[News] Assassin's Creed Should Go Smaller With Its Setting, Not Bigger

[Sxynix]

 

Since the start, each mainline Assassin's Creed game has typically grown in size and superseded that of the previous title, with the three games in the prequel trilogy--Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla--dwarfing all the others (with the exception of Black Flag, which continues to have one of the largest maps in the franchise to date). And though I've enjoyed my long journeys across the deserts of Ptolemaic Egypt, war-torn island communities of ancient Greece, and fields of Anglo-Saxon England, I think it's time that Ubisoft created a smaller setting for Assassin's Creed. A smaller setting could condense the overall experience of Assassin's Creed, which would ensure certain storylines can be better realized and that players can more easily experience the best that the game has to offer.

To Better Serve The Story
Now it's worth pointing out that I don't think a big map is inherently a bad thing. Though I still have my qualms with the pacing of Odyssey's story (especially Chapter 5, which can seriously drag), there's such a sense of joy in riding your horse to the top of a hill, looking out at the glistening ocean, noticing a tiny speck of another island in the far distance, and knowing that you can set sail for it and reach it without encountering a single loading screen. Odyssey wants you to explore because your character, Kassandra, wants to explore after being cooped up on the same island for most of her life.

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Of the three games in the prequel trilogy, Odyssey has managed to take advantage of its staggeringly large map size the best, utilizing a fully realized Greece to deliver on the promise of sending the player on an odyssey to reunite their biological family, only to discover that family is what you make of it--blood does not have to define it.

That's the map acting in service to its story; Kassandra's tale is an adventure, with some awesome side stories scattered around the vast map. There are encounters such as meeting Daphnae at the very start of the game and learning about the Daughters of Artemis, an all-women community that involves you in a a side-quest that continues until you nearly reach the endgame level cap, as well as running into and falling in love with Kyra over the course of the phenomenal nine-part Silver Islands questline. It all helps sell why Kassandra would regularly deviate from her path--which, in theory, should have been rather linear--and stretch her journey over the course of years. It's a lifelong odyssey to discover the meaning of family, which is reflected in the giant setting that is filled to the brim with many families to meet; some are dysfunctional, others are loving, but they all shape Kassandra through the decisions you make for her, ultimately resulting in one of several possible families she can bring together by the end of the campaign.

You can't really say the same for Origins and Valhalla, both of which possess stories that suffer a bit from the large settings they take place in. Origins is the story of a cop and his wife and how their quest for revenge twisted their actions so that they protected those in power and didn't serve the people. The map is large and filled with many side quests and activities but rarely do they have much to do with the fact that you're aiding Cleopatra in seizing control away from others to benefit her. Most quests actually see you aid the people, which goes against the overall story that Origins is trying to tell--only a few storylines support how Bayek and Aya are in the wrong for most of the game. But they're drowned out; the setting is so big that it has to be filled with things to do in order to avoid having a large, empty map.