Assassin's Creed Origins - Review

Dawn of the Hidden Ones

Console: PlayStation 4 game played on a PlayStation 5.

A year or two back, a local discounter stocked a bunch of PS4 games for only €10. I used that opportunity to grab myself a couple of games including the subject of today's review: Assassin's Creed Origins. I like historical fiction and with how big and storied this series has become I'd say it was high time I experienced it for myself. 

However, some might say that Origins is not the best game to get my feet wet with. I know enough of Assassin's Creed through pop culture osmosis that this is where the series took a different path. It went from its stealth and parkour-focused origins (ha!) to an open-world roleplaying game. It's not what made gamers fall in love with the series in the late 2000s but these elements are still here. Not to mention that this is the current direction of the series which led it to greater sales heights than ever before. Than there´s also the fact that this is the start of a new saga in the story. If you look at it that way this is a pretty good starting point after all! 

So, without further ado, let's talk about my first hands-on experience with Assassin's Creed with Origins. A fun but, in my eyes, average game that was a good first outing for this new style that showed exactly what worked and what didn't. 

Layla, an animus engineer gone rogue, uses her self-made portable animus to hook herself up to the mummy of Bayek of Siwa. This brings her, and us, back to roughly 50 BC Egypt. 

When his son is killed by a group of masked men, Bayek and his wife Aya set out on a quest for revenge. After killing the last man on his part of the list, he reconvenes with Aya in Alexandria where he learns his wife has pled her loyalty to the exiled Cleopatra. As it turns out, the group who killed their son have been silently wreaking havoc across all of Egypt, whispering in Cleopatra's brother and current Pharaoh Ptolemy's ear. 

Armed with an experimental wrist blade, Bayek begrudgingly joins Cleopatra's efforts to dethrone her brother as it's his best chance to take the entire group down and get his revenge. 

I took a ton, and I mean a ton, of notes when playing. It might just be the most I've ever written down! A good chunk of that is about the story. 

Let's start with a strength: Bayek himself. He is a character that grew on me over time. His obvious love for children, his sense of humour and his sensibility eventually endeared me to him. I also started to like Aya more the, well, more you saw and played as her. When she allowed herself to be vulnerable and show her true self behind the image she was projecting to the world. 

They shouldn't have focused so much on her at the end though where quite suddenly it's a 60/40 split between playing as her and as Bayek. Knowing that Aya was originally intended to be the sole protagonist puts this oddity in context but doesn't excuse it. Had they paced Aya's section better across the game or, better yet, made Bayek and Aya dual protagonists this wouldn't be much of an issue. In fact, I think it would've made for a stronger game in general. 

A big reason for the meandering pacing in the middle before the big ramp-up is that the game struggles to stretch Bayek's story over this many hours. They should've kept highlights of Bayek's 2nd round of assassinations, such as the twist villain that 'The Scarab' turned out to be and the heart-wrenching fate of Shadya and replaced the rest with Aya's stuff. She talks about the things she does while the two are separated so why couldn't they have made those kills of hers playable? This is all wish fulfillment in hindsight but it had to be said. 

Fair warning: Aya and Bayek can't keep their hands of each other whenever they're together. They are quite the affectionate couple!

Part of the big ramp-up in the last third, aside from the big action set pieces, is the focus on historic figures, I was initially a bit disappointed that Cleopatra appeared to be the only one here. It took until this point before others popped up and it was interesting and fun to see them in this world. I even learned a couple of things about them I never knew before. Neat! Also neat is that the game comes with a mini-documentary all about Egypt and what inspired the team. Worth a button press if you ask me. 

The modern-day sections you ask? The less said about those the better. I admit that this entire diegetic setup (Google it) didn't appeal to me from the outset, blame the movie for that if you will, and what I played did not change my mind. I pulled off such a smooth assassination where, truly, no enemy even glimpsed and that was the moment they tore me away for something boring. Not neat. Well, the user interface it created, this unique way of loading things in, is but that's about it. 

Oh, and one more thing. There are plenty of references to the film here, mostly in the Rikkins coming up in plenty in these present-day sections. This feels like a clear attempt to cover their bases should the movie have been a success. Funny seeing stuff like that years later knowing how it all played out

With all of that out of the way, it's time to tackle the other big chunk of notes. Those are all about gameplay with some overlap with what I wrote above. Said overlap is in the pacing. Ubisoft didn't just stretch the game out with narrative elements. They did so with side-quests and other activities too. 

Just like every other game with a level system, Origins' quests have level recommendations. The game even marks quests by means of red text that are way out of your current league. You can attempt to tackle these under levelled but you're going to have a hard time. The consequences will catch up with you sooner rather than later. That you have to do side-quest and side activities to keep up level-wise is nothing out of the ordinary. How hard Origins relies on it is in my experience. 

Knowing how long this game is and not feeling up for a 100+ hour adventure, my intention was to let much of the side content pass me by. And yet, I ended up doing 88 side-quests over my 36 hours with the title. I couldn´t help but fall into my usual open-world rhythm here. The ´don't fast travel and tackle every quest marker in the vicinity´ approach. That you can set your camel to ride to your next marker automatically helped greatly in this. While basic and sometimes feeling like they missed a beat, I found these side-quests very enjoyable to do with some great rewards here and there which is why I did so many of them. 

