This thread was prompted by watching an FC4 vid and seeing the same skinny enemy with the petrol bomb and machete with the exact same animations from FC3. I'm sure we've all noticed that Ubi's AAA games seem to share a lot of overlap. Open worlds dotted with enemy strongholds and padded with side-missions that reward you with new skills and unlocks. Which game am I describing: you unlock map details by ascending towers. AC, FC, W_D?
I got a massive burst of deja vu when I messed up a stealth kill in a "gang hideout" mission in W_D that triggered an alarm and two cars of enemies pulled out. Everything from the spike in difficulty to the enemy dispersement felt identical to FC3's outposts. There was nothing technically wrong in the design of it, but I'd played that scenario to exhaustion in the previous game and the fun was much less.
They've even structured their development process so that some studios are making a pool of assets that multiple games can have. That's how the exact same weapon models can make appearances in Splinter Cell, Far Cry, Watch_Dogs and Ghost Recon. How Kenway and Aiden both have the same swimming animations. It might strike you as small stuff but it really adds to the homogenization.
It would be less noticeable if the games had a strong campaign but instead they have all this padding. Remember the AC Unity reveal where the player/narrator kept having to point out and then ignore side-missions? A mugging, a murder and a faction battle all in one street. My heart really sank when I saw this though:
All that pointless busy work. And if you skip it you can miss out on content that directly affects gameplay (new weapons & skills) and story (that Adam & Eve vid).
Anyway, whilst I'm sure the majority are still getting more fun than boredom from their games, isn't an inevitability that as the homogeneity and padding will only increase with each new game, that at some point it'll be too much and people will skip them?
I got a massive burst of deja vu when I messed up a stealth kill in a "gang hideout" mission in W_D that triggered an alarm and two cars of enemies pulled out. Everything from the spike in difficulty to the enemy dispersement felt identical to FC3's outposts. There was nothing technically wrong in the design of it, but I'd played that scenario to exhaustion in the previous game and the fun was much less.
They've even structured their development process so that some studios are making a pool of assets that multiple games can have. That's how the exact same weapon models can make appearances in Splinter Cell, Far Cry, Watch_Dogs and Ghost Recon. How Kenway and Aiden both have the same swimming animations. It might strike you as small stuff but it really adds to the homogenization.
It would be less noticeable if the games had a strong campaign but instead they have all this padding. Remember the AC Unity reveal where the player/narrator kept having to point out and then ignore side-missions? A mugging, a murder and a faction battle all in one street. My heart really sank when I saw this though:
All that pointless busy work. And if you skip it you can miss out on content that directly affects gameplay (new weapons & skills) and story (that Adam & Eve vid).
Anyway, whilst I'm sure the majority are still getting more fun than boredom from their games, isn't an inevitability that as the homogeneity and padding will only increase with each new game, that at some point it'll be too much and people will skip them?
