Assassin's Creed: Origins - The Ultimate Critique

Assassin's Creed origins was ubisoft's first delve into the RPG genre with the Assassin's Creed franchise simply put origins is an attempt to provide a sprawling open-world to the game player with multiple gameplay styles supported within it it was a simple and yet lofty goal for the developer of Assassin's Creed unity and syndicate both of which had their own respective problems needless to say a lot was riding on Assassin's Creed origins and Ubisoft had to put out a really strong competitor here if they wanted the franchise to regain the momentum it previously held now I went into this game very excited about the setting I was one of those kids when I was younger who was obsessed with ancient Egypt and would spend all of my time reading books and looking at pictures of the great pyramids and the tombs within them and I was surprised to see that I was not the only one who was incredibly excited just for this setting ancient Egypt and greco-roman Egypt are both incredibly popular and fan favorite locations and time periods especially for video games however I'm sure I don't have to tell you that no game has ever really given us the ability to travel through and explore in ancient Mediterranean world in quite the same way that Assassin's Creed origins is at the very least attempting to this of course can be a good thing and a bad thing it can be a good thing because many people are going to be excited for the title and excited to explore these worlds however it can also be a bad thing because the expectation is so high however instead of shying away from this fact Ubisoft embraced it so where they could have created simply a recreation of Alexandria similar to what they did for Paris and Assassin's Creed unity instead they chose to go the route of recreating the entire country of ancient Egypt this means that we not only get to explore Alexandria with the greco-roman influences that it possesses but we also get to explore the realms of the Ancients and Thebes and in the ruins at Giza we get to explore practically everything that this country and this ancient civilization had to offer for this reason I can confidently say that Assassin's Creed origins is by far the most ambitious title at least that I have come across in recent memory of course we've got another great titles and great games that had large open world such as The Legend of Zelda breadth of the wild earlier this year or horizon zero dawn but none of those games sought to recreate realistically in ancient world civilization and people they were ambitious in their own right but nothing applies quite as much pressure as the historical accuracy demanded from these settings all said and told the game is incredibly large and very ambitious and I went into it with an open mind and yet very very excited and it took me roughly 30 hours of gameplay to comfortably get through the main quest and roughly 74% of everything the game had to offer at least according to the in-game statistics now according to how long to beat.com a website that surveys game players to see how long it took them to complete particular titles in differing degrees according to that website it will take the average person about 23 hours to rush through the main story and about 39 hours to get through all of the main story and pretty much all of the side quest and extra content that you can encounter however if you are a completionist and you're looking to 100% every single location find everything that the game has to offer it will take you roughly 67 hours of consistent gameplay time when you average everything out however we're gonna look at about thirty nine and a half hours for the average player to go through Assassin's Creed origins and finish it to their content at least on average and to me that seems like an accurate number now 39 hours of gameplays a long time especially when we have so many other competing titles that are coming out this year that are absolute we phenomenal so the obvious question is whether or not Assassin's Creed origins is worth your time well that's the question I hope to answer throughout the course of this video throughout this critique I'm gonna be looking at the narrative the gameplay and many of the technical and mechanical elements of Assassin's Creed origins to determine whether or not it is a great game and whether or not it's the game Ubisoft needed in order to save the franchise however for those of you who have not played this game yet and don't want to encounter all of the countless spoilers we're going to be discussing throughout this video I can say confidently that this is a game that you should play absolutely I recommend this 100% regardless of what console you're playing on or if you're playing on PC this game is worth your time but that's enough build-up as always timestamps are included in the description box below for you to jump forward to whichever section you would like to hear or if you'd like to watch this video in parts and as always I highly value your feedback and love to hear everything you have to say about this game down in the comment section below but with all that said let's get started starting off the narrative let's discuss the new protagonist for origins by ik now by ik is a Magi who is essentially the ancient Egyptian equivalent of a sheriff or some sort of state marshal he's in charge of enforcing the laws of Egypt and ensuring that its citizens are protected however this doesn't necessarily mean following the orders and rules and laws of the residing superpower in this case Rome now this is actually often used as the justification for by ex actions that his duty is to the citizens of Egypt and not instead to the Roman guards who are in control over those citizens it's the typical Ubisoft Assassin's Creed power structure that they like to set up in order to justify the actions of their protagonists and they avoid any sort of ludonarrative dissonance where you see a guy saying that he's the good guy in the the hero when that he's actually helping when in reality he's running around a country sized map murdering countless thousands of people for the sake of the game byuk does a good job and I actually kind of liked him as a protagonist and I started to like him more and more as I went through the game byuk does have a backstory however we don't really get to play through much of it or see much of it at least not until much later in the game they really break it up here to the point where are many people who have played the game that I've spoken to haven't actually followed it hardly at all and can't actually tell you what byuk is doing and why he's doing it at a given moment they've sort of checked out and I can actually sympathize to this feeling I wouldn't have been able to follow the story unless I was actually playing through the game intently focused because I knew I was going to be making this critique if I had just casually been playing through the game I'm sure at some point I would have mentally checked out and gone about just running doing small missions not really paying that much attention to what was going on for this reason I would have liked to have seen more a small character building moments early on in the game to in a way sort of loosen up by ik as a protagonist to the audience but they do come later in the game with small interactions especially with aya by X Y f-- and some other main characters that come into the plot about 15 or 20 hours in now what is byuk story you may ask why is he doing what he's doing in the game is there a motivation or is it the typical sort of Assassin's Creed I need to do this because reasons type of scenario well actually he does have a story and it's pretty simple basically byuk son has been murdered and he is hoping to achieve some sort of revenge against the parties responsible and he uses the help of his wife and many others along the way