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

Assassin's Creed was no sandbox...

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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.

Re:Sandy Assassin's Creed

[flitty]

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.