Give Us Someone to Care About
Even in an action-packed game, characters help to keep the experience grounded. Being able to do as you please certainly is fun, but not having anyone interesting as a slight distraction can lead to the game growing stale. Having people to care about or, at the very least, a protagonist worth being can really help to flesh a game out.
Far Cry Primal nailed its survival focused core mechanics. Yet, with the lack of people in the game worth caring about, those mechanics were left to carry the weight of the game. Watch_Dogs suffered similarly with its hard to like protagonist and forgettable enemies.
Ubisoft has proven that they can provide worthwhile characters, it just needs to make it a priority in all of its titles. Having a truly great idea suffer from the lack of a single element is not a good thing. We need more characters like the Frye Twins and Aurora, and less like Takkar and Aieden going forward.