla fell short because it felt like most of the things they asked you to do were content for the sake of content, repeatable objectives that were rarely ever engaging in a worthwhile mechanical or narrative way. Ubisoft just wanted your attention.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows Can’t Just Be Another Massive Open World
This brings us to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which, after the smaller scale Mirage, is said to be Ubisoft’s next big entry, matching the scale of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. It’s set to be an absolute chonker, and part of me wants to think that, four years after Valhalla, I’m ready for anot🍸her entry like this. But now t💞hat I’m staring right down the barrel, I’m not so sure.
Will Shadows enrapture me at first with its dual protagonists and beautiful setting before settling in☂to the same tired routine this series can’t seem to escape, or will it do something different and actually surprise me?
To its credit, Valhalla did try to make some noteworthy changes so the act of exploration and questing felt more natural, tweaks that made it feel like you were discovering points of interest across the open world instead of just chasing icons for several hundred hours. Odyssey and Origins did this too, as they offered ways to track down objectives which didn’t use icons꧋, but places or names and noteworthy landmarks that required the player to put their minds to use. It helped in bringing the world to life, but felt more like a temporary solution to predictable design than a true step in the right direction.
Valhalla took this further with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher 3-esque discoveries and missions, and reduced the almost omniscient power of your bird, which could 🌺identify an objective from across the map in the other games, ye🙈t I still reached a point where I would have rather played a better, more nuanced RPG.
It’s hard to judge the direction Shadows will go in given that w🐠e’ve only seen a fancy ꩲCG trailer and nothing else, which is how the marketing cycle for every game in this series begins. It wows us with a fresh setting and glimpses of new characters before a gameplay reveal brings us back down to earth with exploration and combat that, while themed around those new characters and settings, aren't too far removed from what we know.
Shadows is buildi🐼ng on a role-playing mould that has become Assassin’s Creed’s modern identity, and it seems Ubisoft wants to try and mix these bigger releases with smaller, more experimental narratives like the upcoming Hexe, and, of course, Mirage - which in hindsight was an underwhelming disappointment that failed in its attempt to recapture the series' past.
It needs to not only make use of the distinct playstyles offered by both of its heroes, but put them to use in combat encounters and quests that naturally apply to them, instead of the endlessly repeating the same old mix of stealth, brutality, and fleeing to the nearest safe space. That’s what Odyssey bec✅ame; it felt like I was doing the same missions over and over again to gain enough experience so I could level up, advance the story, and see more of this open world I’d already grown kinda bored with.
I want more than that, and if Assassin’s Creed is going to continue being oneꦰ of the biggest open-world games out there, it needs to💦 extend its ambition beyond being filled with things to do that mean so little.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
- Top Critic Avg: 81/100 Critics Rec: 81%
- Released
- November 15, 2024
- ESRB
- m
- Developer(s)
- Ubisoft Qu𓆏ebec
- Publisher(s)
- Ubisoft
- Engine
- AnvilNext
- Franchise
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin's Creed
