
Ubisoft has had a hard time this year. The initial release of the highly anticipated Watch_Dogs didn't have quite the reaction they were hoping for, and now with the release of Assassin's Creed: Unity they find themselves being scolded by fans and critics alike to take it away and not come back until they've done it properly. They've begun to release update after update in order to fix their many errors and to get us closer to the masterpiece they originally intended. For most people, this is good, but in my opinion, I think it might just have been better before...
On one particular occasion while playing a friend's copy of Burnout 2, my car managed to fall through a section of track, and while falling through the ether racked up so much air time (to the tune of a few hundred metres) that my mate was never able to erase my name off the high score table. At worst, we usually have to reset to a previous save game in order to retrace our steps, however, at best gamers are able to take advantage of a glitch in order to carry them forward in the game, much like my Burnout experience. Via taking advantage of an error in Ocarina of Time, there are speed runners who are able to complete the usually massive game in a mere twenty minutes.

So why is everyone being so hard on AC: Unity? Well certainly the scale of the errors are fairly massive, with everything from clipping issues to the now infamous faceless bug which makes characters look like rejects from Hollow Man. But at the same time it is more than that. Assassin's Creed has proved itself to be a highly cinematic experience. Ubisoft certainly puts their greatest efforts into creating worlds that are both detailed and expansive and allow the player to feel like they are really in that particular place and time, as well as making them feel as realistic as they can. The fact that so much is broken leads gamers to lose their suspension of disbelief while playing. So in this regard, Ubisoft have failed to create an experience that captures their audience, and because of that it is only right and proper that they fix it, in order to give us what they want... Thank god for updates.

If nothing else, this does feel like the culmination of online updates. For years now we have had updates for games that fix odd issues, but now finally we have a game that was not ready, yet released anyway because the developers knew they could fix it afterwards. If they had done the best they could with no turning back, this perhaps would have been acceptable and while fans may have been disappointed they would have learned to live with, and even appreciate Unity as was. But instead we now have a notion that no matter how full of bugs a game is, the developers will be ready with a fix. Good for the gamer? Probably, but good for the art form? Perhaps not.
A new update is available...

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