Assassin’s Creed’s format has gotten a little stale. This isn’t a new idea, and Ubisoft itself thinks so in some respects as it has been experimenting with the series’ formula. Obviously there was huge change with the Assassin’s Creed Origins where the series adopted a slew of RPG mechanics, but Ubisoft has also tinkered and more nuanced things like the series loot system. So One of the smaller change made to a format with Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the ways the series iconic synchronization points work. So that While I appreciate the efforts on Ubisoft’s part to change up the mechanics in small ways and I think the studio should rethink the way it's handles synchronization and maps in Assassin’s Creed.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows Has a Synchronization Problem
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Assassin’s Creed Shadows makes the small change to a synchronization points thats have become synonymous with the series. Instead of a climbings to the top of something tall and getting the sweeping view of the surrounding area and then updating theirs map with the handful of little activity icons Shadows requires the player to climb to a top of something tall get the sweeping views of a surrounding area and then update their map with a handful of questions marks in the place of activity icons.
I appreciate Ubisoft’s willingness to change the way synchronization points work, but the way Shadows changes things is a bit of a misstep. Now instead of know what is around you while adventuring in the Japanese countryside and you have to stay in a dark about the types of the activity nearby until you get close to a question mark. Maybe it is a shrine that gives you knowledge points and maybe it is a featureless town thats not worth stopping at something you do not know until you get there.
So If I had to guess and I think the purpose of this is to create greater sense of a discovery within the player than previous entries which clearly laid out everything in the world. Unfortunately this is makes the world feel less organized since players do not know what they are going to s find when they approach a question mark.
This would probably work good if the activities were meaningful side content but Assassin's Creed Shadows usually a makes it clear where the meatier side quests are without requiring you to climb up to a synchronization point. As it is a now this hiding more basic side content in mystery does nothing other than unnecessarily complicate the ways to players engage with the open world.
Back To Drawing Board
If Ubisoft is serious about changing Assassin’s Creed’s aging formula it should start with synchronization points first. Climbing to top of the something tall to fill out the map in an open world game has become a tired ways to a convey information to the player. It can certainly work it has for Assassin’s Creed or countless others open-world games for nearly two decades but it is a exhausted at this point and stuck in a era of gaming we have started to leave behind.
My plea For this fixing synchronization points in future Assassin’s Creed games comes in two parts. The first its figuring out what the role of a synchronization points should be.
It would probably be great for the series to stop updating the map with tens of a icons every time the player climbs to the top of the tallest thing in the area. Instead the Synchronization points should serve the more Centrals Mechanical purpose. Perhaps climbing to the top of the synchronization point for the first time is a only way for the players to level up their character or unlock new branches of the skill tree. The incentive for climbing to top need not be map completion instead it could be a character progression and or some other gameplay reward. Some are others incentive besides increasing tired to do list.
The best second part of my solution is in regards to delivering map Informations. There need to be more engaging ways to tell players what is a around them. Maybe when the player gets within 300km of a notable locations Assassin's Creed Shadows style question marks appear on the map but they need to find the cartographer in town to turn the question marks into specific icons. Perhaps the wholesale system of discovering points of interest should be abandoned entirely or rely on exploration or contextual information to find point of interest much like how animals in a Ghost of Tsushima lead the player to map icons.
I am not claiming to know more about game designs than Ubisoft. So I am sure the studio has worked tirelessly to figure out new ways to connect to players to the map and the current synchronization point system is what works best for them. However I know I am not the only one who is gotten a little tired of climbing up high things to fill up the map. It is a great to see a sweeping view of feudal Japan and but when I look at a map full of question marks and find that 75 percent of them are towns with no vendors or points of interest. I start to a also realize that my time is being wasted.
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