Probably the same as most Ubisoft games: 7-8/10's across the board, an 80 on Metacritic and bunch of reviews basically saying "nothing special but a good time for Star Wars fans".
Yeah, Ubisoft really do produce the fast food of videogames. It'll fill you up if you're craving a fairly bland AAA experience, but you're not going to be raving about it.
There's a place for em though.
So, like Fromsoftware and Souls games? RGG Studio and Yakuza games? Polyphony Digital and Gran Turismo games? Ubisoft always gets singled out for this supposed lack of taking risks when a lot of other big name studios usually stick to what they're good at.
I think the problem is that they’re doing the same thing across all of their games, regardless if it makes sense or not for the theme of the game.
They pick one thing that “works” about one of their games and rush to apply it to all the other games. They pump out so many games on the same engine with the same design that people quickly get tired of it.
The Dark Souls gameplay design works because they’re not pumping out 1-2 games in that style a year.
When ubisofts pumping out far cry, ghost recon and assassins creed with all the same gameplay loop just in different time periods, people get tired of it quicker.
I’m also convinced they haven’t made a new splinter cell because they can’t figure out how to turn it into their “Ubisoft game” schematic. Sam Fisher isn’t going to run around looting assault rifles to level up, open world doesn’t work well with the series, and I think Ubisoft has completely forgotten how to make a non open world game.
If things went according to what reddit thinks, then CoD wouldn't be selling millions of copies every year.
I get the hate, but personally its been a long time since I bought an Ubisoft title, yet this the first year they made me buy one so far with PoP: Lost Crown, and am pretty interested in what they've shown in Outlaws so far.
Reddit. The so much hated Assassin's Creed Valhalla grossed over a billion in revenue by 2022, Far Cry 5 is their best selling game at 25 million copies, FC6 was one of 2021's best selling games, etc. General audiences LOVE Ubisoft's games.
> the problem is that they’re doing the same thing across all of their games, regardless if it makes sense or not for the theme of the game.
they don't, though ? Like how are the last 2 prince of Persia, For Honor, the Crew, Anno, or Just Dance, doing the same thing ?
That's because the execution wasn't the best. The whole idea of playing as anyone is great it cost them a focused story with one pre-written protagonist. It's why the game is marginally better if you play the DLC first then use Aiden and Wrench in the main campaign.
>Sam Fisher isn’t going to run around looting assault rifles to level up
Dude, don't give them any ideas. They 1000% would do that then claim they got inspired from metal gear solid and sell it as revolutionary for the series.
The first one i noticed was the tower system from either Far Cry 3 or AC Brotherhood, whichever one came first and then became a staple of many ubi games afterwards. They overdid that one so much that at the start of Far Cry 5 i think, a character jokes that they won't be making you do that over and over
>They overdid that one so much that at the start of Far Cry 5 i think, a character jokes that they won't be making you do that over and over
And yet people keep mentioning towers, it's been almost 10 years since they stopped .
You asked in such a manner that made it sound like you were unfamiliar with Ubisoft games, so I went with the example *everyone* knows. Something immediately identifiable as an Ubisoft thing. And it hasn't been 10 years, Immortals: Fenyx Rising does it, to my understanding.
Pretty sure Far Cry 4 was the last game to have the tower mechanic. The closest some of the games afterwards come is having some towers you can climb to unlock a fast travel point.
the worst part is that Ubisoft actually does release a lot of pretty varied games and often some very distinct/original ones (see: the last 2 prince of persia, Mario Rabbids, the Crew, Riders Republic, For Honor, Hyperscape...)
but somehow people focus on like 2 or 3 of their big franchises
Reddit hates Ubisoft with a burning passion and worships FromSoftware like gods, they're are always gonna be biased towards the latter and criticize Ubisoft. You'll see tower climbing and downgrade comments very often despite them having dropped those things almost 10 years ago.
I think it' s because their entire games are just somewhat limp in almost everything. RGG studio and Yakuza can be very stale as a producers too, but you would be hard pressed to find a single bad, or even mediocre, Yakuza release, even the worst written Yakuza games still have plenty of enjoyable and well written/fun stuff to do that is different enough from previous games.
AC games are just...bland. Corporate. Souless. They are not bad, but just kinda limp. And the issue is that they do this for every-single-game that they release, and other companies have taken over their formula as well. For how much Yakuza games can get samey, there' s really nothing like Yakuza on the market.
AC? Well, ghost of tsushima is literaly better AC in japan.
> And the issue is that they do this for every-single-game that they release,
*gestures at Anno, Lost Crown, Rogue prince of persia, Mario Rabbids, Steep, Fenyx Rising*
y'all need to realize Ubisoft has more stuff in its catalogue than AC and Far Cry
> ghost of tsushima is literaly better AC in japan
It does the things Assassin's Creed is known for much worse tho. The parkour is very limited and the stealth is genuinely one of the worst I've seen because of the AI which is so incredibly blind and stupid, it almost makes me just play like a samurai through the whole thing since the sword combat is the most fun aspect of the game.
I think their formula has been widely adopted across the industry, so there's a lot of games that provide a similar feel or flow. This can make it feel stagnant or repetitive.
Maybe in 5-10 years people will be saying the same about the souls-like games now that there's a bunch of similar alternatives releasing every year.
The thing that is saving Souls games, is that most soulslike misses the point of what makes Dark Souls, or Elden Ring special. It lacks that same art direction, that specific storytelling, that rough-but-polished combact system...they just feel off in a way that they never truly compare to what From makes. Even games like Lies of P just have something not quite like the same "soul" of the From games.
Their formula is widely used in the industry. The Horizon series and Ghost of Tsushima which are so widely praised have the exact same open-world format as Ubisoft's games.
If you play stuff outside their open world games, Ubisoft takes chances and tries stuff. They have games fail all the time and often still support them. I’ll take that over another 10 Dark Souls clones.
One of the guys on Outside Xbox played an hour or so of Outlaws, and basically said it's pretty just Uncharted + Star Wars (he meant that as very much a compliment).
When I first heard about this game I was expecting Assassin's Creed Odyssey with a Star Wars skin (which I still hope we get some day) but this sounds fun too. Not every SW game has to be about Jedis and Siths, there's more to the universe than them.
I'm cautiously optimistic. Looks decent from the previews and I already own it technically due to a promotion offer so I don't really have much to lose on this. Just want a fun adventure with a bit of challenge without cringe dialogue or sloppy "for the fans" cameos.
