Throughout the video, we get a look at the original combat system, which revolved around counter-attacks, and how it evolved and got refined with 2009’s Assassin’s Creed 2, 2010’s Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, and 2011’s Assassin’s Creed Revelations. 2012 would bring a major change in the system with the release of Assassin’s Creed 3, which gave protagonist Connor more weapon variety to fight with, as well as a bow. Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag would bring in another shift in 2013 with the inclusion of guns as part of Edward’s arsenal.

While much of the same combat system would be seen in 2014’s Assassin’s Creed Rogue, the year also saw another shake-up with Assassin’s Creed Unity, which made combat slower-paced and raised the difficulty. In 2015, the same system would be further refined in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, which placed quite a bit of emphasis on brawling with its two protagonists—Jacob and Evie Frye.

While the series would see a bit of a break after Syndicate, just a couple of years later, it would see its biggest shift in combat mechanics with the release of Assassin’s Creed Origins. The 2017 title introduced deeper RPG-styled mechanics, with weapons and armors having their own distinct stats and special effects, which could be used by Bayek in his quest to hunt down the Order of the Ancients. The same system would get expanded with the release of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey in 2018, which brought in even more weapon types as well as deeper RPG mechanics. The last game where we would see this system, at least for now, would be 2020’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which introduced a posture system for its enemies.

In 2023, the series would go back to some of its older styles of combat with Assassin’s Creed Mirage, with players taking on the role of Basim and fighting foes in the streets of Baghdad. Most recently, the franchise introduced further refinements to its combat systems with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which provided two distinct styles of play thanks to its deuteragonists—the action-oriented Yasuke and the stealth-focused Naoe.

While Ubisoft hasn’t recently made any major new announcements for the Assassin’s Creed franchise, rumors have been flying around of a remake for Black Flag, which is believed to be titled Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. The overall themes of synchronization in the video would indicate that there might be a deeper connection between it and the much-awaited announcement. The company had confirmed that such a remake was in the works last month.

In the meantime, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has continued to get updates a year after its release, with the most recent one bringing in support for PSSR 2 on PS5 Pro, and mouse and keyboard controls on Nintendo Switch 2. Check out our review of Assassin’s Creed Shadows and its Claws of Awaji expansion for more details.

Following the upcoming update, which releases tomorrow, November 19, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate will finally get a 60 FPS boost on current-gen consoles. Additionally, Ubisoft says the game will target a 4K resolution on PS5, PS5 Pro, and Xbox Series X, while on Xbox Series S, it will run at 1080p. That said, the upcoming patch is going to be much larger on Xbox Series X/S than it will be on PS5, weighing in at about 31.8 GB on the former and 0.75 GB on the latter.

Coming out in the immediate aftermath of the widespread backlash against Assassin’s Creed Unity, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate definitely saw muted reception when it launched in 2015, though make no mistake- the action-adventure title ranks as one of the series’ best games. A 60 FPS update is something that many have been hoping for, so this should bring a decent number of players back into the fold.

The streets of London are calling…#AssassinsCreedSyndicate free 60 FPS update available tomorrow on PS5, PS5 pro & Xbox Series X|S pic.twitter.com/o2T5NdVXtk

— Ubisoft (@Ubisoft) November 18, 2024

The update, dubbed Title Update 1.53, doesn’t really add any new content to the game. Rather, it was an interesting move by Ubisoft to make one of its older games more easily playable on a current platform.

The flickering issues fixed by the update were reportedly making Assassin’s Creed Syndicate almost unplayable on the PS5. The problem seemed exclusive to the PlayStation platform, however, as no such issues have been reported for the Xbox release of the game.

Ubisoft is currently working on a number of upcoming Assassin’s Creed titles, including Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Assassin’s Creed Codename RED, and Assassin’s Creed Codename HEXE. The company is still supporting its previous major release, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, with smaller updates that fix issues.

Ubisoft is also slated to be present at E3 2023, where the company will undoubtedly show off its next releases.

We're happy to announce that Assassin's Creed Syndicate will receive an update tomorrow, February 23, on PlayStation 4.

This update will provide a fix for flickering issues when playing on PlayStation 5. #AssassinsCreed pic.twitter.com/Q2Huord4Dq

— Assassin's Creed (@assassinscreed) February 22, 2023

An overwhelming number of allegations of sexual misconduct against top Ubisoft executives have emerged in recent weeks, leading to major shake-ups at the French company, including changes being made across a number of positions and departments. This includes high-ranking Ubisoft employees having left the company amid these allegations, including chief creative officer Serge Hascoët (who has faced many of said allegations), managing director of Ubisoft’s Canadian studios Yannis Mallat, and global head of HR Cécile Cornet.

