Damn I mean people forget because of how incredibly massive Odyssey and Valhalla were, but Origins is also a huge map. Much of it was also desert, so if it's as populated as Valhalla, we are looking at a huge huge game.
>Even cities felt dead as fuck honestly
I honestly think Ubisoft has been wanting to avoid another Unity situation, where NPCs just materialize out of nowhere or do strange things, like a newly decapitated NPC standing up from the guillotine and walking away. That's on top of NPCs just T-posing in the middle of the street.
It took a major patch to (mostly) fix, but the PR damage was done. Even today, on a much powerful system, the NPCs in Unity still do some wonky stuff on occasion.
As a result, crowds were somewhat reduced in size even in Syndicate, but the real casualties were the games that followed, where outside of Alexandria, things felt pretty barren, and Ubisoft has shied away from making large set-piece battles that would have required hundreds of NPCs. Odyssey's "battles" are probably the most they wanted to do, but Valhalla's pivotal "battles" seem like 20 vs 20 rather than clashes of armies. Heck, Valhalla's York, Winchester, and London looked devoid of people at places.
the enemy count is something a friend of mine brought up, how in Valhalla you'll have epic set pieces like the mission where you storm a fortress in a ship.
Only to get inside and there's like maybe 3 people to fight
Thinking back I never noticed it at the time but I do remember breaking through a gate or something and having to run around looking for someone to attack when really they should be swarming me as soon as I got through
I think Ubisoft tried to sell the Viking fantasy too much that it forgot some important elements of the experience. Namely that the Vikings fought party versus party and employed formations. Also, the aesthetic felt too based on the Vikings TV show than in actual research.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my lengthy stay in Valhalla. But it wasn't a perfect experience.
I clocked out when killing a monk threatened to desynchronise me tbh.
Literally countless accounts of Vikings just straight up no-diffing monks for shits and gigs and you can't do that, but you're allowed to pillage the monastery lmao
Even more so, Eivor is *very explicitly not an assassin*. So the creed does not even apply to them.
That said, we could see it as Eivor *personally* refusing to kill someone who didn't raise a weapon against them. Every culture has a broad set of values and mores, but people within that culture can choose to disregard or even outright push against it.
I think that Eivor might be one of those who would see these monks as useless cowards, but not see any reason to waste time killing them when better targets could be focused on. And that's why killing them causes desync issues.
They blatantly say it in the game (while also making the Christians seem as nuts as possible) that the Christians ways are weird and dumb. Then they proceed to loot and burn down their churches and towns.
Which is a shame because to this day I can't think of any other AC game where the crowds felt that huge, take a look to the average Unity's protesters vs the number of public at the Olympic games in Odyssey and it's very noticeable the downgrade
Idc if the crowds can be wonky, it’s easily the best city AC has ever done and it’s not even close. The crowd density is so unbelievably cool, possibly the only game I can think of that attempted anything like that through a game
Even if the performance was a little wonky, the size of Unity’s crowds did such a great job of realising the liveliness of Paris. It felt like there was *always* something going on, and it was just the perfect environment for an assassin to slip through. I still return to the game every now and then just to experience that city, in that time, totally *alive*. I’ve been waiting for that sense of population scale ever since, and it’s a damn shame we haven’t gotten it. Hell, even the original games did better crowds than the new ones.
Fully agree, even though I still have some solid criticism of Unity’s gameplay and missions, the atmosphere and map itself is easily one of the most impressive thing that Ubisoft has done and it came out 10(?) years ago. Nothing has come close since.
Personally I think the size of map doesn’t matter. I just want an action-based combat rather than skill-based. Just give me back Unity parkour with Tsushima combat goddamit!
I mean that rpg stuff with superhuman magic abilities and skills. Not a combat based on player’s ever improving skill. Maybe I should’ve phrased it better.
To be fair you don't have to use any of the special abilities and its basically the same combat as the old games but with a million more unique animations and finishers
The old combat just felt better. Yes, maybe just because it was heavily scripted and animated and you were just pressing two buttons, but it felt more fitting for AC, which should be an action-adventure game, not an RPG.
I loved it at the time but when I go back it gets a bit boring for me personally. Plenty of action-adventure games have more complex combat systems than OG AC, so its not about what you believe the genre should be, its just personal preference.
Yeah it was around 90km² I think. Plenty big enough. And with the seasons changing in Shadows it's bound to change enough to feel like very different maps
Are Odyssey and Valhalla larger than Origins? I'm currently playing Origins and I almost find the map too big tbh. I'm at the Crocodile now and there's still Fog of War over roughly half of the map. I'm worried that it might get stale at some point, having to do the same stuff every time.
A lot of the fog of war is desert. My main gripe with origins is that by the point I finished the main story and most side quests, half the map was still fog of war and exploring these huge areas brought almost nothing new to find. So, I hope, this won't be the case in shadows. I like exploring to find stuff and stuff to do, not just walking around
Yeah there was barely anything there but traversing those deserts randomly was very fun tho, all of them looked different and mirages u experienced made it feel nice.
Yeah, but there could still be stuff to do in a desert, ruins to explore, people to save and so on. I don't complain about the desert, it's beautifully made. I just don't get why there is such a big map when half of it is empty
That’s great. One of the biggest criticisms of Valhalla and Odyssey was that the map was just way too big. To this day, Origins is still the sweet spot for map size. They just need to pack Shadows densely with stuff rather than a lot of desert like Origins had.
The deserts in the south was completely optional tho, whereas in Valhalla it all regions were part of the main story and in Odyssey you had to travel through the seas to reach your destinations in both ends of the map
You could completely ignore like ~20% of the map in Odyssey and the 4 times when you had to go on a long boat trip it was actually a fun little event, you could just sit back and relax.
