Ubisoft CEO Feels That Breath Of The Wild And Horizon: Zero Dawn “Borrowed” From Them

Open world games are becoming better and better, especially with this year, as both The Legend of [...]

Breath

Open world games are becoming better and better, especially with this year, as both The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Horizon: Zero Dawn attracting all sorts of fans. But Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot believes that Ubisoft set the standard for this design first, and that several gameplay mechanics actually "borrowed" from them.

Speaking with WCCF Tech, Guillemot explained his thoughts, bringing up the Far Cry series as an example. "It's interesting, because The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild took a lot of things that existed in Far Cry and other Ubisoft games, but did them perfectly," he noted. "I think the most important thing is not the systems as they are, it's how they can be perfected; how they can give the player the best experience possible.

"The same system can be in two games, and not be seen as the same thing. The job, really, is to make sure that you have a certain number of possibilities and that you are able to combine them in such a way that provides a great experience. When systems are similar, it's because developers have not been able to take full advantage of what those systems could bring.

"When a system is really good at providing fun, the team knows that that will work—and at the end of the day what counts is the experience. But we are taking more and more time on our games so that they are very different from one another. That has always been the objective. But if you look at many of the games that are being launched—even the last Sony game, Horizon: Zero Dawn—again, they took some of the same systems that we have. Because, in the industry, we always look at other games and other publishers. A game is very complex, so it helps us to provide a good experience."

That said, Ubisoft is trying to set the standard once more, this time with multiplayer games. "It's the kind of game that is more and more in demand from players. As a company, we have to adapt to this evolution in demand," said Guillemot. "So it's a question of generation: some people have been playing linear adventures, and they tend to want to continue to play that kind of game, even if they're starting to open to other types of games.

"For each revolution or disruption, there are steps where you are in the middle and the new thing is not yet very interesting. The first people that try the game might say 'It's good, but it's not as good as I expected' and sometimes they don't want to try it again.

"But after a while you improve the quality of this new experience, and you arrive at a level where the new people who try it love it. It always takes time to change mentalities. For us, we had no choice but to introduce the types of product that most of the customers, most of the players, wanted."

The company's next big open world adventure, Assassin's Creed Origins, arrives on October 27th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.

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