Assassin's Creed Origins Review
Game: Assassin's Creed: Origins
Developer: Ubisoft
Platforms: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC
To the point
AC: Origins may very well be my favorite Assassin's Creed game to date. Ubisoft has had some real up's and down's with the series previously, but this one stands above even the best games in the franchise in my opinion. Truth be told I wasn't planning on buying or even playing this entry into the series as the overall idea of a new AC game had lost appeal to me even with my fondness for some of the older games. I felt that they had beat the dead horse long enough, as cool as an ancient Egypt prequel sounded, it just felt like it was going to be more of the same game repeated. And with that mindset I almost missed a great game. Luckily for me the game came with the new Xbox One S' me and my wife bought each other as early Christmas gifts (I will review the console separately). Still, even free I made the bone headed decision to not play the game and just use my new console on games previously purchased. It was a Friday night and I was jamming on the new Madden I do believe, when I heard my wife boot the game up. So I turned my TV down to half pay attention to the game while I continued to play my game. About a half hour into the game I realized I wasn't even paying attention to my own game anymore. Both the story and game play coming from my wife's TV had sucked me in almost instantly. Before I knew it I had the game downloaded and booting.
Adrift in a sea of Sand
Let me start off by stating that AC: Origins map is huge. Graphics, Textures, and Lighting are all great. Loading into the game is relatively quick considering that 99% of the map is singular, you can travel the different provinces of Egypt and even explore ancient tombs without hitting a loading screen. Graphics wise, I personally haven't run into any glitches or other weirdness. Performance wise, I have had the game freeze a couple times, including: a strange glitch where during an assassination attempt both the player and the target npc have gotten stuck in whatever position they were in before the assassination and the rest of the world will continue on as normal. Aside from the minor and sporadic performance issues, AC: Origins large, beautiful map is filled with all of the mystique and allure of ancient Egypt full of secrets to discover. Making exploring and even just traveling the map an enjoyable experience. There are a multitude of subtasks to tackle in the world that range in difficulty as the map, side missions, and enemies are all leveled creating a very classic RPG feel for this entry into the AC franchise. Besides (The great!) story in Origins, I found myself with a slew of additional goals and tasks that I "Needed" to complete: leveling, collecting, upgrading gear, finding better weapons and cooler outfits. If I went into the gear system for this game this review would take additional hours to write. I'll point out that they added classic RPG attributes to equipment, as well as a tiered system (Common, Rare, Legendary) with the Legendary equipment having unique attributes (like being on fire, or poison). This breaks a mold common in the franchise where equipment had a base damage rating and that was pretty much the measure of the weapons you were using. The RPG aspect of the game is further Accentuated by a skill tree that is large, but not dauntingly so, and filled with interesting and useful skills that are sometimes more fun then they are necessary, making leveling fruitful, light, and enjoyable. The plethora of sub-tasks and side missions removes the monotony of grinding for levels. One issue past games in the franchise have had was the repetitive nature of side missions. This was especially prevalent in the first few games, where you felt like you were repeating the same few tasks to move the story forward. This is one thing I really enjoyed about Origins, every side quest felt like its owns story, the characters involved felt like their own people with their own problems, the tasks within each missions felt different enough to keep each mission fresh and interesting.
A tale of revenge and Idealism
The main reason AC:Origins is one of my favorite games, is the Main character Bayek, his life story, and his apparent place in the world. I wont spoil the story, but like most AC games, it takes place during an important time in history, this game being in the time period of Cleopatra's rise to power in Egypt. The main character Bayek, was a Medjay: protector of the pharaoh, in the previous regime before the current pharaoh took control. Bayek's brothers were disbanded and hunted down, essentially making him the "Last of the Medjay". Bayek's personal story is heart wrenching, full of anger, sadness and regret. But unlike your typical revenge story, Bayek doesn't seem lost in his anger. Don't get me wrong he's pissed, but he doesn't shut out the other people in his life because of it. The character in both the main story and his interactions with characters even in side-quests makes you genuinely believe that Bayek is a good person and a great man. His code of honor is never spoken out loud, but is made plain to see by his small responses and reactions, as well as his seriousness to any person's strife. All of Egypts issues seem to be made his personal responsibility and the character seems to thrive and take pride in it. The story is written, directed, and acted out good enough to make me form personal opinion's and connections with characters and events. I began to despise certain antagonists, relate to main characters, and try to eek out my own suspicions and conspiracies about what was actually going on. All in all, the story was done so well that i genuinely cared for it, and continually wanted to progress it just to know more, or find out what happened next.
The Forge's Verdict
This instance of Assassins creed rekindled my love for the AC franchise's overarching story-line, as well as fixing or completely overhauling a lot of the mechanics that have held down previous games (even if in minor ways). In truth this game has me excited for a series that i thought i had lost interest in do to the high output of games vs the time they were putting into the mechanics of them, the story has always been there, this game just fixes the issue that Almost all of the other games suffer from: It would be fun to play, even without a great story. The only thing holding this game back are minor bugs with freezing, and maybe acting out more of the story so that players that don't care for searching for context into subtle story changes, don't have to feel even a little lost by changes in the polarity of a relationship of certain characters or the introduction of new people or events. Both criticisms i hold for this game are minor, and this game is definitely going on my replay list.
Forge Rating
8/10