The reinvention the franchise desperately needed?
Change wasn’t just necessary, it was inevitable. After a decade of dutiful iteration, Ubisoft is finally taking its most influential and important series back to its roots. It’s an opportunity to establish the origins of the Brotherhood Of Assassins, leaving many of the organisation’s most laboured traditions and most frustrating concessions on the cutting room floor. Assassin’s Creed Origins isn’t a reboot per se, but it is a re-invention – that’s a distinction game director Ashraf Ismail is quick to make, but we are still eager to challenge. “Assassin’s Creed Origins is a re-invention of the foundations of the Assassin’s Creed franchise,” says Ismail, who also led the development team on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. “A brand-new vision that further pushes exploration, narration, combat and progression.”
The ‘re-inventions’ in Origins range from incidental to game-changing, weaving through each and every one of Assassin’s Creed’s ageing core gameplay mechanics and systems – but the heart of it all is still there. It’s still a science-fiction game that uses history as its playground; while no confirmation could be made either way, it looks as if the ineffectual modern day storyline remains, but even that’s easy enough to stomach because, yes, both naval combat and tomb raiding are making a return. Ubisoft Montreal is caught here between wanting to offer something fresh and needing to deliver something familiar to the millions of fans that have had to wait an extra year to get their fill of assassin action.
The ‘fresh’ refers to a focus shift for the series, from action-adventure to action-RPG. With that conceit has come a radical redesign to combat, the intertwining of narrative and exploration and an alteration to the way in which you will interact with – and progress through – Assassin’s Creed’s new sprawling, exotic, Egyptian open world. Whether the studio wants to admit it or not, Origins feels like a very direct and confident response to the criticism that has been levied at the series across the years – which did, of course, spill over in a somewhat spectacular fashion following the release of the much-maligned Unity at the dawn of the generation.
Counteracting the rising tide of discontent with Origins has meant allowing for more incubation time than any Assassin’s Creed original game. Ubisoft Montreal has been hard at work on the title since early 2014, beginning shortly after the completion of Black Flag. It’s the sort of lead time that affords a development team some much-needed space for reflection. “Very early on we knew that to fill a world of this size and scope with meaningful life – narratively and in terms of gameplay – we had to approach the challenge from a new perspective,” continues Ismail, noting that everything, from the AI framework and NPC design, to its aspirations around mission design and combat mechanics, has been completely overhauled in an effort to support your newfound autonomy within this genuinely impressive landmass. “We wanted the freedom to tell many stories through memorable characters and to allow players the ability to engage in the intricacies of this world at their own pace.”
It’s here that one of the most welcomed changes rears its head. Origins is ditching the laboured, regimented mission design of old, opting instead for a quest-based structure to guide its narrative forward. “This means that players will pick up multiple quests, have them all be available simultaneously, and decide their order and priority. This gives autonomy to players while giving us an
opportunity to tell hundreds of Egypt’s stories.”
This is important, although not because the stories are necessarily more elaborate than what we’ve experienced in Assassin’s Creed before. What we’ve seen of the game in action so far seems to suggest that missions, while more open, are still variations on ‘locate a target and loot/kill it in a fashion that won’t see you desynchronised.’ But giving us the opportunity to pick and prioritise the missions we enjoy completing only serves the larger goal of Origins – giving us greater scope to revel in the world design. Ubisoft Montreal wants to give you more control over the Assassin’s Creed experience, breaking out of the formulaic designs of the past and letting you really live and breathe the experience of being an assassin.
Much of this is coming through in Assassin’s Creed’s embrace of the action-RPG model game. Combat (and everything that comes from it) is perhaps the biggest proof of this idea, with Ubisoft Montreal finally taking steps to answer the biggest piece of criticism levied against the series over the decade. “Based on this new action-RPG direction, we completely redesigned the combat system,” teases Ismail. “We changed the paradigm of combat, building from the ground up a new versatile, highly-reactive and fast-paced combat system that gives control, depth and freedom to players, bringing more challenges and thrill to combat,” he continues, noting that everything from the character’s positioning to the size and speed of their weapon, will factor into how successful you are in a scrap with the various enemies of Egypt circa 49BCE.
