Assassin's Creed And the Future of Sandbox Games

Wired's Game|Life blog, and the site of gaming academic Henry Jenkins, discuss sandbox games and the impact of Assassin's Creed . The relevant discussion on Jenkins' site is actually written by GAMBIT lab supervisor Matthew Weise. He argues that open-ended worlds, by their very nature, require some restraints on the player's avatar. Otherwise, the game's meaning is diluted. Likewise, if you're going for a 'sandbox' world, allow that limited character unlimited opportunities. "When I think of open-ended world design I tend to think of worlds that don't involve such limitations. Call it the result of a childhood playing Ultima. I think of worlds in which, if you need to kill the dragon in the cave and you happen to have a drill, there's no reason you can't just drill straight down, bypassing all his little traps, and kill the bastard. That's open-ended to me. That's sandbox. The pleasure of such incredible agency is much more satisfying than any forced narrative structure."

Comments

Sandy Assassin's Creed

[hansamurai]

Having played through Assassin's Creed, the best thing the game has going for it is its open world. The game is the single most repetitive game I have ever played, partly from how open it is. While its openness is beneficial for exploration (finding and climbing viewpoints is awesome), going from point A to point B should only take X number of minutes, but actually takes 5X because guards are spotting you from a 100 feet away because you're not walking as slow as possible. I really had high hopes for this game and while the first few hours are fun, if you get through them you have basically beaten the game. Here's my full review here.

I've never read Henry Jenkins but I totally agree with him that Metal Gear Solid and Mario 64 are really good sandbox games, even if they aren't the typical open game.

Re:Sandy Assassin's Creed

[hansamurai]

Here is how I found it repetitive, expanding some on my review.

Combat: You are correct that you can switch weapons up in battle, and I found myself doing that constantly near the end when the game threw 25 guys at you at once for on reason other than to throw 25 guys at you at once. And I admit that when I found out how cool it was to fight with just the assassin's blade by only countering, I had more fun. But, the problem is every large fight seemed to go about the same way. About five guys would approach you, they'd try to surround you so you'd work yourself between them so their angle of attack was less. Then you'd wait until they tried to kill you and then counter them. You could start an attack of your own but you will no doubt get hit after being parried for the fourth time in a row. So you wait and take them out slowly and try to use momentum from killing the guards on the next one and just hope it works. You kill a guard and then another one will approach and eventually all the guards in the area will be dead. That's essentially every skirmish in the game right there. You can start them off differently, and I tried many different starts, but the next 90% is the same.

Missions: Like you said, there are something like five types of missions, and you need to do I think three of them per target to get enough information. Of course you can do them all, but some of them are pretty obnoxious because of the A.I. Pickpocketing and eavesdropping are jokes and just require you to basically sit there and press one button and the right time. Beating someone up is simple, just listen to them talk for a minute about some crap and then follow them into the alley. Then there was a mini-assassination where you take out a target for someone, I think you were timed for that which is not very good gameplay. And I can't even remember if there was another type. Now imagine doing three of these nine times throughout the game. That's 27 times you're just sitting on a park bench or trying to press B at the right moment to pickpocket someone. Repetitive.

Assassinations: Now that you know where your target is, you go there and are "treated" to a five minute cutscene of your target doing bad things so you know you're not making a mistake of killing them. Basically the game injects some morals to make sure you don't kill someone that might possibly be innocent. Usually the target kills someone or spouts out mean things. Then after they're done talking, you try to make your move. Most times you will be seen by the guards and then you'll have to chase your target or maybe you'll get lucky and kill them. Then you're treated to another five minute cutscene of your target explaining why they shouldn't die, blah blah blah (it's a trippy scene, weird stuff and out of place). But you kill them anyway. Then you run away to your hideout. Repeat that nine times for the game.

So those are the three levels of repetitiveness. Repeat each of those nine times and you have the entire game. In my review I say you really only need to do one or two of them to get a feel for what the rest of the game is like because the game doesn't really try anything new later. It's disappointing. I'd go into more but gotta take care of some things. Respond if you'd like and I'll reply again.