I never thought I'd see the day that I felt compelled to write a review of an Assassin's Creed game. The series just always felt like something I played by availability and not by some driving interest. Up until now I'd see one of the entries on sale when the deluge of big releases were coming to a trickle. It was the interactive media palate cleanser, I guess; it was always neutral, transitional, and available. So when I think about Origins, I see a few things that made me come to this one with a sense of genuine curiosity. Ubisoft took a break from the cadence of the franchise to step back and reassess the mechanics. I was curious what they had accomplished with that extra time, and my experience was surprising.
Origins has accomplished the impossible task of making me care about what's going on. The playable characters, Bayek and Aya, are a ferocious duo that are likable from the onset and never fall out of good graces. You can see how their intentions begin to widen into something beyond themselves, and it was enough to keep me interested. Sure, the Abstergo nonsense is still in here, but it does a decent enough job of trying to keep it behind the curtain. I can respect that. What's more impressive is just how much more there is to do after completing the main storyline, and how persistent the itch is to jump back in and explore. The world of Egypt is vast and beautiful. In some ways it doesn't make sense from a design standpoint. There are expanses of terrain with next to nothing but sand, and yet it adds a level of authenticity to the world that I appreciated. This is doubled down with gorgeous art direction and a camera mode that I found myself drawn to time and time again. Players can compose a shot, choose from a variety of basic editing effects, and upload it to the map. This creates a marker of where the shot was taken, so when players sift through the community photos they can easily travel to that destination. It's a cool way to interact with the community without being intrusive, and there are other equally subtle methods that the game uses to tie the experience together just enough to feel right.
The combat is better than predecessors but only just. It pads out the experience with straightforward RPG mechanics and a skill tree that branches in three paths; these paths boil down to melee, ranged, and tools. Each path has skills you'll find useful or fun to use, and you certainly don't need to worry about committing to any particular option. It took me a bit to adjust to the combat, feeling somewhere in between The Witcher 3 and Dark Souls. The target locking, swapping, and even ranged feel at times janky, but the odds are never at a point where poor precision impedes progress. Stealth is less integral this time around, and it actually makes a point of that in the story. It may be the a key reason I enjoyed Origins so much. Bayek isn't an assassin but a Medjay, an ever-present public figure in Egypt, policing and protecting his people. He settles problems by investigation and confrontation rather than stalking around in the shadows. Certainly you're welcome to play that way if you want to, but it's not something the game makes a big deal out of if you choose not to, nor does it include missions that demand you to specifically play it stealthily or face desynchronization.
There's a basic loot system that doesn't really do much more than give you the contented fondness of watching numbers go up. About six weapon varieties exist in the game and they ostensibly behave the same between their types. Rarities denote how many bonuses each weapon can have, including additional effects like poison on touch or increased adrenaline buildup. I never felt a desire to keep a certain weapon and upgrade it though, choosing rather to just take the weapon with the higher numbers and press forward. None of the loot I collected seemed to really matter all that much. It was cool to keep finding new things, and it definitely made me try weapon types I wasn't too keen on at the beginning. So props is due at least for injecting some change throughout the experience.
The leveling is a bit clumsy. I experienced a few hiccups as I tried to keep in pace with the main questline. The indisputable best way to collect experience is by doing side missions in the towns and the map does a great job of breaking down geographies by level ranges like an MMO would, so you know where to go and when. But the side missions aren't often that great, and many of them ironically boil down to MMO fetch quests or The Witcher 3's fantasy CSI. It would be nice to have seen some more love in the side mission design, especially since it's such a necessary part to leveling. Also, some missions take longer than others or had more demanding level suggestions, and I couldn't find a rime or reason why some of these missions doled out less experience than others. In the course of my playthrough I couldn't find many other good alternatives to leveling, unless you love tower climbing or clearing outposts for a fraction of the EXP yield. So there were occasions where I had to hunt down new missions and it stalled my progress. It did make me venture into new areas of the world and it did encourage exploring though, but the double edged sword was the inconvenience of participating in more of the same to just get by a roadblock.
As I'm writing out these thoughts I'm realizing why I enjoyed Origins so much, and on the surface it sounds like a lot of gripes. But the game left an impression on me that wants to see these rough edges refined. They took a few calculated risks and the payoff is as intended, which is to compel a player to see more, do more, and try more, but the risk also produced some mild irritations. Every choice does more good than harm. Mechanics are chaotic but fine, some of the RPG elements seem basic but welcome, and the progression is dated but enthralling in the way it flows from one providence to the next. There's a clear attempt at something that goes far beyond the series' safe and tasteless design, and I can't complain about any of it at a point where it feels substandard. The characters are the best in the series, the world is the most interesting and beautiful world to explore in the series to date, and the encounters have more significance than ever before. Origins is worth seeing, and definitely worth checking back into long after the main event is accomplished.
Grade: B
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