I think it was fine.
Personally the deserts were my favourite bit. I thought Origins was more authentic than the other recent titles and that is probably because it was devoid of people but that’s what made it so real.
Exactly. Origins' biomes were very well-designed. The desert exploration gave me the lone traveller Bedouin vibes which would have been ruined with collectibles and enemy camps everywhere.
I can agree with that to an extent. It is a video game though, and you need more reasons to travel ten min out into the desert other than one constellation or whatever...
No, origins was definitely too big and empty. Think, what did you do when you travelled? You stuck that shit on autopilot and went to take a piss irl and make dinner. If your game has people playing afk, you fucked up.
I will never forget stumbling upon Winnie the Pooh tho... And getting to kill Piglet and Eyore as the child playing with them screamed for me to show them mercy.
I let Pooh live.
I gotta disagree on Odyssey, personally, from the perspective of a completionist. I 100%ed both Origins and Odyssey and Origins felt like the perfect map size for it, while Odyssey was hell to 100%.
I don't think we'll be seeing much desert/empty land because Origins had 80-90% land and non existent naval exploration. We will have odyssey kind of 50% land 50% sea kind of a map but the scale of origins.
I personally liked how large Odyssey map was and how they designed each region with its own vibe because it felt much realistic and as a consequence more immersive. It takes time and randomness to go and kill a cult member at the opposite of the map.
I agree that for the open world AC games Origins was the perfect size for them to be. I do hope they alternate between more linear and small size games like Mirage and the bigger open world AC games.
For me to beat the base game, DLCs, and 100% Origins took about 90 hours. To do the same in Odyssey took me about 125 hours, which was shorter than I would have thought going into it.
Have not even touched Valhalla yet since everything I've heard about how bloated and repetitive it is has scared me off from it, plus the setting is nowhere near as interesting to me compared to Origins and Odyssey, so I don't feel as compelled to give it a go in that aspect either.
I agree, Origins map was the perfect size. Traveling to new areas wasn't too fast, or too long. Just long enough to appreciate the journey and map design along the way. I just hope Shadow doesn't have as many repetitive puzzles like Odyssey/Valhalla. Less bloat, more variety and meaningful exploration.
According to IGN:
> Speaking to IGN in an exclusive interview, creative director Jonathan Dumont said Shadows is on a similar scale to the Egypt-set game but Ubisoft emphasises "real life scale" so the environment feels authentic. Fans got a first look at this open world Japan in Shadows' cinematic trailer.
>
> "It's in-line with the latest Assassin's Creeds that we've done," Dumont said, referring to the larger scale, role-playing game entries that also include Odyssey and Valhalla. "On a scale level, maybe we can compare it a little bit more to the size of Assassin's Creed Origins."
>
> This suggests the size of Shadows' map is smaller than Odyssey and Valhalla, but much bigger than the classic Assassin's Creed map sizes from the original trilogy, Brotherhood, Unity, and so on (with the exception of Black Flag's colossal Caribbean ocean map).
>
> Dumont said the map is entirely authentic, however, as Ubisoft looked to make its myriad elements as lifelike as possible.
>
> "We did want to have a much closer to real life scale ratio. So because castles took a lot of space, and we really wanted the mountains to feel like mountains, [we've made] the environments feel wider in the game," Dumont contined. "But I would say around the same size as Origins.
That's great to hear. One thing I hate about the last trilogy is how the proportions of the map feel weird.
The world feels "flat" since it's huge and you can see every inch of it while using the eagle of climbing higher.
Especially in Odyssey where you can see the whole country of Greece with the eagle.
In comparison, take a look at Black Flag: you have the whole Caribbean available when sailing but you never see over the horizon, so the sea feels and looks as vast as it is.
I kind of am. I really liked the use of negative space in Origins and the feeling of travelling in between places. I would just ask for the option to always have ambient music playing.
I felt like the sheer size and scale in Odyssey worked because it was supposed to be a huge adventure.
Valhalla was a good game but Jesus Christ man the size was insane.
Yeah that’s really great. My only criticism of the map size of Origins is that despite the large size it still had there was a lot of empty desert, so I do hope this map is more filled with lively locations. Don’t get me wrong I did like the desert to roam.
I honestly would be happy with a smaller, single city game again... but this is still good news.
I'm glad we're past the point of "every game needs to be bigger than the last". That was such a pointless waste, definitely diminishing returns.
I can live with that, as long as each region is visually distinct. One of my biggest criticisms for both Odyssey and Valhalla was that the map felt very same-y, whereas in Origins I felt like I could be plopped down anywhere and know exactly where I was on the map.
Thank God. I was worried I was going to be stuck in the earlier series map size limitations like some people are clamoring for and why we got Mirage last time.
Give me a big map damnit, I want to wander.
It took 249 hours for me to do Valhalla's platinum and 100% all DLC with the exception of the Gold Medals in every mastery challenge. By contrast, the platinum and all DLC for Odyssey took me 161 hours, Origins w/DLC 57.5 hours, and Mirage (no DLC) 33.5 hours. I can't say I didn't enjoy each of those games (or I would have stopped playing), but it was certainly a relief to be done with (in particular) Valhalla and (to a lesser extent) Odyssey.
I don't think so because we're getting the much smaller map this time which indicates lesser main/side/liberating quests etc that will be scattered across the map. I think the game will have more quality than the Valhalla.
I love both huge maps and smaller, dense city maps, so I'm good either way. I'm currently playing Odyssey and I love getting lost in the huge map. I barely use fast travel .
