Assassin's Creed Origins

To get more value out of my 6€ Ubisoft+ month, I decided to play Assassin's Creed Origins as well. Origins is not quite as content-bloated as AC Odyssey which came after it but I still barely managed to complete it before the month was up. You really start feeling Ubisoft Open World fatigue when you finish two of such games at 100% completion back to back.

Origins of the Assassin Brotherhood

AC Origins is a revenge story set around 50 BCE Egypt. For some reason, I had the idea in my head for a good while that the game was taking place way more back into the past, like 2000 BCE something. I realized that was not the case when Cleopatra and Caesar showed up.

Medjay (some sort of desert ranger police?) Bayek and his wife Aya are after people who caused their son's death. The game begins with the task already having started. Along the way the revenge mission gets mixed up in politics and leads to the founding of the first incarnation of the Assassin Brotherhood -- as the title suggests, Assassin's Creed Origins is a prequel story of sorts.

I quite enjoyed the straightforward plot although it does get a bit repetitive when Bayek meets an old friend in every new region he enters. Ubisoft also continues to have odd writing issues when they include actual historical figures in the AC games; the characters always end up feeling like gratuitous cameos.

One particularly cool scene is when Aya and Bayek decide to found the Hidden Ones -- to remove cruel rulers and such. Bayek drops his necklace on the beach they're at, and when Aya picks it up, the necklace's eagle(?) skull leaves the Assassin's Creed logo on the sand. I absolutely love such prequel story details.

I noted a handful of environmental assets that were used in Odyssey too: the movable shelves in particular gave me flashbacks of the terribly samey tombs in the latter game. However, Origins has its distinctive overall looks and setting -- which I enjoyed considerably more than Odyssey's. There are vast and barren desert regions, and river delta areas with crocodiles for instance. The environments feel authentic. I was playing the game during the warmest days of the summer too which added an additional level of immersion.

There's this one combat music track I really enjoyed. Or rather, a small string instrument part of it but since it's at the end, you end up hearing the part quite a lot. The track plays when you're fighting animals -- and I feel other times too. It fits the game well and it kind of defines Origins' soundscape for me.

Passable action

Unfortunately combat itself isn't great. I knew that to be the case beforehand but was still disappointed at how merely adequate it was. It felt awkward and lacked impact; Bayek's shield is useless outside perfect blocks. Normal blocking seemed to stagger you as well which is not optimal. I expected more use out of the shield but the broken spear offhand in Odyssey was definitely cooler. Mounted combat I found surprisingly effective though. Horses and camels are nimble and easy to control. You should always be fighting mounted given the chance: it allows you to take out higher level bounty hunters with relative ease.

Despite the clumsiness, fortresses were a lot easier to clear than in Odyssey where getting spotted led to at least half the place getting alerted into a huge, messy fight that even on Normal difficulty often felt like a thing to best run away from.

It also helped that Origins is more of an action adventure game than an action RPG. There's no build choice apart from your preferred order of unlocking the -- frankly rather unimpressive -- perks: Origins is way behind of Odyssey in flashiness. I didn't have to choose between melee, stealth, and ranged; Bayek was good in every aspect and I could simply switch to bow to take out a guy running to alert reinforcements.

There are equipment effects but not quite on the level of Odyssey. Assassination damage is upgraded in the old straightforward manner of gathering crafting materials. Not being able to kill a target with assassination doesn't happen often, provided you don't skip on upgrading. My completionist playstyle once again caused me to overlevel most of the game's content.

In some story missions you get to play as Aya, albeit very briefly. There are also naval ship combat missions. I guess they provide some variation but having done plenty of naval combat in Odyssey already, they offered nothing new.

I of course played Origins' DLC as well. The Hidden Ones was basically more of the same but Curse of the Pharaohs had some awesome, fantastical stuff. Bayek gets to visit different realms of afterlife, which are otherworldly and picturesque. Assassin's Creed is definitely at its best every time it goes beyond the mundane.