Ancient Egypt, a land of majesty and intrigue, is disappearing in a
ruthless fight for power. Unveil dark secrets and forgotten myths as you go
back to the one founding moment: The Origins of the Assassin’s Brotherhood.
We would think that people are at
least partially interested in history when they enjoy Assassin's Creed games.
Of course, that does not necessarily have to be the case. One group have just
joined this series for love of history, other one love history only after they
have allowed Ubisoft to take them to this wonderful world, and the third group
is playing just for fun and history does not really interest them in real life.
But anyway, most of these players return year after year to the Assassin's
Creed series and they stand with it in good and evil.
I can say for myself that i am
somewhere on the border of the first and the second group. Assassin's Creed
intrigued me for the historical themes, and I devoted more seriously to this
humanistic science for the long-lasting wandering of Ubisoft's universe for the
eternal struggle between Templars and Assassins. Moreover, I can say that this
is one of my favorite serials and that no gaming franchise has left such a mark
on my gaming life.
Player take on the role of Bayek,
a police officer on a mission to avenge his son; player also occasionally
become his capable wife, Aya. Combat is brutal, with Bayek using swords, axes,
spears, daggers, and bows and arrows to stab, slice, bludgeon, and shoot his
enemies. Non-interactive narrative sequences can be even more intense,
depicting Bayek assassinating victims in vicious hand-to-hand combat.
Like in the previous game, you
level up with experience points, which are gained from doing pretty much
anything. Each mission shows a suggested level that you should reach before
taking it on, but you can ignore that if you’re feeling lucky. You can see the
level of each enemy and also their health meter, even showing how much damage
you’ll do in a sneak attack. Most of the main quests involve killing someone
(obviously), but one thing I personally enjoyed returning from Syndicate are
investigations. Like in the Batman Arkham games, some missions require you to
look around an area, collecting clues (blood trails, broken railings, etc) to
find out what happened. A few missions let you sail a ship with Aya (Bayek’s
wife) and a few others let you control and fight as her too.
Each mission requires you a
certain level of experience, but it is not necessary to access them only when
you are notified by the game that you have met the requirements. However, one
level may mean a lot if you allow the soldiers to surround you. In fact, it is
not wise to find yourself surrounded by an enemy, because they will not wait
for your to swing with their weapons at you, and you will not get any warning
to perform an counterattack. If you add to this an opponent who is more
skillful than Bayek in several levels - You're toast. Specifically, their swing
can take more than a third of your health while you will have to score more
arrows in their head so they will finally fall on their knees and their blood
will soaked the sand. Also, it should be noted that hidden blade is not
ultimately a weapon under which any enemy will fall.
The fight is much more complex
and demanding than any Assassin's Creed title so far and is basically pretty
well done. It will protect you in most cases from being attacked by cold
weapons or arrows, which you can then save in your quiver. However, the defense
tool does not have to be made of bronze or iron to defend Bayah from the
shooting of archers. In other words, if you throw over a dead body on the back
of this rage Egyptian from Siwa, he will be spared from most of the fired
missiles. The arrows generally respected the laws of physics, so the exact path
with the passing meters gradually drops, but there are so-called
"predator" arrows that do not aim at realism because you control them
yourself.
From a technical point of view,
the game works very well, with only a few sluggish animation on all platforms
for which patches should be made. Bayek has managed to get stuck on the stone
for a couple of times and there is also a few crashes of the game,for which
Ubisoft said that it was known issue and the game will have a patch that fixes
it. Origins fortunately does not have those urns with bulging eyes and
disappearing half of the textures of the characters. Slim Glitters are somehow
expected in such huge projects and will not affect the overall experience.
As a whole, Assassin's Creed Origins was a unique and completely different experience for me than the previous sequels, but at the same time I felt that this was still a series that turned my life upside down. Regardless that this franchise has a special sentimental value for me, I do not overdo it when I say this is one of the most interesting parts of the series we've been tracking for ten years, and it would be a shame that the fans of Assassin's Creed are missing just because they decided to evolve it. I really do not like that in this sequel you have to solve the mission in a certain way to complete synchronization, and if our old Egypt did not show the start and end of the Assassin's Creed series, I hope that in the future we will have to make tough moral decisions on our own.