however as he seizes this revenge he realizes that he actually has a greater duty to his kinsmen and then he forms what will eventually become known as the Assassin's Creed in order to fulfill that duty the main problem with the narrative however is that this takes a long time to unravel which we'll discuss in a moment before I get into some of the negatives of the story however I want to just say that by X interplay with his wife aya is actually pretty fantastic I really enjoyed these moments where we got to go through gameplay sequences or narrative sequences together they clearly care about each other but eventually they choose to part paths for the sake of the greater good at least as they see it you get to play as both throughout the game you mostly play as byuk but you do get several large instances where you will play as aya going through for instance the Senate and assassinating Caesar which was one of my personal favorite moments in the game and it only comes right before the ending credits byuk Anaya are actually very strong individually however when they get together they are unwilling to compromise specifically aya is unwilling to compromise for the sake of each other throughout the game byuk is doing what's best for Egypt at least as he describes it and understands it and aya seems to be helping Cleopatra no matter what she's doing even if it seems to be for her own self-motivated reasons as opposed to the greater good of Egypt as a whole biock is constantly explaining frustration and expressing this to aya however she's unwilling to listen saying that they owe Cleopatra so much and they should just get over it and deal with it because she's the best they've got there's a few ways you could look at it you could say that this is the typical empowered woman that's striking off on her own and doesn't need a man however I don't think it's that at all I don't think this is a Ubisoft attempt to preach him a feminism instead I actually read this as simply two people who are highly motivated and conflict with each other as a result of those motivations and ambitions it's a tale as old as time two people get together because they're attracted to each other's ambition but eventually that very ambition the very thing that drew them together in the first place actually comes to drive them apart at the end of the game after the Creed has been established ayah and by choose to go their separate ways because their personal relationship is actually preventing them from serving the greater good as they each see it aya needs to go off and kill Caesar and byuk needs to help out the people still in Egypt all told I really like how this was done and why they're doing what they're doing I think it makes sense and their characters are truthful enough to the point where I can believe what's going on at least on screen however I don't really like the mechanical and technical implementation of this storytelling I would have personally liked to have seen many more situations where we just see an extended cutscene of these two talking which is something we're going to discuss in a moment specifically why Ubisoft seems afraid to have cutscenes longer than 30 seconds at a time and when they do have cutscenes longer than 30 seconds they're covering the completely wrong topics and subjects and completely missing the point and this is where we start to slide into some of the criticisms of the story and the way that the narrative is done in general I think the story makes sense by X motivations are clear and make sense based on who he is and the people around him I think the setup is good it's the implementation that I have an issue with as I just said a moment ago Ubisoft seems terrified of having prolonged interactions where two characters are speaking to each other as though they're actual people whenever two characters are alone having a conversation in a main quest cutscene in Assassin's Creed origins it's always incredibly vague language it's almost as if they're trying to write the way they think people would have talked back then in the ancient days instead of just how people would talk to each other it doesn't mean that you need to throw in lingo and all sorts of slang and curse words no you can have an honest normal conversation without all of that however there isn't anything normal about discussions that are had during these cutscenes the best way I can describe it is stiffness and this is how I describe byuk as a character especially for the first 15 hours of the game he's incredibly stiff he's not opened up you have no reason to really like him you're sympathetic to him but that doesn't mean that you like him you understand why he's doing what he's doing you feel bad for him but he's not a guy that you would want to go and grab a beer with in the same way that Arno would be a likeable person and somebody that would likely be very fun to hang out with on your personal time at least the Arno before the character change and before he gets into the Assassin's Creed and gets super boring blah blah blah you know my point it really takes byuk about 15 hours of gameplay before he passes from tolerable and somebody that you just are playing as and you sympathize with to actually becoming a likeable character thanks to some of the later in-game quests for higher levels and also the main story questlines that also give you reasons to like him now this flows forward into my next major criticism which is that his backstory and pretty much the entire story of this game in general is intentionally vague it's not accidentally vague it's intentionally vague and it feels as though the writers thought up the story they printed it out on individual sheets of paper they lined up all of these pieces of paper on the lawn chronologically and then they decided to drive a John Deere tractor lawn mower over it all only then did they look and find the order and then mix it all together and made the story out of that it's incredibly vague and it's incredibly jungled to the point where I don't feel as though I can honestly tell you chronologically what happens in what order which person was killed at which point for what reason now this leads directly into probably my greatest criticism of the narrative of Assassin's Creed origins specifically that the story is intentionally vague and I to be honest don't really understand why the developers and the writers felt they needed to do this the game opens up with you running through ruins with lots of treasure in what is a very visually satisfying and oppressive space and then killing somebody at which point you go outside meet your friend and ride through the desert however you don't really understand why you're doing this or who this character that you're playing as is you don't really understand any of that all you know is that Egypt is pretty and you're riding on a horsey and it's kind of cool it's actually eerily reminiscent of the opening of The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt a game which the developers of Assassin's Creed origins have said many times was an inspiration for them specifically that game opens up with Garrow riding on the back of a horse with his pal vesemir talking to each other having a conversation as they go through a land that they both used to know and used to know specifically before it was ravaged by war in the opening of this game we ride on the back of horses with an old pal of ours through a land we used to know before it was invaded by a stronger external force that we personally don't really like or agree with that is very reminiscent maybe it's a tip of the hat to The Witcher 3 or maybe it's just a coincidence nonetheless they are very similar however that opening for The Witcher 3 shows something very very telling especially when we compare two Assassin's Creed origins specifically that The Witcher 3 was not afraid to have its characters opened up and express their