Back in March, when talking about AC: Syndicate, I opened with “It’s been a while since I’ve genuinely enjoyed my time with an Assassin’s Creed game.” And I’m surprised to say, Origins finally changes that.
Original Assassin’s Creed was a blend of history and drama, a new take on open world design, a fresh take on stealth action and, very importantly, a passion project. It was rough, it felt unfinished, but also inspiring and exciting. And to this day, it remains my favorite game in the franchise. Since then, almost not a single game in the series felt like it was done out of desire to make a genuinely exciting fun and inspiring game. There were glimpses of brilliance, examples of either fantastic evolution or revolution of some of the core elements of the series, or, even rarer, an attempt to write a good story again. But every time all of this has been overshadowed by the rest of the game. Assassin’s Creed Origins might be the first game since the original to have a strong enough developer passion behind it, that it manages to just about obscure all the bad elements. It’s a Ubisoft game, so there are lots of those.
While at the first glance Origins has all the same elements that were present in the series since the original, the gameplay core is completely different. Series were envisioned as a social stealth action with freerunning in open urban environments, and despite moving from that core almost right away, with the second game already not fully fitting the controls and mood set by the original, all games until now kept reusing that same basic concept. It has evolved with years, sometimes not properly fitting the game it was in (it felt off in Black Flag), sometimes like a perfect evolution of the original concept, but in a terribly executed game (like Unity), but it was clear that the series had to change something. And while I would’ve preferred the direction Unity was taking, Ubisoft probably realized that stealth will remain too niche for their big budget plans for the series, so instead Origins moves away from a lot of the basics, to become an open world adventure title, with controls to (mostly) fit these needs.
Freerunning and climbing is even more streamlined than in Unity and Syndicate, requiring just occasional climb button presses, but otherwise just holding the direction. Open world is big horizontally, instead of vertically, so climbing isn’t as important now anyway, with far more focus given to exploration and combat. Exploration is clearly influenced by TES V: Skyrim and The Witcher 3, with a lot of similar concepts and quality of life ideas, while most side-quests exist almost solely to provide you with story-based goals while you’re marking optional locations as completed. Even the rather poorly thought out idea of skills from previous two projects is now fully realized into a simplistic action RPG idea of XP, leveling up, loot and other usual suspects. And as for the combat – it seems like Ubisoft really wanted to make sure people understand that it’s more rhythm based and methodical, rather than hack and slash, so they moved all of the combat inputs to the shoulder buttons and triggers. Yes, just like Dark Souls, you can make that joke now.
Because of these fundamental changes, the whole experience is transformed. Yes, you feel like you’re still playing Assassin’s Creed, and you still feel like you’re playing a Ubisoft game, with all of the ideas seemingly shared and reused across all of their franchises. Yet, it all clicks like it haven’t in years. I struggled through most Assassin’s Creed games of the last 6 years, returning to them again and again just because I still felt like it’s a franchise that can be good, yet does everything against that. Origins took me over 75 hours to play and I’m seriously considering playing it again sometime.
The changes alone wouldn’t have kept me going. There was clear passion behind this game. Different, less risky and experimental, less pure than with the original AC, more tarnished with Ubification and the expectations from a modern age “AAA game” or, in Ubisoft case, a “live service”. But it shines through. It’s the first earnest attempt at just telling a solid story in an interesting setting since the first game. It’s the first earnest attempt at making people actually excited about history and filling the world with so many little details that feel important. Hell, even the soundtrack in this game is one of the best in the series, sometimes reminiscent of the first two games, but doing it in its own unique way. And holy crap does this game look good! I haven’t used the “photo modes” in games much, but here, despite it being very limited, I used it all the time, just because of how great the game world looked. Oh and there’s a bonus history tour mode, that, while somewhat underwhelming in terms of information it sometimes provides, is interesting and again showcases that developers were truly interested in the topic.
But… let’s sour the mood a bit. The whole aRPG concept with leveling up? Works well as a helpful way of showing the “intended exploration route” and adds gameplay rewards to some things that in previous games felt pointless. But otherwise seems like an attempt to make people sink more time into the game. Which, of course, you can somewhat “rectify” with real money microtransactions, which are less in your face than in Syndicate, but are still advertised right there in the main menu. Changes to the combat? Pretty bad. Instead of actually feeling rhythmic or methodical with fun enemy encounters like in the original game or Souls games respectively, the controls simply feel sloppy, some of the moves are useless and some encounters are tedious and unfun. Main boss encounters in the last DLC are a perfect example of how terrible things are and how the combat is slow and boring, rather than calculated and tense.
And the story, while probably being the best attempt at one since Assassin’s Creed 3, still feels incredibly amateurishly put together. Cutscenes, both using the in-game camera and choreographed ones, often look badly edited. Side quest content, instead of being interesting side-stories that enrich the world like in The Witcher 3 are just by the book forgettable interactions that exist solely to make you go to different locations. Don’t get me wrong, they’re cleverly placed to help you get most of each territory of the world and guide you, but that’s all they exist to do. If you remove the story pretense and just make it so they appear as to-do lists, nothing about them will change. Also, annoyingly, they punish you if you explore on your own as they will make you go to the completed location again once you take them, despite one of the opening side quests, allowing you to complete the side quest before you take it. Ending parts of the main story are especially embarrassing and feel like someone pushing the whole AC “lore” down your throat. Game just “remembers” that it’s Assassin’s Creed and does all the bad story decisions all previous sequels to the original made, with out of nowhere year skips that ruin the pacing, unnecessary overuse of historic figures when absolutely unnecessary and convoluted attempts at cramming as much events and backstory into one scene. And it only gets sillier in DLCs, even if it never gets outright terrible.
Game not becoming terrible also kept me going, I suppose. By now I’m just accepting that an Assassin’s Creed game will become at best super tedious and at worst completely fall apart after the opening hours, even if those hours are really good. Yet, Origins never falls that far. It’s a Ubisoft game alright, and it uses a lot of neat little design decisions to keep you playing, to keep on eating it like chips. But it’s not completely soulless this time around and, sad as it may be, this is somewhat enough to make me excited. I never expected liking another Assassins Creed game, but Origins is just the right kind of a project to revitalize the series.
So, I can’t believe myself saying this, but Assassin’s Creed Origins is a really good game and one of the best very big budget productions I’ve seen in a very long time, especially from Ubisoft. It’s absolutely worth playing if you like exploration, history, stealth action and really beautiful game worlds. If you always wanted the series to focus on social stealth again, this might be a disappointment, and same goes for people who are really into the meta-plot of the series, as it seems like that whole thing is being re-thought again. But if that doesn’t matter to you much, give it a go. This is one of the best games in the series and I’ve had a lot of fun with it.