As someone who has spent close to 500 hours across Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Odyssey, and has just started getting into Valhalla, as you would expect I am hugely excited for whatever comes next in the franchise. While these are not my top three all-time favourite Assassin’s Creed games, I am a big supporter of the move to open world RPG’s, a trend I hope will continue with the title allegedly following Valhalla, codenamed ‘Infinity’.
You may already be familiar with the basic concept, but in case you’re not, Ubisoft intend on implementing a constantly evolving world similar to Fortnite, which they can patch new things into whenever they wish. I’ve seen a lot of players take exception to this idea, as if that has even impacted Ubisoft’s design decisions before, but I am fully onboard for it.
An example of this being beneficial to players was demonstrated very recently in Odyssey and Valhalla, where new free content was patched in that added a new island to explore and new story respectively. This isn’t the only example, as around a year after its launch, Odyssey received nine new lengthy side quests titled ‘The Lost Tales of Greece’ which were full of charm and personality to keep players engaged in the Ancient Greek world.
At time of writing we know precisely no specific details surrounding the setting for Infinity, aside from the afore mentioned fact that the world is likely to be constantly evolving through the time the game is supported by the studio. New characters, quests, locations and weapons could be made regularly available to returning players, a concept which has been successfully utilised by the last three Forza Horizon games, with new challenges and cars dropped in every week to keep players coming back to see what’s new.
A lot like how Origins attitude at launch seemed to be ‘don’t knock it till you’ve tried it’, which ended up working for it, I think the Assassin’s Creed player base needs to be a bit more open minded for when Infinity rolls around, regardless of the form it takes (except board game).
While I wholeheartedly agree that the games haven’t truly felt like ‘Assassin’s Creed’ for years, I am still a firm believer that the development teams at Ubisoft know what they are doing and will deliver on the best experience they can. What are your thoughts on the idea of an evolving world moving forward in Assassin’s Creed? Let me know in the comments or on our Twitter @RespawningUK and thanks for reading!