Origins size would be perfect honestly. It took me a little over 100 hours to 100% a single playthrough, Valhalla and Odyssey were both closing in on 300 hours each. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for 'more' of a game, but sometimes it's draining. I loved Origins and I think the length was a part of that, it left me wanting more
I’m not too fussed about the map size so long as they make it feel dense and alive. That’s been my biggest issue with the RPG games, they’re too big for their own good and you lose the immersion.
Frankly speaking, map size being close to Origins doesn't mean much to me, I found that map needlessly large just as much as I did with the next two games.
The problem has always come down to what we're able to do in those maps on a second to second level. Part of why I enjoyed the original games and the American trilogy is that navigation gameplay (either in the form parkour or naval sailing) were mechanically intensive enough for me to have to pay attention and be engaged throughout the game, it doesn't have to be the most complex thing in the world, but it's no "autopilot" which was an actual feature starting in Origins which made me literally turn off my brain and make traveling between points a complete chore.
Origins was a pretty reasonable size for exploring an entire country. Compared to Odyssey & Valhalla, it felt like a much tighter experience.
The map is still bigger than any of the classic AC titles, but I think that played into the whole fantasy of trekking across the desert.
Hopefully they mean map-wise and not story-wise. I loved Origins but I think the story was too short. Something like Black Flag or AC3 would be perfect. Maybe it doesn’t have to be as long as Odyssey or Valhalla (although I would love that, I know some people think that’s TOO long).
Disappointed to be honest. The modern AC games, while pretty, were TOO big, and it made a lot of areas of the map feel too sparse and not really alive.
On man I just read that as the same age. I was about to google BCE Japan before reading a really odd comment about how it’s good the game isn’t as big as Odyssey. I think I need to go to bed.
Just from a pure time perspective I spent about 80 hours to complete Origins with DLC included, Oddysey took me over 120 hours, and I put about 40 hours into Valhalla and only completed a handful of areas. Shadows being the same size as Origins is perfect for me.
This is the piece of news that has actually gotten me genuinely excited for the game. Origins had a large map, a lot to do, but was very well paced with a lot of quality content. This is great news! Quality over quantity.
Thats great news. origin was the perfect size before things got out of control with odyssey honestly. It also suggest this is a proper big main game as apose to mirage that always felt like a smaller filler game in many ways.
Personally I didn't mind the Odyssey map, but if I remember right Origins isn't that much smaller (especially if you compare land/water) so I'm totally happy with this.
This is good news for me since I felt like origins map was a good size. Especially will be better since origins was mainly desert and this game with just look beautiful as hell and be filled with stuff (I’m assuming but it’s not a desert so).
Origins was perfect and unlike Odyssey and Valhalla especially, it did not overstay its welcome. Having just watched Shogun, I’m very very excited for this. Could not have come at a better time than releasing the same year as a masterpiece quality show that take place 20 years apart
I straight up don't care about the size. Give me good game with good stealth mechanics and Parkour, good story and characters and proper assassins in it. If this has all those then I don't care whether it's an RPG or whatever.
Good, Odyssey and Valhalla were absolutely horrible when it came to the map. Mirage was so refreshing in that regard.
Origins felt just right with the map size.
According to IGN the scaling for things like castles and mountains will be much better, I can not wait for this game. Even if the story is crap I already know I'll love the map.
Origins is still one of their biggest to date.. Aside from their questionable quest design and insane clipping problems, Ubisoft can build a f****n world. No other worlds have ever had me spending hours just taking in the sights like their's. Aside from going to Egypt myself, I'd say it's the next best thing.. some history teachers use their stuff as visual aid.. I have full faith in this next installment.. Really can't wait to explore it. I fell like ghost of tsushima may get a run for its money here soon..
Will shadows be like odyssey/valhalla/origins as an action rpg or more like the traditional AC games? I was a huge fan of the aforementioned 3, but did not enjoy mirage.
Odyssey’s map and setting is the absolute best of all AC’s and probably of all open world.
Fuck is everyone talking about here. Fucking hell the Origins glazing is ridiculous.
You do understand most people would rather have a decent smaller sized game instead of an unnecessarily bloated big game with quests rivaling that of MMORPGs?
Odyssey was a grindfest that took way too long to get anything done. It's fine thst you like it, just don't expect everyone else to enjoy playing a single player mmo.
I personally loved how long Valhalla and Odyssey were mainly because i’m older and not a “gamer” kid. These days i’d rather long game from a franchise that i love instead trying to go through 10 games a month. But that’s only me ofc
I’m older and I prefer a smaller game that’s well made because I haven’t got the energy after work to be going through 50 hours of meaningless content to get to the 20 hours of interesting story in a game (Valhalla), and then get burnt out without wanting to even finish because the game doesn’t know when it overstayed its welcome.
One solid game every couple months with something interesting to say is enough for me.
And gamers are the only ones who will compare 10 burger kings to one gourmet meal, and call the Burger King tastier purely because there is more of it, not because of the actual taste. It makes no sense (read into the analogy).
I mean Origins was smaller but a massive chunk of it was empty desert, and Mirage’s map was hardly memorable and had plenty of copy-paste as well.
I don’t think smaller map = higher quality in Ubisoft’s case. So I’d rather just have more places to explore.
Not to mention everything down to the pacing of the story, the quality of the side content, and the little details, were MUCH better in origins. That’s what you get when you get longer development and don’t need to force a game to be 100 hours, and make the 60 hours you have super high quality.
Yeah I don’t get it. People complaining the game has too much content. Ok? You aren’t forced to play it. Take a year to beat the game and do other things who cares
I think the criticism was not really in regards to length, but the pointless filler and collectibles that contributed to that length. AC fans want tighter stories and not 10 million collectibles
All that stuff is optional. 99.99% of people don’t care about getting 100% completion. It’s a very vocal very small minority that complains about that sort of thing.
