The Assassins Creed series has long been famous for its unique historical settings within regions and countries set during pivotal events centuries ago, from the Holy Land during the Third Crusade in Assassins Creed 1 to Sengoku period Japan in Assassins Creed Shadows. Each games world offers players a unique glance at these historical settings and time periods, with each subsequent mainline game expanding in the depth in which fans can learn about the various foregone societies and cultures. Since 2017, the Assassins Creed series has greatly expanded its world by creating vast open worlds supported by increased RPG-like mechanics. With Assassins Creed Shadows being the latest game in the RPG line of AC games, it's worth making an in-depth comparison of Shadows to its RPG predecessors.

As the second season of Severance aired, relief filled the air the beloved sci-fi workplace satire was finally, finally back. But as the weeks ticked by, the sentiments of some longtime watchers began to sour. Disappointment and wariness dispersed across social media, as many viewers felt that the show wasnt measuring up with the long-cultivated hype.This is one of the inevitabilities of our current state of streaming. Short seasons take years to be filmed and aired, leaving huge hiatuses in between. These hiatuses are vacuums, which fandoms naturally abhor. They fill up quickly with speculation and expectation, building up the long-awaited return to a level so lofty that pretty much no new season, no matter how good, can fulfill it.Severances hiatus was extended unduly by the 2023 actors and writers strikes in Hollywood that landed squarely during its production schedule, so the hype had even more time to build than usual. When Severance finally returned, it was far more popular than it had been the first go round: officially the most-watched show on Apple TV Plus, a rare bit of data revealed by the streamer alongside its announcement of an obligatory third-season renewal. That puts it above even Apples previous juggernaut, Ted Lasso, and raises expectations for its quality even higher.Thats a lot of pressure for any show, especially one walking in the footsteps of giants inevitably, Severance has drawn comparisons to hit mystery box shows of the past, and in particular Lost. That show also generated big fan theorizing, huge ratings, and an unmeetable amount of fan expectations. But 20 years on, a lot has changed in the entertainment industry and in the world of TV fandom. Theres no way Severance is going to walk the exact same path Lost did in fact, both its similarities and its differences show how far weve come.Despite protestations about being exhausted by the endless mystery of shows like Severance, based on ratings alone, people are clearly not tired of the mystery box series format that Lost was a vital innovator of. When the basic setup people trapped together in a strange place run by a mysterious entity, uncovering secrets that might lead to their escape is done well, it can be fantastic: a watercooler phenom, the talk of the town. Lost not only became the most prominent example of the TV format, but also the internet format for discussion, which, in the social media age, has taken on a much more intense and heightened aspect. Losts crown was the subject of grabs from many potential heirs, from shows like Fringe and FlashForward, whose airdates overlapped with the OG, to modern mystery-box updates like Dark, From, and Yellowjackets that adapted different elements while aiming to stoke the same fan frenzy which characterized Losts digital heights.Of all these shows, Severance is perhaps the most worthy candidate for a successor to Losts throne so far because it manages to hit all of the same buttons even harder, and with more focus and intention.Comparisons to Lost had already been prevalent during its cult-hit first season back in 2022, but often in a negative aspect. Can we stop comparing Severance to Lost? one Redditor had pleaded. Severance is a masterpiece, let us not besmirch it with comparisons to that train wreck of a show. Many expressed hopes that Severance wouldnt repeat the mistakes of Lost referring to that state of endless mystery as exhausting, arguing that its constant revelations and plot twists and endless teasing of resolutions were never as satisfying as viewers built them up to be.But is Lost really such a bad thing to be compared to? Surely not and many fans and critics do actually take the comparison as a compliment. People loved Lost when it was on because stuff was always happening. Lost was a mega-hit cultural phenomenon that introduced global audiences to the power of lore. Taking cues from previous hits like The X-Files, whose initial monster-of-the-week format soon gave way to a season-spanning mytharc, Lost presented a novel blend between two juicy and irresistible TV formats: a complex sci-fi mytharc, and a soapy ensemble cast full of sexual tension, tragic backstories, and a suspenseful anyone-can-die element.Losts mytharc and endless stream of lore was certainly the dangling carrot that