If there’s one rule game designers should take into account, it’s this: bullshit simply will not fly in the internet age, at least not for long. Ubisoft should have known better, writes Don Rowe.
Creating game worlds from scratch is hard and expensive. Every blade of grass, every bird, every blood-soaked temple to the sun lord has to be crafted by hand, modeled, textured and placed somewhere on a similarly painstakingly crafted landscape.
So, under the hideous pressure of a yearly release cycle, it seems like the makers behind the latest Far Cry game decided to just say fuck that, and recycled last year’s Far Cry 4 map, as noticed by Gamepressure. We cobbled together Gamepressure’s screenshots into one gif for smooth comparison.
Can you blame Ubisoft? They’ve been busy programming mountable saber tooth tigers, drawing cave paintings and generally trying to flesh out some kind of cohesive narrative in a game set before the advent of agriculture. Who has time for digging deep into the digital flesh of some cyber earth, driving mountains into the sky and spraying rivers down their slopes? And even if they did, would you expect anything more from the company behind Assassins Creed?
The reaction online has ranged from ‘meh, whatevs’ through ‘that was lazy’ all the way to outright attacks at the ‘addicts defending their scam-artist drug dealer to justify getting their fix.’
In my opinion, we should be grateful just for new characters. Metal Gear Solid keep using that Snake fella, Mario hasn’t changed his overalls since 1981, and if I see another Pikachu I might puke. Everything is a remix, there’s nothing new under the sun, some other clichés about originality.
Just kidding. Ubisoft have built an industry around shitty rehashes. Anyone who expected different from Far Cry Primal hasn’t been paying attention.
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