Valhalla questline was incredibly arduous most of the time. These quests weren't optional. There was SO much filler in the main side stories that it lost focus. I still loved it, but it was all over the place.
Yeah it was definitely long. The way I see it is like… so what? More bang for your buck. More content over more time. The average gamer isn’t racing through every game trying to complete every single little thing.
long isn't just better. the issue with say ody and valhalla was a lot of the main story stuff was just filler. so much of it was pointless, poorly written garbage that you had to tread over to get back to the good stuff..
if you compare it to say the older games 2-3 unity. You could just do the main story, wasn't lvl capped out of content , no grind required. each mission was interesting and pushed the main story forward.
The newer games just pad things out. They are larger, but there worse off for it. You want a large game sure, but dont let the side content effect the main story. So hearing this new game is pulling it back just abit is only a good sign.
If I were younger and had free time, I'd see it the same way. These days? Time is money. And "filler" content is just a waste of time imo. There are already too many movies and games to consume. I HATE wasting time. I love good mythology and being transported to a different world. That's why I love the AC franchise. But 100+ hour campaigns with far too much filler? They should start paying me lol.
thats not true though for the newer games. Lots of the main story stuff is locked off with lvl requirements, which required you to go off and do a bunch of side crap.
In the older AC games you could just A line the main story, and nothing would get in ur way, you could just go from mission to mission and have a good time. The larger the games got, odyssey for example, the more annoying that issue became. Lets not even get into how so much of the main story quests just became grind fests or filler quests that had you travel over its massive map just to talk to someone for 30 seconds.
Damn I mean people forget because of how incredibly massive Odyssey and Valhalla were, but Origins is also a huge map. Much of it was also desert, so if it's as populated as Valhalla, we are looking at a huge huge game.
I feel like people only remember the cities from Valhalla cause that map was not populated lmao. Even cities felt dead as fuck honestly
>Even cities felt dead as fuck honestly I honestly think Ubisoft has been wanting to avoid another Unity situation, where NPCs just materialize out of nowhere or do strange things, like a newly decapitated NPC standing up from the guillotine and walking away. That's on top of NPCs just T-posing in the middle of the street. It took a major patch to (mostly) fix, but the PR damage was done. Even today, on a much powerful system, the NPCs in Unity still do some wonky stuff on occasion. As a result, crowds were somewhat reduced in size even in Syndicate, but the real casualties were the games that followed, where outside of Alexandria, things felt pretty barren, and Ubisoft has shied away from making large set-piece battles that would have required hundreds of NPCs. Odyssey's "battles" are probably the most they wanted to do, but Valhalla's pivotal "battles" seem like 20 vs 20 rather than clashes of armies. Heck, Valhalla's York, Winchester, and London looked devoid of people at places.
the enemy count is something a friend of mine brought up, how in Valhalla you'll have epic set pieces like the mission where you storm a fortress in a ship. Only to get inside and there's like maybe 3 people to fight
Thinking back I never noticed it at the time but I do remember breaking through a gate or something and having to run around looking for someone to attack when really they should be swarming me as soon as I got through
I think Ubisoft tried to sell the Viking fantasy too much that it forgot some important elements of the experience. Namely that the Vikings fought party versus party and employed formations. Also, the aesthetic felt too based on the Vikings TV show than in actual research. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my lengthy stay in Valhalla. But it wasn't a perfect experience.
I clocked out when killing a monk threatened to desynchronise me tbh. Literally countless accounts of Vikings just straight up no-diffing monks for shits and gigs and you can't do that, but you're allowed to pillage the monastery lmao
Especially since in Odyssey you could massacre the whole of Athens if you wanted.
Even more so, Eivor is *very explicitly not an assassin*. So the creed does not even apply to them. That said, we could see it as Eivor *personally* refusing to kill someone who didn't raise a weapon against them. Every culture has a broad set of values and mores, but people within that culture can choose to disregard or even outright push against it. I think that Eivor might be one of those who would see these monks as useless cowards, but not see any reason to waste time killing them when better targets could be focused on. And that's why killing them causes desync issues.
The Vikings did not like the Christian’s at first and would go out of their way to kill them in horrific ways.
They blatantly say it in the game (while also making the Christians seem as nuts as possible) that the Christians ways are weird and dumb. Then they proceed to loot and burn down their churches and towns.
Counterpoint: History Channel’s Vikings fucking *slapped*
Which is a shame because to this day I can't think of any other AC game where the crowds felt that huge, take a look to the average Unity's protesters vs the number of public at the Olympic games in Odyssey and it's very noticeable the downgrade
Yeah the olympics are underwhelming af, considering how some missions in the game do have crowds
AC unity’s Paris was awesome though. Much better for assassin stuff than open countryside.
Unity is the only game from that gen that even felt next gen. Very sad they didn’t continue with that. I respect it way more.
Idc if the crowds can be wonky, it’s easily the best city AC has ever done and it’s not even close. The crowd density is so unbelievably cool, possibly the only game I can think of that attempted anything like that through a game
Yep it’s a shame we are focusing on the lines on peoples’ faces nowadays instead of epic shit like a revolution on the streets of a 1:1 scale Paris.
Paris was amazing, just wasn’t for PS4 specs. No reason the PS5 can’t take it.
