Nov 22, 2017
Assassin’s Creed Origins Is Actually Good
It’s 2017’s highest-performing under-achiever
I know the headline sounds harsh. Assassin’s Creed is one of Ubisoft’s biggest franchises — and one of the most prolific franchises in video games generally. As important as the Assassin’s Creed games have arguably been for the industry and for gamers, the series has been mercilessly mocked for its seemingly habitual bugs (Assassin’s Creed Unity was perhaps the worst example; it spawned body-horror memes that are now burned onto my memory).
There has also perhaps been a sense of Assassin’s Creed fatigue among gamers, with at least one new major release every year between 2007 and 2015. Last year was an exception to the rule; Ubisoft began to question the idea of annual releases, admitting that the frequent release cadence of Assassin’s Creed games may have been hurting the franchise’s sales. Ubisoft president Yves Guillemot explained that moving away from annual releases would enable the development team to “take better advantage of new engines and technology”. Presumably this also implies a less buggy and more stable experience for players.
The latest game in the series, Assassin’s Creed Origins, was fully revealed in June this year and was released globally on October 27th. Right alongside Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. Oh, and Super Mario Odyssey.
Ruh-roh.
Swimming upstream
Has Ubisoft’s strategy for Assassin’s Creed Origins actually worked? Has it risen beyond its historical heights due to spending a little more time in the oven?
Well, for starters, let’s head over to the holy grail of game review aggregation: Metacritic. The Xbox One version scored the highest, at 85/100, while the PS4 version sits at a neat-and-tidy score of 80/100. When compared to other games in the series, Origins appears to sit somewhere around the comfortable middle; some games scored higher (high 80’s to low 90’s) and others scored lower (dipping down into the low 70's). Even a score of 70/100 should represent a pretty darn good game, right? If 50/100 is the “average” or “mediocre” halfway point, then 70 should indicate something pretty solid with maybe a few caveats.
I am, of course, deliberately ignoring the obvious fact that for many observers, any average score under 70/100 essentially equates to a completely dismissable game.
In any case, a game that launches with a mid-80’s Metacritic average should presumably be considered a top-tier release for the year, if not a must-have for many gamers. Right?
Yes…but…this isn’t any ordinary year.
It’s such an unusual year for groundbreaking, triple-A games that Mitchell Wolfe and I actually dedicated our latest podcast episode to this very subject. So, on the one hand, Assassin’s Creed Origins is a genuinely great experience, but it has the misfortune of being released in the same year as games that have arguably re-defined entire genres (I’m looking at you, Breath of the Wild). As a result, it’s unlikely to win — or even come close to winning — any game of the year awards. But even more significantly, I have to wonder how many gamers will be able to spare the time and money to play it.
After all, if you’re already having trouble deciding which of the many remarkable triple-A games to spend your money and time on this year, Assassin’s Creed Origins is very likely to simply fade from your focus entirely — unless, of course, you’re a die-hard fan of this specific franchise.
Not dying quietly
And yet, Assassin’s Creed Origins is actually good. It’s actually worth your time. Despite some obvious missteps, it’s a genuinely grand experience that is filled with thoughtful touches and conspicuous examples of attempts to push at the edges of the Ubisoft-style open-world design language that the Assassin’s Creed games pioneered.
I’m not yet at the stage where I can confidently write a review (right now I’m about 10–12 hours in). Right now, I’d say the game has definitely grown on me.
It may sound a little tepid to say that the game is growing on me after so many hours playing it. But it’s fair to say that my initial impressions were mixed at best.
After all, Ubisoft promises a lot: here’s a massive, open-world game where you can explore all of ancient Egypt — yes, you can even spelunk your heart out in those enormous pyramids (which, as it turns out, is actually rather fun). What could possibly be better?
Well, initially, there were two big factors that put me on guard straight away. First — and you’ll know my standards are pretty high if you’ve listened to the conversations about video game plots on the Super Jump Podcast — I was pretty keen on the plot’s premise. It involves a three-way political chess game between the Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII, his ambitious sister (Cleopatra) and Julius Caesar, whose designs on a Roman conquest of Egypt provide a nail-biting backdrop to the power struggles between the two royal siblings.
But — at least so far, and with a couple of notable exceptions — both the writing and voice acting have been stunningly mediocre. Maybe in another year, I’d be more forgiving, especially given this game’s enormous scope. But remember, I’ve just finished Wolfenstein II, which has almost set a new standard when it comes to both writing and acting in a video game. The contrast between two very different genres might seem unfair, but Wolfenstein II has only reinforced my snobbery in this area.
Then there’s the combat.
