Why is Assassin’s Creed Origins so different from its predecessors?
The most recent installment in Ubisoft’s most successful franchise is leaps and bounds ahead of most of its predecessors. Past installments of the franchise before Origins i.e. Unity and Syndicate were not well received by the community mainly because Unity had a lot of bugs on launch; so many that the game was unplayable. This affected Syndicate as well which was mainly regarded as “Just fine!”. Taking a break from its yearly release schedule, Ubisoft decided to launch Origins in 2017 and this I believe worked in their favor and made the game exponentially better than I imagine what it would have been if they had released it in 2016. Enough context there! I will talk about a few reasons as to why I think that Origins is one of the most spectacular games in the franchise and I am not referring to the graphics or the soundtrack; which for the record are amazing.
Let us talk about the most obvious one - the overhaul of all the major systems in the game. We have seen each game add new systems and make a few changes to the core systems, but Origins has overhauled most of the core systems while adding new systems to it. There are a couple of systems that I’ll be discussing at length and why is it that their overhaul was necessary to the game and the franchise itself.
COMBAT!
One of the first systems you get to experience in the game is the combat system! The gameplay starts off when Bayek, the protagonist, is fighting against a target’s bodyguard. A short tutorial introduces the new combat system to the player who has been plagued with an unnatural combat system for the past several installments. Every installment claimed to overhaul the combat system, but it felt unnatural as always until Origins dropped.
The new combat system feels much more fluid and natural. There is no button mashing at the right time based on the symbols shown on the screen. Any enemy can attack at any point of time and so can Bayek. This introduces a lot of unknowns in the scenario and how they work together. That is a major reason why we are talking about the combat system here. It is a far cry from all the previous ones. There is no right or wrong way to fight here. Players can choose to fight however they want and whomever they want. Doing away with a lot of optional or sometimes even mandatory objectives like “Do not get detected”, gave the player a lot of freedom to explore their play style rather than adhering to what the game asks them to do. The combat mechanics are rather well designed to couple with this quest design goal in mind. All in all, killing enemies has never felt so thrilling in Assassin’s Creed before.
EAGLE VISION
Another surprise that we come across is the Eagle Vision in this game which is literally THE EAGLE VISION i.e. we see the world through the eyes of an eagle. Where is THE SENSE?
Seriously though, Eagle Vision in the previous games has been a mysterious power that has allowed Assassins to find hidden symbols, focus on their targets and look through walls. It has also been referred to as “The Sense” in some of the games.
Instead, in Origins whenever you want to scout, focus on targets or find hidden objects you switch to Senu, an eagle who is Bayek’s friend and his eyes in the air. The franchise saw a few changes to the system with each new installment but Origins completely changed the system. It was not the case that there was something wrong with the system and needed to be fixed. Rather a major part of the community has responded really well to it in the past. Then why change it?
I have two possible reasons to give you. First is the sheer size of the world. The range of eagle vision was very limited in the previous games and it would not have worked for Origins as the map is exponentially larger. Camps and hideouts are spread over wide areas and are heavily guarded. It would be very frustrating to scout the site using the traditional Eagle Vision. And the answer to that problem was Senu! Our very own eagle that can be sent to the skies as our eye. Second reason is to probably answer a more over arching narrative question as to why eagles are so associated with the Assassins and why their “Sense” is known as Eagle Vision. Bayek is shown to be the first Assassin and the founder of the brotherhood, so it makes sense that his friend and pet Senu become the symbol of the brotherhood.
Now that we have taken a look at these systems, what is so special about them. Most of what we gather is that they are different than the ones in the previous installments and probably feel good in the moment. How do they effect the by and large of the game?
All the systems bind effortlessly in the game. Using multiple systems at the same time, switching between systems, the small supporting mechanics at work, there is just so much going on. The countless stimuli that go toward calculating the events of each moment is unprecedented not only in the franchise but also probably in the entire gaming industry. The details are so fine that we intuitively process them and do not even realize that they are there. For example, the step sound changing based on the material Bayek steps on or the grass pressing down when stepped on. We may sometimes not even notice it, but all these details affect the gaming experience to a great extent. It contributes toward a great deal of immersion by replicating the already existing models in the player’s mind to the minutest of detail. It allows the player to feel more natural even while standing idle in the game. The feeling that the character on-screen is a natural extension of the player itself is something very difficult to design and achieve especially in a AAA title.
Another reason for discussing systems at such length is that they feel continuous and not quantized. Actions of the player in other parts of the world and even the past affect the current experience and I am not talking about just in terms of narrative here.
A great example of this would be the immensely improved hunting system of the game. Each animal reacts differently to the type of action the protagonist or even the NPCs do and these reactions carry forward in time i.e. the animals do not disconnect themselves from the player when either the protagonist or the animal escapes. The way animals react when the player encounters them the next time is affected by their past experiences. This is very easy to miss as we are used to hunting systems of a lot of other games and especially the Assassin’s Creed franchise where we see animals react in the same way every time we encounter them and this deters the player to engage with the system voluntarily unless the game needs the player to.
And that is justified I believe, because the hunting system has been a minor part of the franchise till now, where the major goals achieved through it were completing futile side quests and upgrading the player’s armor. Origins had to take a different route because of the way the system binds into the game. All the previous games could have done away with this system and it wouldn’t have mattered much, but Origins cannot survive without it. Due to the prevalence of hunting in ancient Egypt, it was essential for the designers to bind the system as tightly to the game as possible to the extent that the game cannot survive without and the gameplay certainly does justice to that approach towards design.
I am going to go a little bit more in depth about this point and give out another example. I am going to talk about the heart of Assassin’s Creed itself, yes, the climbing mechanics. Origins has revolutionized the way we climb. The player can climb almost anything in the game and that too seamlessly. Bayek finds the crevices or holding points himself while climbing which is amazing in itself because we have seen modular climbing systems previously which dull out the player after a few hours of gameplay. What probably has kept the system interesting in the previous games is the change of environment, but Origins has completely reinvented the system requires no such support to make climbing interesting (funnily, the environment is much more supportive of the system). Adding to that, the realistic weight shift of the character allows for a much more immersive climbing experience and has made climbing one of the best things to do in the game. My favorite was climbing the Pyramids of Giza.
I can give you several other reasons as to why the game is so spectacular in my eyes. Systems and mechanics happen to be some things that I tend to talk about the most. There are also some novel experiments involved with narrative but unfortunately this is it for now. So if you are an Assassin’s Creed fan and have been skeptical about playing it, believe me when I say that Origins will be one of the best gaming experiences you will have had in a long time. Always remember: “Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”
