Yesterday, Creative Director Patrice Désilets left Ubisoft Montreal, and the one thing people are contributing his departure to is Ubisoft's
recent announcement that they are, basically, following in Activision's footsteps and release yearly sequels to it's more successful brands. He's not the only Ubisoft leader that has left. Remember Jade Raymond? Sure you do. She worked on Assassin's Creed 1 and left shortly after. Don't forget Clint Hocking, who left Ubisoft recently as well, and this guy was another creative director, mainly working on FarCry 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction. Yea,
that guy.
What my focus on right now is the hate towards the decision to actually make
and release
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood this year, which said hate could be deriving from the über-hatred that Valve received when it announced
Left 4 Dead 2 at last year's E3; boycotts galore. But the one thing we all did once we actually
played the game? We shut the fuck up.
Since Patrice's decision to leave Ubisoft is heavily believed to be due to Ubisoft's decision to ramp-up
production release dates for particular franchises (the only one's I can immediately think of that would be affected would be the Tom Clancy brand -
Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, HAWX, End-War and
Rainbow Six - and
Assassin's Creed) and become infected with the "Annual Sequel Syndrome" - or "A.S.S" - something that is currently infecting Activision and EA, the latter of which is oft-believed to be the originator of this disease. There is one draw back to release annual entries in popular franchises, and that is the lack or quality in the overall product, but if there is one thing we can look back on and say "Holy shit, how'd they do it?", it would be
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.
For those who don't remember, don't know, or just don't give a shit, Shigeru Miyamoto, upon completion of
Ocarina of Time, didn't want to make his fans wait another 5 years between Zelda games (such as they did between
Link's Awakening and
Ocarina), so he entrusted his newest companion, Eiji Aonuma, to make a new Zelda game. The only problem is that Shiggy gave him only 18 months to make the damn thing. Eiji was allowed to re-use most of Ocarina's resources, as well as the engine, to make the game. With the time constraint, he crafted the notorious 3-day system, which allowed a level of intense complexity, but gave the game a compact feeling.
Majora's Mask was release 17 months after
Ocarina's release (November of '98 to April of '00), and was met with univeral acclaim (Metacritic's words, shared by my agreement);
Majora's Mask stands at an incredibly respectable 95/100 based on 27 reviews, with a GameRanking of 91.8%.
Ocarina is at a very-tough-to-beat 99/100 based on 22 reviews with a 97.48% GameRanking. That's fucking
insane.
Uncharted 2 has 96/100 based on 101 reviews. Yea,
Majora's Mask trails
Uncharted 2 by
one point. Suck it.
