Digital News Production: Assassin's Creed Unity Research

In order to report on broken and unfinished games, I've needed to gain further knowledge on them. As our main focus is Assassin's Creed Unity and Assassin's Creed Syndicate, I've first conducted research into the former.

General Research
Assassin's Creed Unity is 'the next-gen evolution' (Assassin's Creed Website, 2014) of the Assassin's Creed game series, meaning that it's the first of the series to be released on newer versions of consoles e.g. PS4 instead of PS3. The fact that it was released for next gen implies that it was supposed to be groundbreaking. Due to the graphics and smoothness of gameplay being on a whole new level with next generation consoles, the expectations are set even higher. It's the most recent Assassin's Creed release, being released on 11th November 2014, before the upcoming release of Assassin's Creed Syndicate, due for release on 23rd October this year.

Bugs & Issues
Unity clearly had problems right from the start. The release date was originally set for 28th October 2014, but was delayed to 11th November 2014 due to being incomplete. The executive director of the game's publishing company Ubisoft, said in an interview 'If we think we’ve ended up with a 70 percent Assassin's Creed game, we’re not going to ship it' (IGN, 2014) yet even after pushing the date back, it was still released unfinished. As even the chief executive of Ubisoft Montreal & Toronto put out an email saying 'Unfortunately, at launch, the overall quality of the game was diminished by bugs and unexpected technical issues' (Kelion, 2014)

The game has been reviewed favourably in areas due to the beauty of it's next gen graphics, but the main focus has continued to stay on the issues of the game. With one reviewer mentioning that 'When it all worked perfectly [it] brought me a great sense of satisfaction. The key phrase there was “when it all worked,” because the series-long frustration of your assassin not doing quite what you want him to do is still present here.' (Sliva, 2014)

While it's clearly seen as frustrating for most fans, many of them are seeing the funny side. Some find them simply entertaining, with entire articles dedicated to presenting and listing the glitches while saying 'What all of these have in common, though, is that they're hilarious.' (Hernandez, 2014)

The bugs/glitches in Assassin's Creed Unity include textures not loading, unusual behaviour from non-player characters, the main character getting stuck, climbing invisible objects, walking on air and even falling through the map. As can be seen in the video below...

The fact that fans and customers are both extremely frustrated by the incomplete nature of the game as well as entertained by it's unusual and frequent issues will be worked into our news package. We'll be connecting with the annoyed fans by exploring the issues in-depth and taking the topic seriously, but as it is a human interest story and it's quite a light-hearted subject, the whole feel, appearance and presentation of our channel will be an easy-going one.

We have also been given consent to use the above video's footage by the YouTube user in our news package, allowing us to show the game's bugs first hand.



Bibliography:

Assassin's Creed Website (2014) Assassin's Creed® Unity At: http://assassinscreed.ubi.com/en-gb/purchase/assassins-creed-unity.aspx (Accessed on 12.10.15)

IGN (2014) Release Date At: http://uk.ign.com/wikis/assassins-creed-5-unity/Release_Date (Accessed on 12.10.15)

Kelion, L. (2014) 'Ubisoft apologises for Assassin's Creed Unity bugs' In: BBC News [online] At: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30226586 (Accessed on 12.10.15)

Sliva, M. (2014) 'Assassin's Creed Unity Review' In: IGN Articles [online] At: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/11/11/assassins-creed-unity-review (Accessed on 12.10.15)

Hernandez, P. (2014) 'Assassin's Creed Unity Has The Best Glitches' In: Kotaku [online] At: http://kotaku.com/assassins-creed-unity-has-the-best-glitches-1657939797 (Accessed on 12.10.15)