Ubisoft’s recent decision to split their “Assassin’s Creed” franchise into two parts may have come back to bite them, at least due to the way they have decided to approach the situation. The company wanted to release two games at the same time, one with the pirate theme of “Black Flag” and another, more traditional “Assassin’s Creed” game that takes the series back to its roots. The game in question, “Assassin’s Creed: Unity”, has been met with widespread negativity immediately after its release.
Most of the criticism has been aimed at the current technical state of the game, which is barely playable. Glitches are everywhere, including issues with animations, physics, AI, connectivity and more. Players have been recording videos of their gameplay experiences and putting them online, sharing ridiculous situations such as NPCs floating in the air, the player character climbing invisible walls in the middle of an open field, characters getting stuck in unbelievable poses, random disconnects, and more.
On the other hand, it’s obvious that a lot of work has gone into the game – the world is finely detailed, the story is good, and the gameplay is actually quite good when one ignores the glitches. So what happened? Ubisoft wanted to have both their new “Assassin’s Creed” titles out in time for the holiday season, but it seems that it would have been wiser to release just “Rogue”, leaving “Unity” for later so it can be given more polish.
Indeed, most of the game’s problems seem to boil down to a lack of polish. If the developers had been given a few more months to properly test and finish the game, it could have been an instant hit. Instead, they were forced to rush it out to meet the demands of an increasingly greedy management team running the show at Ubisoft. The company has several major releases lined up for this year, including “Far Cry 4”, so it’s not even a matter of financial necessity – pushing this game out so quickly simply shows a lack of care for product quality and customer satisfaction.
The company has been quick to release updates for the game that have addressed at least some of the issues, but the damage is already done. This could have very well dealt a major blow to customer trust in Ubisoft, and in pre-orders in general. The old quote in the gaming industry that “a delayed game is eventually released, but a bad game is bad forever” holds true even in an age where developers can easily fix problems with their games in mere hours. First impressions will always matter strongly, and Ubisoft have managed to create a very negative one about their latest title.