Do we really need five more Assassin's Creed?

While it seems like yesterday, it's actually been a good 15 years since the first Assassin's Creed made its debut. Ubisoft's title was immediately a great success due to some revolutionary mechanics, such as the parkour-style movement, which allowed you to move with a fluidity never seen before in a video game. In fact, this mechanic was then a source of inspiration for many other video games, as well as the structure of its open world, which became the standard model for many future titles, so much so that some still use it today.

To celebrate 15 years of the saga, Ubisoft has decided to dedicate an event to her and to talk about her future, announcing five new projects as well as a Netflix series in the works. A real feast of titles for passionate fans of the series, but are we sure that the future return every year (if not more) of the most famous assassins in the gaming world is really good?

From the return to the past to feudal Japan

The event recently held by Ubisoft has shed light on the new titles related to the Assassin's Creed saga, starting just to talk about the last chapter , Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which by the end of 2022 will see a free update that will conclude the story of Eivor, the or the protagonist of the title, with one last mission. The game, released in 2020, has seen numerous updates over the years, taking possible hours of play to an incalculable level.

One of the most common criticisms leveled at this chapter (and also at the previous ones) is precisely to dilute the main contents too much, with rather forgettable secondary activities that push the hour counter to far exceed one hundred, if you decide to do everything possible. Added to this is the fact that sometimes it is the game itself that forces you to undertake these activities to reach the level necessary to continue with the main plot. It is therefore a little twitchy that those who played the Valhalla launch find themselves two years later having to take it back to watch the real finale.

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Moving on to the novelties presented, the title with the closest release date is Assassin's Creed Mirage, currently scheduled for a generic 2023. The game will be set in the ninth century Baghdad and will feature Basim, a character already met in Valhalla, in the years of his youth. This new chapter wants to bring the saga back to the mechanics of the very first chapters, with a large explorable city, no RPG elements and a greater emphasis on movement with parkour and on stealth mechanics. The developers have in fact declared that it will not be a huge chapter like the last ones, but that it will take 15-20 hours to complete the main story.

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Another big announcement was that of Assassin's Creed Red, code name of the next main chapter set in feudal Japan. This setting has been in demand by fans for a long time and it finally seems like Ubisoft has decided to please them. There are still no details on the release date or on the gameplay, since only a teaser trailer has been shown, but it is confirmed that the structure will be similar to Valhalla and Odyssey, therefore with a more role-playing approach.

Another teaser then showed Assassin's Creed Hexe, defined as the darkest chapter of the series, which will probably have as its setting that of the period of the witch hunt, in the seventeenth century. No further details are known about this title, except that it will come after Red.

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Among the other projects presented, Assassin's Creed Jade, a chapter set in ancient China made exclusively for mobile, and Assassin's Creed Infinity, currently defined as a hub that will unite the players of the various Assassin's Creed in one place, but for now we have no details on how it works. br>
Finally, the series has been confirmed for Netflix, which should be unrelated to what is seen in the film not exactly successful starring Michael Fassbender, and an exclusive title for Netflix's mobile gaming platform.

Ubisoft and the philosophy of quantity

The French company hasn't been doing very well in recent years. Lately it has been the scene of several scandals that have led to the dismissal of figures on the upper floors. In addition to this, for some time now it seems to be unable to make its titles with the same creativity as they once were, with the consequence that all their games resemble each other. The Watch Dogs series, for example, failed to live up to expectations with its latest installment, Legion, which quickly disappeared from the radar. Far Cry 6, released last year, has seen an inflection in sales compared to the previous installment of the series and even Rainbow Six Siege, a very popular online multiplayer shooter, with an established eSports circuit, has seen a big drop in players in the game. last year. Not to mention an important project, such as the video game dedicated to the film Avatar, originally scheduled to be released together with the film at the end of 2022, has now been postponed to a later date.

UbisoftThe main problem of many of these titles is the continued reiteration of models that worked well several years ago, but are now starting to tire. The open world structure with lots of secondary content is almost similar in all Ubisoft games of this type and over time, instead of thinking about renewing the formula, we preferred to expand it by favoring a "quantity over quality" approach. This is demonstrated by the latest Assassin's Creed, who from Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla offer huge open worlds that are also graphically very beautiful to look at, but with content that is repetitive and boring and above all dispersive in the long run. In fact, many players prefer to live a more compact and meaningful experience rather than playing for over a hundred hours without really having fun.

With Assassin's Creed Mirage it seems that Ubisoft is trying to change course, but the arrival of the chapter set in Japan, which promises a structure similar to that of Valhalla, worries about the possibility of seeing the same mistakes of the past repeated. Furthermore, the Japanese setting is very thorny, both because it is dealt with by a Western team that has never faced such different culturally environments (despite the fact that they have recently promised to rely on many Japanese consultants to be as historically accurate as possible), and because they will have to confronting other similar titles that have already imposed a very high standard, such as the exclusive Sony Ghost of Tsushima.

The solution to Ubisoft's current problems, moreover, certainly cannot be to propose one or two Assassin's Creed l 'year, given that once the chapters of the franchise came out at a similar pace, with the result of having saturated the desire of the players to devote themselves to new titles of the saga. And even if at the moment this same saga is the one that sells the most for Ubisoft, the risk of returning to saturate the market with the release of too many titles in a short time is high. The solution, therefore, would be, once again, to prefer quality over quantity, something that Ubisoft has not been doing for years.