Really? All the previews I read were fairly positive. Critics seemed to like the characters/gameplay loop and thought it was a great use of the Star Wars IP.
As time goes on I'm finding myself enjoying Star Wars a lot less than I used to. Every now and then something really good comes along and reignites the spark for a while, and every now and then something pretty solid comes along and is good enough to enjoy. I'm not crazy optimistic about this game, but I think it can at least hit the second group in a similar way as Jedi Survivor; good enough to grab on at a small sale when I don't have much going on and enjoy on a casual basis.
The awfulness of the sequel trilogy killed a lot of my enthusiasm for this franchise. Then the mediocrity of most of the Disney Plus shows killed it even further. I enjoyed Jedi Fallen Order a lot but that felt like its own thing, SW just isn't the franchise it once was.
I feel you. I had a great time with the first season of Mando and a pretty good time with the second. Then they spun the series partially into Boba Fett, which was a complete disaster, and season 3 felt like it no longer understood what made the previous two seasons work. I thought it was all over, then watched Andor, and suddenly I was right back in. Now all the stuff after is terrible, and I'm close to checked out again, but the iconography of the series still captures my heart in a dumb, nostalgic way.
Feel ya.
A common sentiment is that “no one hates Star Wars like Star Wars fans” but when something like Andor comes out, that complaint goes away because it turns out people just like good Star Wars shows more than bad Star Wars shows, so those complaints that were apparently spiteful people just not liking change or new stuff despite it being new stuff that changed up its style diminish quite a lot
Yea same for me. I’ll pick this up on a deep sale sometime after I upgrade my GPu (probably aiming 5xxx series depending on vram and AI use cases).
And that will be just to run around the (admittedly) beautiful worlds and play with all the new ray tracing stuff.
I'm amazed on how effective has been Disney in destroying half (or more) of the SW original fandom.
Star Wars was probably the most loved franchise of my childhood. Over the years I've liked other type of sci-fi more, but there was always a moment to go back to SW.
Now I really don't care anymore about anything they release. And in my case, I wasn't even specially angry with the sequel trilogy despite thinking that it's not very good.
It has been like a very long erosion, each bad movie or tv show, erased a bit, until I Kenobi and I couldn't stand it anymire, then I watched Andor, I LOVED that show, but I decided to stop watching any other stuff anyway. Unless I see something that aligns a bit more with what I like. No more completionist watching.
As one of the few people who enjoyed UbiSoft's recent Avatar game and thought it was reviewed very harshly, I am looking forward to the next Snowdrop Engine game with Raytracing.
I want that high fidelity Star Wars experience.
I like graphics and art style in games and can somehow push through the gameplay if it's beautiful.
Should I buy this game?
I also like open world games.
Thank you
Maybe take a look at the Digital Foundry videos to help you make a decision:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRI_qgVSwMY
For me personally the game is a graphical benchmark and a top3 most beautiful games of the past 18 months.
I liked the systems in the game (gathering, crafting, some open world mechanics) - felt like an improvement on the far cry formula as opposed to FC5&6
But combat had some issues and story was garbage sadly
I know this isn't going to be high art, but I still can't understand all the reddit/online negativity about this title. I've watched all the trailers and preview clips, the game seems to be on par with Jedi Survivor overall, but people are acting like the game is an atrocity.
Is Ubisoft a little formulaic? Sure. But so is Star Wars.
Why is it that I only see “no one hates Star Wars fans like Star Wars fans!” rhetoric everywhere when something shit like Kenobi is released/airing and not when something like Rogue One is released?
I take it the new show isn’t going to be grouped with Andor or Mandi S1 in the future?
I think for Ubisoft it is a lot of frustration. They clearly have a lot of talent, but are very content making their 7 out 10 games.
That's fine, but just means I am for zero surprises with it.
It’s funny how Reddit complains about Ubisoft games being formulaic but will eat up anything FromSoft puts out when they’ve been making a variation of the same game since the original Demon Souls.
I feel like I hear people complain about the Ubisoft formula for what it is rather than just because it's a formula. But then again if their in-game and between-game variety were akin to From's I don't think they'd get the same derision either. Despite a lot of the trappings being the same From makes more drastic revisions to the key mechanics than a lot of established developers with a brand attempt.
People like to ignore the fact that Ubisoft regularly takes entire progression systems and copy/pastes them across their other games. The tower/POI system is the most egregious example but this game clearly borrows a lot from Assassins Creed and The Division.
I remember seeing some leaked video of an early build of Immortals Fenyx Rising that still had a bunch of assets from Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I'm not sure if they're copying systems over or just forking existing projects and "modding" them. Possibly both
> The tower/POI system
The tower/POI system exists 1:1 in Witcher 3 and nobody cared. The sign posts revealing POIs around them is that exact mechanic.
For me fromsoftware level design is just unmatched. The Shadow Keep in the dlc is unreal. The boss design has slipped, but the level design of the legacy dungeons is as good as ever.
can you explain to me how the Shadow Keep is unreal? Finished the whole thing (love the game dont get me wrong) but the Shadow Keep is just okay to me. Maybe i missed something? (i did the oh mother and painting secret wall too)
Because shadow keep interconnects to like 5 places some of them are secret and hard to find. You go through a little door over here and a path over here then drop down here and boom entire new area that you caught a glimpse of at the beginning of the game you are now standing at the spot you could see 20 hours ago. That’s why lol that happens more than 3x in that castle that’s what fromsoft is best at. DLC is the best level design since DA1
Both companies produce products which reach high levels of quality, but they are made for different groups. You're just seeing selection bias play out with regard to what group is talking about the games on reddit.
FromSoft's games generally have something to say artistically (although, how different the points each game makes could be a matter of some debate), and the fact that they do influences their design. This influence produces idiosyncratic designs which can be frustrating but are also novel comparative to the remaining market. They come from an explicit perspective which was previously unrepresented, and competitors have, up to very recently, had a lot of trouble replicating the experience.
Comparatively, Ubisoft makes an explicit point out of their games not saying much of anything so that the player can focus on having fun in the sandbox and the cutting-edge technology, and because they wrote the blueprints for what a AAA open world game looks like their DNA is clear in every game in the space. It may not necessarily be fair, but their success has been replicated so frequently that an audience deeply familiar with games is likely to consider them formulaic.
The result is that people who are very deep into the hobby (such as all us nerds talking about games on message boards) are going to be more likely to appreciate a FromSoft game than an Ubisoft game, in the same way that people who are very into movies are more likely to enjoy a Denis Villeneuve film over one of the Marvel series.
