Assassin’s Creed Origins

Assassin's Creed Origins is an action-adventure game developed by Ubisoft Montreal. It's the tenth major installment in the Assassin's Creed series and the successor to 2015's Assassin's Creed Syndicate. 

The game is set in Egypt during the near end of the Ptolemaic period (49-47 BC) and recounts the secret fictional history of real-world events. The story explores the origins of the centuries-long conflict between the Brotherhood of Assassins, who fight for peace by promoting liberty, and The Order of the Ancients, forerunners to the Templar Order, who desire peace through the forced imposition of order.

You take on the role of a Medjay named Bayek and his wife Aya, as they work to protect the people of the Ptolemaic Kingdom during a time of widespread upheaval. The Pharaoh, Ptolemy XIII, struggles to maintain his rule while harbouring ambitions of expanding his kingdom; his sister, the recently deposed Cleopatra, begins marshaling loyalist forces to launch a counter-coup against Ptolemy and frequent incursions into the Kingdom by the Roman Republic under the command of Julius Caesar lead to fears of an imminent invasion. Bayek's role as a Medjay brings him and Aya into contact with the secretive forces manipulating these events and into becoming the first Assassins.

I was a massive fan of the Assassin’s Creed series when it first began. Assassin’s Creed 1, 2 and 3 plus Brotherhood and Revelations were some of my favourite games in my teenage years and then the franchise totally lost me with regards to its poor conclusion to the story of Desmond Miles, the modern day assassin whom you follow throughout all of these games along with the fact that the market was at the time being flooded with Assassin’s Creed games every year. The games became stale for me and I moved onto other things. Assassin’s Creed Origins first grabbed me when I heard about the location it was going to be set in, Egypt a country who’s history personally interests me a great deal. I was still pretty apprehensive to purchase the game on launch day incase it was a buggy mess like the most recent titles in the franchise. So I waited to see what the consensus was before I went and bought the game. To my great surprise, Assassin’s Creed Origins was a fantastic game filled with a rich story and exciting gameplay that goes the distance. 

Bayek and Aya’s journey is a compelling and riveting tale that keeps you entertained for the whole length of the campaign. You relate to both of them in different ways and get a deep understanding for their motivations throughout the game. An aspect of the main quest that I really enjoyed was how these two characters tie back into the broader Assassin’s Creed mythology and the little nods that you get that make you go ahhhh yes now we know how that came to be were so very satisfying. 

Along with Bayek and Aya’s story you also engage yet again with the modern day assassins, this time in the form of a young woman called Layla Hassen who previously worked for the evil Abstergo corporation for 11 years, never getting promoted to the Animus Project due to her numerous transgressions of Abstergo protocols. As part of a Historical Tactical Team, Layla and her co-worker and friend Deanna get assigned to find and retrieve an important ancient artifact in Egypt. However, Layla instead finds the mummies of Bayek and Aya. Without informing her superiors, she used her own portable Animus to relive their memories in order to prove her worth to the Animus Project. Her story while being quite intriguing is extremely brief and doesn’t really lead anywhere with the main focus being given to the story of the assassins. I am very interested to see where they take Layla, she’s got the same sort of vibe and spunk that Desmond had which excites me going forward. 

The main quest is extremely long and the map you can explore is huge. It took me a good month to complete it from start to finish which was so good for someone like myself who has been generally finishing the campaigns of games very quickly. This game just kept giving and giving and I hadn’t even reached the post game yet. The one issue I had with the main quest is its demand and requirement that you reach a certain level before attempting to complete the next mission of the main campaign, forcing you to detour and do some side quests to rack up enough experience to reach the level required for the mission. It’s a small complaint but as someone who likes to go into a game and beat the story first and then tackle the side quests this annoyed me quite a bit but fortunately the side quests found in Assassin’s Creed Origins are just as interesting as the main quest so it didn’t detract from the overall experience. 

The combat system has been drastically improved upon and it allows for more strategy and planning to take place before engaging in a fight which is a welcomed change for the Assassin’s Creed franchise. It still does kind of end up boiling down to mad button mashing at times but when you are faced with higher level, more heavily armoured enemies with deadlier weapons you are forced to employ dodged, parries and charged attacks that add more zest to the combat. And it’s not just soldiers and mercenaries who pose a threat to you. Animals are more deadly than ever in Origins with everything from elephants to crocodiles baiting for your blood. This added element always kept me on my toes when traveling from point A to point B. 

The environment of Egypt and Rome looks stunning and you always feel very immersed in it. All the cool real life landmarks can be found throughout the environment and it was very exciting when you stumbled across one of them. There were however times when the game struggled a bit. I encountered frame rate drops, non-playable characters floating away and general glitching here and there but it was never anything that made the game unplayable just stuff that momentarily took you out of the immersive world. 

Overall, Assassin’s Creed Origins is a fantastic game and such a great return to what made the series such a smash hit to begin with. The story is amazing and looks to be leading the series down an interesting path, the gameplay has been jazzed up in a way that makes it feel fresh and exciting and the map is so big and expansive that it makes for a game that has a lot of gas in the tank throughout its whole main campaign and beyond. This is a game that both long time fans and gamers who’ve never played an Assassin’s Creed game before will enjoy. 

4.5/5

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