I haven’t played an Assassin’s Creed game in a long time, so I’m not sure how close the combat mechanics in Origins are to more recent entries in the series — but suffice it to say, combat here is tedious, to put it mildly. It’s tedious because it’s slow, it’s clumsy, and the game doesn’t seem to properly utilise its own mechanics. As you may have read elsewhere, there’s a basic lock-on capability that enables you to strafe around an enemy and engage them — this feels passable when you’re only fighting one enemy, but it becomes frustrating and pondersome when you’re surrounded (and you will find yourself in this situation frequently, even if you prefer to be stealthy in general). Dodging also feels clumsy, and there is a general sense of the controls feeling imprecise — both in terms of your character movement during combat, as well as your weapon strikes.
Sometimes it feels like you and your enemies are on excursion from the local nursing home: you want to fight, if only it weren’t for your bad backs, sloth-like reflexes, and ubiquitous arthritis problems seizing up those joints.
There are some other small annoyances that I’m hoping aren’t going to crop up too frequently. For example, in one quest, I was joined by two A.I. companions who were going to help me retrieve something from a nearby enemy hideout. Cool, I thought. It’ll be fun to sneak around and to fight with a group. But I ended up yelling at my poor, hapless buddies, who repeatedly got stuck, fell off cliffs, engaged enemies even when sneaking in cover…and who were tied to me with some weird invisible rubber band, which meant that they’d run off to engage powerful enemies and then run right back to me, drawing a ton of enemies right to me. Argh. Painful.
Right, so, I did say this game is “actually good” — I know. And it is. Allow me to explain.
As clunky as the combat is, you do get used to it (or maybe I’ve just developed a form of Stockholm syndrome). One reason it gets better is that over time, you’ll upgrade your abilities, which will provide much-needed combat variety, including additional tactics that allow you to avoid too much combat.
You’ll also notice that as ridiculously massive as Egypt is, Assassin’s Creed Origins is mercifully restrained in terms of how it allows the landscape to unfold in front of you. Specifically, you won’t find yourself entering a new location only to have your HUD fill up with countless indicators all clamouring for your attention. Rather, you will sometimes come across new quests in a passive sense within the environment (for example, you may encounter a situation unfolding in real time in front of you and that will trigger a quest), but Ubisoft have implemented a system where you are always given the option to track the quest…or not. A quest marker will briefly appear and you’ll be able to hold a button to track it then and there. Ignoring it will cause the quest to politely disapppear from your HUD, only to file itself into a relevant category in your broader quest log, which you can peruse at your leisure.
In addition, Ubisoft appear to have borrowed a page from Nintendo’s book, in the sense that significant points of interest typically won’t appear on your world map until you’ve actually been to that particular area. Either that, or you’ll simply see a question mark, indicating the presence of something interesting — but you won’t know what it is until you get there. In this way, Origins manages to walk the fine line between providing enough guidance not to get lost, while simultaneously loosening the leash to the point where the player can genuinely explore and make discoveries on their own, at their own pace.
Aside from outright exploration, I think my favourite part of the game is the way that it handles enemy hideouts, of which there are a metric ton, with each one being notably different and thoughtfully designed.
You’ll approach these hideouts as part of quests in some cases, but much of the time, they simply exist in the world and can be “beaten” whenever you feel like it. Each hideout will display several local objectives when you enter it, which usually include some combination of taking down a couple of powerful enemies and finding a few pieces of major treasure. What’s great is that the treasure is usually worth finding, and it’s often located in fairly busy parts of each hideout, ensuring that you’ll really have to strategise (or be brilliant at combat) to steal it.
You can plot your attack from afar by taking control of your trusty pet eagle, Senu, which enables you to fly high above the world and spot and tag enemies from great distances. You can even unlock an ability that allows you to “harass” enemies with Senu, which is great for creating diversions or distracting a guard that you plan to take down without them seeing you.
The world itself is a joy to explore, and although you do follow a central plot, you can explore any part of Egypt’s vast landscape at any time. Ubisoft have kindly indicated the level range of enemies present in each major region, so at least you’ll know in advance whether or not you’re walking into a completely suicidal situation (or simply increasingly the difficulty for some extra challenge).
Although it’s definitely too early for me to write a comprehensive review of Assassin’s Creed Origins, I can confidently say that it’s at least worth a look, especially if the idea of exploring a massive, living, breathing version of ancient Egypt interests you. Despite the flaws I cited here, there’s a whole lot here that Ubisoft did right.
Like quicksand, I was struggling at first. But as the enigmatic world of ancient Egypt began to envelop me, I went with the flow, and was quickly sucked in. [/badpun]
