Assassin's Creed Infinity Needs To Be More Than A Live-Service Content Mill

thegamer.com:

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is set to be unveiled later this week, and will be the first in a long line of new titles that seek to rebrand the series completely. Infinity is also on the horizon, and will transform Ubisoft’s crown jewel into a live-service effort with far more ambitious goals, yet it still seems to understand the appeal of smaller settings and increased creative restraint.

Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla are all massive games. Too big - I haven’t finished any of them despite dedicating dozens of hours across the trio over the years. Ubisoft added new expansions and missions to an already bloated experience in order to maintain our interest even if the actual content was little more than gathering loot and chasing objective icons.

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I might have grown tired of it all, but Valhalla continues to break records and help the series reach new heights, so I worry that outside of the echochamber I’m an outlier. Assassin’s Creed is still incredibly popular, and Ubisoft has seen the emerging trend of live-service titles and wants to crowbar its biggest franchise into the model even if the two don’t match up. But this won’t be another Hyper Scape. I’m not sure if it’s possible.

We’ve seen the publisher fail time and time again outside the success of Rainbow Six Siege and For Honor when it comes to making each game it releases the next big thing, and all of these have been underwhelming live services that cannibalise existing titles in its own library and fail to realise that there isn’t enough time in the day to dedicate to all of these games that demand a constant stream of attention. It’s psychologically manipulative, with season passes and