It’s rare when Ubisoft releases a video-game that isn’t open-world, as this is the general schema of their games. The developer is even working on an open-world Star Wars game, and though that might sound exciting, it’s worrying that it may fall into the same traps as some of the other Ubisoft titles.
Despite many of these games still being great, whether it’s rehashing a previous game’s map or underdelivering on what was promised, these are the titles in which players would much rather fast-travel than explore the open-world.
Far Cry: New Dawn (2019)
Far Cry: New Dawn is set 17 years after the events of Far Cry 5, and it’s based in the same location. As it’s close to two decades later, there are some changes to the map, but much less than what would be expected.
The biggest difference of it all is that there are a lot more flowers in the world, and besides that, it’s like trying to spot the difference between two pictures that are identical. The worst thing is that the map of Far Cry 5 wasn’t all that great in the first place, so having to live through it again is a little tiresome.
Driver: San Francisco (2011)
There are loads of movies that have destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge, and Ubisoft is here with its own rendition. The map isn’t terrible, but it’s a city that gamers have seen what feels like hundreds of times in the past, and driving over the Golden Gate Bridge or the Bay Bridge only feels novel for so long.
And on the Wii version, the map is even worse, as most of the locations that require bridges to get to are completely blocked off.
Assassin’s Creed Origins (2017)
Origins is easily one of the best games in the Assassin’s Creed series, as it not only tells one of the best stories, but it looks beautiful too, being easily one of the nicest looking games on PlayStation 4.
However, the map has some major issues, with the biggest problem being that it’s actually too big. Where games like Grand Theft Auto V feature giant maps, that game at least fills the map with things to do and interesting NPCs, but Origins does nothing of the sort. It might be great to see the pyramids or The Library of Alexandria, but outside of that, it’s totally empty.
The Crew 2 (2018)
Whether it’s the Grand Canyon, Central Park, or the Golden Gate Bridge, The Crew 2 sounds ambitious on paper, but it’s more of a jumbled mess than anything. The buildings aren’t detailed, the cities are lifeless, and there are some very strange creative decisions.
Miami can be seen being covered in snow at certain points, and it’s impossible to tell what in the world is destructible and what is not before players smash into something. It's not really an exciting world.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole (2017)
Unlike other games mentioned, South Park: The Fractured But Whole is an incredible game, and it’s a delight for fans because the game could be seen as its own season of the show.
However, the open-world map of South Park itself is uninspired, as it’s the same map as The Stick of Truth from three years earlier. Of course, the town of South Park isn’t going to change completely, but the “expanded” map just isn’t enough, and it almost makes this game feel more like The Stick of Truth DLC than anything new.
Steep (2016)
An open-world in a game has never been more unnecessary than it is in Steep. Given that it is predominantly a snowboarding and skiing game that’s all downhill, there’s literally no need.
On top of that, the map feels very copy and paste in many areas, but that may be simply because the whole thing is white, downhill, and covered in rocks. There’s nothing remotely memorable about it, and compared to the PlayStation 2 game SSX On Tour, which was also an open-world snowboarding game, Steep missed a few tricks.
Assassin’s Creed: Rogue (2014)
Out of all of Ubisoft’s properties that get annual and bi-annual releases, Assassin’s Creed is the most exciting for fans of open worlds. Far Cry’s maps are mostly great but they're almost always the same environments and Watch Dogs is always a modern-day metropolitan city, but Assassin’s Creed could be anything.
From 18th Century Colonial America to the French Revolution, the maps are usually a sight to behold, but that wasn’t the case for Rogue, and it was the first major misstep in the series. The map was lifeless and it felt like a completely blank canvass. The world was so empty and felt like a duller version of the one found in the previous year’s Black Flag, and fans had never been so grateful for fast-travel.
Watch Dogs (2014)
There are a lot of things wrong with Watch Dogs, and it’s one of the many times Ubisoft tried to pull the wool over gamers’ eyes, as the promotional videos for the game made it look like a next-gen game, but the end product was anything but.
The map of Chicago is impressively detailed, but if players look a little closer they’ll see all the cracks in the map. The game promised all of these powerful hacking tricks that players could mess around within the open-world, but those tricks ended up being largely scripted. However, many of the issues with the map were rectified in Watch Dogs 2, which is one of the best Ubisoft games of all time.
The Crew (2014)
Just like its sequel, The Crew features a huge open world, perhaps the biggest of any racing game of its generation. The map is a scaled-down version of the entire USA, but absolutely every aspect of the map is lacking, whether it’s the textures, the emptiness on the long country roads, or the copious amounts of invisible boxes.
The game has a lot of promise, but it doesn't deliver.
Far Cry: Primal (2016)
Primal is an outlier in the Far Cry series, as it doesn’t have an exciting theatrical villain and there are no human enemies. Instead, the game is set in 10,000 BC and sees players taming giant beasts. Despite it being an unusual entry for the series, Primal is a fun game, but its map isn't up to par.
The developer came under scrutiny as it clearly re-used the same map as Far Cry 4, but the worst part was that the developer tried to hide that fact by switching a couple of things around. It was insulting to the fans and marked the point when Ubisoft truly started lacking innovation. However, the upcoming Far Cry 6 could change that, as it looks like a promising return to form, and it’s one of the biggest games coming in 2021.