Even with all of this compared to Horizon Forbidden West, also an open-world roleplaying game with similar RPG elements, the level difference is stark. I strongly remember hitting the level cap in that game before fighting the final boss. Here, I only just made it to that recommended level for the final. 

Like a friend pointed out, with all the effort the team put into these side-quests they're going to put some pressure on you to actually do them. Making it so that you need to do this many of them to keep up it contributes to the feeling of bloat this game and its sequels have hanging around them. And this (yes I can bring this back around) doesn't help the game's pacing much. All of this dipping in and out of the main course, so to speak. I mean, the prologue took 3 hours simply due to all of this.  

That brings me to the gameplay proper. You've read me write that Origins swerved into the open-world roleplaying territory. What does that mean exactly? More or less what you think it does. This game has all the modern open-world tropes. A large world which you can explore freely filled with tons of side-quests and activities to do, collectables to find and enemies to fight. The RPG mechanics mean that there is a skill tree to invest in, a slew of different weapons to find, wield and experiment with, a resource gathering and crafting system and different costumes to wear. 

As you the open world got its hooks in. I wouldn't have fallen into that relaxed play rhythm if I wasn't having fun. The characters you meet and the activities you do are fine but what I really like here is Egypt itself. It is a very well-realized land if you ask me. I had a lot of fun seeing and learning about Egypt through what is in here. Through seeing its vistas, visiting its cities with its monuments and hearing the people talk about their culture. 

Graphical fidelity is up to par with what I'd say was the standard for 'realistic' graphics at the time. This makes all of what I talked about above that much nicer to see and explore. I rushed the last 3 hours or so because I wanted to see the ending but seeing these new, very different mountain regions I skipped past without much interaction made me feel a little guilty. Knowing I was rushing through what must've been quite some work to make. 

Looking pretty good, no? Also never knew the top of the pyramids were, supposdedly, plated with gold originally. The more you know!

However, did not care much for the RPG elements. I only ever bothered with what was convenient.  Upgrading my favourite weapons with the money I got from selling stuff I auto-looted, for example. I know there are more hidden numbers here about attack power etc. and weapons having a variety of different side effects but I never bothered looking at these. 

These elements don't intrude though so me not engaging in them, luckily for me, is of little consequence. And let's not forget, there is a plus side to this. You can mostly ignore it, find a playstyle that suits you early on and stick with it without much penalty. Well, on normal difficulty at least. I quickly gravitated towards the khopesh and when that same friend I mentioned earlier had a crack at the game and found a spear in his save file early on, I hunted one down for myself and I never looked back. I constantly switched between these two, the up close and personal damage dealer and the less damaging but greater reach one and had lots of fun doing so. 

Speaking of weapons, the combat itself isn't all that great. It´s functional but it´s a lot of button mashing to hit targets without clear combos (though they do exist) with heavy and/or light attacks while dodging or blocking in the most basic way. It's not something that 'breaks' the experience but it is a clear area of improvement for Odyssey, and I will look for that improvement whenever I tackle that game. 

Due to the lacklustre combat, I highly prefer using parkour and stealth to tackle scenarios. They feel really fun and 'right' when everything works out the way it should. There is this thrill to running over rooftops, jumping from one building to the next and taking down enemies without them ever noticing you. Thankfully, Origins hasn't forgotten its roots and gives you plenty of opportunities to do so. 

More than once the game tells you of two locations where your target is depending on the time of day, giving you the choice of where and how to assassinate them. Are you going to do so at night, when visibility is worse and soldiers tend to be asleep but in more open terrain or do it during the day in an area filled with plenty of cover? Are you going to use your tried and true wristblade or are you going to snipe them with an arrow? Perhaps you want to use poison or be very subtle and explode a barrel of oil right as they walk by? The choice is yours. 

This leads me to my final point of criticism: the controls. They are clunky and finicky where they should've been precise. So many misses with assassinations, jumps etc. because the game just wouldn't do what I wanted it to do and I feel is technically possible. So many times the game would jump to the wrong point due to slightly off positioning or it not understanding I meant to jump. A jump button would've done wonders.

Conclusion

Assassin’s Creed Origins was a solid introduction to the series for me. Flawed but enjoyable. It’s a game full of ambition, with a well-realised open-world, an intriguing if uneven story, and a surprisingly relatable protagonist in Bayek. It’s also a game that shows the growing pains that come with a change in direction like this. It has pacing issues, bloated side content, lacklustre combat, and occasionally frustrating controls. Despite these flaws, I still found myself enjoying the experience, immersing myself in ancient Egypt and getting a thrill from the stealth. 

Origins may not be an outstanding game, but it’s a good one, and it basically did what the optimist in was quitely hoping it would do: make me properly interested in the series. I plan to play another Assassin's Creed game soon, just not Odyssey quite yet with how big that game is. I'm going to look back before moving forward.