The game's latest patch has brought a slew of mediocre changes, none of which fix the one thing fans have been asking for, raising concerns about Ubisoft's commitment to player satisfaction.

2017's Origins introduced lighting braziers and burning spiderwebs with a torch – the most exciting new mechanic to the Assassin's Creed franchise since the hidden blade – and gamers, apparently foolishly, expected those wondrous activities to carry over to subsequent entries in the series. To the dismay of everyone except spiders, sconces are the only thing worth lighting up in Odyssey, though they are few and far between, begging the question of how the citizens of old got around those tombs without smashing into every fucking wall around them. Someone at Ubisoft made the decision to remove web burning, and, possibly even more egregiously, to cut out the number of webs littering the game's tombs, as if we wouldn't notice.

The treacherous developer had a chance to rectify their mistake this month with a huge update, but chose instead to double down on dismissing our desire for meaningful gameplay. Rather than adding the ever-satisfying web-burning mechanic back in, Ubisoft opted for raising the level cap, reducing equipment upgrade costs, and an equipment appearance customization option – i.e. a bunch of useless distractions to try and make us forget about the one thing that would actually make the game worth playing. Perhaps the monster behind these decisions would be better off taking their poor development decisions to EA where cutting corners to push out sequels is priority number one.

Do yourself a favor this holiday season and replace Odyssey with Origins on your wish list if you haven't already made the regrettable choice of buying the former. The newer title may be shinier and let you make dialogue decisions that affect missions, but at what cost? I'll take lighting up and cleaning tombs over story-driven player agency every time.