The Assassin’s Creed franchise is a purely love/hate relationship for a lot of fans these days. We love how amazingly well it started off back in 2007 with the release of the first game. Sure, it had its downfalls, but the premise of playing as a hooded Assassin, hiding amongst the city’s populous as we hunt down our elusive targets in a setting not typically seen in video games was truly awe-inspiring. Not to mention the story, the confusion, the plot twists and the lore. It, and the sequels that followed, quickly became one of the most unique series of games seen in the gaming industry and rapidly propped itself up as Ubisoft’s flagship franchise.
Then Assassin’s Creed: Unity happened.
Unity, while ambitious in intention, completely failed to hit the mark, and really put a dent in the franchise’s popularity. Aside from the fact that fans may have been suffering from franchise fatigue from the annual release of every title, Unity‘s protagonist, Arno, was a cardboard cut out of Ezio from AC2, and half as charismatic. The story was bland, the characters uninspiring and the game itself was completely unrefined, with bug after bug making the game nigh-unplayable until Ubisoft patched what they could. Unfortunately by then, the damage was done, with Syndicate not being able to recover the franchise and the result being Ubisoft taking a year out to readjust.
But you know all of this already. What you also know is that in that year gap and the year that followed, Ubisoft were hard at work making sure their next instalment would put the Assassin’s Creed franchise back on the path of success.
And, arguably, Origins managed that feat. Somehow…
Assassin’s Creed: Origins puts you in the shoes of yet another new protagonist, Bayek, a Siwan Medjay who suffers a family trauma through his son, Khemu, being unjustly murdered, and sets upon his journey for vengeance.
While the premise is rather unoriginal in terms of our protagonists experiencing some kind of family drama, with nearly every instalment starting off with one family member or another being killed, it is certainly made up with the fact that not only is this the story of how the creed was born, but it’s also in a setting that fans had been wanting to see for a while; the historical fascination that is Ancient Egypt.
The year off Ubisoft took to ensure Origins brought hope back to the fans really shows as the scenery is absolutely gorgeous and expansive, the story is compelling, though stretched, and the gameplay has been refined yet again in a way that is different, but a ‘good’ different. Combat, while fans will miss the brutal cinematic-like counter kills, has been changed to offer for the first time in AC history a real challenge. In the past when Ubisoft mentioned that players make a choice to fight-or-flee from enemies, fans chuckled as they easily dispatched enemies and went on their merry way. But in Origins, they mean it. Enemies can kill you before you even lay a dent in their health bar; a welcome challenge for many.
While free running has remained much the same as Syndicate & Unity, there’s something that feels oddly different in Origins, perhaps down to the fact you are climbing a huge cliff-side or the Great Pyramid in Giza, as opposed to the usual city rooftops we’ve seen time and time again.
Source: Ubisoft
Bayek feels like a real human being in terms of his personality, his sense of duty to protect the people translates well when undertaking side missions, and when he gets angry or upset, his voice breaks and rises with real emotion. Props to Abubakar Salim who did a fantastic job in conveying that in his vocal performance for Bayek. Bayek’s relationship with Aya is a breath of fresh air that Assassins don’t always have to be a player with the ladies, and his motivations are made plain and simple when running his blade through his enemies.
Origins also boasts a map size that is not only the biggest to traverse in the series’ history, but is also jam-pakced with activities to do, be it viewpoints, forts, tombs, animal lairs or numerous side quests, there is a huge amount to do and a huge map to do it all in.
The map size does have an impact on the fluidity of the story, however. Players can find themselves constantly getting distracted by the seemingly endless activities to do, simply by going from A to B, which has a marked impact on being able to follow the story. Not to mention the requirement to have Bayek reach a certain level in order to accomplish missions.
The levelling system, which will be relatively familiar to those who played Syndicate, has been implemented into the game to the point where it forces you to undertake side quests and explore the map to acquire XP and level up. Be that a positive or a negative is a matter of one’s perspective, but it can be very time consuming, and as mentioned, can really make you lose focus in terms of the main story.
Unfortunately, Origins’ supporting characters, besides Aya, once again fail to be memorable, with every character being painfully under-developed. Even Cleopatra, one of the most famous figures in history, is portrayed with a rather dull personality. It makes one yearn for the days when you could sympathise with the Assassin’s antagonists like Al Mualim, Cesare Borgia or even Robert de Sable. Bayek’s search for justice almost seems futile to the players because there is seemingly no other character to share this journey with him.
