Assassin's Creed Needs To Fix Its Synchronization Points

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Peter Hunt Szpytek

Published Apr 4, 2025

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The Assassin’s Creed format has gotten a little stale. That isn’t a particularly novel take, and Ubisoft itself seems to think so too in some regards based on the way it’s been experimenting with the series’ formula. Obviously, there was the big change that happened with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed Origins, where the series adopted a plethora of RPG mechanics, but Ubis🅰oft has tinkered with more granular things as well, like the series’s loot system.

One of the small changes made to the format with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the way that the series’ iconic Synchronization Points work. While I admire the attempt on Ubisoft’s part to tweak the mechanic in small ways, I think it’s time the studio went back to the drawing board with ho💫w it handles synchronization and maps in Assassin’s Creed at large.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Synchronization Problem

Naoe standing on a Synchronization Point in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows makes a small change to the Synchronization Points that have become synonymous with the series. Instead of climbing up to the top of a tall thing, getting a sweeping view of the surroundin𝔍g area, and then having your map be updated with a handful of small activity icons, Shadows has the player climb up to the top of a tall thing, get a sweeping view of the surrounding area, and have their map update with a handful of question marks 🍌in place of the activity icons.

It’s not a big change, but, hey, it’s a start.

I appreciate Ubisoft wanting to change 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:how Synchronization Points work, but the way Shadows changes things up is a litt𝔉le misguided. Now, instead of knowing exactly what’s around you as you adventure throughout the Japanese countryside, you’re left in the dark about the type of activity nearby until you get close to a question mark. Maybe it’s a shrine that nets you a Knowledge Point, maybe it’s just a featureless town that’s not worth stopping in, you have no idea until you get there.

If I had to guess, I think this is meant to instill 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a greater sense of discovery within the player than in previous entries, which explicitly laid everything the world had to offer out on display. Unfortunately, all it does is make t🐬he world feel less organized since players don’t get to know what they’re going to find when they approach a question mark.

This would likely work better if the activities were meaningful side content, but Assassin’s Creed Shadows usually makes it clear where the meatier side quests are without the need to climb a Synchronization Point. As it stands right now, shrouding the more 💦basic sidဣe content in mystery does nothing but needlessly complicate the way that players engage with the open world.

Back To The Drawing Board

Synchronization points in Assassin's Creed Valhalla

If Ubisoft is serious about wanting to change up the parts of the Assassin’s Creed formula that are getting old, one of t🌺he first places to start would be the Synchronization Points. Climbing to the top of a tall thing to fill out the map in an open-world game has become a tired way of dishing out information to the player. It can certainly get the job done, as it has for Assassin’s Creed and countless other open-world games for nearly two decades, but it’s played out at this point and feels stuck in an era of gaming that we’ve started to leave behind.

My pitch for fixing the Synchronization Points in future Assassin’s Creed games comes in two parts. The first is figuring out what🐠 the role of Synchronization Points should be.

It would likely suit the series well to stop having the map update with tens of icons every time the player climbs to the top of the tallest thing in a region. Instead, Synchronization Points should serve a more central mechanical purpose. Maybe climbing to the top of a Synchronization Point for the first time is the only way for players to level their character up or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:unlock new branches of a skill tree. The incentive for climbing to the top doesn’t need to be map completion; instead, it can be character progression or some other gameplay reward. Something with more incentive beꦑsides extending a tired to-do list.

The second half of my solution is in regard to dishing out map information. There needs to be a more engaging way to tell players what’s around them. Maybe the Assassin’s Creed Shadows-style question marks appear on the map when the player gets within 300km of a place of note, but they need to find a cartographer in a city to turn the question marks into specific icons. Maybe the system of bulk point of interest discovery should be dropped altogether and rely on exploration and contextual information to find points of interest, like with the way animals lead the player to map icons in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ghost of Tsushima.

I’m not claiming to know more than Ubisoft about game design. I’m sure the studio has worked tirelessly to figure out new ways of having players engage with the map, and the current Synchronization Point system is w🌳hat works best for what they’re going for. What I💛 do know, however, is that I’m not the only one getting a little tired of climbing up tall things to fill in the map. Seeing a sweeping view of feudal Japan is great, but when I look at a map full of question marks and discover that 75 percent of them are towns without any vendors or points of interest, I start to realize that my time is being wasted.