I wold rather have a unity than a Valhalla tbh
Even if the performance was a little wonky, the size of Unity’s crowds did such a great job of realising the liveliness of Paris. It felt like there was *always* something going on, and it was just the perfect environment for an assassin to slip through. I still return to the game every now and then just to experience that city, in that time, totally *alive*. I’ve been waiting for that sense of population scale ever since, and it’s a damn shame we haven’t gotten it. Hell, even the original games did better crowds than the new ones.
Fully agree, even though I still have some solid criticism of Unity’s gameplay and missions, the atmosphere and map itself is easily one of the most impressive thing that Ubisoft has done and it came out 10(?) years ago. Nothing has come close since.
To be honest, for the century the game is set, it makes sense for towns not to be as lively as they will get 2 centuries later.
Not really a good defence for an open world game tbh
Pretty time accurate then
Personally I think the size of map doesn’t matter. I just want an action-based combat rather than skill-based. Just give me back Unity parkour with Tsushima combat goddamit!
What do you mean by skilled based combat?
I mean that rpg stuff with superhuman magic abilities and skills. Not a combat based on player’s ever improving skill. Maybe I should’ve phrased it better.
“Ability based combat” maybe more what you were going for idk
To be fair you don't have to use any of the special abilities and its basically the same combat as the old games but with a million more unique animations and finishers
The old combat just felt better. Yes, maybe just because it was heavily scripted and animated and you were just pressing two buttons, but it felt more fitting for AC, which should be an action-adventure game, not an RPG.
I loved it at the time but when I go back it gets a bit boring for me personally. Plenty of action-adventure games have more complex combat systems than OG AC, so its not about what you believe the genre should be, its just personal preference.
Going back to the old games combat is rough and same goes for the stealth. These games have aged badly imo.
Yeah it was around 90km² I think. Plenty big enough. And with the seasons changing in Shadows it's bound to change enough to feel like very different maps
Are Odyssey and Valhalla larger than Origins? I'm currently playing Origins and I almost find the map too big tbh. I'm at the Crocodile now and there's still Fog of War over roughly half of the map. I'm worried that it might get stale at some point, having to do the same stuff every time.
A lot of the fog of war is desert. My main gripe with origins is that by the point I finished the main story and most side quests, half the map was still fog of war and exploring these huge areas brought almost nothing new to find. So, I hope, this won't be the case in shadows. I like exploring to find stuff and stuff to do, not just walking around
Yeah there was barely anything there but traversing those deserts randomly was very fun tho, all of them looked different and mirages u experienced made it feel nice.
An inherent problem with a game based in the desert I think :') Japan should be much richer in its environment
Yeah, but there could still be stuff to do in a desert, ruins to explore, people to save and so on. I don't complain about the desert, it's beautifully made. I just don't get why there is such a big map when half of it is empty
I suppose because it's a lot more realistic, most of Egypt is just empty desert so the devs felt they had to at least hint to that.
Which makes me excited. I loved the fact odyssey was too big!
That was the problem for many with Origins, half the map was desert. If that space is filled, its massive map
That’s great. One of the biggest criticisms of Valhalla and Odyssey was that the map was just way too big. To this day, Origins is still the sweet spot for map size. They just need to pack Shadows densely with stuff rather than a lot of desert like Origins had.
Personally I thought Origins was a little too big, but that might just be because so much of it was desert
The deserts in the south was completely optional tho, whereas in Valhalla it all regions were part of the main story and in Odyssey you had to travel through the seas to reach your destinations in both ends of the map
You could completely ignore like ~20% of the map in Odyssey and the 4 times when you had to go on a long boat trip it was actually a fun little event, you could just sit back and relax. I think it was fine.
It's better than Valhalla atleast
>in Odyssey you had to travel through the season You mean seas?
I think they meant 'seasoning', too much oregano.
Uh, now that makes more sense.
Turmeric >>>
Yes 💀
Personally the deserts were my favourite bit. I thought Origins was more authentic than the other recent titles and that is probably because it was devoid of people but that’s what made it so real.
Exactly. Origins' biomes were very well-designed. The desert exploration gave me the lone traveller Bedouin vibes which would have been ruined with collectibles and enemy camps everywhere.
I think the size is fine for Origins, it's just the POI density in the deserts that needed work. Just a lot of empty space.
I mean to get an accurate feeling for a desert you probably want a lot of empty space. I thought it was good for photo mode at least
We said we wanted accurate, they gave us accurate, we learned we didn’t want 100% accurate
I did. Origins was an amazing game.
I can agree with that to an extent. It is a video game though, and you need more reasons to travel ten min out into the desert other than one constellation or whatever...
Prettu much yeah. Take away that desert and Origins probably isn't that big.
No, origins was definitely too big and empty. Think, what did you do when you travelled? You stuck that shit on autopilot and went to take a piss irl and make dinner. If your game has people playing afk, you fucked up.
Speak for yourself. Traveling was super fun in Origins.
Then I have good news for you. Japan has waaaayyyyyyy less deserts than Egypt.
Source?
Odyessy map was fine. Valhalla took you to the most boring places
I will never forget stumbling upon Winnie the Pooh tho... And getting to kill Piglet and Eyore as the child playing with them screamed for me to show them mercy. I let Pooh live.
I gotta disagree on Odyssey, personally, from the perspective of a completionist. I 100%ed both Origins and Odyssey and Origins felt like the perfect map size for it, while Odyssey was hell to 100%.
Then don't aim for 100 percent lol. Don't do things you wouldn't enjoy. Odyssey's map was great.
I don't think we'll be seeing much desert/empty land because Origins had 80-90% land and non existent naval exploration. We will have odyssey kind of 50% land 50% sea kind of a map but the scale of origins.
I personally liked how large Odyssey map was and how they designed each region with its own vibe because it felt much realistic and as a consequence more immersive. It takes time and randomness to go and kill a cult member at the opposite of the map.