feelings in a straightforward honest way where you could understand what they were saying and what they were feeling in a given moment The Witcher 3 opens with Geralt having a dream that's very personal very emotionally raw and he's honest about it at least if you choose the honest dialogue prompts and explain your feelings to vesemir now keep in mind this is in the first 10 minutes of the game you actually get to see what Geralt thinks and feels about the characters that you are going to be interacting with for the next 20 30 40 hours of gameplay and that's in the first 10 minutes you know exactly where the character stands where you should stand and what's going on whereas in Assassin's Creed origins we weirdly have to wait 15 hours before we even fully grasp what's going on there's a directness to the way The Witcher 3 approached its storytelling where they could have vague stories that are bounced around and aren't fully explained until later on but you still understood as much as the main character did it's not like they were keeping information from the player the player was on the same page as the protagonist as the person that they were playing as whereas in Assassin's Creed origins we don't actually know everything that's going on inside by its head it's this weird middle ground and I personally think it holds the narrative back or should I say it holds the narrative byuk I just thought of that just now I had to put that in the video I'm sorry okay I'll move on all of this to say I've heard many gamers many game reviewers and other critics say that the story in this game was almost incomprehensible to the point where they didn't really know what was going on and I understand this however I fundamentally disagree with the notion that it's not follow able or intelligible I think you can follow it it just requires a fair amount of focus and thought it's not all gonna be handed to you and neither was the narrative in The Witcher 3 that was a game that you had to pay attention during the cutscenes you couldn't be watching an episode of South Park while playing the game you just couldn't if you tried to do that you wouldn't know what the hell was going on believe me I tried now whenever there's a fundamental design issue with the game I always like to try to figure out why it was designed that way because clearly this was a choice the way the story was structured was something that Ubisoft chose to do that ashraf ismail the game director chose to have as a structure for the story and the setup for all of the characters and the narrative as a whole why did they choose to do it well as far as I can gather and from my own understanding of their writing process and just my thoughts in general trying to figure this out the only way I can justify this decision is because it acts in many ways as a carrot on a stick for the player essentially they're afraid that if you know exactly what's going on and by accident exactly what's going on that you're gonna lose interest and aren't gonna feel the need to continue playing you're gonna know exactly what's going on and there's no gonna be no real reason to continue however this is a fundamental wrong idea at least I believe so it can be done correctly in many cases but I don't think a video game is the place for it what I mean by that is that the narrative is held over like a carrot on a stick over the player basically the horse's mouth in order to drive them forward to allow them to continue to give them a reason to basically continue playing the game and not quit on it as they say too much of any good thing is a bad thing and in this case it's very very true you can have a vague story with vague mechanics that are told in a vague way however it can eventually get to the point where it's overkill and it's so vague that it's completely incomprehensible simply put these types of story mechanics can go very badly very quickly and they tend to work in this way they start with an interesting build where you get intrigued by what the characters may have to tell and what their backgrounds may hold then it continues to intrigue you as you learn more about each and every single one of these characters and their motivations why they're doing what they're doing and what they're going to do next then after that you begin to doubt the future of the story and whether or not the writers actually know what they're doing and whether or not the story will resolve itself comfortably and to your satisfaction at which point you are disappointed because you realize the story actually isn't very good and they didn't actually have anything in mind they were just writing plot twists because they thought a plot twist was a good idea even though they hadn't justified it within their own mind to begin with at which point you get one other mediocre resolve where they try to tie everything together right before everything ends and you're left with just a mediocre feeling as the result of a mediocre story and unfortunately Assassin's Creed origins is really no different as the story continues and as it goes on you learn more about the characters you start to like the characters more but the last hour and a half or two hours of the main quest is almost completely nonsensical to the point where it's jumping around so much it's going through characters like Tic Tacs through a tic tac I don't know that's the only thing I could think of in terms of an analogy it really just got to the point where it was disappointing because we were just pumping through characters and plot lines I didn't know exactly what was going on or why I was going somewhere all I knew is that this is where I needed to go to continue the story and then the game was over it really does seem as though the writers started off area ambitiously with a real strong idea of where they wanted to go with the story however as they began working they realized their goals were too lofty and that they were gonna need to pull back so they began to pull back and simplify the story however they realized that they had already set up many other plot points characters villains and motivations that they needed to justify in the later game and so they tried to wrap it all together very quickly and rashly and it just didn't turn out well all told the main story of Assassin's Creed origins really builds up nicely but leaves you wanting more and the resolve is completely unsatisfying and frankly disappointing when you realize the writers didn't actually have anything in mind for these major plot points and instead were just kind of guessing and trying to create something interesting for the sake of creating something interesting as opposed to telling a story that they felt really needed to be told and with that let's move on to the side quests the side quests in Assassin's Creed origins is something that was greatly discussed and debated leading up to the game's release the game director ashraf ismail said this was going to be a major focus of the game and that they were focusing on trying to deliver a story and a narrative with every single side quest so you never were performing actions for no reason you were doing everything for a purpose for an actual person in the game world and i actually have to say they succeed in this every single side quest i encountered had characters that needed something for real reasons requested my help and I helped them and got an actual response from those characters as a result of my actions it was fantastic it was phenomenal of something I didn't expect to see and enjoy as much as I did however it was not perfect now there are some great examples of quests and narratives for those side quests within Assassin's Creed origins many of them so memorable I can list them off right now off the top of my head for instance one side quest that stood out to me was where a couple was asking byuk to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones from