When Ubisoft released the very first Assassin's Creed back in 2007, it was an absolute game-changer. For better or worse, the historical adventure introduced a slew of features and ideas that went on to return in numerous open world AAA games over the years - especially other Ubisoft titles.
Of all of these, the most infamous is perhaps the Ubisoft tower. The idea, as I'm sure you're all-too aware, is that to unlock a portion of the map in an open world game and find out where various points of interest and collectibles are, you first have to climb up to a particularly high vantage point so that you can get the lay of the land.
To be entirely fair to Ubisoft, this is a genuinely fine and logical way to encourage players to unlock areas of the map and get excited for further exploration. I remember being really quite fond of the towers in the first few Assassin's Creed games, too, mostly because you got to jump off from the very top and land in a pile of hay. It was thrilling stuff.
Of course, if you start to see the same concept pasted into every game, you'll no doubt start to get a little tired of it. Towers showed up in every subsequent Assassin's Creed game, and even made their way into the Far Cry titles. Hell, even Breath of the Wild recycled the tower concept in 2017, although for some reason people don't seem to mind about that one quite as much.
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Regardless, we all got sick of towers, and it seems the creator of Assassin's Creed knows that. During a recent Q&A panel at EGLX in Toronto (via Destructoid), Patrice Désilet, who worked as Creative Director on the first three games, finally said that he's sorry he made us climb all those damn towers.
Asked by one attendee whether or not he's still seen as "the Assassin's Creed guy", Désilet replied, "honestly, I don't know. A little bit! If you're going to spend years on something, I hope that happens."
The developer went on to specifically reference the infamous impact of towers and climbable vantage points, and how they managed to seep into other games of the era before inexplicably finding their way into a Zelda game, of all things.
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"Breath of the Wild, wow! That was a game where you could do anything, once you finished the first half hour or so," said Désilet. "Now, you're just going to climb towers and unfog the rest of the map. Sorry, it's my fault..."
It only took 12 years, but at least next time you're playing a AAA open world game and find yourself having to laboriously climb to the top of the millionth bloody tower, you'll know the man responsible at least feels kind of bad for it.
Featured Image Credit: UbisoftTopics: zelda, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Ubisoft