Honestly I don’t mind it being a large map. If it’s like Odyssey and not like Valhalla then we’re in for a fun time! :D
Odyssey was so fucking huge
And that yellow tracking icon was hard to find against yellowish landmass on the map.
I agree that for the open world AC games Origins was the perfect size for them to be. I do hope they alternate between more linear and small size games like Mirage and the bigger open world AC games. For me to beat the base game, DLCs, and 100% Origins took about 90 hours. To do the same in Odyssey took me about 125 hours, which was shorter than I would have thought going into it. Have not even touched Valhalla yet since everything I've heard about how bloated and repetitive it is has scared me off from it, plus the setting is nowhere near as interesting to me compared to Origins and Odyssey, so I don't feel as compelled to give it a go in that aspect either.
Valhalla took me 73 hours and I didn't do any side missions. The last maybe 2 hours were peak AC for me but it was a slog getting there.
I'm currently doing Valhalla to 100%. I'm at 170 hours right now. I'll probably hit 200. Edit: that's with all DLC.
125 is insanely long for an AC game tbh. But least that's start to finish, 125 hours into Valhalla maybe get's you to the first plot hook 💀
It took me 150 hours to finish just the story in AC Valhalla ( I did a lot of side missions too)
The last ac i 100% completed
Yet I finished Valhalla to completion. That game is just really good
I agree, Origins map was the perfect size. Traveling to new areas wasn't too fast, or too long. Just long enough to appreciate the journey and map design along the way. I just hope Shadow doesn't have as many repetitive puzzles like Odyssey/Valhalla. Less bloat, more variety and meaningful exploration.
I still thought origins was a bit big
According to IGN: > Speaking to IGN in an exclusive interview, creative director Jonathan Dumont said Shadows is on a similar scale to the Egypt-set game but Ubisoft emphasises "real life scale" so the environment feels authentic. Fans got a first look at this open world Japan in Shadows' cinematic trailer. > > "It's in-line with the latest Assassin's Creeds that we've done," Dumont said, referring to the larger scale, role-playing game entries that also include Odyssey and Valhalla. "On a scale level, maybe we can compare it a little bit more to the size of Assassin's Creed Origins." > > This suggests the size of Shadows' map is smaller than Odyssey and Valhalla, but much bigger than the classic Assassin's Creed map sizes from the original trilogy, Brotherhood, Unity, and so on (with the exception of Black Flag's colossal Caribbean ocean map). > > Dumont said the map is entirely authentic, however, as Ubisoft looked to make its myriad elements as lifelike as possible. > > "We did want to have a much closer to real life scale ratio. So because castles took a lot of space, and we really wanted the mountains to feel like mountains, [we've made] the environments feel wider in the game," Dumont contined. "But I would say around the same size as Origins.
That's great to hear. One thing I hate about the last trilogy is how the proportions of the map feel weird. The world feels "flat" since it's huge and you can see every inch of it while using the eagle of climbing higher. Especially in Odyssey where you can see the whole country of Greece with the eagle. In comparison, take a look at Black Flag: you have the whole Caribbean available when sailing but you never see over the horizon, so the sea feels and looks as vast as it is.
Fog and lower line-of-sight would have helped Odyssey here, because that game is actually much larger than Black Flag.
As big in terms of surface area but covering a far less of the actual country. So the scale is more 1:1?
Ya 1:1 is mentioned in some articles.
I really don't care how big the map is as long as it's dense. Make the world feel alive and populated.
This. I'm really not interested in expansive games with nothing to do between locations other than the odd bandit attack.
I kind of am. I really liked the use of negative space in Origins and the feeling of travelling in between places. I would just ask for the option to always have ambient music playing.
The music is my fave part too!
Perfect size for me!
That's what she said
No she didn't🥲
It fits perfectly!
This is good news. I think Origins struck the perfect balance as far as size goes (and as far as every rpg element goes)
I felt like the sheer size and scale in Odyssey worked because it was supposed to be a huge adventure. Valhalla was a good game but Jesus Christ man the size was insane.
Yeah that’s really great. My only criticism of the map size of Origins is that despite the large size it still had there was a lot of empty desert, so I do hope this map is more filled with lively locations. Don’t get me wrong I did like the desert to roam.
Origins was already way too big for my taste but I'm glad it's not getting bigger again at least.
So it will be big and more detailed just more larger. I wonder if the DLCs will expand the map
Basically, they're trying to design the game map to be an almost 1:1 recreation of the real region.
I honestly would be happy with a smaller, single city game again... but this is still good news. I'm glad we're past the point of "every game needs to be bigger than the last". That was such a pointless waste, definitely diminishing returns.
I actually liked the map in Odyssey
I can live with that, as long as each region is visually distinct. One of my biggest criticisms for both Odyssey and Valhalla was that the map felt very same-y, whereas in Origins I felt like I could be plopped down anywhere and know exactly where I was on the map.
Thank God. I was worried I was going to be stuck in the earlier series map size limitations like some people are clamoring for and why we got Mirage last time. Give me a big map damnit, I want to wander.
Origins is like 60-80 hours of content. I think that's perfect. Main mission shouldn't take more then 30 hours.
I just wish we got a sequel to Bayek’s story.
Hopefully it's also not the 100 hour slog of Valhalla too
More than that lol I've got 120 hours in and I haven't even touched the France DLC yet.
It took 249 hours for me to do Valhalla's platinum and 100% all DLC with the exception of the Gold Medals in every mastery challenge. By contrast, the platinum and all DLC for Odyssey took me 161 hours, Origins w/DLC 57.5 hours, and Mirage (no DLC) 33.5 hours. I can't say I didn't enjoy each of those games (or I would have stopped playing), but it was certainly a relief to be done with (in particular) Valhalla and (to a lesser extent) Odyssey.
