Ubisoft has taken us on quite a ride alongside the Assassin's Creed franchise over the past six years. At its height, the series delivered award contenders that transported players to fully-realized historical settings and helped redefine the open-world genre. The characters captivated, and the amazing sense of place left us in awe. But as the series morphed into an annualized product, many of us were left feeling that a lot of the magic contained within the series had fallen along the wayside. One major victim of this oversaturation has been the multiplayer.
Assassin's Creed is still viewed primarily as a single-player experience. Unlike Call of Duty, Ubisoft's historical franchise has never been able to create a strong enough multiplayer that stands on its own as a reason to purchase each new installment on a yearly basis. This certainly isn't for lack of trying -- since Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood back in 2010, each subsequent entry has placed a growing emphasis on the multiplayer component of the package, and yet the gaming masses haven't seemed to bite quite yet. Despite containing a good-intentioned suite of interesting ideas, the online portion of the series seems to be missing that special something that makes gamers addicted for hundreds of hours. Here are a few ideas that Ubisoft could use to help right the ship and make AC's multiplayer relevant.
Ubisoft has confirmed that there will not be multiplayer naval battles in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, and to be perfectly honest, I see this as a huge mistake. One of the immediate ways to differentiate Black Flag from nearly any other game on the market is to embrace its naval core across both single and multiplayer. Few games outside of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker have ever given players free rein to explore the open seas in their own personal vessel, let alone do that in an open, multiplayer arena. Imagine being given the freedom to complete an assassination by scurrying along the rooftops, charging a horse through city streets, or commandeer a ship and attacking your target from the water. By taking a cue from DICE's Battlefield series, Ubisoft could turn AC's multiplayer into a major online contender.
The major objective here is to make each match unfold as an event. The players should feel like they are a small part in a much larger conflict, and the best way to do that is to widen the scope of the maps. Instead of having us lurk around confined urban spaces, use the breadth of the Caribbean to create arenas that stretch beyond the horizon. Picture a team having to defend an island outpost from an armada of ships barreling towards the coast. You could man the cannons, sail a ship of your own, or attempt to sneak aboard their vessel and take out your enemies one by one. Instead of pigeonholing players into a single type of gameplay experience, Ubisoft should give us the freedom to assassinate however we choose.
Still, hope remains that Black Flag's seafaring won't necessarily be a lonely affair. I think I speak for a lot of AC fans when I say that it's about time for the series to allow us to gather up a handful of buddies, enter a full version of the single-player world, and just run amuck across Ubisoft's beautifully crafted environments. Imagine having Edward Kenway's ship, the Jackdaw, populated by a crew of real-life players. While one person is at the wheel, the others could be wandering around the deck, heading down to the hold, or playing lookout for any number of the islands scattered about the environment. The potential for tropical raids, ship-to-ship combat, and naval exploration would be endless if Ubisoft allowed us to do it with a group of friends. Honestly, if Crackdown was able to deliver multiplayer sandbox mayhem in 2007, surely Ubisoft can do the same six years later.
Crackdown isn't the only game Ubisoft should look to for inspiration. More recently, Dead Space 3 placed a heavy emphasis on cooperative play by fencing off some of the game's best missions from players who were going it alone. If Ubisoft created a handful of specific scenarios that could only be accessed by a team of assassins, more players might be compelled to take their acts of piracy online. But if Ubisoft is feeling especially daring, they can take a cue from Journey and seamlessly incorporate multiplayer into the core single-player experience. What if you infiltrated an enemy compound, snuck past the guards, and finally entered your target's chamber only to discover that another player had just stolen your assassination? No matter how good a game's A.I. might be, nothing can compare to the thrill of hunting down a player-controlled character.
With Assassin's Creed, Ubisoft is in the unique position of having a multiplayer foundation that exists outside of the tired metropolis of competitive FPS'. Assassin's Creed doesn't have to compete with Call of Duty and Halo, because it offers something completely different than iron sites and perks. Its closest analogues are Ubisoft's own Splinter Cell, and perhaps more importantly, Chris Hecker's upcoming SpyParty.
Available to play primarily at various gaming conventions throughout the past few years, SpyParty might be the purest form of espionage our medium has ever seen. The gist of it is that one player -- a spy -- innocuously mingles with A.I. partygoers, all while attempting to solve a series of objectives. At the same time, a second player -- a sniper -- watches the party from a distance with the goal of discovering which character is being portrayed by his or her opponent. This second player has only one bullet, meaning that they have to be certain they've identified their adversary before pulling the trigger. It's a game that hinges on theatricality, observation, and carefully calculated risks. In short, it's something that Assassin's Creed should strive to be.
Most multiplayer games reward those who are brash, fearless, and willing to do anything to stay in the spotlight. You don't earn prestige in Black Ops II by hiding in a corner and waiting for the rest of the players to take care of each other. But that's not what SpyParty is about; instead of rewarding the player for doing their best John Rambo impression, victory is dependent on patience, intense environmental observation, and a willingness to take part in the long con. It's role-playing in every sense of the word, and Black Flag could certainly learn a thing or two from SpyParty's fearless originality.
While some of these ideas might seem a bit pie in the sky, the fact remains that Ubisoft needs to take some serious risks in order to give their multiplayer a strong and unique voice. With the staggering number of units that each installment of Assassin's Creed moves, the series has what it takes to rival Call of Duty and Halo as pillars of the online community. But until AC does something to make us truly care about its multiplayer, that half of the game will never reach its full potential.
Marty Sliva is an Associate Editor at IGN. He really, really wants to be able to play SpyParty every night. Follow him on Twitter at @McBiggitty and on IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
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