Source: Ubisoft
Of course, there is Aya, Bayek’s wife. Aya is a fighter like Bayek and is also a playable character for certain missions. While Bayek is at the forefront of the story, and his understandable motivation for wanting to kill the people responsible for killing his son is clear, Aya’s motivations are almost confusing. She is the mother of Bayek’s child, yet does not seem too interested in seeking justice until they are betrayed by Cleopatra. Before this even happens, she seems almost obsessive over Cleopatra and is even willing to separate from Bayek for half of the game to serve Cleopatra instead of support her husband’s quest for vengeance. If properly developed and explored, this could be understandable. Compelling even. But she simply comes across as a cold wife and mother who almost takes Bayek for granted in some ways.
Whether one gets invested in the story or not, one thing Ubisoft manages to accomplish, for the most part anyway, is keeping true to the lore previously established in past instalments to the franchise.
Assassin’s Creed 2, in particular, mentions that an assassin called Amunet is responsible for killing Cleopatra. Aya is revealed to be Amunet at the end of the game, so 1 point to Ubisoft there. Another is Bayek using Darius’s hidden blade, Darius being the assassin that first used the hidden blade. One thing fans feel was handled poorly, however, was Bayek’s loss of his ring finger being purely on accident. It is later established that cutting the ring finger off was to show their dedication to Bayek and the Hidden Ones’ cause, but the mere fact that Bayek cut his own finger off on accident provides a rather ridiculous back story for something that becomes a ritual and is iconic for the early days of the Assassin Brotherhood.
The idea that in the days of Altair, an assassin pondering as to where the idea to cut their ring finger off came from, Al Mualim starts his explanation off with “So, funny story actually…” is just a little silly. The writers could have perhaps come up with something a little more imaginative.
Source: Ubisoft
As for being imaginative, it is also clear in this instalment that they continue to have no clear sense of direction as to where they are taking the modern day storyline. This time, instead of taking on the role of an Absergo employee in first person, or simply pressing play to become an assassin, you take on the role of Layla, a visual embodiment of what Lara Croft and Nathan’s Drake love child would look like. Her relationship with Abstergo is a little bit of a head scratcher, but from what we gather she was hired by Abstergo to do…something, and by simply not checking in, is put on Abstergo’s hit list.
Some mighty strict company policies there.
Whether Layla will be the new Desmond is unclear, and we’ll have to wait to see when Odyssey comes out, but when it does, her character is going to need some real refining by the writers if she is to become a likeable new protagonist. One can at least admire that Ubisoft is putting an actual character back into the modern day instead of having us merely watch what is going on.
But that enough won’t be able to save the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Recent fan response to Ubisoft’s unveiling of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey at E3 2018 has been alarmingly negative, and rightfully so.
Source: Ubisoft
Odyssey almost prides itself on being entirely different from it’s predecessors. While being ambitious and wanting to evolve your franchise can be admirable, it very rarely works out well (just look at how Star Wars: The Last Jedi worked out). Odyssey looks to have a protagonist that doesn’t even remotely resemble an assassin in terms of appearance, focuses heavily on large battles, and doesn’t include simple things like a hidden blade, a white hood, or even templars and assassins themselves, as Odyssey is set 400-or-so years before Origins – the game that shows how the Assassin’s formed! Odyssey also showcases a more RPG-style of story progression, with players now able to choose one of two characters to play as, and have multiple dialogue options in cutscene conversations. This heavily goes against the idea that the Animus shows what already HAS happened, with memories only being relived, not manipulated.
Having seen, and still seeing, AC fans backlash on Odyssey, it is concerning that Ubisoft don’t seem to have learned that taking big chances and churning out sequels only a year on haven’t worked out well. It is also concerning that the franchise has just been able to get itself back into gear with Origins, and it would be a huge disappointment to see the franchise go into meltdown having just found it’s feet again. The only premise that may make Odyssey a worthy sequel is a popular theory that Odyssey may be the origin story for the Templars, which would certainly make for an interesting twist, given how intriguing Assassin’s Creed: Rogue‘s story went in terms of shedding light on Templar motivations.
While Origins may not have been perfect, it was enough to give fans confidence that Ubisoft had sorted out their mess. Let’s hope Odyssey isn’t as bad as it looks or we may never see this once beloved franchise recover…
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