Ubisoft has their formula set when it comes to open world games, and you can see the template being repeated over many of their biggest franchises. While for the most part their approach to open world game design is solid, it does tend to get very repetitive and mindless. Other games have definitely taken influence from some of the biggest Ubisoft games, but tweaked many of these mechanics to offer a much more compelling gameplay loop.
Ubisoft also seems to have noticed this, saying that some of the biggest open world games this year have borrowed from their open world mechanics. In an interview with Edge Magazine Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has this to say:
“It’s interesting, because The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild took a lot of things that existed in Far Cry and other Ubisoft games, but did them perfectly. I think the most important thing is not the systems as they are, it’s how they can be perfected; how they can give the player the best experience possible.
The same system can be in two games, and not be seen as the same thing. The job, really, is to make sure that you have a certain number of possibilities and that you are able to combine them in such a way that provides a great experience. When systems are similar, it’s because developers have not been able to take full advantage of what those systems could bring.
When a system is really good at providing fun, the team knows that that will work – and at the end of the day what counts is the experience. But we are taking more and more time on our games so that they are very different from one another. That has always been the objective. But if you look at many of the games that are being launched – even the last Sony game, Horizon: Zero Dawn – again, they took some of the same systems that we have. Because, in the industry, we always look at other games and other publishers. A game is very complex, so it helps us to provide a good experience.”
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