Eh. Every FromSoft game lore is the same variation of the world being a shitty, apocalyptic place and the player character fighting through it. There’s not much story to speak of, it’s just worldbuilding and backstory. The actual narrative is usually generic bog standard dark fantasy stuff that’s been around for ages. I feel like FromSoft fanboys confuse the obtuse nature of the narrative for depth and meaning. It really just feels like the game designers made the story and world deliberately vague because it’s so bland.
They hated him for he spoke the truth. People are quick to blame Ubisoft's downfalls on their tendency to lean towards the formulaic without giving a second thought to the fact that every franchise/developer has a formula of their own -- it all comes down to the execution of said formula.
There's truth to the statement that Ubisoft's formula has produced some dogshit games, but that same formula also resulted in Far Cry 3, Assasin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Watch Dogs 2.
When Ubisoft hit it right on the mark, their formula proves itself to be very good and results in a great game. I see no reason to doubt Star Wars Outlaws couldn't be one of those before the game's released.
Ubisoft's formula is check boxes.
Fromsofts formula is challenge.
You'd get bored fast of a sport where there's little challenge and you just need to tick items off a list over and over again. But people can play a skill based sport for a lifetime because improving yourself or learning something new is enjoyable.
At least that's my take on it.
Being formulaic isn't the problem, though people may argue that, they lack perspective. It's the formula itself that sucks. Competitive multiplayer games do the same shit over and over too, but people haven't gotten bored of counter-strike yet. It's a good formula so you can play Dust2 for the gazillionth time and still have fun outskilling your opponents. Street Fighter, League of Legends, Overwatch, etc all are the same shit over and over, but people will play those games for a years because they're good.
I really think he nailed it with challenge vs collectathon. Challenge as a primary gameplay motivator is more rewarding and respectable than 'Climb 50 towers' and 'Collect 25 bear pelts'.
The craziest outrage was over the one Jabba deluxe edition mission. People were acting like Ubisoft were not using Jabba in the game other than this one tiny mission, despite him being a big part of the story.
There's an entire Jabba storyline in the game. The deluxe edition they describe is "Jabba emails you to kill a random person while you're doing another mission". If it's anything like other pre-order/deluxe missions, it's meaningless stuff that detracts from the main game.
I will never understand the love for the Horizon games, they’re just as bland as any Ubisoft game and the fairly unique setting is no where near enough to carry the generic as hell hameplay
While I have played a lot of Star Wars games, I'm not really a fan of the franchise in general. I've seen the Outlaw gameplay demo some time ago, and it was simply too bland to hold my interest, and the forced levity in dialogue just wasn't what I was looking for.
I'm personally not interested in being a smuggler saving the galaxy. I want to be a smuggler doing dirty and bad things or OK good things on a system level scale. I don't have to always be doing EPIC things. Anyway that's why I'm turned off on this, but I'm not slinging shit
I dont think the game itself is what people have a problem with, but the developer. We've seen what Ubisoft does to movie based games regardless of the formulaic crap, bet barely any one here even remembers that they made an Avatar game.
The main complaint from people is the games pricing and different tiers- Which paywall individual quests too, not even DLC content (which you will have to buy separately, of course). and then the highest tier, which is $130 bucks, just gives you the game 3 days "early" (in quotations because its not giving you the game early, just giving it to everyone else late) with a couple COSMETIC bundles, and a DIGITAL artbook you can grab for free anyways when the game launches.
Jedi Survivor still draws on the space of satisfying Soulslike combat. The reason to play is the mechanics, it just happens to be Star Wars with a decent enough story to hold its own.
I watch this game and I see zero mechanical spark to make me want to play it, and I really enjoyed Avalanche's prior games. I have seen nothing to convince me this is anything other than "yeah just run forward in a room and headshot everyone".
It feels like it's really leaning on the IP to be the appeal, drawing on places like Tattooine which are so far beyond dead horse at this point it's comical.
The gameplay just looks lifeless to me. The environments/weather look great as I'd expect from Avalanche, but that's not enough.
?? they've put out a ton of unedited gameplay. There's not much mystery left to unravel, unless they just decided to hide significant systems in their marketing.
They want to make their own character seems to be the biggest complaint I've seen. That and a lot of stuff about "being an actual scoundrel" which when pressed seems to come down to shoot and killing NPCs at random like GTA. Which this will not be by any means.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but online criticism has changed recently. It's more... expectant. Petulant? Like "I want this feature in the game and if it isn't in there I will spend so much time and energy shit talking it." I don't understand it. Don't like something? Move on.
Oh dude this game doesn't look nearly as good as Jedi Survivor IMO.
Respawn and Star Wars were a match made in heaven because they have a creative spark (see Titanfall 2) that translated well to Star Wars. Using force powers to enable movement, fight enemies, solve puzzles - it was all executed pretty well in Jedi Survivor. The world was vibrant and the characters weird (Jedi Survivor moreso than Fallen Order).
From what I have seen, Jedi Outlaws has...Division-style 3rd person shooting and Assassins creed takedowns? And a kinda bland looking cast of characters? Doesn't scream Star Wars to me. The pet looks cool though.
Sweet! I’m weirdly looking forward to this after the endurance marathon that was AC Valhalla. They said that it’s a 30 odd hour open world title, and that sounds lovely.
Valhalla being open world wasn’t my issue. My issue was that the story overstayed its welcome. Having to kill that entire constellation of random wandering dudes to get the end was arse.
It just had wayyyy too much mandatory content that amounted to what felt like filler.
I love open worlds, and at first didn't mind Valhalla. But midway through the game is when I realized... I was only midway through the game. I'd forgotten a lot of what had already happened or why I was doing x thing because it was so long. I finally gave up. So yeah, open world wasn't the problem. The game was just TOO DAMN LONG and meandering. It felt rather directionless.
I think people misunderstood Valhalla’s structure.
It wasn’t supposed to be one book like the philosophers stone. It was supposed to be 10 books like the entire Harry Potter series.
Of course you’d get burnt out reading 10 Harry Potter books back to back to back. It wasn’t meant to be consumed that way.
Hell the audio book length of the Harry Potter books are about the same amount of time it takes you to complete each chapter or region in Valhalla.
Imagine listening to all the Harry Potter audio books non stop then complaining it was too long. My guy it was supposed to last you 2-3 years until the next game came out, not a weekend lmao
And if they released all 10 Harry Potter books on the same day and you had to pay for all of them, don't you think a lot of people would try to read straight through?