Now, a new report written by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has gone into greater detail on these issues, citing several more instances of sexual and racial misconduct, on top of describing a hostile and “machismo” work environment that pervades the entire company, which has offices all over the world, while also going into detail on how most of these problems had been well known to the company, its HR departments, and its top executives for years (owing to countless complaints, among other things), but were swept under the rug.

The report goes on to explain that these problems – described as systemic and deeply entrenched by multiple former and current Ubisoft employees, many of whom chose to remain anonymous – seeped into the company’s creative decisions as well. For instance, the roles of several major female characters in multiple Assassin’s Creed games were significantly reduced following orders from either the aforementioned Serge Hascoët or the company’s marketing, because “female protagonists wouldn’t sell.” As Schreier points out in his report, in an industry with numerous commercially and critically successful games such as Horizon Zero Dawn, the Tomb Raider series, and more recently, The Last of Us Part 2 (to name a few), that notion doesn’t ring very true.

The report explains that an early outline of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate had twins Jacob and Evie Frye sharing equal screen time as deuteragonists. The final product saw the latter’s role being reduced, and the former playing the much more dominant role. Following that, Assassin’s Creed Origins was originally going to either kill off or seriously injure its protagonist Bayek early on in the game, with players taking control of his wife Aya for the rest of the story. In the final game, Aya was playable for a negligible amount of time, and had a significantly reduced role. Finally, 2018’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was originally going to have Kassandra be the sole playable protagonist, but the development team was told that that wasn’t an option.

All of this happened following a similar incident in 2014- when Ubisoft were called out for not having included playable female characters in Assassin’s Creed Unity’s co-op, they said that adding women character models, clothing, and animations would have required too much production work.

Schreier’s report goes into great detail on the system issues at Ubisoft. You can read it through the link in the beginning of this report.

Another day, another dollar, and another week, another batch of free games from the Epic Games Store. This week we get an great adventure game from a legendary series and then an interesting fantasy-themed card battle title to add to your library.

First up is Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate from Ubisoft. Syndicate takes place in Victorian era England as you must take the role of twin Assassins in the never-ending battle of free will with the Templars. The game was the last of the classic style before the series got a soft reboot when Origins released. It’s worth a look.

Next is Faeria, a digital card game set in a fantasy world. You must use strategy with a deck you build and play on a living board that is ever changing.

Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate and Faeria are available to download free from now until February 27th. After that the next game in the rotation is InnerSpace. Epic has a tendency to sneak a game in there before it goes live, so stay tuned.

Another week is starting up, which means that we’re on the countdown for more free games coming from the Epic Games Store. Last week we got two very different historical experiences with Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Aztez. As of last week, only one other game was announced for the 20th, Faeria. Now a second game will join it from one legendary franchise.

As announced via the official Twitter, which you can see below, on the 20th you’ll also be able to download Assassin’s Creed Syndicate free of charge of Epic’s storefront alongside Faeria.

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate came out originally in 2015. The game was the last one before Assassin’s Creed Origins, which took the series gameplay in a much different way, making Syndicate the last of the classic AC style. It takes place in Victorian England as the conflict between Templars and Assassins rage on. You’ll be able to download it on the Epic Games Store February 20th.

https://twitter.com/EpicGames/status/1229509038104338433?s=20

The point is: There’s no one route to story-telling in a video game. It often depends on the game itself, whether it can support these ambitions and even if it should focus on packing as much story content into a game as possible. In that respect, I feel the Assassin’s Creed franchise stands out. The series is one of the progenitors of the open world, collectathon genre as we know it. With Assassin’s Creed Origins and even more so with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, there’s been shift towards packing as much story into the game as possible.

In the case of Odyssey, you have a main narrative that culminates in reuniting your family. Now it’s off to hunt down the members of an evil cult. Is it over? Nope. Now you have to discover who your real father is and your true purpose. In between, there are dozens upon dozens of smaller quests, Lost Tales of Greece, hunts, side missions, bosses, camps to assault, wars to wage and so on and so forth. It’s easy to see why Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has garnered some criticism for feeling bloated.

It’s interesting when you think about Greek classics like Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey. Both poems are sweeping narratives with their various events, characters and conflicts meticulously connected. Removing a dozen lines or so would be sacrilege. By comparison, you could remove a few side quests and missions from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and very few would notice. But I digress.

