When I was nine years old, there was a new game called Assassin’s Creed that I played at a friend’s house. Should I have been playing it? Shut up. It was an incredible game that blew me away, mainly because you could just… climb buildings? Whaaaaat?
That feature was revolutionary in my mind and made me realise how much freedom games could give us. Sure, being a hooded assassin and making discreet kills was something you could do, but I was obsessed with climbing the largest towers and seeing the sandbox that was laid out before me.
Here we are, 17 years later, and Assassin’s Creed is still all about the sprawling sandbox it provides for us, but unfortunately, that’s pretty much all it’s about now.
Too Much Exploration, Not Enough History Explored
Open-world games used to be a lot more limited, at least compared to what’s possible nowadays. Assassin’s Creed (and Ubisoft in general) was at the forefront of this genre, laying down the foundations for what could be done and how it could be done. We’re still haunted by towers we need to climb to unlock more of the map in games today.
The thing is, when we look back, Assassin’s Creed is a significant pillar in this industry. While I don’t believe it’s always been as great as people would have you believe, I do recognise the impact the games have had – on myself, sure, but on video games as a whole, too. The games innovated a lot more than just the open-world formula, but almost two decades later, they’re only remembered for that – and quite frankly, they don’t innovate much anymore.
This goes for Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and even the short-lived Watch Dogs.
I loved the freedom of climbing buildings and having a pocket of history to explore at my leisure, but, more importantly, I also loved the characters, the heart, the story, and – at the end of it all – the simplicity. It remained straightforward, it remained focused: here is a list of guys, go kill those guys. Now, I don’t quite know where to look, and I keep playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows in 20-minute increments because I just feel too overwhelmed to have my brain that switched on for navigating wilderness to track down more question marks on the map.
I’ll Keep Trying, But My Efforts Are Running Thin
As I play my short sessions of Assassin’s Creed Shadows – which I am enjoying in the moments before I get overstimulated, for the record – I can’t help but picture things on a smaller scale. I loved Origins, I loved Odyssey – which bumped up the world scale significantly, though with plenty of naval focus – and I loved Valhalla, despite it taking 100 hours to roll the credits. But now, even though I love the stealth gameplay and gorgeous scenery of Shadows, I just wish it was a smaller game.
The flashback sequences, in particular, make me feel this way. When Naoe rests and practices her Kuji-kiri, we get to play out a glimpse of her earlier life and her training, including the emotional moment of her first time killing another person. I love these sections, and they even feel like a stronger tutorial than the actual tutorials that came before – so why isn’t this structure the focus?
In these sections, the scenery is still gorgeous, the gameplay is just as fun, and the focus drives a lot more emotion out of the situations – to be blunt, the game loses nothing when the open world is taken away; It gains a lot more, and once it’s over and the world opens back up, my interest fades at the thought of getting to wherever I need to head next.
I love open-world games, and I have since that first promise of possibility when I was nine years old. But now the huge map feels like a pointless requirement that just keeps getting more tedious rather than innovative, especially when it comes to Assassin’s Creed.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
- Released
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March 20, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language