Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has been a massive (and much-needed) success for Ubisoft, even if that hasn't stopped the publisher from laying off a number of its devs. Looking at the player reactions, it's evident longtime fans of the series were ready for a return to the series' pre-RPG roots.
Understanding where open-world games are right now is impossible without studying what happened in the early 2010s. Skyrim proved density trumps raw size and that immersive sim elements are the key to immortality. GTA 5 became a new gold standard for modern-day sandboxes that many studios still haven't reached before GTA 6 arrives. Assassin's Creed, meanwhile, toyed with a bit of everything and began rowing towards beautiful worlds of deceptive depth and excess.