If that wasn’t enough, your enemy combatants will no longer sit back and wait to be countered into decapitation. Instead, you’ll find foes to be far more aggressive, eager to kill you as quickly as possible. You’ll actually need to engage in sword fighting; right bumper for a light attack and right trigger for heavy, with the left trigger pulling up your shield to block attack and deliver a well-timed parry. Combat is all hit-boxes and positioning now; there’s no warping to the feet of an enemy combatant with the tap of the X button, no more stilted animations or button mash tactics to engage in. Sword fighting feels like something the developer wants you to engage in, rather than it simply being a means to a bloody end.
LAND OF THE PHARAOHS
UBISOFT HAS ALWAYS TRIED to make Assassin’s Creed’s locations, and the personnel that inhabit them, as historically accurate as possible. Obviously concessions have to be made, but for the most part the team treats its games as postcards from the past. Egypt presents something of a
problem, then, because, as Ismail tells it, so much of this era is simply unrecorded. “One of the other big differences from previous Assassin’s Creed games is that we go much further back in time than in previous instalments. So we had to work very closely with historians and Egyptian experts to help
us fill in the gaps of Egyptian life not easily found in history books.”
This means the Ubisoft Montreal team enjoys far more creative freedom with this locale, which it describes as “not only massive” but also “more diverse than any other setting we created in the past.” The results are stunning, but it’ll be interesting to see how the team handles an environment when it has license to go off-book. “For some elements, this lack of reference also challenged us to create and illustrate parts of Ancient Egypt,” continues Ismail, “rather than re-create known history as we did with past games. For this, we heavily relied on the amazing work done by our Art team to really capture the look and overall feel of what Ancient Egypt would have been like at the time.”
This new paradigm also translates to the RPG dimension of the experience,” Ismail continues, giving us a hint as to how the change to the combat system has bled out into other immediate areas of the game. “Not only do weapons differ in size and speed, they also come with their own specific statistics, attributes and rarity levels, from Common to Legendary. A Legendary Hunter Bow will be much deadlier than a common one and might have some special abilities, such as a better chance of critical hit. All those changes contribute to the same goal: to give players control, depth and freedom in the way they fight for a thrilling and challenging combat experience.”
“[The] action-RPG elements support finding weapons with different rarities, levels, stats and visuals, [ensuring] each unique weapon impacts gameplay appropriately. How your character’s overall level compares to the ones of enemies is a key factor in the experience. As a player, you now have to carefully consider and choose what are the abilities, gear and crafting decisions that define your Assassin.”
The studio might be increasing the complexity of the Assassin’s Creed experience, but it is doing so in an effort to give you more control – letting you build towards your own playstyle as opposed to wrestling with the game’s systems to actually play how you want to. Progression has been completely overhauled, impacting what missions you can take on and which enemies you can stand a chance of defeating – there are even legendary creatures and foes to find out in the world, such as giant snakes, guarding special loot should you be sufficiently geared.
“A player’s level and how it compares to the enemies’ one is fundamental in the experience, as it will be very difficult for players to kill opponents that are several levels above them. Levelling up not only makes your Assassin stronger, it also grants Ability points that can be spent to obtain a specific capacity, such as more precise aiming with their bow or being able to poison dead bodies,” Ismail says, noting that there are three main branches to the ability tree, and specialisation is integral to get the most out of stealth, melee combat and environmental mastery – though keeping on top of Origins’ full crafting system is also essential to survival and progression.
All this comes together to create an experience that feels classically Assassin’s Creed in spirit, but renewed at heart. It seems as if Ubisoft has finally looked outside of itself and taken note of the innovations made in the open world space by its most immediate competition. Whether this is doing enough to bring lapsed players back to the Animus remains to be seen, but given the spiralling trajectory the series has been on for some time now, Origins feels at very least like a bold step to restore some faith in the Brotherhood.
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