The quality of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey can be called into question but it’s a different story format. This isn’t a one-and-done read that you might go back to at some point like a poem. This is a video game, that too with a live service infrastructure, action RPG mechanics, loot grinding, leveling systems, DLC, Mercenaries, ship battles and user-created content. It’s meant to be engaged with over a longer period of time. Which is all well and good if you’re a fan of games that can provide dozens of hours of content, repeated and dull as some of that content may be. But what if you don’t want to commit to a game in the long-term?

Well, for starters, you can forget about going back to a shorter experience with Assassin’s Creed 2020 (rumoured to have a Viking setting). Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot was recently asked about the same by GamesIndustry.biz and said that, “Our goal is to make sure you can have an [Assassin’s Creed] Unity within an Odyssey. If you want to have a story of 15 hours, you can have it, but you can also have other stories. You live in that world and you pursue what you want to pursue. You have an experience, many Unity-like experiences.” Guillemot also pointed to the game’s playtime, roughly 60 hours on average, and noted that “players got a lot from their investment in the game, a lot more than they got before.”

From a business perspective, it makes sense why Ubisoft is taking a more measured approach with Odyssey. Even if you account for XP boosters, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has clearly been designed for its players to engage with a wide suite of content outside of “just” the story. For better or worse, the game pushes you to discover other things in the wilderness. Alternatively, you could just “grind” those levels out, assaulting forts and bandit camps even it quickly got old. Either way, you’re in it for the long haul and Ubisoft releases free content to keep you coming back (with this “good will” philosophy hopefully translating into sales for their paid cosmetic items).

Besides, weren’t people getting tired of the way Assassin’s Creed used to be? Isn’t the current model more successful, especially in terms of sales and revenue? Yes to both. So from a business standpoint, it makes sense to ensure that Assassin’s Creed 2020 is yet another immense open world with loot to earn, levels to grind, side quests by the dozen to undertake, etc etc.

However, when we talk about “investment” from a narrative standpoint, it’s interesting to think that a game like Assassin’s Creed Unity can just “fit” into Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Hearing that investment broken down into “hours” makes sense but how do you measure emotional investment? More hours spent playing may be better and translate to better sales but does it make for a better story?

Personally, I believe Ubisoft should consider returning to tighter, more focused narratives. Not that Assassin’s Creed Unity was “small” by any means but think of a game like Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. It provided the backdrop for a litany of side missions, each with genuinely interesting stories and characters. You had your share of collectibles, sure, but you never deviated too far from the main narrative.

Even though certain side missions and interactions could be removed from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey without anyone noticing, all of this has been designed keeping the overall pacing in mind. Some side quests and missions may have multiple parts but you’re mainly looking at objectives that require killing X animal or enemy. You’re looking at burning X amount of enemy supplies or assassinating X target. There’s quantity, for sure but when you try to take the narrative of Unity or Syndicate and simply slot it into Odyssey, changes have to be made to properly align it with the game’s core narrative. It’s not going to be the same narrative experience by a long shot.

This isn’t to say that Guillemot’s idea of having “Unity-like experiences” is disingenuous but there’s more to a game’s story and the engagement that it creates with the player than just “number of hours played”. I would argue that Assassin’s Creed as a franchise suffered not because it didn’t have enough content in each game but because each new story failed to really engage the player on an emotional level. These games haven’t been getting smaller over the years but there’s been a clear shift away from “We have an interesting story to tell” towards “We need to pump out a new game every year, no, I don’t care if Desmond is dead.” It finally settled on alternating between Ubisoft open world franchises every other year.

When comparing the overall goals of narrative design between this generation’s Assassin’s Creed and the previous titles, I can’t help but think about Days Gone and The Last of Us. Both take place in post-apocalyptic settings where infected humans are the biggest threat. Both have are pretty character-focused as our heroes struggle to survive in a society where the norm has long since been abandoned. It’s the overall focus of these narratives that determines their scale and how the plot plays out.

Days Gone, for all intents and purposes, is about Deacon finding his wife. The journey is constrained to a single open world, providing ample opportunity to interact with different survivors and learn their stories. The main narrative can be tackled whenever is convenient for the player. By comparison, The Last of Us is about traveling across the country as our protagonists struggle to fulfill their objective. You may not explore the entire country as each Chapter is its own linear level but it suits the narrative at hand.

Other survivors are encountered but these stories are woven into the main narrative, each event influencing the protagonists’ growth in the overall journey and beyond. There is no “start and stop” point for the player – it’s a ride from start to finish.