where they had just been mauled by a bunch of hippos just a short distance away so I went collected the bodies killed the hippos so that they could be buried and sent off to the field of reeds another side quest that I really enjoyed was when I investigated a massive crocodile in the fiyo maysa that actually had been believed to be a representative of Sobek and was incredibly sick at which point I investigated him and found out somebody had been paid to poison that crocodile and then as I went on I also came across another side quest where for instance a young woman was trying to commission your help because her husband was missing so you go looking for her husband rescue him from a small island where he had been deserted and was being attacked by crocodiles I killed the crocodiles and took him on a boat back to this woman who claims she was his wife at which point I realized that she had actually gotten this man incredibly drunk and had forced him to marry her because she wanted to be married at which point the woman's brothers came out and I killed them in order to let this man go free one of my favorite small details from this game entirely was when I was doing a side quest and helped a NPC who was a playwright find and save his manuscript that had been seized by some of the Roman soldiers a play which would later be called my pharaoh lady which I just love so much I can't even explain it really each side quest has a story which is really nice and I enjoy it however it's very frustrating because the developers never actually stick on one story long enough for you to truly care every time you come across a story or a narrative within these side quests it's over before you can even say short side quest it's so quick and short that you really do have trouble justifying getting come or - honestly caring about any of these characters at all in the same way that they're afraid to have any long cutscenes or conversations between characters they really do seem afraid to have a sort of sidequest character that shows up multiple times to the point where you actually get truly connected with them and care about what's going on in their lives now as for the way that all of these stories are implemented specifically with the way that the cutscenes are designed they're actually all done pretty well at least the cutscenes that are actual cutscenes however for most of the side quests that you will be encountering you're not actually going to be seeing cutscenes you're going to be seeing essentially short little clips of gameplay dialogue where the game isn't actually giving you a camera setup instead they're just having you watch to NPCs essentially talk and that's what it feels like the camera rotates around you don't have any say in the conversation it doesn't even look particularly good you just get to listen to biock talk with somebody for 30 seconds to a minute at a time and it's actually kind of weird because you can rotate the camera around you just can't actually participate in what's going on you feel as though you just have to sit there waiting your turn this is one thing I would really hope that they fix in the next game specifically that they're able to find some way of streamlining their process so that they can have cutscenes for essentially every dialogue interaction in the game such as you have in The Witcher 3 where every single time you speak with somebody you get a cinematic camera angle you get something that's really good looking and you don't have to worry too much about it it just looks good and it's going to feel right when you watch it play back you don't feel as though you're waiting your turn you feel as though you're watching a clip from a film and the last thing we'll discuss before we get into the gameplay is the lip-syncing this is something that a lot of people were concerned with after watching the e3 demos and gameplay show off that they did back at those conferences and I can actually say confidently now that they listened to that criticism and worked their butts off to fix it and sure enough they did and as far as I can tell there aren't any major issues there's a few NPCs especially later in the game that are smaller characters that seem to have some dialogue lip-syncing issues but for the most part it works really well and you're not going to be noticing any major problems I do have to show you this one example though because I found this absolutely hilarious when I encountered it mute my child the tyrant is dead you are free now see that it didn't match at all but regardless for the most part it works well and it's actually kind of cool to see that Ubisoft listen to people's criticisms specifically about the - button and the lip-syncing after e3 and applied that to the game and I just find that really cool that they have that quick of turnaround to make such a fundamental change in the game and so in closing the narrative for Assassin's Creed origins is actually fairly decent and the characters are likable enough however the execution of the story is done so vaguely and so poorly that it's incredibly hard to follow what's going on why it's happening and why these characters you should have any craps given about them as for the side quests they're all approached in a very interesting and intriguing way where every single one of them has a story to tell and the world itself has many stories to tell whether you come across a little note in an encampment or you're just sailing along the sea you come across an island with a note on it telling you where to find some buried treasure it's all very well done and there's a real attention to detail here that I can appreciate however the main quest is the one thing that falls flat and there's a weird fear of committing to longer plot lines that I can't really explain reasonably all told it's far better than anything the series has yet offered however it's still got some major issues that can be overlooked but with all that said let's get into the gameplay now to start off our discussion of the gameplay the first thing I have to let you know is that the game's world is gigantic that's really all I can describe it as it is massive it is huge there is tons to do when it's very densely packed while still being believable as a livable and habitable space so often when we play big open-world games like this everything is so stretched out and empty that it doesn't feel as though it's a real place but Ubisoft's recreation of ancient Egypt is just that and is believable to accommodate this world design and the effort they put into this Ubisoft got rid of the mini-map and instead went with a compass at the top of the screen similar to what we had in Skyrim and other such open-world titles this is done to keep you from staring at your mini-map and instead direct you towards a compass that you can glance at and then go back and drift your eyes down back towards the open world that they spend so much time and effort crafting the HUD is also incredibly customizable which I greatly appreciate because I tend to be a bit of a HUD snob I really don't like most heads-up displays I find they're incredibly crowded and have so much needless information displayed however everything is going to be customisable on this to the point where even on consoles you can get it down to a very minimalistic view so that you get exactly what you want to see and so that you can enjoy the world that they've created and it all works really really well the idea that I can explore ancient Egypt and the detail they've put into this I can climb through the pyramids looking in old tombs I find in the sides of hills and I can even fight Anubis at one point like it's so incredible to me and as a nerd for Egypt I absolutely love it I just can't even explain how much I enjoyed exploring this world I recognize that for other people who are not big fans of ancient Egypt it may not be a big deal and it might not matter