shutting down online services for old Assassin's Creed games, it's worth taking a look back at the franchise's early days and examining the roots of Ubisoft's problems with bloat and repetition.
It's a popular opinion that Assassin's Creed 2 is one of the best games in the franchise, with many going as far as to label it one of the best games of all time. This praise is more than deserved, as Assassin's Creed 2 marked a huge step forward for Ubisoft as a developer and for adventure games as a whole. The game's virtual rendition of Renaissance Italy is stunning, and the story of Ezio Auditore (which would be expanded upon in two direct sequels - Brotherhood and Revelations) is one of the best in Ubisoft's catalog. It can feel like stepping into history while playing the game, a sensation that is no doubt aided by the many historical figures who appear in Assassin's Creed 2.
With all that said, Assassin's Creed 2 was also the birthplace of game design decisions that would go on to define Ubisoft's now-controversial reputation. With its gorgeous and expansive map came things like collectibles and side activities that, while perhaps not an explicit issue at the time, would grow into what many consider the bloat that is present in modern Assassin's Creed games along with other Ubisoft series like Far Cry. Assassin's Creed 2 has aged well in the eyes of many fans, but it also planted the seeds of present-day Ubisoft problems.
Assassin's Creed 2 Kicked Off Ubisoft's Map Marker Obsession
Assassin's Creed 2 broke onto the scene long before memes started bashing Ubisoft for its cluttered game design. As such, it was easy to overlook just how much there is to do in the game. Aside from the stellar main campaign, there are a number of collectibles and side quests to find, including Petruccio's 100 feathers, various treasures, parkour races, and investment opportunities for Villa Monteriggioni. Additional exploration content, such as discovering the game's many synchronization points, further inflated the game's bevy of optional content. For players looking to get the most out of the game, Assassin's Creed offers plenty to keep busy.
Granted, the side content of Assassin's Creed 2 is actually a point of praise for many players, as it offered satisfying endgame and narrative experiences. This is a more than fair assessment as, while many players today are often wondering if open-world games like Assassin's Creed are too big, Assassin's Creed 2's map was almost the perfect size, offering enough content for players to get their money's worth without becoming overwhelming. The content itself was also solid, especially iconic activities like the Assassin's Tombs, which were carefully crafted, unique, and offered worthwhile rewards.
However, Ubisoft learned the wrong lessons from the side activities in Assassin's Creed 2. Whereas players may have looked at AC2's multitudinous map markers and saw exciting opportunities and mysteries to uncover, modern Ubisoft maps are more likely to fill players with a feeling of dread and overwhelm them, as there is simply too much to do. This high volume of side content, coupled with Ubisoft's dense annual release schedule, means that collectibles and side activities have almost no chance at approaching the quality of Assassin's Creed 2's. Nowhere is this clearer than in 2020's Assassin's Creed Valhalla, whose ongoing festivals and other live events heap more flaccid content onto a game that already has far too much to do. This would not be as much of an issue if the content were consistently diverse, but Ubisoft games have grown less varied in the years since AC2 released.
Ubisoft Established Repetition With Assassin's Creed 2
There's an argument to be made that repetitive content was born in the first Assassin's Creed, as that game featured just a handful of mechanics and minigames for players to interact with. However, Ubisoft truly began to fall into its unhealthy habit of reusing features, activities, and mechanics in Assassin's Creed 2. As previously mentioned, AC2 had a huge amount of side content, but much of it was repeated. There is little difference between the first feather that Ezio collects for Petruccio and the 100th, for instance. This repetition is present over the course of Ezio's story in Assassin's Creed 2 as well, with the main campaign being comprised of a considerable amount of trailing missions and straightforward brawls.
Once again, this repetition was not an outstanding issue in Assassin's Creed 2 for a few reasons. For one thing, players had not seen many historically-focused games of this scale and quality in 2009, so expectations may have been lower. In that same vein, Assassin's Creed 2 was truly innovative from both a technical and design standpoint, so the more repetitive elements managed to feel fresh throughout the course of the experience. AC2 was also helped by having an entertaining, engaging, well-crafted narrative, which gave these activities a sense of purpose.
Current-day Ubisoft hasn't evolved much beyond Assassin's Creed 2, and as a result is still adopting much of the design principles and mission structure from that title to games released a decade later. Uninspired Assassin's Creed DLCs like The Siege of Paris and post-launch content for other Ubisoft games have failed to iterate upon this repetitive game structure as well, which exacerbates the problem. Contemporary Ubisoft games also don't offer the same narrative heft as Assassin's Creed 2, which makes the studio and publisher's rote game design even more apparent.
Assassin's Creed 2 is a great game, and that's part of the issue; perhaps due to its positive reception, Ubisoft has applied many of the elements that made the game such a success to numerous sequels and other series, despite AC2's innovation serving as a major reason for its success. Many of the most loathsome Ubisoft staples, such as innumerable map markers, copy-paste side content, and illuminating waypoint towers, are all present in Assassin's Creed 2. These staples were novel at the time, but they are now considered among the Ubisoft tropes that should be avoided. Fans may yearn for a return for the glory days of Assassin's Creed 2, and for good reason, but in many ways it was the start of many of Ubisoft's problems.
