CREDIT: UBISOFT
Perhaps developers like Ubisoft should have fixed issues on Assassin's Creed before releasing to the masses.

I found myself belatedly sitting down to play Assassin’s Creed: Unity, the next-gen incarnation of Ubisoft’s long-running historical fiction series, and almost immediately found myself joyfully lost as I jumped around the rooftops in a massive 1:1 scale rendition of Paris.

Assassin’s Creed was one of my favourite series last gen, bouncing back from an indifferent introduction 2007 in spectacular fashion and setting standards that would be reflected in the company’s other games and others in the open-world genre. What I found was one of the most enjoyable experiences I’d had in the genre for some time, as the technical issues that were reported upon the game’s November release were not showing up four months later.

The difference between my experience playing the game last week and the early issues facing the title are examples of one of the best and worst things about console gaming in the online age: the software patch. A patch is the ability for developers to repair any issues in the finished product’s code and send it out globally to all who own the game. The primary purpose was to find unseen issues and add in new features that were requested by the players in order to improve the overall gameplay experience. Today, though, it has a different connotation, one that Unity demonstrated to disappointing effect.

No fan enjoys hearing that a title they are anticipating has been delayed. Just this year, titles on my must-play list, like Batman: Arkham Knight and Uncharted 4 were hit by significant delays. But the latest Assassin’s Creed is a game that could have benefited from a few more months of development.

The product that was released in November was immediately deemed a woeful attempt to meet the franchise’s self-imposed yearly release schedule and to not miss out on the holiday shopping rush. While denied by the developers, the unusual move of offering free downloadable content as an apology lends credence to the idea.

The other primary piece of evidence is the smooth running state of the game today, as it has been repaired by the developers in a series of several patches. Unfortunately, the game was so broken at release that new purchasers face 6.5 gigabytes worth of patches before they can play, an extra half an hour or so on a good Internet connection. While it’s nice that the game was brought up to a playable state, it doesn’t change the fact that these fixes should not have been needed in the first place. They should have been present the day the game hit shelves.

The release of a broken game begs the question of whether or not a publisher has become complacent with their ability to add a patch after release. Even day-one patches have become a common practice, fixing issues before the general public has even had a chance to make note of them. Not too long ago, games were on cartridges and had to be perfect before release or else it was stuck that way, terrible forever. It’s not a question that can be answered, as it seems to be permeating the major aspects of the industry more and more, but it’s a disappointing direction that developers seem to be travelling in.