that much to you but for me it was totally engaged absolutely just captivating I can't nerd out about it enough they did a fantastic job recreating this world now that I'm done geeking out let's talk a little bit about the gameplay itself leveling to begin with leveling in past Assassin's Creed titles has been there but it hasn't been very crucial or critical in Assassin's Creed syndicate we could go up to a level 9 and we could be fighting all of these heavily armored and powerful characters but it really didn't feel as though leveling was that big of a deal and you didn't actually know at which point you were going to reach a certain level it was kind of just up in the air and lightheartedly tacked on to the game however as I said at the beginning of the video Assassin's Creed origins is a concerted effort to make this a step towards an RPG first and foremost and that's what they tried to do here there's 40 levels that you can reach each of which are going to unlock an ability point and you can unlock ability points also by reading steel a throughout the world these ability points can be spent on of course abilities that will unlock new things that by it can do or that sendo can do as well all of this is based on XP that's gained through performing certain activities or completing quests or discovering locations and so it's a pretty standard affair as far as RPGs go however there are pros and there are cons to the system the pro of course is that it is clearly outlined how exactly you will progress and you can plan your gameplay accordingly it follows practically every RPG in recent memory using this design and I actually really enjoy it and I think it's a good thing that Ubisoft went this direction because I think that this is what the game should have been doing all along the con is that this constantly affects the way that you interact with the game world often in a bad way I actually found myself putting aside side quests that had low xp rewards in favor of chasing the high XP ones instead as far as I can tell the amount of XP awarded is almost exactly proportional to the amount of effort that the developers put into it a one side quest for instance I did the math on this one sidequest that gave out 1500 XP that I encountered was actually completed in 3 minutes and 22 seconds at least that's how long it took me whereas one that was worth 3500 XP took me 13 minutes and 43 seconds to complete and was to be honest more fun the other bad element of this is that the amount of XP awarded for a particular quest doesn't actually drastically change as the level of that quest increases meaning that the amount of XP granted is often identical whether you're completing a level 15 quest or level 37 quest and I know that doesn't sound like a big deal or it even sounds good because you can go back and easily farm through quests that you didn't previously complete however that's partially the problem this makes choosing between tackling a higher level quest or an easier low lower level quest a no-brainer the one saving grace to this frustrating part of the game is of course the number of side quests at each level this is a highly curated and carefully arranged system so that each side quest doesn't necessarily get harder to complete as you go up in level at least on a mechanical level in a technical level they do that meaning specifically that the enemies are gonna get higher level they're gonna have better armor they're gonna have better gear they're gonna have larger health bars but on a mechanical level as to what you're doing it won't require more skill to complete a level 37 quest as opposed to a level 27 quest furthermore the number of side quests available at a particular level are the same as the number of side quests that will be needed in terms of XP when combined with the main quests for that level the to level up to the next level where the process just repeats this basically means that everyone is going to have the exact same experience and for an RPG this is not good what this means on a practical level is that everybody when they reach level 15 is going to need to do the level 15 side quests and the main quest for level 15 in order to level up to level 16 and they're going to need to repeat the process to reach level 17 and then level 18 and when everybody is having the exact same experience when playing an RPG one has to ask whether or not it's actually an RPG now of course this is assassin's creed's first attempt at creating an RPG but moving forward they will need to fill the world with either more side quests of this length or lengthen the encounters and increase the xp reward for each of these quests in order to ensure that everyone can experience the world in their own personal way now that brings up the topic of gear levels gear now has levels too and can be crafted or purchased or upgraded using blacksmiths in the world or using materials that you collect in the world as well having shifted towards an RPG this was of course a design must and it actually works really well if you have a weapon that you like you can then upgrade it for drachma as you level up which I actually really enjoyed because I found a pair of dual daggers that I really liked were legendary in terms of their classification I wanted to keep using them and I was able to upgrade them to my current level every time I leveled up so I could keep using them and they would have a comparable damage output now there are heavy weapons light weapons speed based weapons and generic sort of middle of the road performing weapons and the leveling system doesn't actually build your character around just one of these types of weapons meaning that you can play really however you want throughout the course of the game allowing you to quote-unquote roleplay as you see fit and I actually really liked this design choice because it made it so as I leveled up I didn't feel as though I had to commit to my dual dual wielding swords I could actually go and try out a mace or a spear for a particular encounter if I noticed they had a certain type of shield configuration I could adapt to the world and to the way the enemies were approaching every interaction and I actually really liked it some people I know won't like it because they'd rather specialized under one and just used one however I actually found myself feeling the opposite now the detail in this game is absolutely incredible the AI has been noticeably improved and I'm gonna discuss these details later specifically once I get into some of the stealth discussion so don't worry we'll talk about it but I can say the AI has been noticeably improved and of course the day and night cycle is now a major mechanic being something that you can constantly swap between to change and cycle 12 hours forward into the night if you're in the day or into the day if you are currently in the night allowing you to customize your approach towards a certain encampment in a very far cry style based on the time of day and what those NPCs will be doing at that particular time of day now as for the classic assassin's creed parkour mechanics this has also greatly been improved now not only are there not multiple buttons you have to hold down in certain configurations in order to climb it just sort of works and I really really enjoy it not many people have talked about it at least as far as I've seen many of them take this for granted but there is a real attention to detail and there has been a focus placed on this freerunning and that I don't think has been placed on it in previous titles at least the ones in recent memory there is a real improvement here and I think it's great specifically you can climb almost anything of course we have the entire country of Egypt to explore and now we can climb up cliff faces and we can climb up trees that we previously couldn't climb up it's actually very very well done and it's very reminiscent of actually The