So while Days Gone may be more open-ended and sand-boxy, The Last of Us fine-tunes its cinematic pacing and story-telling to tell a concise story. You can enjoy the narratives in both games because both games take effective approaches to immersing the player. However, personally, I find the story-telling and characterization of The Last of Us superior simply because the game did a better job immersing me into the story. Quality of writing, cinematography, scripting, plot – a number of factors influence that immersion and it varies from person to person. But both of the above games try to tell meaningful, focused stories within their frameworks.

What kind of story is Ubisoft trying to tell with Assassin’s Creed 2020? If we discount the rumours and believe that it emphasizes a tale of warring Vikings, it would have a completely different treatment from, say, SIE Santa Monica’s God of War. And I say that keeping in mind that even God of War had superfluous systems like loot and larger environments with side missions, secrets and collectibles. With God of War 2, you don’t know what new innovations the studio will bring to its gameplay forefront – all you know is that the story-telling will be similarly engaging with a sharp focus on its lead characters. You know to expect a good story, not to suddenly veer off in the action RPG route, socializing with other players controlling their own version of Kratos in a hub while grinding daily faction missions.

Assassin’s Creed 2020 will likely dabble with Norse mythology, giving the players some mythical weapons and powers to play around with. You’ll still be assaulting outposts, completing kill quests for citizens and trying to grind XP to equip better loot. Maybe you’ll meet different Viking clans and get your daily faction missions that way. If the rumours are true and we’re indeed allowed to influence the economy of different regions, that would be neat. But how much do you want to bet that it would be akin to the Conquest battles in Odyssey – flashy, but ultimately not all that meaningful in the long run?

I’m not trying to say that the next Assassin’s Creed should be like God of War, simply aping that franchise’s new-found direction. But there’s something to be said about the stories that Ubisoft has told over the years. They’re becoming less about memorable characters, fleshed out and unique worlds, and plots that emotionally resonate with players.

The new trend is to cobble as many elements together into as big of an open world as possible, capturing that ever-elusive player engagement and delivering free content for the sake of pushing microtransactions. If the recent Ghost Recon Breakpoint has proven anything, it’s that the company might want to think about its current loot-obsessed, live service model before it risks burning players, yet again.

I remember back in the day when Assassin’s Creed had a “story”. I remember when it was about more than just artifacts, reliving memories for the sake of reliving them, and having interesting characters who we bonded with. Characters who stayed with us, through thick and thin, and saddened us with their passing. I remember when even the historical figures themselves were vehicles for complex sagas – how long has it been since Ubisoft presented a character arc like Ezio Auditore’s?

We might never go back to the old days. But a strong focused narrative, one that favours a highly polished storyline over excessive grinding and tasks, will never go out of style. You could argue that it wouldn’t make the most money or have the longest revenue tail but with the number of samey open world titles that Ubisoft is pumping out, surely there’s a possibility of something, anything different.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Sure, it was Far Cry 3’s open world and gameplay that formed the base for Blood Dragon. However, while that game was marketed on the basis of its charismatic antagonist Vaas, Blood Dragon’s charm seeped through every pore of the game’s style and atmosphere. The gameplay itself was no slouch either, removing many of the limitations of Far Cry titles like fall damage and increasing movement speed. Keep in mind that we haven’t even gotten to the part where you ride an armored Blood Dragon with a laser turret in an all-out assault.

"On November 8th 2018, Kotaku journalist Jason Schreier revealed a rather interesting yet unsurprising fact – single-player DLC doesn’t usually sell very well."

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon wasn’t just a financial success, selling over 1 million copies and becoming the fastest selling downloadable title in Ubisoft’s history. It also stood out as one of the best Far Cry titles ever made, despite essentially reusing an entire map and having a shorter story. We had a feeling at the time that it would influence Ubisoft’s approach to DLC in the future, moving beyond the typical add-ons and expansions, but little did we know by how much.

On November 8^th 2018, Kotaku journalist Jason Schreier revealed a rather interesting yet unsurprising fact – single-player DLC doesn’t usually sell very well. Citing a “fair number of developers over the last few years”, Schreier explained that this was the reason that DLC for games like Dishonored 2 and Uncharted 4 would become standalone games, as seen in Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and Uncharted: Lost Legacy respectively. Even Hollow Knight’s upcoming Hornet-focused content was meant to be DLC but eventually expanded into Hollow Knight: Silksong (that’s still being given free to backers of the first game, mind you). So it’s not a scenario that’s isolated to just triple A games. It’s interesting when you think about it in other ways– how many games got ahead of the curb like Grand Theft Auto 5 which focused primarily on delivering GTA Online DLC (especially considering how Grand Theft Auto 4’s Episodes performed in sales)?

