Assassin's Creed: Origins review: A turn in the series, the Soul RPG

Before Assassin's Creed Origins, players had mixed feelings about Revolution and Thunder. Players generally approve of their quality, but when you put them in the context of the history of the Assassin's Creed series, these two games seem insignificant. It seems that after Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, the formulaic component of the series became more and more prominent, and the lack of innovation caused players to love and hate it. For now, Ubisoft needs Assassin's Creed Origins to bring the franchise back to its past heights and make it a turning point for the series.

For some of the game's evergreen series, the return to "origin" seems to have become a tried-and-true theme in recent years. When players feel bored and tired of constantly iterating and expanding the content, manufacturers have taken out the killer mace of returning to the starting point of the series, taking out the theme that players have been thinking about, and earning a vote of feelings with more advanced engines and design concepts. This time Assassin's Creed: Origins is no exception, it no longer pushes the series timeline into the modern day, but goes back to the beginning of the "Assassins", BC ancient Egypt, Templar knights and Brotherhood before the era.

Assassin's Creed Origins delivers the biggest map in the series, though it does include vast stretches of sand dunes and vast stretches of ocean. One of the most obvious things I noticed in the early stages of the game was that Assassin's Creed Origins had reduced the density of map points, missions, and collectible resources. Each side quest is also driven by dialogue and careful story design, giving the player a stronger sense of engagement.

This time the main character, Bayek, is a guardian of a former dynasty whose relatives died and were torn apart by the organization behind the Egyptian government. So Bayek embarks on a journey to avenge his loved ones and purge Cleopatra of the mysterious organization buried deep within the regime. And this mysterious order became the Knights Templar.

The Assassins' side of the plot is beginning to appear in Bayek. The origin and break of the sleeve sword will be presented one by one in the plot. In addition, the game also gives the player a true sense of the eagle eye, called upon, can look around to make marks.

With Assassin's Creed Origins, Ubisoft is probably living up to its reputation as the maker of "travel simulators." This time Assassin's Creed, with only the geographical scenery and historical sites restored, can support a good content for players to consume. In terms of overall expressiveness, the picture of Assassin's Creed: Origins is tending to be bright, even at night, the line of sight is not obstructed, but there is a quiet sense of a thin silver luster covering the ground.

In the various islands and lands divided by the sea, the local customs and people's feelings are also significantly different. For example, the types of buildings, the way people made their living, the salt on the coast, people near the mountains built mines, mined marble, and people in the interior exposed dye on their roofs to make clothes, to make paint.

The Sphinx you can imagine, the famous pyramid of Khufu, is also present in Assassin's Creed: Origins. Moreover, this game almost maximizes the parkour ability, even on the smooth sculptural curved surface, the player can climb. Climb to the top of the pyramid, open the bird 's-eye view, and look around.

Sometimes, quests and resources are hidden inside the pyramid, and the player must even try to solve puzzles and find the entrance inside the winding pyramid. In certain scenarios, players will also sink into some scenes related to Egyptian mythology and legends, shooting golden arrows of light to fight against the gods.

In terms of combat, Assassin's Creed Origins also marks a turning point in the series. When I just started, I put aside the conventional assassination first, and the feel of the head-on engagement is very similar to the soul series. The player is quick to slash and dodge, and can move quickly to one side to avoid attacks, or roll to one side to avoid attacks. When the time to dodge is just right, it will also trigger the Witch Time for the player to output.

In addition, the player's weapon is no longer fixed. Assassin's Creed Origins takes a radical turn toward RPGS. Weapons, arms, helmets, etc., all have their own equipment categories, which players can pick up in the treasure box or drop after killing their opponents. Each piece of equipment has a specific numerical division, and some can be inlaid with inscriptions to provide additional benefits for the characters.

The skill tree is also divided into three branches. Ranged, melee and Stab. Some of the skills learned can be assembled in the skills bar and can be manually released during combat. What is clear is that these active skills are used very frequently in Assassin's Creed Origins. The amount of anger required to use it is easy to accumulate, and the ability damage is quite significant.

But these skills are not panacea. This is because in Assassin's Creed: Origins, the case of rank suppression is still relatively obvious. When the level gap between the player and the other side reaches more than 3 levels, it is difficult to have more than one enemy in the front, and it is necessary to pay attention to dodge from time to time, and rub the damage to consume the other side.

Assassinations don't solve this situation. Because in this game, the decision to kill is to directly cause a lot of damage to the target. Enemies of the same level or one or two levels higher can of course be solved with a sleeve sword, but the elite monster and the cross-level too high allele, the effect of the assassination is only to lose a lot of HP, and then the player still has to face each other directly.

But that doesn't mean the assassination has lost its value. Compared to the general attack, the assassination damage is still very considerable. Even in some cases where it is necessary to fight the other side directly, the player's best choice is to sneak up on the other side, assassinate him, and then confront him.

In addition, because Assassin's Creed Origins' Settings are larger than previous games in the series, players have more freedom in the routes they take to infiltrate a stronghold. For example, if I try to infiltrate a military fortress, I can even climb out from a cave some distance away from the fortress by going underground to a dry well deep in the fortress.

Naval battles have also become a staple of Assassin's Creed Origins. It's a big step up from Black Flag. Throwing spears, defending against flying items, and expending energy to release special attacks, this generation of naval battles is more challenging for players to grasp the timing of attack and defense. The return of the barcarolle also lets players find the feeling of being at home.

Overall, Assassin's Creed Origins makes a good start to this series of twists. It's a good way to expand Assassin's Creed in terms of maps, RPGS, and combat. But I have to say that by the end of the game, after I'd played it for about three or 40 hours, the sense of repetition that most open world games today can't avoid was still there and weighing on me.

But compared to the progress of this generation of Assassin's Creed, this boredom is totally tolerable.