Legend of Zelda breath of the wild that released earlier this year and I'm not saying any game copied the other because of course this game would have been in development long before we ever saw a glimpse of breath of the wild but they are very very reminiscent of each other I actually however believe origins does this free climbing better then breadth of the wild did specifically in the climbing animations and the lack of a stealth bar that just ends up frustrating people when you're climbing up a wall or a cliff by X hands will actually reach for the contours in the rock or the building whereas in breath of the wild link just sort of shimmies his way up a particular cliff face palming it like a basketball it's actually really high quality in terms of the animations that they've put into origins and I think it's better than any other game with freerunning that we've seen at least on this scale and that of course leads me to saying that the animation work in general in this game is very well done no sort of Mass Effect Andromeda issues here at least as far as I encountered everything is very smooth save for a few performance related issues but in general the animations are done well lip-syncing for the most part is done very well horses look as though they're actually running birds as though they're actually flying hippos is a though they're actually walking it's all done very well now this brings me to the naval moments that I just had to mention during this critique that we actually encounter multiple times throughout origins something I didn't expect to see actually at all now these encounters are fun but they're actually very infrequent they sort of serve to remind you that this is the same team that made Black Flag while also making it clear that this is not an attempt to downright copy a previously successful game and I think it succeeds origins really does stand on its own and doesn't feel as though they need to rely on a previously successful title now controls are for the most part very responsive except for a few actions such as using smoke bombs and aerial attacks which are both incredibly clunky and almost inexplicably so and they always seem to happen when you don't want them to and they don't happen precisely when you want them to it's very frustrating and I'm not sure why they are such such problem children but nonetheless they are there now as for stealth stealth has been streamlined after all we are talking about an assassin's Creed game we need to discuss the stealth mechanics and what has been done to them now there is a difference between streamlined stealth and simplified stealth many people mix up the two and believe that is discreet origins stealth mechanics have been simplified much in the way that the RPG elements of Fallout 4 were simplified and not streamlined there is a different streamline makes things more accessible and easier to interact with whereas simplified just means that they're simple they're easier there's less depth to them now Assassin's Creed has never been an incredible stealth game usually it's something where you can sneak around hiding in little groups of people and then use throwing daggers to one-shot higher-level enemies in the head now all of that is tied together and still works however you have much better ranged enemy options and you have to consider their improved AI all at the same time as dealing with their new schedules that they're going to be interacting with constantly when they're going to bed at night or when they need to go and relieve themselves in the river those types of things now are built into every single character in the world and that has to be considered in every single stealth interaction and so I greatly disagree when people online or reddit or wherever say that stealth is no longer priority in Assassin's Creed rather they've empowered players to play the way they want to to go in guns blazing with their mesas and their shotgun looking arrow blasting bows or they can sneak their way in and play that way now it's an RPG you can approach it the way you want to at least for the most part now further discussing AI as I said earlier I was going to discuss it now I'm going to discuss it now so the differences in the AI is very noticeable every NPC has a schedule things that they need to do they have a job they have a home they have a bed where they go to sleep and they go on that cycle every single day you can follow them you can watch them they actually live their own sort of mini life and it's really cool to see it's something that many games have preached and claimed to have but have never implemented in an honest or really intriguing way now I actually encountered this on multiple levels in multiple cases with multiple NPCs my favorite interaction for this particular example was when I was going through a military encampment and I was killing a few people and I went up to one of the guard towers took out the guard and refilled my arrows on one of the little refilling stations that they have up there I then climbed away and was ready to go about my business I pulled up Senna and started looking at the encampment as a whole at which point I saw one of the guards walking towards the body at which point he picked the body up after looking around for whoever might have performed this heinous act and he carried the body down the stairs over to a large field where he laid the body down and left it to be and when I ran over there he had carried another body there and as he walked away he was saying how much this person would it be missed and how much they loved working together bla bla bla he was basically giving them a mini obituary in this small interaction I didn't need to see and that most people probably won't see I happened to kill one of his buddies and because one of his buddies died he took him over to a field where he would presumably later bury him and lay him to rest it was a very nice touch and something that I honestly did not expect to see now that level of attention to detail is something that's seen all throughout origins and those little types of interactions that I didn't need to see I didn't need to interact with but I just did and it reminded me of a moment in The Witcher 3 when I was going through and no spoilers for that game but there's a moment when a woman is basically exiled and sent to her death for a crime that she committed and that's the last you see of her however it doesn't have to be as I went through the game I about 20 gameplay hours later I was sailing along and I saw this rock and there was somebody chained to it I went up to the rock and I found sure enough that lady chained to it were it described where why she was executed and here blah blah blah it was very interesting and it was something I didn't need to find but I found it and the fact that I found it was so incredibly rewarding I honestly didn't know really how to respond to it and this little interaction in Assassin's Creed origins is one such encounter now as for combat it has been completely reworked it is now a hitbox system as opposed to the old paired animation system and all that means is that now when you swing your weapon there is a field or a box essentially where the weapon travels and if a character or NPC is within that box they will take damage based on what that weapon is and what your level is blah blah blah however in the old paired animation system you had to actually pair two characters together the player character and an NPC and they would play out an animation together meaning that each of these NPCs would wait their turn and you wouldn't ever get two of them attacking at the exact same time and it just was clunky it didn't work well and it was a long-running joke rather than an actual gameplay system now to be fair Assassin's Creed origins new comment system has a very long learning curve especially if you're coming off of syndicate or Assassin's