It’s a real case-by-case basis though. The Forza series, both Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon, continue to deliver expansion packs in addition to free content. Forza Horizon 4 actually leaned further into the games-as-a-service model, offering substantial content updates since launch along with expansion packs. Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds is another great example – even if DLC sales weren’t through the roof, Sony is able to offset costs thanks to other factors like hardware sales, console licensing fees, PlayStation Plus revenue, digital sales revenue cuts and much more.

Such a trend could also explain why games-as-a-service has taken such prominence in this day and age. Rewarding continued investment, taking advantage of the sunk-cost fallacy, etc are major factors, make no mistake. After all, why release substantial single-player content that would be tougher to produce and doesn’t provide a continuous revenue stream (forget the fact that many players may not even buy it)? You may be thinking of exceptions like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt which have seen strong revenue from their post-launch expansions. Keep that in mind as we delve further.

"Games-as-a-service titles aren’t looking to be “one-and-done” like traditional single-player expansions or DLC. They’re meant to be a recurring factor in your gaming life, squeezing out some additional revenue whenever possible."

Games-as-a-service titles are benefiting more from smaller content releases in between substantially larger content drops. Destiny, Destiny 2, Tom Clancy’s The Division, ideally Anthem and Fallout 76, Fortnite, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Overwatch and so on are prime examples. Path of Exile follows a set schedule of substantial Challenge Leagues while preparing mega-expansions for release every few years. Warframe’s approach last year saw a big expansion arrive with Fortuna and various smaller content drops since then like newer story episodes, Nightwave and so on. Even Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn, which functions off of a subscription-based model, delivers a major paid expansion every two years. The one thing they all have in common is that they’re multiplayer/social-focused titles and not purely single-player offerings.

Perhaps the one major advantage that games-as-a-service titles have is that they account for players eventually leaving. Keeping them hooked is important, for sure, but the amount of competition in today’s market actually helps players “decompress” from the grinds of of games-as-a-service titles. By the time they return, there are new offerings and hooks to keep them engaged (and possibly spending some money). After all, it’s not like you hate the gameplay of Destiny 2 or Anthem so why not return when some new updates go live? Why not drop some money on Forsaken and the Annual Pass or on Anthem’s cosmetics?

Games-as-a-service titles aren’t looking to be “one-and-done” like traditional single-player expansions or DLC. They’re meant to be a recurring factor in your gaming life, squeezing out some additional revenue whenever possible.

Which makes Ubisoft’s approach to DLC over the past few years so interesting to observe.

"Of course, we all know what happened in 2014. Despite being fairly successful, Watch Dogs faced a firestorm of controversy over its graphical downgrades, bugs and much more."

Let’s go back to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. A phenomenal standalone game in its own right but for all intents and purposes, it was DLC. It probably would have been successful as a smaller-scale DLC pack for Far Cry 3 but Ubisoft took a risk, pricing it at $20 and making it a digital-only title.

Things weren’t going too badly for Ubisoft before this. Assassin’s Creed was already a successful yearly sequel franchise – in fact, the publisher was experimenting with releasing a “full-fledged” Assassin’s Creed title and a side game at the time. This would be seen with Assassin’s Creed 3 and Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation in 2013, and later repeated with Assassin’s Creed Unity and Assassin’s Creed Rogue in 2014. Yes, they were all on different platforms but the fact that they’ve arrived for current gen consoles since then makes Ubisoft’s goal of building a long-term catalog all the more obvious now.

Pre-Blood Dragon, titles were still very much in the traditional DLC cycle. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier received three DLC packs; Trials Evolution only received one DLC pack; and Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag received a single-player expansion in Freedom Cry (which would release as a standalone title in February 2014, not-so-coincidentally after the success of Blood Dragon). Despite releasing post-Blood Dragon, Splinter Cell: Blacklist also falls in the same category with its Homeland Pack which only added two new maps, some weapons, and new skins for $6.99. The game released only a few months after Blood Dragon so it makes sense that it would stick to a more old-school DLC model.

Of course, we all know what happened in 2014. Despite being fairly successful, Watch Dogs faced a firestorm of controversy over its graphical downgrades, bugs and much more. It still had Ubisoft’s patented Season Pass with DLC packs but that was pretty overshadowed by all the controversy. Such was the blow-back that it even affected launch week sales of Watch Dogs 2.

"2015 would see Ubisoft truly begin diversifying its DLC portfolio. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege launched and despite receiving heaps of criticism from the outset, it laid the foundation for eventual Yearly Passes."

