14 DAY TRIAL // Assassin's Creed Unity is apparently another one of the big-budget AAA games with a hefty price tag that will also include microtransactions, following in the footsteps of its younger brother AC4: Black Flag, in a trend that many gamers see as a worrying one.
The open-world action-adventure video game features an extensive customization system that allows gamers to tailor their own experience and make Arno Dorian, the game's protagonist, more adept at doing what they love best.
The game is also the first one in the series to fully support cooperative action. While previous installments allowed players to go head-to-head, Unity enables groups of up to four friends to tackle the many available missions together seamlessly, and customization will play a pretty important role in the way the game is played.
Ubisoft's Alex Amancio, Assassin's Creed Unity's creative director, has shed some light on the free-to-play elements that will be making an appearance into the upcoming full-price game.
Since cooperative gameplay encourages complementary play styles and specializations, the team wanted players to be able to get the necessary skills to make these synergies stand out, with various stats being tied to different costume options.
Some of the items are rewards for various missions, and others will be purchasable, with some of the items even being unlockable with real money, introducing a minor free-to-play aspect to Assassin's Creed unity.
The developer did make the effort to note that nothing would be exclusive to paying customers, or at least to those who willing to pay more than the game's price, and everything would be available through the usual grinding process.
This is reminiscent of a time when games had cheats, with the only difference that cheat codes and hacks didn't cost any money and had the potential to make the game more fun instead of just more annoying, as free-to-play design emphasizes arduous grinds in order to incentivize free players to pony up some cash and skip the toil.
Last time this was attempted, with EA crowbar-ing in microtransactions in Dead Space 3, things didn't go down so well, and everyone was irked that they had to put up with an annoying paywall in a full-priced video game.
Assassin's Creed Rogue and Assassin's Creed Unity are the seventh and eighth episodes in the Assassin's Creed series, both of them coming out this November, and while the former is headed for last-gen consoles, the latter is only going to be available on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