kept people watching, and filled up the forums with speculation and argument, but the heart of the show from the very start was the central characters and the fated relationships among them.Its an approach many have tried to emulate to Losts degree in the years since, though Severance pulls off this particularly enticing combination with aplomb and with an additional dose of compressed pacing that is obligatory when only given 10 episodes per season to tell its story, instead of Losts more expansive 20-plus. This means that when stuff happened, it really happened: We got answers to lingering mysteries about Cobels backstory, Mark and Gemmas relationship (in an episode compared to Lost fan favorite The Constant), and the unveiling of season 1s most enduring question what are the mysterious numbers MDR is refining?The latter was something that had certainly already been hinted at, and so the reveal they made up, cumulatively, the brain of each of Gemmas innies was satisfyingly logical, instead of being a total rug-pull. Severance is a show that you have to pay attention to in order to catch Easter eggs, hints, and subtle reveals, and one that rewards fans for figuring stuff out in advance, instead of punishing them.And the show brings in the side of things that is narratively satisfying yet humanely illogical: Like Lost, Severance plays around with the inherently controversial trope of the love triangle, but instead of simply involving three different people, it involves different versions of the same people. This is like catnip to fans who are compelled to argue about relationships online: The Severance fandom is constantly riven by fiery debates about the central trios innies and outies, arranged in their complex love hexagon. For fans who care more about love than lore, this setup is hugely engaging often stressfully so and certainly ups the ante from traditional TV romances. Gemma warriors and Helena defenders have far more context to contend with than the Jack/Kate and Sawyer/Kate factions did back in the day. Plus, they have more territory to defend. While Losts fandom played out over forums and LiveJournals, Severance has the full spread of platformed social media to take advantage of.Creator Dan Erickson has gone on record stating that unlike Lost, which by its own showrunners admission was often flying by the seat of its pants, he has everything planned out season by season and has a clear idea of what Lumons endgame is. But hes hitting all the other Lost buttons pretty efficiently, as seen by the intensity of both sides of the fandom on social media: Broadly, Reddit is for the lore-heads, where every frame is analyzed for hints, and Twitter and Tumblr are a shippers heaven (or, more frequently, their argument-riven hell). Even though the world of Severance is a bit smaller than the vast island of Lost, the fan universe is much more far-reaching.Some Lost die-hards turned Severance fans might feel that perhaps it would be better if Severance had just a bit more room to relax and explore, to meander a bit and hit on the kind of serendipity that made Lost an all-time TV standout. During the second season, fans missed the togetherness of the MDR core four, and the mundane oddness of Devon and Rickens family life. A mystery-box show requires new elements to constantly be introduced as old ones are effectively resolved, and Severances second season certainly moved the needle. But are those questions as urgent as the initial ones the show started out with?Now that we know what MDR does, what the goats are for, why Ms. Huang is a child, and more, what lore is left to figure out? The main lingering question after the second season seems to be a purely character-based one: the solution (if such a thing is possible) to the Helly/Mark/Gemma equation. This may be the perfect bone for ship-focused fans to chew on endlessly, but may not be as satisfying to the more mytharc-focused fans as the Lumon intrigues left to them after season 1s cliffhanger.Losts legacy was impacted by its controversial finale, which pushed a lot of unanswered mythology questions to the side in favor of focusing more or less solely on character relationships. The myth-heads of the Lost fandom, having been constantly tantalized by six seasons of unfolding Island lore, felt more than a little ripped off.But those who had cared less about the lore than the relationships and characters (like yours truly) felt moved and satisfied by the ending, which proved in a tear-jerking send-off that love means more than the answer to any Valenzetti equation.For a show like Severance, which has to contend with less screen time and longer hiatuses than Lost, the stakes are higher to make all viewers happy, a fundamentally impossible task to begin with. No matter how many lore questions are answered, if fans feel like theyre not getting as much time with their favorite characters, theyll be unhappy; conversely, if mythology is pushed aside too far in favor of romance and relationships, the lore-heads will riot. It all comes down to the balance between man and myth.