A similar trend was observed with Assassin’s Creed Unity – it launched in a broken state, had a Season Pass with a main story expansion (Dead Kings), some additional single-player/ content (The Secrets of the Revolution Pack) and two packs with new gear, weapons and outfits (Underground Armory Pack being free and Revolutionary Armaments Pack being paid). Once again, the controversy over Unity’s launch would bleed over into launch week sales for Syndicate besides a general exhaustion with Assassin’s Creed as a franchise.

Granted, Far Cry 4 was better received but the fatigue with Ubisoft’s open world approach was becoming obvious. Far Cry 4 featured a bit more experimentation with its single-player content. Instead of only offering new missions and PvP maps, we also got Escape from Durgesh Prison, a 30 minute race to escape. Completing quests added more time and upgrades while permadeath forced you to restart from the beginning (albeit with any upgrades intact). Valley of the Yetis featured a more robust story component but also introduced base-building and upgrading (which would return as a core mechanic in Far Cry New Dawn). Then you had the standard Hurk Deluxe Pack which added new missions and weapons.

2015 would see Ubisoft truly begin diversifying its DLC portfolio. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege launched and despite receiving heaps of criticism from the outset, it laid the foundation for eventual Yearly Passes. In 2016, Far Cry Primal arrived and served as a standalone title that utilized Far Cry 4’s map. It presented a completely new narrative and mixed up the gameplay significantly by focusing on hunting, older weapons like spears, and warring with other factions. By March 2016, Ubisoft made a major foray into games-as-a-service with Tom Clancy’s The Division.

Though the plan was to initially have three expansion packs and a Season Pass, each expansion was its own self-contained experience. The only real benefit of completing them was for gear that could be carried over into the main game. In terms of narrative and world-building, they had no effect on the base game, not counting minor changes to some existing areas or being able to earn caches containing loot for use in almost all activities.

"Far Cry 5’s approach was a mix of free content updates and an expansion pass that contained three standalone experiences. This could be looked at as trying to create three potential Blood Dragon-like games for the price of one Season Pass."

Underground was a randomly generated set of dungeons; Survival was a battle royale-esque fight for extraction; and Last Stand introduced the game’s first dedicated PvP mode. The main plot-line wasn’t advanced in any significant way but it also meant you didn’t have to own any of the DLC. This became more apparent with Ubisoft’s Year 2 plan which introduced Global Events, Resistance and Skirmish with a brand new area, completely free for all players. Cosmetic-only loot boxes would be subsequently introduced but due to easily earning key fragments and the abundance of outfits as is, most players didn’t take issue with this.

As Rainbow Six: Siege received major improvements to its core gameplay and structure, it introduced its Year 1 Pass. This essentially provided 7 days early access to the new Operators, a Renown boost, Credits for spending in the shop and five daily challenges to earn even more Renown. It wasn’t so much pay-to-win as “pay to get an advance start”. After all, everyone got the new maps for free at roughly the same time. If you were super competitive and wanted to know how the new Operators interacted with these maps, then the pass was for you. Ditto for if you wanted more cosmetics because you were that dedicated to the game,.

Far Cry 5’s approach was a mix of free content updates and an expansion pass that contained three standalone experiences. This could be looked at as trying to create three potential Blood Dragon-like games for the price of one Season Pass. It actually harks back to that Ubisoft survey in 2015 which asked players what they would like to see. A “futuristic, sci-fi setting on another planet” is most likely a reference to Far Cry 5’s Lost on Mars while Hours of Darkness is set during the Vietnam war and Dead Living Zombies takes place during an undead outbreak.

Of course, we recently got Far Cry New Dawn, a standalone title that was actually set several years after the events of Far Cry 5. Though reusing the same map, it had enough new mechanics (including more base-building and outpost attacking) along with a new story to warrant its reduced price point.

"Assassin’s Creed Odyssey took things even further with monthly updates that introduced modes like New Game Plus, free story quests in The Lost Tales of Greece, new cosmetics and gear, level scaling options and so on. That’s in addition to a gargantuan amount of base content."

Cut back to Ghost Recon: Wildlands in 2017 which, again, featured two expansion packs – Narco Road and Fallen Ghosts. Both offered self-contained experiences – you couldn’t transfer equipment and progress to the base game. Meanwhile, the base game would see updates like Special Events, free quests and the addition of Tier 1 Mode for end-game players. For the game’s second year, Ubisoft introduced the Year 2 Pass. This provided cosmetics and early access to new classes in the new Ghost War PvP mode (which was added for free and received additional maps afterwards). It also ensured players had early access to the new Special Operations – special story missions that would crossover into other Ubisoft franchises. The introduction of various tiers of loot boxes also came with the new content updates which were free for everyone.

