ASSASSIN’S CREED ORIGINS
After taking a gap year, the series found itself anew as it travelled the dunes and cities of Ptolemaic Egypt
While development began after Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Origins wasn’t a game Ubisoft wanted to rush out, even giving the annualised series a year off in 2016 to make sure it got Origins right. And get it right it did. Origins was the biggest departure for the series yet, and also one of the most well-received ever, pushing boundaries for all open world games. Set in a ridiculously huge map of Ancient Egypt around 50BC, it charted the origins (see what they did there) of the Assassins through a very personal journey, as Bayek and Aya set off to track down and kill a secretive masked order which murdered their son. Things are never as simple as just getting revenge, however, and they become embroiled in the civil conflict between Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra, and also the growing Roman influence in Egypt at the time.
Mostly you played as Bayek while Aya was off being a bit more politically involved (you played as her in a few select missions), and the tale had a bit of a pulpy edge, as Bayek was one of the last remaining Medjay – protectors of the people, who were established in the Old Kingdom. This led to some police procedural-like missions with investigative elements, in a neat mix of genre conventions. This set of rules was what was eventually adapted into
“ASSASSIN’S CREED ORIGINS DELIVERED ON THAT VERY INITIAL VISION – THE TRUE CREED.”
the creation of the Hidden Ones, an evolution of the Medjay that would later become known as the Assassins.
Not only was the map of Egypt huge (and we mean absolutely, honking massive), but the majority of the game was pretty open. You could explore wherever you wanted without coming up against walls, and once you got into it your main masked targets were revealed for you to track down in whatever order you wanted. However, different parts of the map had different levels of difficulty, meaning if you were under-levelled for an area you had a much harder time there.
Things like levelling up, skill trees, and equipment were introduced as quite prominent elements, blending the classic action gameplay with RPG mechanics. Levelling had its benefits, but not being guaranteed a kill when you sneaked up on someone to stab them in the neck with your hidden blade was a bit weird. A knife in the neck’s a knife in the neck, after all. But, for the most part, leaning into RPG elements was a success in really making the world feel like a detailed and real one. And being set in the earliest period in Assassin’s Creed at that point, exploring the lived-in ancient cities was fascinating.
ORIGINAL TWIST
The way you interacted with the game was largely retooled too. Gone was the mini-map, with the eagle Senu now acting as your eye in the sky, marking enemy locations and other points of interest. It worked wonderfully. You felt like a force of nature as you cleared enemy camps, but one that made sense in context. Marking, clearing, avoiding. Most missions were open-ended enough that part of the challenge would be working out your own approach. While the series had toyed with that conceptually before, it never truly delivered in the way that Origins did. Lots of the changes made it feel like the most different Assassin’s Creed to date, but in many ways it also felt like the one that delivered on that very initial vision – the true Creed. And with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey giving Ubisoft Québec the reins to play with those principles in the even earlier setting of Ancient Greece, we can’t wait to see what’s next for the series.