Eiji Aonuma and Shigeru Miyamoto promote Zelda: Breath of the Wild at E3 2016. | Photo: NintendoAs Shigeru Miyamoto never actually said, A delayed game is eventually good, but a bad game is forever bad. This sliding-doors concept gains an additional, poignant dimension when considering The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, because that games delay affected more than its quality. Originally planned for release in 2015 as a Wii U exclusive, Breath of the Wilds shift to early 2017 moved it onto the launch lineup for the Nintendo Switch. It went from propping up a failed console to becoming the game that defined the Switch, and redefined Nintendo, for a whole new era.That halo has made it easy to forget that the Wii U version of Breath of the Wild was actually released. Not for the first time, Nintendo chose a Zelda game to play the dual role of swan song for one generation and curtain-raiser for another (appropriately for the Zelda series, with its preoccupation with the closed loop of history). In 2006, Twilight Princess was released on both the outgoing GameCube and the brand-new Wii. On that occasion, you could see the cracks. The Wiis novel motion controller was an awkward fit for Twilight Princess, and the games deliberate classicism clashed with the bright, casual, carefully neutral aesthetic Nintendo was advancing with other launch titles like Wii Sports. It was clearly a GameCube holdover in ill-fitting clothing.Nintendo was not about to let the same thing happen to Breath of the Wild this time, it optimized the game for the new console and retrofitted it into the old. Firing the Wii U version up recently, I found exactly the same game that had seared itself into our collective consciousness. Producer Eiji Aonuma, director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, and their team had taken care to stamp out anything that might have tied it to the idiosyncrasies of the Wii U hardware.If anything, it is the Wii U version that feels out of place, mostly due to its performance issues. Nintendo took advantage of the small amount of extra headroom afforded by the Switchs specs to output a higher-resolution image when docked, and to push the physics engine and environmental detail past the point the Wii U was comfortable with. Mostly, Breath of the Wild plays great on Wii U, but it suffers from a very choppy frame rate when subjecting Bokoblins to physics-based carnage, panning past deep vistas of the Hyrule landscape, or visiting densely detailed locations like Kakariko Village.Its not unplayable, but not what you expect of Nintendo; that the company was happy to live with this level of performance says a lot about the extent to which it had already moved on from the Wii U. The game also looks a little hazy and washed-out by comparison to the Switch version, whether played in 720p on a big TV or on the Wii U Gamepads inferior screen.Otherwise, though, Breath of the Wild is entirely uncompromised on Wii U. Or is it? Playing the game on a TV, with the chunky slab of the Gamepad in your hands, you get a faint, vestigial sense of a more bespoke Wii U experience that might have been. When Link collects his Sheikah Slate and downloads a map onto it, it seems like a deliberate echo of the consoles unique dual-screen functionality. Surely we were meant to have the map open in our laps as we played, or to be navigating Links inventory on the touchscreen. In fact, Nintendo had demonstrated touchscreen features for Breath of the Wild back in 2014, but stripped them out to ensure total parity with the Switch version and because, Fujibayashi said, looking between the two screens could be distracting.Playing Breath of the Wild on Wii U is very fun because Breath of the Wild is very fun. (Have you heard? Its a good game.) Its also a little sad, because as misbegotten as the Wii U was, Breath of the Wild should have been its crowning glory. Instead, this version is a slightly hobbled afterthought living in the shadow of the definitive masterwork it became on another console. It sold 1.7 million copies on Wii U, and 32.6 million on Switch.Playing such a familiar game in this unfamiliar form brought home to me how prophetic the design of the Wii U was. At the time, it was poorly understood, but without it, the Switch could never have happened. The Wii U was almost the right idea at slightly the wrong time. The Gamepads form factor, which once felt so ungainly, feels totally natural in the era of the Steam Deck. And the magic of instantly switching your gameplay from the TV to the tablet in your hands hasnt dimmed. This is the entire concept of the Switch, just with the roles reversed.The other day, I fancied playing Breath of the Wild in the evening, but didnt want to hide from my family in my office, where the Wii U was plugged in. With a sudden jolt of delight, I realized remembered that I could just bring the Gamepad to the sofa and continue playing there. With the Wii U, Nintendo imagined a better world where your gaming could fit around and into your life. With the Switch, it made that world a reality.

