Ubisoft has responded to criticisms that its open-world games are too big. Ubisoft is one of the few publishers that got in on the open-world hype early with franchises like Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed. It wasn’t long until that expanded to franchises that were previously smaller in scale like Ghost Recon. Over the years, as expectations have grown, Ubisoft has doubled down on open-world gaming, sometimes to a fault. The sizes of its maps have become increasingly larger and resulted in more content. With that said, many have noted over the years how they are unable to finish Ubisoft’s games because of how long they are, almost to the point of becoming overwhelming. Now, Ubisoft is developing technology known as Scalar which is expected to create “limitless” open worlds.
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In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Ubisoft Stockholm’s managing director Patrick Bach stated that not all games need to be bigger, but some games will benefit from it if that’s the vision of the creator and the game they’re creating. Bach went on to state that he doesn’t believe the size of a game necessarily dictates if a game is better, essentially boiling it down to bigger doesn’t always mean better.ย
“No part of a game should be driven by ‘more is better.’ This is technology, and that does not dictate what games you build, but there are games that will definitely benefit from being bigger, more detailed, being able to scale and being greater than they are today,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a real connection between games being bigger and them being better or worse. It depends on the creators and how they want to spend their energy achieving their vision.” ย
It seems like Ubisoft is bound to keep upping the ante on its open-world franchises, but it is heavily rumored that there is a linear Assassin’s Creed game in development right now. Details are scarce on the project, but it will be a new direction for the series and possibly a welcome one from lapsed fans.
Do you agree with Ubisoft’s sentiment that bigger isn’t always better? Let us know in the comments below or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.