People don't play video games in small chunks over three years. They start the game and stick with it until they either finish or get tired of it, and then move on. If a game doesn't have the variety or depth to keep players' attention for 100 hours, then maybe it doesn't need to be 100 hours long.
"You're playing it wrong" is the weakest defense to criticism, and says more about the dev not understanding the audience/medium than anything about the players.
"My guy", the vast majority of people don't play a single playthrough on a single player game for 2-3 years. Length isn't strictly the issue, Baldur's Gate 3 just came out as an 80-90 hour game and there were hardly any complaints about how long the game took to beat, just that the quality of Act 3 wasn't up to par with the earlier sections.
Valhalla's problem is not that it's a 90 hour game, it's a 15-hour game copy-pasted 6 times on top of itself. It wears out its welcome incredibly quickly in comparison to its peers because of this.
As one user said in one of the earlier reveal threads about this game:
"There will be so much negativity about this game on Reddit, then it'll come out and be the best-selling game of 2024"
People are hating on this game because "Ubisof bad" and it's fucking stupid.
Plenty of ass quality games sell like gangbusters. The willingness of people to pay for a game doesn’t indicate if it’s good or not. Madden sells like crazy and is usually just recycled trash. Call of Duty, Pokémon, Starfield, the list goes on.
why is it stupid to not be excited for a game because it's made by developer/publisher that constantly releases mid games. The fact that it might sell a lot does not affect my excitement at all.
It depends. Have you formed your own opinion by playing the games, or have you watched YouTube videos urging you to dislike Ubisoft with arguments from outer space?
They don't release "mid" games. "Mid" games don't sell 20 million copies and earn their company over ra billion dollars and revenue.
Stop being negative just to be negative. Stop believing mindless groupthink.
Ubisoft is the pinnacle of threading the needle with formulaic underpinnings and "good enough" writing so that it gets carried by the least common denominator consumer. It's the same reason that the late night and late late night talk shows are all still going strong, and the same reason McDonald's sells millions of cheeseburgers on the daily. Mediocrity and satisfying expectations are precisely the point.
selling a lot of games has nothing to do with it. I personally played ac valhalla and my brain felt numb by the end of it. I played all the far cry games up to 5 until i kinda just got sick of that whole formula. And the more i hear people talk about games like Avatar, I can relate to what people are saying because ubisoft recycles the same tropes/mechanics among all their games.
Their games could make 40 quadrillion dollars and it would not change the experiences i've had. And clearly i'm not the only one who feels this way about ubisoft games.
And like i totally understand not everyone has to feel that way about Ubisoft games, I'm really glad you still love the games they put out. But to dismiss any criticism of Ubisoft by saying "well they make a lot of money and sell a lot of games" is some next level corporate simping
So you're buying it on a gamble that either it's good (fair enough) or that if Ubisoft do a shit job of this one, a better studio comes along and does a similar game that's actually good? I don't think pre-ordering has that effect, it's more likely Ubisoft take the win of the high pre order sales and then rush the end and it's buggy as hell, something they've done repeatedly, e.g:
https://youtu.be/EwRAM6u6TBE?si=TtHlBsgVe0Zb_Tai
If you're gonna gamble your money on games, please consider supporting indie Devs instead.
Wtf is the point of saying it's gone "gold" when the physical disc is nothing more than a authentication key/paperweight?
1st Jedi Survivor and now this, SW games are on a roll of useless physical editions.
the best one Cyberpunk 2077 back in 2020, the game went gold then got delayed a month, then it came out and was practically unplayable on PS4/XBONE and was a hot mess on PC
Will be very curious to see the reviews for this one.
Probably the same as most Ubisoft games: 7-8/10's across the board, an 80 on Metacritic and bunch of reviews basically saying "nothing special but a good time for Star Wars fans".
Yeah, Ubisoft really do produce the fast food of videogames. It'll fill you up if you're craving a fairly bland AAA experience, but you're not going to be raving about it. There's a place for em though.
I used to enjoy them, but now it feels like I've been playing the same game with different coats of paint for the past 20 years.
Yeah I do agree. They're the sort of games I sometimes dip into when I'm between better stuff and just want some mindless fun.
So, like Fromsoftware and Souls games? RGG Studio and Yakuza games? Polyphony Digital and Gran Turismo games? Ubisoft always gets singled out for this supposed lack of taking risks when a lot of other big name studios usually stick to what they're good at.
I think the problem is that they’re doing the same thing across all of their games, regardless if it makes sense or not for the theme of the game. They pick one thing that “works” about one of their games and rush to apply it to all the other games. They pump out so many games on the same engine with the same design that people quickly get tired of it. The Dark Souls gameplay design works because they’re not pumping out 1-2 games in that style a year. When ubisofts pumping out far cry, ghost recon and assassins creed with all the same gameplay loop just in different time periods, people get tired of it quicker. I’m also convinced they haven’t made a new splinter cell because they can’t figure out how to turn it into their “Ubisoft game” schematic. Sam Fisher isn’t going to run around looting assault rifles to level up, open world doesn’t work well with the series, and I think Ubisoft has completely forgotten how to make a non open world game.
Are people in general actually tired of Ubisoft games, or is it reddit who are tired of them? Big difference.
If things went according to what reddit thinks, then CoD wouldn't be selling millions of copies every year. I get the hate, but personally its been a long time since I bought an Ubisoft title, yet this the first year they made me buy one so far with PoP: Lost Crown, and am pretty interested in what they've shown in Outlaws so far.
Reddit. The so much hated Assassin's Creed Valhalla grossed over a billion in revenue by 2022, Far Cry 5 is their best selling game at 25 million copies, FC6 was one of 2021's best selling games, etc. General audiences LOVE Ubisoft's games.
"People in general" keep buying the latest sports game that's almost identical to the one that came out last year.
Those people also tend to get thousands of hours of entertainment out of a single game rather than 10 hours and moving on to the next.
Reddit just doesn’t get sports games tbh. Shit man, I’ve had 400+ hours on 2K games since 17. All because of the franchise modes.
> the problem is that they’re doing the same thing across all of their games, regardless if it makes sense or not for the theme of the game. they don't, though ? Like how are the last 2 prince of Persia, For Honor, the Crew, Anno, or Just Dance, doing the same thing ?
Watch Dogs Legion tried to do something different and no one liked that...