Remember The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and its expansions? It seems Ubisoft has found an interesting plan to pursue games-as-a-service in the single-player, open world action RPG space as well. Assassin’s Creed Origins featured an in-game cash shop and added free content over time including Explorer Mode, an editor for PC players to mess about with any setting and Super Bosses to battle for rare loot. It also brought in two expansion packs with new regions and substantial story content.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey took things even further with monthly updates that introduced modes like New Game Plus, free story quests in The Lost Tales of Greece, new cosmetics and gear, level scaling options and so on. That’s in addition to a gargantuan amount of base content. Even the expansions took a more episodic approach – Legacy of the First Blade was divided into three, easily consumable episodes that introduced new weapons and abilities. As a whole, you could comfortably complete these and then either try out other new features or simply return to the game next month. Once again, you don’t need these expansions to get the most out of Odyssey – the base game already delivers dozens, if not hundreds of hours of content.

It’s an intriguing model, one that combines the games-as-a-service model with single-player expansions but without spending too many resources on brand new regions, dozens of new enemy types, tons of new loot, etc. Through a combination of new gameplay systems like Mastery Progression, balance tweaks, level cap increases and reasons to replay the entire game, Ubisoft is ensuring that fans returning to Odyssey have reason to stay.

"The company has talked about developing games that stick around for several years, seeing substantial updates and growing ever larger as a result (as opposed to a simple yearly sequel strategy)."

Now we have The Division 2 launching with tons of content, ensuring plenty of story and lore for those in it for the long haul along with plenty of end-game opportunities for those seeking the best loot. More content is on the way including World Tier 5, the first raid, the likely introduction of Gear Sets and Episodes containing new story missions, areas and much more. Ubisoft Massive has also promised multiple raids throughout the first year of the game, all free. Of course, there are loot boxes and Year 1 Pass if you want 7 days early access and some goodies but once again, it’s not necessary to avail of the free content.

So to summarize, this is Ubisoft’s current slate of DLC strategies:

• Standalone expansions that reuse a previous game’s assets like map design with new stories, some new mechanics and new characters. Example: Far Cry New Dawn.
• Expansions that don’t much alter the base game (sometimes at all) while also providing dramatically different standalone experiences. Examples: Ghost Recon Wildlands’ Narco Road and Fallen Ghosts, The Division’s Survival and Underground, Far Cry 5’s Season Pass DLC.
• Free content updates and features which often come with updates to the in-game cash shop. Examples: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Division 2.
• Yearly Passes which provide exclusive cosmetics, boosters and early access to new content. Examples: Ghost Recon Wildlands Year 2, Rainbow Six: Siege, The Division 2, For Honor.
• Single-player expansions but broken up into episodes and spread several weeks apart. These introduce new mechanics, weapons and abilities while also remaining baked into the main game. Perhaps the closest to “traditional” single-player DLC. Example: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

In this day and age of free to play titles, games-as-a-service titles, triple A releases, multiplayer-centric games and “grind” games, it’s easy to dismiss single-player expansions as being outdated. However, companies like Ubisoft are finding new ways to integrate them into their very large base experiences. The company has talked about developing games that stick around for several years, seeing substantial updates and growing ever larger as a result (as opposed to a simple yearly sequel strategy). This doesn’t mean you won’t see a trend like, say, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey releasing a year after Origins but it does mean that the former will have a much longer shelf-life as a result.

Intrinsically, this creates more potential revenue streams for the company to pursue without having to commit too many resources. On the surface, it heightens the profile of Ubisoft as a company that cares about its games, even if they suffer from a few glitches at launch. But at the end of the day, the plan was to always support some titles in the long-term, even if the method of doing so (see “Operation Health” for Rainbow Six Siege and update 1.3 for The Division) was based off of community feedback and requests.

"All of this is a big step up from the Ubisoft of old, which released technically troubled games to the ire of fans and critics everywhere."

Credit must be given to Ubisoft for improving the overall quality control of its titles at launch as well. However, it’s pretty crazy to see the company branch out into so many different DLC opportunities. It has Yearly Passes for early access to new content, free quests, story expansions, story expansions that serve as standalone games, new areas, new modes, new features, new Operators, the list goes on. And with the company lending its support to Google Stadia, a game streaming platform which promises to eliminate large downloads for the latest updates (among many other things), Ubisoft could be envisioning a future where it can have major triple-A releases on every platform that are supported for years at a time that exist at their own standalone franchises. These would have robust cash shops for those who want to attach additional support to the brand.

