With E3 2019 just around the corner, we thought it would be fun to talk about what we don’t want to see from Ubisoft this year.
Ubisoft will be at E3 2019, presenting all kinds of games and new things for us to play. Even though Ubisoft have been on a huge upswing about quality lately, it is still okay to be a little bit nervous about their press conference. I thought it would be fun to go through some things we don’t want to see from Ubisoft.
#1 Someone Who Isn’t Aisha Tyler Presenting
I know some people don’t enjoy her presence at Ubisoft’s conferences, but I do. In a week of really nervous developers, and very stuffy people in suits, Aisha Tyler brings a degree of humanity to proceedings. She can be goofy, excited, and a little awkward sometimes, but that is a good thing. Her foibles don’t stem from discomfort on stage; they stem from her general excitement about what she is seeing. She always just comes off as being such a big fan of gaming, and her enjoyment of the event is palpable.
#2 Guns In Watch Dogs 3
If the rumors are true, and Watch Dogs 3 is set in London, then I am really hoping Ubisoft are going to seriously reduce the availability of guns in the game. Due to some fairly strict gun laws, ownership of weapons is a bit more limited in the UK than previous settings for the game. Watch Dogs should always have been about something more interesting that guns anyway, and that is system infiltration. London is one of the most camera-riddled cities in the world, so if the game really is set there it would be nice to see the development team jump at a fun design challenge and make an interesting and exciting open world game that didn’t rely on firearms quite so much. They could develop a deep combat system that involved kicking the hell out of people, and I would be fine with that.
#3 Far Cry Anything
It is safe to say that the Far Cry series has wedged itself into a corner, and it is going to take a big stick and some menacing words to make it come out again. The game needs some time out of the spotlight so that people can have a really good think about how they can make it feel new again. While the way the stories went in Far Cry 4, leading into Far Cry New Dawn, was certainly interesting, the game is always just the same systems each time. A heavy tonal shift combined with some new on the gameplay front could really make the series shine again. We will never have another Vaas, but maybe we can have another Far Cry game that makes us want to play it.
#4 The Crew
The Crew can look nice, but they are bad games. While I could happily go the rest of my life never playing another one, I’d be happy enough if the game did some dramatic switch up. The campaign is always rough going, providing us with the vaguest excuse to put a surly protagonist in a car. How about we stop kidding ourselves and just release the next version of the game as a massive driving sandbox if we are going to do this dance again. To anyone who likes The Crew, that’s okay, we are all wrong at some point, it was just your time.
#5 Beyond Good And Evil 2, In Pieces
Okay, this is maybe just a personal fear, but I am worried about Beyond Good And Evil 2. It was announced two years ago, and we haven’t heard much about it since. This could mean that they either announced it really early in the development process, or that the development process is struggling a little bit. Sometimes people do crazy things, and the whole idea of episodic games didn’t exactly die with Telltale Games. For some reason I can’t shake the feeling that Beyond Good And Evil 2 might end up releasing in episodes. I don’t want that. I want to be able to take a couple of days off work, start the game, and barely eat until the story is over.
#6 No Prince of Persia
It’s time. The Prince has been away for a while, and his dutiful subjects would like him to bring those Sands of Time back now. The series has nearly always been a fun time, and having an entire console generation pass with no game feels like a little too much. I’d love to see a bit of time rewinding fun appears on the current generation before they are shipped off to various secondhand shops when the new hardware arrives. I also think the game could look just beautiful, and a brave dev team could do something interesting with the game that could really standout in the market right now.
Basically, what we don’t want to see from Ubisoft is a reduction in their newfound attitude towards finding the quality in their products. They have shown they are willing to put the resources and the time into products that they believe in, and this has given us successes from the stumbling starts that For Honor and Rainbow Six Siege both had. A little break for Assassin’s Creed brought the series back to life, and games like Anno 1800 have been a joy. All they have to do is maintain the trend, and we should be very happy with their E3 2019 showing.
Published: May 30, 2019 10:10 pm