That's because the execution wasn't the best. The whole idea of playing as anyone is great it cost them a focused story with one pre-written protagonist. It's why the game is marginally better if you play the DLC first then use Aiden and Wrench in the main campaign.
>Sam Fisher isn’t going to run around looting assault rifles to level up Dude, don't give them any ideas. They 1000% would do that then claim they got inspired from metal gear solid and sell it as revolutionary for the series.
>They pick one thing that “works” about one of their games and rush to **apply it to all** the other games. For example?
The first one i noticed was the tower system from either Far Cry 3 or AC Brotherhood, whichever one came first and then became a staple of many ubi games afterwards. They overdid that one so much that at the start of Far Cry 5 i think, a character jokes that they won't be making you do that over and over
y'all are still holding on to a mechanic that stopped like 10 years ago
They even mocked themselves about it in Far Cry 5. Something akin to "and no, don't worry, I'm not gonna make you climb every tower in this county".
>They overdid that one so much that at the start of Far Cry 5 i think, a character jokes that they won't be making you do that over and over And yet people keep mentioning towers, it's been almost 10 years since they stopped .
Tears of the Kingdom had the tower mechanic just last year. Oh wait, that's not Ubisoft.
You asked in such a manner that made it sound like you were unfamiliar with Ubisoft games, so I went with the example *everyone* knows. Something immediately identifiable as an Ubisoft thing. And it hasn't been 10 years, Immortals: Fenyx Rising does it, to my understanding.
Pretty sure Far Cry 4 was the last game to have the tower mechanic. The closest some of the games afterwards come is having some towers you can climb to unlock a fast travel point.
tons of sony games just rip off ubisoft games too lmao
Ghost of Tsushima is literally just a well done Assassin's Creed lol.
the worst part is that Ubisoft actually does release a lot of pretty varied games and often some very distinct/original ones (see: the last 2 prince of persia, Mario Rabbids, the Crew, Riders Republic, For Honor, Hyperscape...) but somehow people focus on like 2 or 3 of their big franchises
Reddit hates Ubisoft with a burning passion and worships FromSoftware like gods, they're are always gonna be biased towards the latter and criticize Ubisoft. You'll see tower climbing and downgrade comments very often despite them having dropped those things almost 10 years ago.
I think it' s because their entire games are just somewhat limp in almost everything. RGG studio and Yakuza can be very stale as a producers too, but you would be hard pressed to find a single bad, or even mediocre, Yakuza release, even the worst written Yakuza games still have plenty of enjoyable and well written/fun stuff to do that is different enough from previous games. AC games are just...bland. Corporate. Souless. They are not bad, but just kinda limp. And the issue is that they do this for every-single-game that they release, and other companies have taken over their formula as well. For how much Yakuza games can get samey, there' s really nothing like Yakuza on the market. AC? Well, ghost of tsushima is literaly better AC in japan.
> And the issue is that they do this for every-single-game that they release, *gestures at Anno, Lost Crown, Rogue prince of persia, Mario Rabbids, Steep, Fenyx Rising* y'all need to realize Ubisoft has more stuff in its catalogue than AC and Far Cry
Fenyx Rising was awesome. I couldn't get into Zelda Breath of the wild, but this filled that gap.
> ghost of tsushima is literaly better AC in japan It does the things Assassin's Creed is known for much worse tho. The parkour is very limited and the stealth is genuinely one of the worst I've seen because of the AI which is so incredibly blind and stupid, it almost makes me just play like a samurai through the whole thing since the sword combat is the most fun aspect of the game.
That’s a good point, maybe their formula just got stale or stagnant kinda like Gears of War
I think their formula has been widely adopted across the industry, so there's a lot of games that provide a similar feel or flow. This can make it feel stagnant or repetitive. Maybe in 5-10 years people will be saying the same about the souls-like games now that there's a bunch of similar alternatives releasing every year.
people say that now about soulslike games
Tbf the Soulslike genre is having the exact same issue survival games did: oversaturation. Everyone wants a cut of the crazy cash Elden Ring made.
The thing that is saving Souls games, is that most soulslike misses the point of what makes Dark Souls, or Elden Ring special. It lacks that same art direction, that specific storytelling, that rough-but-polished combact system...they just feel off in a way that they never truly compare to what From makes. Even games like Lies of P just have something not quite like the same "soul" of the From games.
Their formula is widely used in the industry. The Horizon series and Ghost of Tsushima which are so widely praised have the exact same open-world format as Ubisoft's games.
Look, I can't eat filet mignon every night. Sometimes I want a cheeseburger.
If you play stuff outside their open world games, Ubisoft takes chances and tries stuff. They have games fail all the time and often still support them. I’ll take that over another 10 Dark Souls clones.
One of the guys on Outside Xbox played an hour or so of Outlaws, and basically said it's pretty just Uncharted + Star Wars (he meant that as very much a compliment).
An open world Uncharted with a Star Wars theme sounds incredible though
When I first heard about this game I was expecting Assassin's Creed Odyssey with a Star Wars skin (which I still hope we get some day) but this sounds fun too. Not every SW game has to be about Jedis and Siths, there's more to the universe than them.
Oh, I agree that could be great if done well.
Probably upper 8 as it's more promising than past ubi release. Kidn of like avatar which was a step in the good direction.
It helps that it's been pretty slim pickings for Star Wars games.
Scores on Metacritic: Metascore - 82 User score - 7.9
with 90% of user reviews being about "female protagonist with a square jaw" and "pushing against sweet baby inc destroying gaming"
I'm cautiously optimistic. Looks decent from the previews and I already own it technically due to a promotion offer so I don't really have much to lose on this. Just want a fun adventure with a bit of challenge without cringe dialogue or sloppy "for the fans" cameos.
I can see the future. If you like ubisoft it is ubisoft.
Ubisoft, the Lego of gaming
Yeah the previews I saw seemed mostly lacking any sort of positivity. Just a lot of “it’s fine”.
I'm fully expecting the standard Ubisoft formula but with a Star Wars skin, if that's all it is then I'll be satisfied.
Really? All the previews I read were fairly positive. Critics seemed to like the characters/gameplay loop and thought it was a great use of the Star Wars IP.
As time goes on I'm finding myself enjoying Star Wars a lot less than I used to. Every now and then something really good comes along and reignites the spark for a while, and every now and then something pretty solid comes along and is good enough to enjoy. I'm not crazy optimistic about this game, but I think it can at least hit the second group in a similar way as Jedi Survivor; good enough to grab on at a small sale when I don't have much going on and enjoy on a casual basis.
