Alex Hutchinson Leaves Ubisoft

[PZ]

Assassin's Creed 3, Far Cry 4 Creative Director Alex Hutchinson Leaves Ubisoft

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/04/08/assassins-creed-3-far-cry-4-creative-director-alex-hutchinson-leaves-ubisoft

[LowPolyOWG]

So, his next game will feature radio towers/other "Do this to open next area" and so on?

[PZ]

I sure hope not - completing tasks to open an area is one of the stupidest things I dislike about some games. What kind of open world requires you to complete tasks before you can visit.

That in real life would be as lame as requiring me to find and kill the spider in my living room, then burn the back yard before I am allowed to go to my barn. What kind of immersion into an open world is stupid like that.

[LowPolyOWG]

Yeah and especially when the map is locked behind missions. I think UBI*bleep* improved their formula in WD2, I immediately bought the AS50 when I had enough cash as the weapon was unlocked from the start.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Well, technically, you didn't have to free a radio tower to be able to go certain places, it was just to see them on the map. But having to complete a certain amount of the game in order to open the second area of the map, that was dumb. Like in Fallout 4, if you want to head as far south and east as you can early in the game, you can, but the enemies there will own you fast if you're not careful. But, you can go there if you want.

[PZ]

Totally okay to have a mechanism to go where you want even if the map does not reveal. However, in modern warfare it is difficult to imagine that a team will go into an area without at least a semi-accurate map of some kind.  Developing the map as you go seems more appropriate for old technology like Assassin's Creed times.

In the past week I have nearly completed a play through of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, and while I find many aspects of the game quite enjoyable, the locked map parts are annoying. I'd like to be able to defeat the Borgia towers in order to claim my Brutus armor, but you can't get to the last area until nearly the last sequence (. In my opinion that goes against the idea of an open world, when in fact, you are still constrained to the artificial limitations imposed by the developers.

I'm glad that UBI*bleep* is changing that stupid way of thinking

[Dweller_Benthos]

Right the arbitrary obstructions seem to make little to no sense in the way games are made these days, at least open world ones. In Fallout 4, I had some items I grabbed from some of the more difficult areas early in the game, but in Far Cry 4 you can't do that because that entire area is off limits. Makes no sense.

[PZ]

Truly - I like the mods that open the entire world from the start

[Art Blade]

I like the games in which the entire world is open from the start and no mods needed for that.

[PZ]

Me too, but when the developers are deliberately obstructionistic, then mods appear to be the only solution 

[BinnZ]

I liked the way FC2 was divided into two maps. It was still pretty open world to me. And there was a lot to guess left halfway the game. Same in FC3, I liked the idea knowing that there is a second island, that you eventually be able to explore. I also liked the way in GTA San Andreas 2 of 3 islands were locked at first. I even made a sport of going there, getting the obligatory 4 star wanted level, and obtain everything you could on those islands (findables, unlocks etc.) without dying, and having to safely make it back to the first island where your only safe house was, so you could save your progress.
The way FC3 worked, with watch towers etc. was a one timer only for me. When I heard FC4 was the same, that was one of the reasons why I didn't buy it; it was too much of the same.

[durian]

If I remember correctly, back in 2010 Red Dead Redemption lets the player free roam from the beginning. Part of the problem with the radio towers was that it's utterly tedious to do them,  and  the fact that there's a ton of them,  I have to wonder, did any of UBI*bleep* devs not feel it's very boring at all or they actually enjoyed it ? Horizon Zero Dawn, a PS4 exclusive open world game by Amsterdam based dev Guerilla Games (creators of Killzone series which I quite enjoyed) came out recently has some kind of towers too but unlike in FC3, these towers are fun and there are only 7 in the entire game.

[LowPolyOWG]

Maybe they wanted to sell CoD?  Like, rehash the same concept over and over again althought with different locales? Honestly, I can agree with BinnZ, FC2 was better in that aspect. While still locked, the game had its world open from the start at least.

[PZ]

I actually preferred all the maps open from the start (with mods) in FC3/4 because I made my way to the former locked map and managed to snag a good weapon which I took back to the original map. it was more fun for me with a good weapon, but then again, I like cheating at my games 

I guess the take home lesson is that everyone has their gaming preferences, and I wish that the developers would put those options into the menu system.