All of this is a big step up from the Ubisoft of old, which released technically troubled games to the ire of fans and critics everywhere. While one could criticize this approach as effectively homogenizing several of the company’s properties, stripping away the identity of Assassin’s Creed and Ghost Recon in favour of more generic sandboxes that tick all the open world requirements, Ubisoft has shown an ability to quickly iterate on things that aren’t working. Assassin’s Creed Syndicate released in 2015, for instance, and just two years later, the company reinvented the franchise into an open world action RPG with a heavier emphasis on exploration and choice-driven quests. Keep in mind that this is after Syndicate was well received by critics and eventually saw first-week sales pick up.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey took the same tenets of Origins but leaned much harder into the action RPG looter approach that defines games like Path of Exile and Warframe while being easier for the vast majority to get into. For a crowd craving more story-based open world RPGs like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Horizon: Zero Dawn, it implemented more choice-based gameplay, dialogue systems and multi-part quests.

No Ubisoft game is without criticism though. Ghost Recon Wildlands’ cosmetic loot boxes and lack of PvE content, complaints of excessive grinding in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (which would be further exacerbated by the existence of XP boosters), PvP balance concerns in The Division 2, whatever happens to ail Rainbow Six Siege in any given month – the list goes on.

"However you may look at it, this is a intriguing time for Ubisoft. What will the company introduce next and how long will it leverage current models of content delivery?"

Imagine the support structure and community teams required to constantly address PvE vs. PvP balance and loot droprates in The Division 2 or balance concerns and story direction choices in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Compared to the days of haphazard development on Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, it’s almost miraculous that Ubisoft is delivering post-launch content and new games at such a fast pace while also trying new things like Starlink: Battle for Atlas, Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle and the upcoming Skull and Bones.

Ubisoft has also shown an apt hand at staying ahead of the monetization curb while still appealing to and retaining the vast majority of consumers. There’s probably something to be said about the company leaning much more into open world titles with boat-loads of content. Does all that content make for a better experience on a narrative and gameplay level or is it simply there to ensure all kinds of players have something to do? Is Assassin’s Creed Odyssey a better game because it caters to story-hungry fans while also having random contracts, gear grinding, best-in-slot optimization, fetch quests, large Conquest battles and so on? For that matter, is The Division 2 served better as a looter shooter by including so many random activities to complete along with social activities instead of a more narrative-focused, single-player campaign with optional co-op? Perhaps a discussion for another day.

However you may look at it, this is a intriguing time for Ubisoft. What will the company introduce next and how long will it leverage current models of content delivery? What does the future hold especially as conversations about crunch culture and the like keep happening? How will Ubisoft leverage deals with storefronts like the Epic Games Store and strengthen its own brand at the same time? Time will tell but if you have even a passing interest in the majority of Ubisoft’s offerings, chances are you’ll be in it for the long haul. And in age where the usual expansions don’t quite cut it in terms of revenue, what more could a major triple A publisher want?

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Do keep in mind, that though it’s natural to assume that when we talk about big game maps, we might be talking about open world games only- but that’s not the case. Whether its an open world game, or an open ended game that’s not particularly open world, or a huge map that we’ve seen in multiplayer play- it’s all fair game for this list. Also, do keep in mind that randomly generated maps were not considered for this feature.

A final note before we begin- there’s every possibility that we might have missed out on some game you were expecting to see on this list, and if we did, it’s either because the exact sizes of their maps aren’t known to us, or because we simply forgot! If it’s the former, and you know what the sizes are, please tell us! If it’s the latter, please remind us.

So without further ado, let’s jump into it.

#50. ASSASSIN’S CREED UNITY

The open world action by developers Ubisoft has its fair share of issues, sure, but its world is one aspect that can’t be faulted. It’s a joy to explore, and it’s also pretty big. At about 2.4 km2, there’s more than enough space in this virtual world to explore and lose yourself in.

Black Panther

Remember that iconic scene near the waterfall in Black Panther? No, not the second more tragic scene but the first one as T’Challa battles M’Baku for the title of king. Odyssey has a slight reference to that – just head to the Gortyn Waterfall in Messara and you’ll find two men battling it out on a cliff overlooking a waterfall. A few spectators are even witnessing this, cheering jubilantly. You can even kick one of the combatants down the waterfall and decide the battle for them, just like in the movie! Well, almost.