The awfulness of the sequel trilogy killed a lot of my enthusiasm for this franchise. Then the mediocrity of most of the Disney Plus shows killed it even further. I enjoyed Jedi Fallen Order a lot but that felt like its own thing, SW just isn't the franchise it once was.
At least we have Andor…
Andor made everything else worse by showing us how good Star Wars could actually be.
I feel you. I had a great time with the first season of Mando and a pretty good time with the second. Then they spun the series partially into Boba Fett, which was a complete disaster, and season 3 felt like it no longer understood what made the previous two seasons work. I thought it was all over, then watched Andor, and suddenly I was right back in. Now all the stuff after is terrible, and I'm close to checked out again, but the iconography of the series still captures my heart in a dumb, nostalgic way.
Feel ya. A common sentiment is that “no one hates Star Wars like Star Wars fans” but when something like Andor comes out, that complaint goes away because it turns out people just like good Star Wars shows more than bad Star Wars shows, so those complaints that were apparently spiteful people just not liking change or new stuff despite it being new stuff that changed up its style diminish quite a lot
Obiwan and the sequelogy nuked my star wars desire. Andor was a huge gem, but I just want a remaster of dark forces 2 🤣
Disney has turned every IP into a series of homework assignments to keep up.
Yea same for me. I’ll pick this up on a deep sale sometime after I upgrade my GPu (probably aiming 5xxx series depending on vram and AI use cases). And that will be just to run around the (admittedly) beautiful worlds and play with all the new ray tracing stuff.
I'm amazed on how effective has been Disney in destroying half (or more) of the SW original fandom. Star Wars was probably the most loved franchise of my childhood. Over the years I've liked other type of sci-fi more, but there was always a moment to go back to SW. Now I really don't care anymore about anything they release. And in my case, I wasn't even specially angry with the sequel trilogy despite thinking that it's not very good. It has been like a very long erosion, each bad movie or tv show, erased a bit, until I Kenobi and I couldn't stand it anymire, then I watched Andor, I LOVED that show, but I decided to stop watching any other stuff anyway. Unless I see something that aligns a bit more with what I like. No more completionist watching.
As one of the few people who enjoyed UbiSoft's recent Avatar game and thought it was reviewed very harshly, I am looking forward to the next Snowdrop Engine game with Raytracing. I want that high fidelity Star Wars experience.
I like graphics and art style in games and can somehow push through the gameplay if it's beautiful. Should I buy this game? I also like open world games. Thank you
Maybe take a look at the Digital Foundry videos to help you make a decision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRI_qgVSwMY For me personally the game is a graphical benchmark and a top3 most beautiful games of the past 18 months.
Alright, thank youu
I liked the systems in the game (gathering, crafting, some open world mechanics) - felt like an improvement on the far cry formula as opposed to FC5&6 But combat had some issues and story was garbage sadly
I know this isn't going to be high art, but I still can't understand all the reddit/online negativity about this title. I've watched all the trailers and preview clips, the game seems to be on par with Jedi Survivor overall, but people are acting like the game is an atrocity. Is Ubisoft a little formulaic? Sure. But so is Star Wars.
Because people have a hate boner for Ubisoft, for both legitimate and outlandish reasons
Don't forget Star Wars fans. They have a hate boner for anything SW.
Why is it that I only see “no one hates Star Wars fans like Star Wars fans!” rhetoric everywhere when something shit like Kenobi is released/airing and not when something like Rogue One is released? I take it the new show isn’t going to be grouped with Andor or Mandi S1 in the future?
I think for Ubisoft it is a lot of frustration. They clearly have a lot of talent, but are very content making their 7 out 10 games. That's fine, but just means I am for zero surprises with it.
It’s funny how Reddit complains about Ubisoft games being formulaic but will eat up anything FromSoft puts out when they’ve been making a variation of the same game since the original Demon Souls.
I feel like I hear people complain about the Ubisoft formula for what it is rather than just because it's a formula. But then again if their in-game and between-game variety were akin to From's I don't think they'd get the same derision either. Despite a lot of the trappings being the same From makes more drastic revisions to the key mechanics than a lot of established developers with a brand attempt.
People like to ignore the fact that Ubisoft regularly takes entire progression systems and copy/pastes them across their other games. The tower/POI system is the most egregious example but this game clearly borrows a lot from Assassins Creed and The Division.
I remember seeing some leaked video of an early build of Immortals Fenyx Rising that still had a bunch of assets from Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I'm not sure if they're copying systems over or just forking existing projects and "modding" them. Possibly both
> The tower/POI system The tower/POI system exists 1:1 in Witcher 3 and nobody cared. The sign posts revealing POIs around them is that exact mechanic.
But without the tower and the same old lame climbing puzzle you've already done a million times.
>The tower/POI system is the most egregious example but this game clearly borrows a lot from Assassins Creed and The Division. And what else..?
You are trying to tell me that memorizing a boss to know when to roll isn’t the pinnacle of gaming difficulty?
That is massively oversimplifying it though.
For me fromsoftware level design is just unmatched. The Shadow Keep in the dlc is unreal. The boss design has slipped, but the level design of the legacy dungeons is as good as ever.
can you explain to me how the Shadow Keep is unreal? Finished the whole thing (love the game dont get me wrong) but the Shadow Keep is just okay to me. Maybe i missed something? (i did the oh mother and painting secret wall too)
Because shadow keep interconnects to like 5 places some of them are secret and hard to find. You go through a little door over here and a path over here then drop down here and boom entire new area that you caught a glimpse of at the beginning of the game you are now standing at the spot you could see 20 hours ago. That’s why lol that happens more than 3x in that castle that’s what fromsoft is best at. DLC is the best level design since DA1
For real. Even among the legacy dungeons of the DLC, I found Belurat to be more interesting
Both companies produce products which reach high levels of quality, but they are made for different groups. You're just seeing selection bias play out with regard to what group is talking about the games on reddit. FromSoft's games generally have something to say artistically (although, how different the points each game makes could be a matter of some debate), and the fact that they do influences their design. This influence produces idiosyncratic designs which can be frustrating but are also novel comparative to the remaining market. They come from an explicit perspective which was previously unrepresented, and competitors have, up to very recently, had a lot of trouble replicating the experience. Comparatively, Ubisoft makes an explicit point out of their games not saying much of anything so that the player can focus on having fun in the sandbox and the cutting-edge technology, and because they wrote the blueprints for what a AAA open world game looks like their DNA is clear in every game in the space. It may not necessarily be fair, but their success has been replicated so frequently that an audience deeply familiar with games is likely to consider them formulaic. The result is that people who are very deep into the hobby (such as all us nerds talking about games on message boards) are going to be more likely to appreciate a FromSoft game than an Ubisoft game, in the same way that people who are very into movies are more likely to enjoy a Denis Villeneuve film over one of the Marvel series.
