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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."
Sims, Black & white (the first 1), Morrowind, now those have more in common with the sandbox style of play. Assassin's creed has fairly open levels to be sure, but I heard with all your wall climbing abilities there are still far too many walls the game limits you from going beyond.
Maybe it isn't such a good idea to drop a guy off in front of his home when a thousand police are chasing you?
I think it only works where the world is itself interesting enough to make the game worth playing. I love sandbox games, though admittedly I seldom finish them, because finishing to me seems like it's missing the point.
I think a dynamic world coupled with a multi-user environment offers a lot of sandbox possibilities. Imagine GTA if you could be a cop, shooting down other dumbasses who were running over prostitutes? That'd be a hell of a game.
I think in the long run the genre will transition to MMOs...That's the natural progression, because the biggest weakness of the MMO is that there isn't enough content, and the biggest weakness of the sandbox game is that the content is diluted by the fact that you can effectively skip it if you don't want to do it. I think Eve has done a good job of moving in this direction. I think you'll see others following that lead.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This is how I feel about Assassin's Creed: If you want it to be the most repetitive game ever, it can be. Same with GTA. You can use your sword in every battle, only doing counter-attacks and the combat then sucks. However, you can force yourself to swap weapons in the middle of the fight to fight a different style, and it becomes fun. You can solve the quests (of which there are about 5) the same way each time, or you can find new ways of completing the tasks, adding variation to the game.
Yeah, some people might complain that you can play "massive gaurd slaughter" Creed, but is that worse than a game that fails you out of any mission where you break your cover? And, If I were Ubisoft, I would patch the game so when you were in the "Kingdom" horse riding could be done at full speed. That's my only major complaint. It's a nice solid game though, at least as good as Mass Effect. However, I find myself playing COD4 more often than AC.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
I didn't even realize Assassin's Creed was supposed to be considered a "sandbox" game.... What a crock. The "plot" pulls you out of where you are and drops you on a linear path all the time. It's practically a definition of a linear game. Having multiple ways of accomplishing an objective doesn't make the game a sandbox game if the plot is still linear and the places you can go at any given time are limited.
I had this complaint about Oblivion when I played it the first time. The game is more unstructured than Morrowind (its prequel). Oblivion boasts having like 200+ caves to explore or something. But, the enemies and the items they drop totally depend on the level you're at. If you're level 1, they drop wooden arrows and cloth armor. If you're level 10, they drop steel arrows and mithril armor. So, when faced with the question, "Should I explore this cave or should I explore that cave?" you eventually realize it literally doesn't matter. At level X, every cave will have the same types of enemies and rewards.* It totally takes the fun out of exploring for the sake of exploring.
Don't get me wrong, I think Oblivion is a great game. The "solution" to this problem, I discovered, was to explore the world of Oblivion through its quests. If a quest told me to go to a cave, it was because there was actually something interesting to do in it that the quest triggered. But, paradoxically, that lead to a more structured game than Morrowind even though the intention was the opposite. In Oblivion, the routine became "Get the quest, explore the cave" over and over again. In Morrowind, while there was that, there was also "Explore the cave just for the fun of it".
*I am simplifying here. There are about 3 different kinds of caves. Type A will have monster/drop 1,2,3 at level 1, Type B will have monster/drop 3,4,5 at level 1, Type C will have monster/drop 5,6,7 at level 1, etc.
Maybe it has something to do with AS moving around 2 million units even with all the bad press? Clashing opinions is the heart of controversy, and AS has that in spades. Some folks love it, some folks hate it, almost everyone interested in video games knows about it. Controversies get discussed. Just because you didn't like it or think it didn't live up to what you imagined it should be doesn't mean there isn't something to talk about.