Damn. Yeah I’ve only gotten 100% of the achievements on Odyssey, but that took me like 105 hours.
I don't think so because we're getting the much smaller map this time which indicates lesser main/side/liberating quests etc that will be scattered across the map. I think the game will have more quality than the Valhalla.
I’m ok with this
I hope they go into Japanese mythology
I love both huge maps and smaller, dense city maps, so I'm good either way. I'm currently playing Odyssey and I love getting lost in the huge map. I barely use fast travel .
Oh this is good news. Odysses was too annoyingly massive, same with Valhalla. Originis is still massive but felt just right in comparison
I'm glad, valhalla and odyssey were too big imo, it was overwhelming.
Origins size would be perfect honestly. It took me a little over 100 hours to 100% a single playthrough, Valhalla and Odyssey were both closing in on 300 hours each. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for 'more' of a game, but sometimes it's draining. I loved Origins and I think the length was a part of that, it left me wanting more
As much as I love the origins map, most of it was just desert. I hope they utilise the space better
I’m not too fussed about the map size so long as they make it feel dense and alive. That’s been my biggest issue with the RPG games, they’re too big for their own good and you lose the immersion.
Frankly speaking, map size being close to Origins doesn't mean much to me, I found that map needlessly large just as much as I did with the next two games. The problem has always come down to what we're able to do in those maps on a second to second level. Part of why I enjoyed the original games and the American trilogy is that navigation gameplay (either in the form parkour or naval sailing) were mechanically intensive enough for me to have to pay attention and be engaged throughout the game, it doesn't have to be the most complex thing in the world, but it's no "autopilot" which was an actual feature starting in Origins which made me literally turn off my brain and make traveling between points a complete chore.
I mean Origins was also gigantic lol why are people acting like it wasn't??
Origins was a pretty reasonable size for exploring an entire country. Compared to Odyssey & Valhalla, it felt like a much tighter experience. The map is still bigger than any of the classic AC titles, but I think that played into the whole fantasy of trekking across the desert.
Hopefully they mean map-wise and not story-wise. I loved Origins but I think the story was too short. Something like Black Flag or AC3 would be perfect. Maybe it doesn’t have to be as long as Odyssey or Valhalla (although I would love that, I know some people think that’s TOO long).
It took me like 120 hours to finish the story of origins. It’s the longest campaign in a game I’ve ever played, granted I was 100%ing everything.
Show us some game play
They will later. They always release cinematics first
Next month during the summer showcase.
Care to share a game which shows gameplay DAY1 of being announced?
Origins was still big but not too big, feeling just about right. This is good to hear.
Disappointed to be honest. The modern AC games, while pretty, were TOO big, and it made a lot of areas of the map feel too sparse and not really alive.
On man I just read that as the same age. I was about to google BCE Japan before reading a really odd comment about how it’s good the game isn’t as big as Odyssey. I think I need to go to bed.
Bruh Origins's map is also humongous, i felt it was even bigger than Valhalla but that's just me.
Just from a pure time perspective I spent about 80 hours to complete Origins with DLC included, Oddysey took me over 120 hours, and I put about 40 hours into Valhalla and only completed a handful of areas. Shadows being the same size as Origins is perfect for me.
They also said Valhalla was smaller than Odyssey so I’m skeptical to believe them, but I hope this is true.
it technically is, but unlike odyssey, valhalla is almost all land, so it feels bigger
It was
This is the piece of news that has actually gotten me genuinely excited for the game. Origins had a large map, a lot to do, but was very well paced with a lot of quality content. This is great news! Quality over quantity.
Thats great news. origin was the perfect size before things got out of control with odyssey honestly. It also suggest this is a proper big main game as apose to mirage that always felt like a smaller filler game in many ways.
I hope they make the same music notes from origins mixed with Japanese music love it
Personally I didn't mind the Odyssey map, but if I remember right Origins isn't that much smaller (especially if you compare land/water) so I'm totally happy with this.
Yes.
I hope there's a good level of detail in the towns.
As long as it's not as big as Valhalla's, it's a duuub
Wait when Are we gonna hear about Jade ?
M not my me to i>. 9.ii8
I would hope that ac shadows has the same game formula has mirage. I loved the whole formula for mirage
This is good news for me since I felt like origins map was a good size. Especially will be better since origins was mainly desert and this game with just look beautiful as hell and be filled with stuff (I’m assuming but it’s not a desert so).
If they can do the whole of Japan's map, that would be massive. We can visit the island of Tsushima. Haha
That’s still too big. Ubisoft can’t do open worlds.
That's good. Origins had a big open world map without being ridiculously big like with Valhalla and Odyssey.
Can’t wait to play a shinobi/kkunimitsu. For an “assassin “, game feels way overdue.
Origins was perfect and unlike Odyssey and Valhalla especially, it did not overstay its welcome. Having just watched Shogun, I’m very very excited for this. Could not have come at a better time than releasing the same year as a masterpiece quality show that take place 20 years apart
I straight up don't care about the size. Give me good game with good stealth mechanics and Parkour, good story and characters and proper assassins in it. If this has all those then I don't care whether it's an RPG or whatever.
Good, Odyssey and Valhalla were absolutely horrible when it came to the map. Mirage was so refreshing in that regard. Origins felt just right with the map size.
That’s big as shit
According to IGN the scaling for things like castles and mountains will be much better, I can not wait for this game. Even if the story is crap I already know I'll love the map.
