Variations on a Theme or More of the Same?
While recently playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey I was struck by the similarities between some of the game’s mechanics and those found in Ghost Recon: Wildlands which I played extensively last spring. Using your eagle companion to spot enemies and tag them on the map in the former is virtually identical to launching a drone and scouting the terrain in the latter. However, as both games are Ubisoft titles this is hardly a revelation. Yet the more I’ve played ACO, it has become very clear that many of their top titles share a great deal of common systems and mechanics. This makes sound business sense especially when you’re a company that releases multiple titles each year. Why rebuild a system when you can simply re-use an existing one? Yet even after recognising the practical benefits of such an approach to games development, I couldn’t help but feel that if you play a great deal of Ubisoft games, there must come a point when they all begin to feel a little too familiar. Even more so when you’re playing different iterations of the same franchise.
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