We redesigned mobile email replies with a UI for inserting local responses while reading, optionally with AI. Image by theauthor.Many UI designers are currently tasked with extending existing interfaces with AI features, such as copilots and chatbots. On desktops, these are often added in sidebarsbut on mobile devices, where screen space is limited, AI is typically layered on top of existing UIs aspopups.In this article, we explore the drawbacks of this design pattern and discuss a better alternative. Drawing on our research in Human-Computer Interaction, we introduce a redesign inspired by microtasking. We use this to improve the experience of replying to emails on smartphones.The problem: AI on top hides context for usingitMobile email UIs are a prime example for adding AI on top: The image below shows how several email apps added AI with a popup oroverlay.A common UI design pattern for AI replies in current mobile email apps: AI is integrated as a popup (A), on top of an empty draft view (B). Users enter a prompt (C), check the generated reply (D), and then accept it with a button (E). Image by the author, with screenshots from Googles website, Superhumans YouTube channel, The Copilot Connections YouTubechannelUnfortunately, this design wastes valuable screen space, because the AI popup hides the incoming email or existing draft. This forces users to remember key details from the original email while crafting an AI prompt and reviewing the generated response. This cognitive burden becomes especially problematic for longer emails or in typical mobile scenarios where users are frequently interrupted.Leaving UI space unused, while requiring users to recall information, indicates that current AI replies are not integrated well.The solution strategy: Microtasking keepscontextTo address these issues, we applied principles from microtasking, leading to a new UI concept we call Content-Driven Local Response (CDLR). It restructures the UI for email replies into twosteps:The redesign: (1) While reading the email, tap any sentence to insert a local reply, optionally with AI sentence suggestions. (2) On a usual draft UI, connect the local replies to one coherent emailor (3) let AI do just that. Image by theauthor.Step 1Local response: Instead of switching to a separate AI popup, users can insert responses directly within the email as they read. In a sense, the email text itself becomes the interface: Tapping a sentence inserts a response card where users can jot down a reply, notes, or keywords. This tap also signals the AI to generate sentence suggestions, which users can accept with a tap orignore.Step 2Connecting the local responses: Once users finish reading, they transition to the email draft screen, where all local responses are collected. Here, they can refine these snippets into a full reply manuallyor let AI generate a coherent message fromthem.Result: Flexible workflows and usercontrolWe evaluated this design in a user study with 126 participants, comparing it to two baselines:Manual replies: Users wrote responses withoutAI.AI-generated replies: This UI mimicked the industry standard of entering a prompt for a fully AI-generated response.Our findings show that Content-Driven Local Response (CDLR) provides a flexible middle ground between these extremes. By allowing users to draft local responses while reading, the design allowed users to engage more with the incoming email and their own thoughts on it. At the same time, AI support helped reduce typing effort anderrors.As our study (N=126) showed, our design (center) involves users more, also while reading. Image by theauthor.Moreover, participants also valued the added control over the final message. While full AI generation was faster, the new design also covers fast workflows: When preferring a quicker workflow, users can skip the local response step and jump straight to AI drafting. In this way, the new UI supports very flexible workflows.This design empowers users to decide when and how to involve AI, for example, to balance speed andcontrol.Design lessonslearnedA core principle of microtasking is keeping relevant context visible, allowing users to recognise information rather than having to recallit.Initially, we applied this idea to help users see the incoming email while prompting AI and reviewing its output. Through our user-centred design process, we refined it further: the ability to insert local responses while reading is useful on its owneven withoutAI.Put as a design insight for AI integration:Rather than adding AI on top of existing UIs, we should design for users workflowswhether they involve AI or not. Such flexible UIs empower users to decide themselves when and how to involveAI.So how can we redesign for these flexible workflows? Heres ourrecipe:Identify micro-decisions that users make in the workflow that currently lack explicit interaction. In email replies, this meant recognizing that users naturally decide which parts of an email to respond to whilereading.Enable users to express these moments in interaction. In our case, we allowed users to tap any sentence whilereading.Integrate AI specifically and optionally at these decision moments. For example, in our design, tapping a sentence also triggered (local) suggestions.ResourcesPreprint of the paper on arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.06430Video showing the UI in action: https://youtu.be/wtTDgU6559Ihttps://medium.com/media/e7f6b6bfe841b7b510751e41d3f33a51/hrefDont just add AI on top: Rethinking mobile email UX for all workflows was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Theres a Kraft Heinz commercial running in Canada right now that is a perfect embodiment of the geopolitical moment between the U.S. and its northern neighbor.In it, the brand is celebrating its Canadian workers, and highlighting all the Canadian ingredients in its products like peanut butter, cheese, and Kraft Dinner.For context, in case you dont read the news: Since the election, President Trump has not only threatened and implemented trade tariffs on Canadian goods, but has added insult to injury by suggesting Americas longtime ally become its 51st state. This has not gone