How well missions use open-world space in Assassin’s Creed II

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With the help of self-made 'mission design heatmaps', I look at the efficiency of open-world space usage in Assassin's Creed II missions.

Stanislav Costiuc, Blogger

May 20, 2016

12 Min Read

This is a repost from my personal blog.

Creating and filling open worlds is a tricky thing. On one hand, you want them to be massive, expansive, provide a feeling that you have a whole sandbox to play in, and incentivize exploration. On the other hand, you also don’t want them to feel like there’s nothing to do, you want there to be content. Pretty much every open world game (that is not an RPG, I suppose) tries to mitigate this issue by adding a bunch of collectibles spread all over the world. That’s content that, if the player chooses to complete it, will have them explore every part of the map. But, to be honest, I consider most collectibles to be filler with very little value. What’s much more important is how the world is utilized in missions or other meaty actual content. And a game that I think is a very good example of open world usage in missions is Assassin’s Creed II.

What I find very cool about the open world in Assassin’s Creed II (which in this sense continues the open world principles of the first game), is that the world opens up step by step, right up until the very late stages of the game. It’s very different from lots of open-world games of today (including the Assassin’s Creed installments that came after), where usually at first the player is limited to a small gaming space for the introduction period and then the whole world opens up to him. Not that there’s anything wrong with that approach, of course, but there are certain advantages to the way Assassin’s Creed II deals with world space.

There are two big cities in the game, each with several districts, and three small cities, each essentially being one district that encompasses the whole area. Each Sequence of the game opens up a new district, which would be the main focus of the story missions. The side missions, in turn, would be also used to fill in ‘gaps’ in the used space. In the end what happens is, if you just go through the main story, then you would visit a very considerable amount of the open-world. If you also do the side missions, then you would explore almost all of the map. All while doing content that matters instead of the sole purpose of collecting things.

Here is a breakdown of all district unlocks over the course of the game’s main story sequences. Generally speaking that’s also the district where the main missions are focused in, with the exception of smaller towns which tend to unlock with a one mission tease before being the focus of a main sequence later on.

Sequence 1 – Florence – San Giovanni District
Sequence 2 – Florence – San Marco District
Sequence 3 – Monteriggioni & San Gimignano (1 mission tease)
Sequence 4 – Florence – Santa Maria Novella District
Sequence 5 – San Gimignano (the main sequence for district)
Sequence 6 – Apennine Mountains (setpiece area) & Forli (1 mission tease)
Sequence 7 – Venice – San Polo District
Sequence 8 – Venice – San Marco District
Sequence 9 – Venice – Dorsoduro District
Sequence 10 – Venice – Castello District
Sequence 11 – Venice – Cannaregio District
Sequence 12 – Forli (the main sequence for district)
Sequence 13 – Florence – Oltrarno District
Sequence 14 – Rome – Vaticano (setpiece area)

To better visualize the usage of open-world throughout the main and side missions of the game, I’ve created sort of mission design heatmaps (click on them to enlarge). The legend for all the maps is pretty simple:

Green – Area that the player will pretty much 100% visit and explore because the mission design revolves around it (be it an infiltration sandbox area, search area, a particular path of a character we need to follow, etc.)
Yellow – The uncertainty space, areas that the player might visit during the mission, mostly relates to when we need to go from point A to point B (so it encompasses all the different routes), or escape guards after an assassination, etc. Basically, the brighter the yellow is, the more likely it is players will explore that part of the map during missions.

NOTE: The maps do NOT have anything related to collectibles or open-world exploration on your own pace, strictly just missions.

Venice
I’ll start with Venice. If you have read my previous posts related to Assassin’s Creed II, you might know that I have a bunch of problems with the part of the game that takes place in it. Narrative pacing comes to a halt, Sequence 9 (Carnevale) doesn’t make sense and Sequence 10 (Arsenale) is boring and redundant, among other issues. All that said, it doesn’t affect the main topic: which is how the space is utilized in missions. In that regard, I think Venice is a perfect example to start with. Please note, that Sequence 8 is also the one where we utilize the flying machine, which is why half of the city is covered in probability space, but the focus of the sequence is the San Marco District in the center.

Sequence 7
How well missions use open-world space in Assassin's Creed II