With Assassin's Creed: Shadows, Ubisoft remains the undisputed king of snackable open worlds
It feels like open world games have been having a bit of an extended, existential crisis these past few years. Like there's a sense that something within the classic formula of big maps, question marks and to-be-coloured-in icons that's served us so well, back through The Witcher 3 and Skyrim to at least The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, isn't quite working. That a change or evolution - if not outright ripping-up revolution - of some kind is necessary for the genre to thrive. But also, a bit of a problem: that the games wrestling with these bold new frontiers of mapmaking don't really know what that new, evolved form ought to be. Read more
It feels like open world games have been having a bit of an extended, existential crisis these past few years. Like there's a sense that something within the classic formula of big maps, question marks and to-be-coloured-in icons that's served us so well, back through The Witcher 3 and Skyrim to at least The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, isn't quite working. That a change or evolution - if not outright ripping-up revolution - of some kind is necessary for the genre to thrive. But also, a bit of a problem: that the games wrestling with these bold new frontiers of mapmaking don't really know what that new, evolved form ought to be.