Creed unity as I was because I played those games in preparation for this one so I could compare directly how far this game has either come or fallen now right bumper and right trigger correspond to light and heavy attacks respectively while left bumper corresponds to a block using whatever weapon door shield configuration you currently have enabled - is one of the weakest elements of the system though it has been improved from the animation set we saw at e3 this past summer but it's still very very rkt and it doesn't match the same level of realism that we see attempted elsewhere in the game and I really just don't like it it could have simply been a role it could have been something like that but instead it's this weird sort of shuffle and it just looks stupid to me I don't why now in this comment system you can also build up an adrenaline meter that allows you to use a special ability that's determined by your weapon now there are abilities that you can unlock through your ability menu that start this bar half filled or fully filled depending on which you have unlocked at a given time but it's a nice little detail because it allows you to perform special attacks and save those special attacks for some of the larger brute enemies and use and build up that meter on the lesser enemies now the weakest element by far of the combat system is the lock-on mechanic you push down on the right stick to access this and it's a mechanic than something that most fighting games with melee combat are going to have especially when you throw in multiple enemies at a particular moment however it works very strangely in origins and I'm not really sure why it's almost as though it's depth sensitive as opposed to just left or right or up or down it shouldn't be this complicated to switch between enemies but weirdly when there's a group of six or seven NPCs attacking you and you lock on to one if you flick the right stick to the right to switch it actually shifts to the person in the back or to the front it's very contextual it really just doesn't make sense and I absolutely hate it and it turns out I'm not the only one it seems to be the most hated element of the game and it's something that I do have hope can be patched and fixed in the future because of course it is just a little mechanic I'm sure it's just a few pieces of code as to sensitivity and and how it calculates which enemy it should switch to and I'm sure that can be improved so maybe in a month it's not gonna be an issue but as of right now it's incredibly frustrating now with that having been said this is an attempt at RPG so there's multiple ways to play through and to approach the combat in this game you can either perform the melee attacks you can go with the stealth route or you can choose to use ranged weapons specifically bows and each of these bows fall into their own respective categories specifically there are speed based bows there are closed ranged damage oriented bow that operate much like a shotgun there's also long-distance or more sniping oriented bows and then there's the generic all-around bow that does sort of all of these things on a basic level now I do want to mention that there is an ability that can be unlocked for the sniper bows specifically that allows you to control it as it goes through the air very reminiscent of Batman Arkham whatever game you want to name where you can control the Batarang as it goes through the air it is very Arcadia I personally don't really like it and I've tried using it as I did unlock that ability but it doesn't work very well and it's not something that fundamentally breaks the game it's just sort of a stupid thing they added because they thought it would be fun however you don't have to use it it is there it is an option but it's not as though there are quests that mandate its usage it is there you can use it if you want to most people however I would guess are never gonna touch it now I have to say I love the ranged fighting in this game the bows work very very well they tie into the combat flawlessly and very fluidly and I actually found myself enjoying this bow combat far more than I actually enjoyed horizon zero dawn and I know that might tick off a lot of people but I'm just being honest on a personal level I enjoyed this ranged combat far more than I enjoyed the combat in horizon zero dawn horizon zero dawn combat always just left me feeling very frustrated and feeling as though I just suffered a stroke whereas origins was actually fun and I often wanted more targets to snipe as a few as opposed to less of them and more people I could just hit with my glowing blue sticks so that is an element I do want to say that I personally enjoyed the combat in this game far more than I enjoyed the combat in horizon zero dawn now that's not saying much because the combat was one of the weakest elements of horizon zero dawn but nonetheless I felt that it should be said now with all of this out there I need to say that the combat has been by far the most polarizing element of origins just without a doubt it has been the most polarizing some people absolutely love it and others absolute Heita and can't play the game as a result I personally really like the system sure it's not perfect or as highly polished as other games that offer similar systems but for a series that has long had a combat system that was more of a punch line than a quality game mechanic it's fantastic now as for the technical side of the game it is gorgeous to begin with I don't need to explain this if you've been watching the video this far through that you've already seen much of the games gameplay different biomes different areas and you can see this game is a looker through and through however it is very very demanding on PC hardware and this is a game that I could totally understand somebody choosing to play it on a console such as the Xbox one X as opposed to a PC now part of this is reportedly due to the insane level of DRM installed on the PC version at least reportedly and that is tanking the cpu performance for many builds which allows the Xbox one X to achieve 4k at 60fps while a comparable PC is struggling to hit 30 or 60 at regular 1080p resolutions so it is something to consider if you're looking at getting this game for PC if you can get it for a console you will have less of an issue but this is a game I would recommend only getting for PC if you have a 10 70 or better or if you're watching this far in the future they've optimized it or if they've cracked the DRM and cracked a nouveau and they've removed it from the title then in that case I would consider getting it for a week or build but as of right now it's incredibly demanding and is going to tank on lesser Hardware furthermore there are many strange moments of stutter where the frames per second is actually at a steady 60fps but the motion on the screen drops to what looks like 20 FPS I'm not sure what causes this but it's totally and utterly immersion breaking and it's incredibly frustrating and I don't know why it's happening I don't know what might cause this it's well above my pay grade but the frames per second stays steady while the animations look as though they're dropping down into the teens I really can't explain it it's very weird when it happens because it really looks as though it's only occurring when the actual characters on screen are moving everything else is moving smoothly the environment the camera movement is smooth but the actual movements or walking animations are incredibly chunky and just don't look good at all I don't know what's doing it but it's there and that's something that will probably be patched out later but as of right now it is there now as for the music and soundtrack this is part of the game that I'm very conflicted over because parts of it I really like in moments I think it's very minimalistic and I think it works and feeds into the idea that you're in this vast