Ubisoft has upset fans with the glitchy game

Nov 17, 2014 00:43 GMT  ·  By

Ubisoft launched almost one week ago not one but two different Assassin's Creed games, in the form of Unity for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and Rogue, for the PS3 and Xbox 360 (and in early 2015 for PC). Unfortunately for fans of the massive franchise, both suffer from issues, with Unity having some of the most atrocious problems in the history of the series.

The Assassin's Creed games are some of Ubisoft's biggest titles, selling tens of millions of copies each year and showcasing the power of the French company's long list of global studios.

Unity is a global effort

On the recent Unity, while the main work was done at the Montreal division, a big number of other local divisions chipped in, in the form of Bucharest, Toronto, Shanghai, Singapore, Quebec, Annecy, Chengdu, Montpellier, and Ukraine. That's a whopping 10 studios that worked together for quite a few years to bring forth Unity, while also pitching in at other internal projects, not to mention the last few installments in the game, like Black Flag.

Most of the times, things work as intended and great games are the result, such as last year's Black Flag, but this time, thanks to the many new mechanics and the focus just on the more powerful platforms, something failed.

The result is a game that's plagued by drops in framerate, problems with stealth and exploration, not to mention game breaking glitches that cause protagonist Arno Dorian to fall through the world or get stuck in different objects.

What's more, these problems are consistent across all the platforms, i.e. PC, PS4, and Xbox One. As such, Ubisoft can't say that these problems are only due to certain hardware or because of problems with the software ran by the different devices.

Unity needed a bigger delay

In case you forgot, Unity was set to appear right at the end of October, but for extra polishing, Ubisoft pushed back its debut by a couple of weeks, so that it coincides with the launch of Assassin's Creed Rogue on PS3 and Xbox 360.

While delays are always a bit disappointing, they ultimately end up improving the game, and Ubisoft certainly promised at that time that the extra weeks would result in a much smoother experience.

As we saw with the game's actual final edition, it needs way more polishing to actually play as intended. As such, in my opinion, Ubisoft needed to bite the bullet and lengthen the delay so that Unity could be improved even further.

Yes, such a move would have upset fans, but at least they had Rogue to tide them over until Unity was ready to launch. It also wouldn't have been Ubisoft biggest delay, as Watch Dogs was also pushed back from the initial fall 2013 period to spring 2014.

EA got burned but Ubisoft doesn't want to learn

Electronic Arts has been the punching bag for many disgruntled gamers in recent years but at least it had the courage to delay Battlefield Hardline, after seeing how much faith can be lost in a franchise due to the bug-ridden Battlefield 4 last fall.

Ubisoft apparently wants to also go through that, as the glitches in Unity are causing a fierce backlash against its practices and against the whole Assassin's Creed series overall.

Assassin's Creed Unity (7 Images)

Unity is a glitchy game
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