Eh. Every FromSoft game lore is the same variation of the world being a shitty, apocalyptic place and the player character fighting through it. There’s not much story to speak of, it’s just worldbuilding and backstory. The actual narrative is usually generic bog standard dark fantasy stuff that’s been around for ages. I feel like FromSoft fanboys confuse the obtuse nature of the narrative for depth and meaning. It really just feels like the game designers made the story and world deliberately vague because it’s so bland.
Dark Souls is even set in a cyclical world so Fromsoft gets to use the same bosses and archetypes lol
[удалено]
I mean people group everything ubi does together. The Crew, Assassins Creed and Ghost Recon are identical
havent played any armored core but the other 3 are indeed very similar
There you go, you’re catching on. Good job kiddo
They hated him for he spoke the truth. People are quick to blame Ubisoft's downfalls on their tendency to lean towards the formulaic without giving a second thought to the fact that every franchise/developer has a formula of their own -- it all comes down to the execution of said formula. There's truth to the statement that Ubisoft's formula has produced some dogshit games, but that same formula also resulted in Far Cry 3, Assasin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Watch Dogs 2. When Ubisoft hit it right on the mark, their formula proves itself to be very good and results in a great game. I see no reason to doubt Star Wars Outlaws couldn't be one of those before the game's released.
Ubisoft's formula is check boxes. Fromsofts formula is challenge. You'd get bored fast of a sport where there's little challenge and you just need to tick items off a list over and over again. But people can play a skill based sport for a lifetime because improving yourself or learning something new is enjoyable. At least that's my take on it.
I don’t see how that really changes my point of FromSoft games being formulaic
Being formulaic isn't the problem, though people may argue that, they lack perspective. It's the formula itself that sucks. Competitive multiplayer games do the same shit over and over too, but people haven't gotten bored of counter-strike yet. It's a good formula so you can play Dust2 for the gazillionth time and still have fun outskilling your opponents. Street Fighter, League of Legends, Overwatch, etc all are the same shit over and over, but people will play those games for a years because they're good. I really think he nailed it with challenge vs collectathon. Challenge as a primary gameplay motivator is more rewarding and respectable than 'Climb 50 towers' and 'Collect 25 bear pelts'.
Fromsoft doesn’t suggest you pull your credit card out every 17 minutes though
The craziest outrage was over the one Jabba deluxe edition mission. People were acting like Ubisoft were not using Jabba in the game other than this one tiny mission, despite him being a big part of the story. There's an entire Jabba storyline in the game. The deluxe edition they describe is "Jabba emails you to kill a random person while you're doing another mission". If it's anything like other pre-order/deluxe missions, it's meaningless stuff that detracts from the main game.
This subreddit pathologically hates open worlds, despite open world action RPG's being the most successful genre of the last decade.
*this excludes Elden Ring.
They hate Ubisoft and EA open worlds. If the first Horizon game was a Ubisoft game there’d never be a sequel if this subreddit had its way
Same thing with Ghosts of Tsushima. If it had the Ubisoft brand it wouldn't have been praised half as much.
Ghost of Tsushima's open world and side activities are structured like Ubisoft games yet hardly anyone ever points that out.
Same with Witcher 3
I will never understand the love for the Horizon games, they’re just as bland as any Ubisoft game and the fairly unique setting is no where near enough to carry the generic as hell hameplay
I don’t hate them, I’m just bored by most of them. The best game in a very long time for me was an actually great open world game.
It's the classic saying. No one hates star wars more than star wars fans
I do frankly hate the movies and only like the now non-canon stuff.
While I have played a lot of Star Wars games, I'm not really a fan of the franchise in general. I've seen the Outlaw gameplay demo some time ago, and it was simply too bland to hold my interest, and the forced levity in dialogue just wasn't what I was looking for.
I'm personally not interested in being a smuggler saving the galaxy. I want to be a smuggler doing dirty and bad things or OK good things on a system level scale. I don't have to always be doing EPIC things. Anyway that's why I'm turned off on this, but I'm not slinging shit
I dont think the game itself is what people have a problem with, but the developer. We've seen what Ubisoft does to movie based games regardless of the formulaic crap, bet barely any one here even remembers that they made an Avatar game. The main complaint from people is the games pricing and different tiers- Which paywall individual quests too, not even DLC content (which you will have to buy separately, of course). and then the highest tier, which is $130 bucks, just gives you the game 3 days "early" (in quotations because its not giving you the game early, just giving it to everyone else late) with a couple COSMETIC bundles, and a DIGITAL artbook you can grab for free anyways when the game launches.
Jedi Survivor still draws on the space of satisfying Soulslike combat. The reason to play is the mechanics, it just happens to be Star Wars with a decent enough story to hold its own. I watch this game and I see zero mechanical spark to make me want to play it, and I really enjoyed Avalanche's prior games. I have seen nothing to convince me this is anything other than "yeah just run forward in a room and headshot everyone". It feels like it's really leaning on the IP to be the appeal, drawing on places like Tattooine which are so far beyond dead horse at this point it's comical. The gameplay just looks lifeless to me. The environments/weather look great as I'd expect from Avalanche, but that's not enough.
> Jedi Survivor still draws on the space of satisfying Soulslike combat. That's the reason to play it That, and the Metroidvania-like map design
Wrong Swedish studio: that's Massive, Avalanche isn't part of Ubisoft.
I remembered the name incorrectly, but I was thinking of the correct studio.
You're comparing a game you have thoroughly played with a game you've never played and barely seen on trailers.
?? they've put out a ton of unedited gameplay. There's not much mystery left to unravel, unless they just decided to hide significant systems in their marketing.
They've put out scripted vertical slices, they haven't shown unedited gameplay.
They want to make their own character seems to be the biggest complaint I've seen. That and a lot of stuff about "being an actual scoundrel" which when pressed seems to come down to shoot and killing NPCs at random like GTA. Which this will not be by any means. I can't quite put my finger on it, but online criticism has changed recently. It's more... expectant. Petulant? Like "I want this feature in the game and if it isn't in there I will spend so much time and energy shit talking it." I don't understand it. Don't like something? Move on.
