Due to the non-linear nature of open-world video games, developers will often create certain in-game limitations in order to gate and unlock player progress. The most common version of this is the "Ubisoft Tower," a location on that map that, when cleared, will unveil large portions of the map. This is a two-part feature: on one hand, this creates an easy template for challenging the player, as the developers can re-use the location multiple times but in different variations in order to create new content. On the other, developers can center the interesting content of the game world around the tower so players are gravitated towards them. These towers aren't strictly required, however they do make navigating the game world and finding things to do much less ambiguous and frustrating.
Visiting these towers typically serves three purposes (although these may not be present all at once):
- Unfogging or revealing a large amount of the nearby area on the in-game map to better allow the player to navigate it and find their way around.
- Reveals side quests, collectibles, activites, and other points of interest for the player to engage in. This is usually constrained to the newly-unfogged areas so that the player isn't overwhelmed by getting an entire map's worth at once.
- Acting as a new fast travel location for players to come back to, allowing them to seek out and clear the new objectives and then return to find another (or otherwise be used to return to this area).
May overlap with Video Game Vista if it allows the player to see gorgeous scenery from high up as a way of making the world feel bigger and more expansive. In fact the view is often justified as why the player character now has clarity on the surrounding area and the things in it (with fast travel being justified as the tall structure serving as a landmark). These towers usually have a way to return back to the ground safely like a zipline or a soft landing, or the player can use a glider instead.
Compare Portal Network. Subtrope to Highly Visible Landmark.
Examples of this trope include:
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Ubisoft
- Ubisoft both made and codified the trope, as almost all of their game series include these, hence their nickname "Ubisoft Towers".
- Assassin's Creed is the first series in which they came to prominence, where they are named "Viewpoints". When climbed by Altair, Ezio, and other player characters, they reveal sections of the map and allow them to track objectives.
- Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood adds onto this with "Borgia Towers", which have to be destroyed before Ezio can pay to open shops in the area.
- Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag features viewpoints and also naval strongholds, which have to be conquered by Edward Kenway in order to reveal portions of the ocean map to reveal locations and collectibles when using the Jackdaw.
- In Unity and Syndicate, Synchronisation reveals various opportunities and details and the environment that you can use to execute your mission (such as "you can steal the keys from that nurse" or "you can rescue these guys to create a distraction").
- In Origins and Odyssey, the Synchronization points are also used for fast-travelling, making traversing the massive open worlds much easier.
- Averted in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which doesn't use them at all. Instead, the player can talk to NPCs to get side quests, and using clues to find flora and fauna is an important part of the gameplay.
- Far Cry:
- In the third and fourth installments, these are known as "radio" and "bell" towers respectively. Both reveal more of the map, liberate weapons in the area, and reveal more objectives.
- Lampshaded but ultimately averted in Far Cry 5. An early mission has the player climb a tower to activate an antenna as part of a story mission, with Dutch joking how the player must think he'll have them do that all over the county — in clear reference to the notorious presence of this being a regular mechanic in other Ubisoft games, but this game in fact has no such mechanic.
- Immortals Fenyx Rising: Clearing out the fog from the map requires you to climb massive statues of the Gods, though finding collectibles can done with the Farsight ability which can be used anywhere (though the top of the massive statues does provide a good vantage point for said ability).
- Watch_Dogs uses CTOS towers to reveal collectibles and the map.
- Assassin's Creed is the first series in which they came to prominence, where they are named "Viewpoints". When climbed by Altair, Ezio, and other player characters, they reveal sections of the map and allow them to track objectives.
Non-Ubisoft examples
- Batman: Arkham Origins has jammed transmission towers Batman needs to hack in order to unlock fast travel.
- Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: Scattered across the landscape are the Remnawave Towers, old republic technology that Chadley has Cloud activate in order to amass data about the various regions. They don't reveal the entire map, but they do highlight other locations that have to do with intel gathering. Other places such as caches must still be found via exploration.
- Genshin Impact has "Statues of the Seven", which reveal more of the map, act as fast travel points, and heal the party if you ask them nicely. The heal function can be toggled so merely teleporting to a statue heals your characters. Ordinary "teleport waypoints" merely do fast travel. Both can be seen on unrevealed areas of the map, but only activate when visited in person. Unlike most other examples however, it doesn't need (or made) to be climbed on, though a few Statues are located high up in places that can only be reached by climbing.
- Halo Infinite plays this completely straight, except the FOB's are low to the ground. They also double as bases where you can call in vehicles and weapons and gather marines.
- Horizon Zero Dawn and its sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, has the Tallnecks. Large giraffe-like machines with Saucer-shaped heads who gather telemetry from all the other robotic wildlife in the region. They patrol around ruins, and the player has to climb the ruins they circle, then jump onto the passing Tallneck to then scale its titular neck to the saucer section and thus get map information. They are basically a (slightly) mobile version of this trope.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: The "Sheikah Towers" require Link to climb them and insert his Sheikah Slate into a terminal at the top. Unlike Ubisoft, in which visiting these points reveal a typically-circular portion of the map and unlock objectives, visiting a Sheikah Tower fills in the borders of an entire region, and does not add objectives to the map. Instead, the player has to manually scout out where shrines and other points of interest are, putting more emphasis on exploration, rather than ticking off a checklist of objectives. Since they are Warp Whistle destinations, they also double as convenient high points for Link to use his paraglider. In addition, reaching these towers is often a challenge by itself, as various obstacles (such as being covered in Malice or thorny vines, heavily guarded or located in a Bottomless Pit) make each tower a puzzle to solve.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom:
- Link still finds towers and Link does still survey the land from a great height, but he no longer has to actually climb the new Skyview Towers (most of the time). Instead, the tower itself blasts him into the air and Link uses the Purah Pad to scan the surrounding landscape. Like its predecessor, it doesn't fill anything in on the map, merely uncovering a section for the player to see the topography of, but these towers also serve as excellent places to vault Link into the sky so he can make his way to the many sky islands floating above Hyrule.
- In the Depths below Hyrule, Lightroots serve a similar function to the Skyview Towers on the Surface. They only reveal a small circular portion of the map, however, which is part of the difficulty in exploring the Depths, and working out where they are and how to reach them is often no easy task.
- Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel Shadow of War use Barad-Silme or "forge towers" to reveal the map, reveal collectibles, and function as respawn and quicktravel locations.
- In Sable, cartographers always land their balloons on the highest natural landmarks they can find. If you reach them, you can buy a map of the area.
- Spider-Man (PS4) has Radio Towers Spider-Man needs to find and hack, which reveal all objectives in their vicinity and allow Spider-Man to respond to crimes in progress. This being a Spider-Man game, there's not that much climbing involved since you'll be web-slinging at rooftop levels to begin with.
- State of Decay uses the same "manual scout" feature as Breath of the Wild well years before its release. It's however optional except for the tutorial, as both the minimap and full map will automatically reveal points of interest.
- In Submerged: Hidden Depths, when you climb a lookout tower and light the fire, nearby secrets are revealed.