over well in Canada for obvious reasons.Thats why an American conglomerate like Kraft Heinz feels the need to clarify a few things. Sure, the cream cheese might be called Philadelphia, but ITS MADE IN MONTREAL with CANADIAN DAIRY, WE SWEAR. As a Canadian, it feels to me like the brand equivalent of my American friends turning to me during every commercial break of a hockey game to assure me they dont actually want to annex my country.Canadian to the coreOf course, its not only American companies creating ads to hype how deep their Canadian connections are. This moment has given Canadian brands a chance to really fly their maple leaf flags to make sure we all know whos really from here.Thats important because Canadians buy more American-made goods than the U.K., France, Japan, and China combined. Yet a recent KPMG study found that 70% of Canadians would boycott U.S. products if President Trump implemented his 25% tariffs, while 80% are actively seeking non-U.S. alternatives when Canadian options arent available.The threats and tensions arent just theoretical: The Globe & Mail reported this week that cross-border travel is falling sharply: Statistics Canada reported that Canadians made 1.2 million fewer round-trip visits to the U.S. last month, which is 23% less than February 2024. Meanwhile, hotels in Maine are reporting a major drop in summer bookings, some as much as 90%.Peter Chapman, founder of consulting firm SKUFood and a former executive with Canadian grocery giant Loblaw, told The Canadian Press, Its by far the most dramatic and swiftest shift Ive seen in consumer behavior.Ian Westworth, Grey Canadas head of planning and effectiveness, wrote in Campaign recently that this shift in consumer behavior presents a significant opportunity for Canadian brands to align with this cultural moment and tap into a groundswell of national pride. This is an opportunity to build not just short-term momentum but also enduring consumer relationships, said Westworth.Halifax-based Moosehead Breweries is facing tariff impacts across its packaging supply chain, but managed to keep its sense of humor, creating a Presidential Pack of 1,461 beersone beer for every day of the next four years. Its sold at least 10 of the $3,400 packs so far, and now has a waiting list. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Moosehead Breweries (@moosehead)Everyone up here, from the Prime Minister to Mike Myers, has been using the Elbows up mantra (its a hockey thing). And now brands from both countries have been forced to reconcile what that actually means for them.Flying the flagThis isnt the first time a brand has aimed at the under-tapped resource that is Canadian national pride. Back in 2000, Molson Canadian created a spot called The Rant that featured a guy named Joe proudly dispelling what amounts to American stereotypes of Canada.Cheesy, sure, but it struck a very strong nerve. As loathe as we are to admit it, a sizable proportion of the Canadian identity is tied to all the various ways we arent American. Were often a nation stuck between the influences of a colonial past (Britain and France), and a pop culture present (America). Part of our contemporary identity is finding ways to move beyond this binary. Marvel star, and Toronto native, Simu Liu leaned into our unique brand of multiculturalism when he hosted the 2022 Juno awards (Canadas Grammys) and re-created his own rant: I grew up on ketchup chips, roti, and Jamaican beef patties . . . Thats about as Toronto as you can get.Like any emphasis on buying local, or touting Made in the USA stateside, brands have long used their connection to Canada as a marketing device here. But this time its different. It feels like all at once, every marketer in Canada is a maple-syrup-swigging, hockey-loving hoser.Some are doing it by adding phrases like Proudly Canadian or Canadian Made to their labels. Others are creating full ad campaigns. Maple Leaf Foods recently launched a partnership with other Canadian brands urging people to look for the leaf on grocery products. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Maple Leaf Foods (@mapleleaffoods)Grocery giant Loblaws has created a black T label to highlight products impacted by the new American tariffs.Retailer Canadian Tire dropped a spot to reiterate its roots, while using harsh winds as a nod to the current political and economic climate.The Canadian Forces even has a spot that could weirdly double as a tourism ad, encouraging Canadians to be maple-leaf buying, local adventuring in their spending habits.Graham Candy, chief strategy officer at Toronto-based ad agency Angry Butterfly, is expecting to see more marketers join the chorus. We feel like this is just the beginning of what we are going to see out there from a political and marketing comms perspective, says Candy. We expect to see bolder messages, more pride, potentially more anger and stronger Us versus Them messaging.Personally, Im just waiting for Nestl to finally announce a brand partnership with Shoresy for its Canadian-made Drumsticks ice cream treat.Same rules applyFor some marketers, wrapping their brands in the flag may work perfectly well. For others, its a mistake.In so many ways, the current situation between Canada and the U.S. is unprecedented. But the solution for marketers is actually still rooted in the best practices of a modern brand: know what your core values are and use that as the lens through which you communicate with your audience.Plenty of brands in Canada will jump on this patriotic bandwagon, but the ones who find success will be those who have built their Canuck credentials over time. Just as brands that decide to aim attention at a particular cultural nichewhether anime fans, surfers, or Swiftiestheir actions need to be true to who they are or else the brand will be called out and, ultimately, unsuccessful in reaching that audience.American and international companies that have built the strongest brand connections to their Canadian consumers will ultimately weather the tariff storm, and it wont be because of some haphazard flag-waving.That said, Diageo should probably start re-airing its 2023 Crown Royal Super Bowl ad immediately.