I've been playing old Assassin's Creed games, which are small on the scale of Open World. I just finished III and Liberation, and started Black Flag. I like having lists of easy things to do, and these games are all about minor achievements doled out as fast or slow as you want them. I gather the newer games went overboard with all the stuff, but the earlier ones are manageable as long as you don't go for 100%.
The most modern of this style I've played for extended periods is probably LotR: Shadow of Mordor (not all that modern), which I did get icon fatigue with. My favorite of this style is probably Bully, the Rockstar not-GTA game, though I haven't revisited it since release to know if it holds up.
I picked up AC: Black Flag again, and finished it. I've continued doing absolutely everything I could before moving on to the actual story, and prefer that approach. It's like walking around an Animal Crossing island, cleaning up stuff here, finding doodads there, just a light task load that may entail murdering dozens of people.
Storywise, I thought Black Flag was fine, but liked the standalone Freedom Cry expansion better. It's more satisfying to kill slave owners on plantations than just other random white guys, especially when you see how many people you rescue for being undetected. It's all just simulations within simulations, but it was a welcome change to have Adewale as the protagonist.
I'm in the first third of AC: Rogue, a game that I remember got panned pretty hard because it was for PS3/360, and released the same day as AC: Unity, on the PS4/Xbone. I'm having a great time with it, especially because they realized that people like me exist, and they let you divert from the critical path almost immediately. I'm a third of the way in the story missions, but now have 98% of the collectibles found. If you go on doodad hunts early, most of the enemies ignore you entirely, so you can just collect with impunity.
The game has reused a ton of assets from ACIII and IV, and one of the people in the "modern world" did have a bark commenting about it as a meta reference, but I don't mind it at all. They had the locations already done, just swap out textures and call it a day. Story in Rogue is fine, this one does make the case that the Assassins are, if not just as bad as the Templars, are pretty bad in their own right.
On a tech point, this game actually runs better than both AC3/4 on my steam deck. They must've done some optimizations, or just had lower quality texture/model polish since they apparently spent the majority of their focus on AC: Unity. In a month or so I'll be ready to try that one out, unless I need a break from project task lists.
