Assassin's Creed: Origins
AC: Origins is a good game.
Mechanically, it changes up the counter-heavy combat of previous installments for a hit box system, making combat much less like a quick time event. It leads to some odd moments here and there and means a lot of situations can be button-mashed through, but it works well enough I wasn't bored by the combat. The different weapon combinations feel different, as well. Using an eagle for the spotting/tagging mechanics breaks the flow a little sometimes, but works fine. The level system is functional - it serves to channel play in a certain direction and gives a sense of advancement without really being overbearing in my opinion.
The ship mechanics from Blag Flag make a return... but only in a limited fashion, which sort of drags the experience down. Because it only occurs in a handful of missions, it feels out of place. And when the ship isn't a part of your character, there's no real attachment to it. I could say much the same about the non-ship missions playing as Aya - I liked playing another character, but because she's divorced from the weapon/skill choices you may have made with Bayek (locked into her own set of weapons), the actual gameplay feels more limiting than liberating.
The Egyptian sandbox is neat and looks generally good (once I turned the graphic settings up). It's neat to see a slice of history that isn't often depicted in games, though it bears remembering it is through the warped AC lens. The vistas and flavor are solid enough to inspire interest and possible research. I generally liked Bayek and his range of rage and revenge to love and compassion.
Of course, one of the interesting things about the Assassin's Creed games is the meta-story with Templars, Assassins, artifacts of the precursors to humankind, and all of that. Here, it's minimal, but there are a few points. Layla, the main Anima-delver has some potential as a character, but I never got a feel for her plans. Okay, she's a visionary (perhaps genius) who joined Abstergo, but decided she could make a better Animus on her own. And then... I'm unclear on what her plan was. Was she going to go back and rub it in their collective corporate faces? Try to compete in some way? She didn't seem to have much of an end game in mind, really, unless I missed something. When Abstergo/the Templars send out a team to capture or kill her, what's her response? Well, take care of those few people and then go back into the Animus.
Of the First Civilization, we get some recorded messages triggered in old tombs that... seem targetted toward Layla rather than Bayek, which makes his uncovering of them seem suspect - perhaps more a representation of things than an actual event that happened to him. They're steeped in technobabble fluffing up only a few real points. Really only one of those resonated with me. As I'd looked at in previous games, the Creed of the Assassins is pretty f-d up if you take it at face value. "Nothing is real. Everything is permitted." That's very nihilistic/hedonistic taken as-is. One of the messages makes a point of saying the First Civilization saw its demise and couldn't stop it, and now sees the demise of humanity coming and sees no way to stop it. The only way would be to find a way to "break the rules," or see beyond the perceived rules, of causality. To that end, a message encouraging looking beyond what's believed to be "real" makes sense. Exactly how that gets ingrained into the Assassins is unclear, though, if Bayek wasn't seeing those tomb messages himself.
And so, by the end of the story (which I found sort of unsatisfying itself), the Assassins are born - a group of people who 1) have seen and want to prevent the abuse of First Civilization artifacts and 2) are fed up with the machinations of powerful people trying to control humankind. That sort of works, but feels a little hollow. I somehow expected a little more story-wise, though the game itself is fine.
Mechanically, it changes up the counter-heavy combat of previous installments for a hit box system, making combat much less like a quick time event. It leads to some odd moments here and there and means a lot of situations can be button-mashed through, but it works well enough I wasn't bored by the combat. The different weapon combinations feel different, as well. Using an eagle for the spotting/tagging mechanics breaks the flow a little sometimes, but works fine. The level system is functional - it serves to channel play in a certain direction and gives a sense of advancement without really being overbearing in my opinion.
The ship mechanics from Blag Flag make a return... but only in a limited fashion, which sort of drags the experience down. Because it only occurs in a handful of missions, it feels out of place. And when the ship isn't a part of your character, there's no real attachment to it. I could say much the same about the non-ship missions playing as Aya - I liked playing another character, but because she's divorced from the weapon/skill choices you may have made with Bayek (locked into her own set of weapons), the actual gameplay feels more limiting than liberating.
The Egyptian sandbox is neat and looks generally good (once I turned the graphic settings up). It's neat to see a slice of history that isn't often depicted in games, though it bears remembering it is through the warped AC lens. The vistas and flavor are solid enough to inspire interest and possible research. I generally liked Bayek and his range of rage and revenge to love and compassion.
Of course, one of the interesting things about the Assassin's Creed games is the meta-story with Templars, Assassins, artifacts of the precursors to humankind, and all of that. Here, it's minimal, but there are a few points. Layla, the main Anima-delver has some potential as a character, but I never got a feel for her plans. Okay, she's a visionary (perhaps genius) who joined Abstergo, but decided she could make a better Animus on her own. And then... I'm unclear on what her plan was. Was she going to go back and rub it in their collective corporate faces? Try to compete in some way? She didn't seem to have much of an end game in mind, really, unless I missed something. When Abstergo/the Templars send out a team to capture or kill her, what's her response? Well, take care of those few people and then go back into the Animus.
Of the First Civilization, we get some recorded messages triggered in old tombs that... seem targetted toward Layla rather than Bayek, which makes his uncovering of them seem suspect - perhaps more a representation of things than an actual event that happened to him. They're steeped in technobabble fluffing up only a few real points. Really only one of those resonated with me. As I'd looked at in previous games, the Creed of the Assassins is pretty f-d up if you take it at face value. "Nothing is real. Everything is permitted." That's very nihilistic/hedonistic taken as-is. One of the messages makes a point of saying the First Civilization saw its demise and couldn't stop it, and now sees the demise of humanity coming and sees no way to stop it. The only way would be to find a way to "break the rules," or see beyond the perceived rules, of causality. To that end, a message encouraging looking beyond what's believed to be "real" makes sense. Exactly how that gets ingrained into the Assassins is unclear, though, if Bayek wasn't seeing those tomb messages himself.
And so, by the end of the story (which I found sort of unsatisfying itself), the Assassins are born - a group of people who 1) have seen and want to prevent the abuse of First Civilization artifacts and 2) are fed up with the machinations of powerful people trying to control humankind. That sort of works, but feels a little hollow. I somehow expected a little more story-wise, though the game itself is fine.
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