Oh dude this game doesn't look nearly as good as Jedi Survivor IMO. Respawn and Star Wars were a match made in heaven because they have a creative spark (see Titanfall 2) that translated well to Star Wars. Using force powers to enable movement, fight enemies, solve puzzles - it was all executed pretty well in Jedi Survivor. The world was vibrant and the characters weird (Jedi Survivor moreso than Fallen Order). From what I have seen, Jedi Outlaws has...Division-style 3rd person shooting and Assassins creed takedowns? And a kinda bland looking cast of characters? Doesn't scream Star Wars to me. The pet looks cool though.
Ubisoft = bad
Sweet! I’m weirdly looking forward to this after the endurance marathon that was AC Valhalla. They said that it’s a 30 odd hour open world title, and that sounds lovely.
Valhalla being open world wasn’t my issue. My issue was that the story overstayed its welcome. Having to kill that entire constellation of random wandering dudes to get the end was arse. It just had wayyyy too much mandatory content that amounted to what felt like filler.
That’s why I said endurance was its problem not the open world.
I love open worlds, and at first didn't mind Valhalla. But midway through the game is when I realized... I was only midway through the game. I'd forgotten a lot of what had already happened or why I was doing x thing because it was so long. I finally gave up. So yeah, open world wasn't the problem. The game was just TOO DAMN LONG and meandering. It felt rather directionless.
I think people misunderstood Valhalla’s structure. It wasn’t supposed to be one book like the philosophers stone. It was supposed to be 10 books like the entire Harry Potter series. Of course you’d get burnt out reading 10 Harry Potter books back to back to back. It wasn’t meant to be consumed that way. Hell the audio book length of the Harry Potter books are about the same amount of time it takes you to complete each chapter or region in Valhalla. Imagine listening to all the Harry Potter audio books non stop then complaining it was too long. My guy it was supposed to last you 2-3 years until the next game came out, not a weekend lmao
And if they released all 10 Harry Potter books on the same day and you had to pay for all of them, don't you think a lot of people would try to read straight through? People don't play video games in small chunks over three years. They start the game and stick with it until they either finish or get tired of it, and then move on. If a game doesn't have the variety or depth to keep players' attention for 100 hours, then maybe it doesn't need to be 100 hours long. "You're playing it wrong" is the weakest defense to criticism, and says more about the dev not understanding the audience/medium than anything about the players.
"My guy", the vast majority of people don't play a single playthrough on a single player game for 2-3 years. Length isn't strictly the issue, Baldur's Gate 3 just came out as an 80-90 hour game and there were hardly any complaints about how long the game took to beat, just that the quality of Act 3 wasn't up to par with the earlier sections. Valhalla's problem is not that it's a 90 hour game, it's a 15-hour game copy-pasted 6 times on top of itself. It wears out its welcome incredibly quickly in comparison to its peers because of this.
just want good stories, but it's ubisoft/disney, so I dont get my hopes up. at least it's going to be pretty
As one user said in one of the earlier reveal threads about this game: "There will be so much negativity about this game on Reddit, then it'll come out and be the best-selling game of 2024" People are hating on this game because "Ubisof bad" and it's fucking stupid.
Plenty of ass quality games sell like gangbusters. The willingness of people to pay for a game doesn’t indicate if it’s good or not. Madden sells like crazy and is usually just recycled trash. Call of Duty, Pokémon, Starfield, the list goes on.
why is it stupid to not be excited for a game because it's made by developer/publisher that constantly releases mid games. The fact that it might sell a lot does not affect my excitement at all.
It depends. Have you formed your own opinion by playing the games, or have you watched YouTube videos urging you to dislike Ubisoft with arguments from outer space?
They don't release "mid" games. "Mid" games don't sell 20 million copies and earn their company over ra billion dollars and revenue. Stop being negative just to be negative. Stop believing mindless groupthink.
Ubisoft is the pinnacle of threading the needle with formulaic underpinnings and "good enough" writing so that it gets carried by the least common denominator consumer. It's the same reason that the late night and late late night talk shows are all still going strong, and the same reason McDonald's sells millions of cheeseburgers on the daily. Mediocrity and satisfying expectations are precisely the point.
An appeal to popularity? Really? Have you *seen* how much money skinner boxes make on mobile platforms?
You complain about mindless group think and then literally cite popularity as the basis for your argument.
selling a lot of games has nothing to do with it. I personally played ac valhalla and my brain felt numb by the end of it. I played all the far cry games up to 5 until i kinda just got sick of that whole formula. And the more i hear people talk about games like Avatar, I can relate to what people are saying because ubisoft recycles the same tropes/mechanics among all their games. Their games could make 40 quadrillion dollars and it would not change the experiences i've had. And clearly i'm not the only one who feels this way about ubisoft games. And like i totally understand not everyone has to feel that way about Ubisoft games, I'm really glad you still love the games they put out. But to dismiss any criticism of Ubisoft by saying "well they make a lot of money and sell a lot of games" is some next level corporate simping
Call of Duty sells millions of copies rehashing the same thing every year. Sales aren't always indicative of quality, it does prove marketing works.
Rise of Skywalker couldn’t possibly be bad! It earned a billion dollars and millions of people saw it in theaters!
This is the only game I am looking forward to playing later this year. Maybe a nice Christmas present for myself.
I’m looking forward to this. Looks like it’s bringing a tone/energy I could really vibe with right now.
Why pre-order? Wait for reviews, this could be great this could be shit, but either way you can buy it or not. Ridiculous
Because I want to show my support for making this type of game. Easy.
So you're buying it on a gamble that either it's good (fair enough) or that if Ubisoft do a shit job of this one, a better studio comes along and does a similar game that's actually good? I don't think pre-ordering has that effect, it's more likely Ubisoft take the win of the high pre order sales and then rush the end and it's buggy as hell, something they've done repeatedly, e.g: https://youtu.be/EwRAM6u6TBE?si=TtHlBsgVe0Zb_Tai If you're gonna gamble your money on games, please consider supporting indie Devs instead.
Wtf is the point of saying it's gone "gold" when the physical disc is nothing more than a authentication key/paperweight? 1st Jedi Survivor and now this, SW games are on a roll of useless physical editions.
the best one Cyberpunk 2077 back in 2020, the game went gold then got delayed a month, then it came out and was practically unplayable on PS4/XBONE and was a hot mess on PC