I think one of my biggest issues with Assassin's Creed ever since the original game is its insistence on constantly reminding me that I'm playing a game, despite the potential for immersion in its settings.
This isn't a discussion about the modern day stuff or the animus. I get playing into the conceit that you're in a computer simulation of the past, but despite that I've found each AC game to suffer from an overload of game information, possibly more than any other open-world game. These games are extremely dedicated to recreating a different time and place, and in that lies the potential to immerse players in worlds that are pretty unique among video games, but then the HUD and menus all have to look so generic.
I'm in the middle of Assassin's Creed Unity right now and things like the shop menus just look so... plain. If they're going to make it look like a futuristic computer interface they could at least make it look like a cool one, like Metroid Prime, new DOOM, Dead Space 1 (more games in general need to do that 3D map screen shit), Rogue One, Alien, or I don't know, Ubisoft's own Watch Dogs 2. Even the shots I'm looking at from the Assassin's Creed movie look cooler than the animus interface in the games.
I tried out Origins for a little bit and the main thing that pulled me out of it was that the HUD constantly reminded me I was playing a game that wanted me to collect a bunch of crap. This was in stark contrast to the two recent open-world games Origins most obviously pulled from -- The Witcher 3 and Zelda Breath of the Wild. None of Origins' HUD presets really satisfied me, either containing too much information or leaving out some of the information I wanted to keep because of how the game is designed (I'll admit moving from a minimap to a Bethesda compass is the one good decision open-world game developers are taking top heart now). TW3 on the other hand lets people switch each individual HUD item on and off (actually I think even Far Cry 4 does this). As soon as I started TW3 I turned off the question marks on the map and a couple other minor things which immensely improved my experience. Breath of the Wild on the other hand is designed from the outset around a minimal HUD.
But even in those games things like maps, character highlights, or interfaces go for some kind of cohesion that isn't too busy. For an extreme example in a historical game, look at the upcoming Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The whole HUD is supposed to fit with the medieval theme, to the point where the map screen looks like a contemporary map almost. I'm not saying AC has to go for that, but at least do something that doesn't look like it came from a corporate blob.
This isn't a discussion about the modern day stuff or the animus. I get playing into the conceit that you're in a computer simulation of the past, but despite that I've found each AC game to suffer from an overload of game information, possibly more than any other open-world game. These games are extremely dedicated to recreating a different time and place, and in that lies the potential to immerse players in worlds that are pretty unique among video games, but then the HUD and menus all have to look so generic.
I'm in the middle of Assassin's Creed Unity right now and things like the shop menus just look so... plain. If they're going to make it look like a futuristic computer interface they could at least make it look like a cool one, like Metroid Prime, new DOOM, Dead Space 1 (more games in general need to do that 3D map screen shit), Rogue One, Alien, or I don't know, Ubisoft's own Watch Dogs 2. Even the shots I'm looking at from the Assassin's Creed movie look cooler than the animus interface in the games.
I tried out Origins for a little bit and the main thing that pulled me out of it was that the HUD constantly reminded me I was playing a game that wanted me to collect a bunch of crap. This was in stark contrast to the two recent open-world games Origins most obviously pulled from -- The Witcher 3 and Zelda Breath of the Wild. None of Origins' HUD presets really satisfied me, either containing too much information or leaving out some of the information I wanted to keep because of how the game is designed (I'll admit moving from a minimap to a Bethesda compass is the one good decision open-world game developers are taking top heart now). TW3 on the other hand lets people switch each individual HUD item on and off (actually I think even Far Cry 4 does this). As soon as I started TW3 I turned off the question marks on the map and a couple other minor things which immensely improved my experience. Breath of the Wild on the other hand is designed from the outset around a minimal HUD.
But even in those games things like maps, character highlights, or interfaces go for some kind of cohesion that isn't too busy. For an extreme example in a historical game, look at the upcoming Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The whole HUD is supposed to fit with the medieval theme, to the point where the map screen looks like a contemporary map almost. I'm not saying AC has to go for that, but at least do something that doesn't look like it came from a corporate blob.
