Ever since the original Assassin's Creed, Ubisoft's open-world games have followed a relatively similar formula: find a watchtower, reveal more of the map and start clearing out all the different icons that pop up. To be fair, it's far from the worst system in the world, but after nearly 10 years of seeing the same mechanics pop up in game after game, it's hard not to think that Ubisoft is starting to run out of ideas.
Despite the fact that it took place in a modern-day Chicago, the original Watch Dogs featured Ubisoft's trademark watchtowers. It barely made sense: at least in other Ubisoft games, players are exploring vast jungles and ancient cities, but why would someone in 2014 need to unlock a GPS map of their own hometown?
At the very least, it looks like Ubisoft is finally starting to realize that not every open-world game needs to be unlocked in the same exact way. In an interview with Eurogamer, Watch Dogs 2 creative director Jonathan Morin confirmed that players won't be scaling any radio towers when the game launches later this year.
"It's not a game where you open your map and everything's there. There are no towers. You just explore the world."
In all honesty, it's a smart move: Ubisoft's open-world action games have been feeling more and more like copies of one another. Even Far Cry, a series in which these map-unlocking towers make sense, has started to feel like a copy-and-paste job. It's a gameplay tradition that's seemingly been kept around for the sake of tradition — regardless of whether or not it's a good idea.
What's worse is that, for the most part, scaling the towers isn't very fun. Some of the radio towers in Far Cry play out like short platforming puzzles, but it's not long before they get repetitive — and that's nothing compared with the Assassin's Creed model, which forces players to climb dozens of vantage points without any sort of challenge whatsoever.
So, while gamers probably haven't seen the last of Ubisoft's tower-scaling design, it's nice that the publisher is at least willing to move away from it. Watch Dogs 2 will take place in a modern, always-connected city — it just wouldn't make sense if Google Maps didn't work.
Will the absence of watchtowers and unlockable maps make a big difference in Watch Dogs 2? Well ... probably not. Does this signal the start of something new for Ubisoft, where tradition can be shirked in favor of playability? Again, probably not — but even so, it's a good move on the studio's part.
Watch Dogs 2 is set to launch on Nov. 16.