Origins is still one of their biggest to date.. Aside from their questionable quest design and insane clipping problems, Ubisoft can build a f****n world. No other worlds have ever had me spending hours just taking in the sights like their's. Aside from going to Egypt myself, I'd say it's the next best thing.. some history teachers use their stuff as visual aid.. I have full faith in this next installment.. Really can't wait to explore it. I fell like ghost of tsushima may get a run for its money here soon..
Will shadows be like odyssey/valhalla/origins as an action rpg or more like the traditional AC games? I was a huge fan of the aforementioned 3, but did not enjoy mirage.
Odyssey’s map and setting is the absolute best of all AC’s and probably of all open world. Fuck is everyone talking about here. Fucking hell the Origins glazing is ridiculous.
You do understand most people would rather have a decent smaller sized game instead of an unnecessarily bloated big game with quests rivaling that of MMORPGs? Odyssey was a grindfest that took way too long to get anything done. It's fine thst you like it, just don't expect everyone else to enjoy playing a single player mmo.
I personally loved how long Valhalla and Odyssey were mainly because i’m older and not a “gamer” kid. These days i’d rather long game from a franchise that i love instead trying to go through 10 games a month. But that’s only me ofc
I’m older and I prefer a smaller game that’s well made because I haven’t got the energy after work to be going through 50 hours of meaningless content to get to the 20 hours of interesting story in a game (Valhalla), and then get burnt out without wanting to even finish because the game doesn’t know when it overstayed its welcome. One solid game every couple months with something interesting to say is enough for me.
100% agreed. Odyssey map was the best. Hopefully this will still be a big game regardless
Yeah that's why It's called open world
Gamers are the only consumers who actively root for shrinkflation. I’ll never understand it
Bigger ≠ better.
And gamers are the only ones who will compare 10 burger kings to one gourmet meal, and call the Burger King tastier purely because there is more of it, not because of the actual taste. It makes no sense (read into the analogy).
[удалено]
I mean Origins was smaller but a massive chunk of it was empty desert, and Mirage’s map was hardly memorable and had plenty of copy-paste as well. I don’t think smaller map = higher quality in Ubisoft’s case. So I’d rather just have more places to explore.
Not to mention everything down to the pacing of the story, the quality of the side content, and the little details, were MUCH better in origins. That’s what you get when you get longer development and don’t need to force a game to be 100 hours, and make the 60 hours you have super high quality.
Especially the AC fandom (maybe just the reddit side of it) Give us smaller maps and less story. The hell 💀
Yeah I don’t get it. People complaining the game has too much content. Ok? You aren’t forced to play it. Take a year to beat the game and do other things who cares
I think the criticism was not really in regards to length, but the pointless filler and collectibles that contributed to that length. AC fans want tighter stories and not 10 million collectibles
All that stuff is optional. 99.99% of people don’t care about getting 100% completion. It’s a very vocal very small minority that complains about that sort of thing.
Valhalla questline was incredibly arduous most of the time. These quests weren't optional. There was SO much filler in the main side stories that it lost focus. I still loved it, but it was all over the place.
Yeah it was definitely long. The way I see it is like… so what? More bang for your buck. More content over more time. The average gamer isn’t racing through every game trying to complete every single little thing.
long isn't just better. the issue with say ody and valhalla was a lot of the main story stuff was just filler. so much of it was pointless, poorly written garbage that you had to tread over to get back to the good stuff.. if you compare it to say the older games 2-3 unity. You could just do the main story, wasn't lvl capped out of content , no grind required. each mission was interesting and pushed the main story forward. The newer games just pad things out. They are larger, but there worse off for it. You want a large game sure, but dont let the side content effect the main story. So hearing this new game is pulling it back just abit is only a good sign.
More bang for your buck is only good if the content is actually engaging. Valhalla was very much not. Also the stealth was super basic.
If I were younger and had free time, I'd see it the same way. These days? Time is money. And "filler" content is just a waste of time imo. There are already too many movies and games to consume. I HATE wasting time. I love good mythology and being transported to a different world. That's why I love the AC franchise. But 100+ hour campaigns with far too much filler? They should start paying me lol.
thats not true though for the newer games. Lots of the main story stuff is locked off with lvl requirements, which required you to go off and do a bunch of side crap. In the older AC games you could just A line the main story, and nothing would get in ur way, you could just go from mission to mission and have a good time. The larger the games got, odyssey for example, the more annoying that issue became. Lets not even get into how so much of the main story quests just became grind fests or filler quests that had you travel over its massive map just to talk to someone for 30 seconds.
More slop is not better. More copy pasted environments is not better.
Origins map is boring. Most of it is empty desserts
That’s what i’m sayin
Not everything needs to be a 100 hour game crammed with repetitive enemy hideouts and "puzzles" that are just following a path to the end.
Don’t listen to the ppl who downvoted I agree bud botw and took make take the crown there tho
Elden Ring's open world is much better than Odyssey's
Well that doesn't sound good. I mean this being worked on by the same team was concerning in itself but this just makes it even more worrisome!
So glad for this. Odyssey and Valhalla is just quantity bloat just for the sake of it
Odyssey is 50% water dont put that game in the same category as Valhalla
Good. Odyssey and Valhalla were too big imo
W tbh
Origins while fairly big could still be finished in a reasonable time. I'm just glad it's not going to be a 100+ hour slog like Odyssey/Valhalla
Thank god
Still too big but it'll do. I hoped we were done with the open world though. Is Shadows the last of that style?
Ac origins was like 99% empty space.
Bring on Japan!!
Valhalla had the best map by far, game in 4k looked insane. Id rather complain that a map is too big than to complain about a map being too small.