People rip on Ubisoft because their games are mechanically trash and they haphazardly drown their games with checklist gameplay with zero thought. Horizon doesn't suffer from these things at all from what I've played.
Basically this.
"Open-world" can be done serious justice (as Horizon is demonstrating). It's the difference between meaningful and engaging content, and padded busywork that is divorced from the gameplay, narrative, and world.
Ubisoft games have a ton of stuff to do... but no real reason or motivation to do it other than "because it's there". What I've seen from Horizon (copy is still in the mail...), there's far more meat there, more substance, more reason to engage the player and spur them forward with satisfactory resolutions for the player's time and effort.
Marrying that open-world structure to quality content and then bolstering it with strong combat, smooth animations, a strong narrative, and stunning visuals really does make Horizon a "complete package" type of experience that's a far cry (no pun intended) from the typical Ubisoft "checklist" formula.