empty world or a formerly fantastic and majestic civilization that has since fallen to the ways of the Romans or what have you but at the same time I wish that we would have gotten a slightly better soundtrack that employed much more of the actual instruments of this land and area and there were actually many moments when the great big scenes and set pieces were in front of me and nothing was actually taking place I felt very very awkward almost as I watched this big behemoth walk out on screen and then a sort of piddly sort of pathetic soundtrack playing in the background I don't know if it was a glitch or if it's just a weird sort of way that the game chooses which audio tracks to play but nonetheless I found myself gravely disappointed by the soundtrack in this title and as for everybody's favorite discussion and topic microtransactions and pre-order bonuses this is something I couldn't avoid discussing it's such a hotly contested issue in our industry currently I simply had to discuss it and that's what we're gonna do briefly here now there are microtransactions available within assassin's creed origins that can give you drachma or improve the rate at which you level up and earn XP if people are looking to get through the game quicker than most other people they also offer some cosmetic options specifically outfits like this one that allows you to look kind of like a mummy for roughly $5 us a piece and so these microtransactions are there however they are not pushed anywhere near the same level that you're gonna find them pushed in a game like battlefront 2 they're here they're in a menu sort of tucked away there is a game prompt that pups pops up early on in the game that tells you about them but for the most part you're never gonna be faced with them there's not gonna be many pop ups pushing you to purchase these there's something optional you can get but for the most part as far as I can tell they don't actually affect the way that the world and the leveling system was structured after finishing the game I actually can say that it almost feels as though the game developers behind origins said okay Ubisoft executives you want microtransactions in here all right we'll give it to you but they just tucked it in a menu they said there has to be a prompt to let the players know that they're there ok we'll tuck it in right away and people will forget about it and sure enough that's what I did after about 20 hours of gameplay I didn't find myself wanting to accelerate or expedite the process I actually found myself wishing that it was more drawn out that there was more to do almost as if there was more grind there wasn't of course but that in and of itself shows that they didn't stretch this out to push and encourage that XP boost all in all I don't think the microtransactions are a real issue in this game they are there and if you consider microtransactions an inherent issue then of course I guess it would be an issue but for the most part they don't affect the way the game was structured or created which is a nice change of pace from what we see typically in the modern triple-a title now as for the pre-order bonus this is something I've always not liked the fact that they cut a mission out and add it in if you pre-ordered the game and you have to buy it externally if you do not preorder it however having played through this pre-order mission to test it out I can say that it's actually fairly short it's called the secrets of the pyramids and you go through basically climbing at the top of two pyramids you find a couple objects you put them together and then all of a sudden it's kind of over it's incredibly short I believe I was done with it in about 10-15 minutes and it was incredibly unsatisfying didn't offer that much XP and it has a level recommendation of twenty four meaning that most people who pre-ordered the game aren't gonna get to play through that mission until several days after they began playing if they're playing it a lot not to mention if you're just playing it casually on the couch over the weekend and so it really seems as though Ubisoft recognized that okay we got to put a preorder bonus mission in there but we don't want to make it such a critical and crucial quest that people feel as though they're being gypped by not pre-ordering or maybe they just wanted to save labor and not put a lot of effort into it that's another way of reading the situation as well nonetheless it isn't a big deal and I actually found myself kind of disappointed in it as a pre-order bonus it was weirdly just another tiny quest that happened to be packaged with the game simply put this particular instance there was no real harm and so I feel as though there's no real foul maybe I am making justifications and I'm justifying the terrible business practices of this company but to me if I don't see a real issue here I can't really criticize it too heavily if these micro transactions affected the way that this game was designed in the way that they approached the design of the game of course I would criticize it but as far as I can tell it didn't and of course if the pre-order mission were vast and massive and offered a ton of XP to the point where it made a real difference in the long term I would criticize it heavily but here it seems so small it's almost difficult to justify purchasing it externally and certainly to justify pre-ordering the game for it but that's about all I have to say there and so in closing I do want to say that Assassin's Creed origins has been one of the most impressive games I played this year knowing how much work went into it and how far this series has come origins is coming off the heels of games like unity and syndicate and so they didn't have to a lot to blow those games out of the water because they were incredibly repetitive dull and uninspired but they instead chose to be incredibly ambitious recreate an entire ancient country and civilization and give you a completely different take on a game that was previously well beloved and reinvent the wheel and I actually am very glad that they did in a time in our industry where open-world games seem to not have a lot of care put into them anymore they're just large Maps with a ton of small menial tasks to be performed Assassin's Creed origins is actually a welcome change and the fact that it comes from Ubisoft is a little surprising to be honest I can only hope this is a permanent change of pace and of attitude towards these types of games at least from Ubisoft because if we get another game in the same style in the same franchise from the same teams we are in for a real treat and so Assassin's Creed origins is going to get the much-coveted rank of a must-play from Luque poo you absolutely have to play this game whether it's in 2017 2018 or 2020 whenever you need to play this game and with it going on sale in many different places for the holidays it is a must pick up I highly recommend it that's all I can really say but with all that said thank you guys for watching honestly and truly if you made it all the way through this video you are a scholar and a saint and I love you very much thank you for watching if you have any thoughts leave those down below in the comment section I'll be reading through them and responding to as many as I can feel free to join our discord links in the description below we have a great time follow me on Twitter and consider supporting me on patreon I'm a struggling college student who's very passionate about videogames and anything you give will help but with all that said thank you for watching I love you all and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Luke Stephens

Views: 363,142

Rating: 4.7877035 out of 5

Keywords: LukiePoo, Assassins Creed, AC Origins, Assassin's Creed: Origins, The ultimate critique, Review, Analysis

Id: 9RQUB0cwo8k

Length: 66min 28sec (3988 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 16 2017