Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10
If there was a series that could have benefitted from a fresh start, Assassin's Creed would be a prime candidate.
There's only so long you'll get away with the same formula that barely extended beyond altering the setting and location, but Assassin's Creed Origins officially rips the script up and starts anew, taking a dramatic shift for the series. It isn't perfect, but it is a step in the right direction.
The main character is Bayek of Siwa. The time period is Ancient Egypt. After being held captive by a mysterious group along with his nephew Khemu, they are taken to an underground vault, where Bayek is presented with the Apple of Eden. The mysterious group believe the Apple acts as a key to open the vault and whatever treasures lie within, but also do not understand the potential jeopardy that comes along with this.
During the attempted struggle to escape, Bayek accidentally kills his nephew, and holds the masked men and those who command them responsible. This turns out to be a group called the Hidden Ones - Linked to the Assassin Brotherhood - Who partly make up a larger organisation called the Ancient Order. This group of assassin's primary goal is to dethrone Cleopatra and resume control over Ancient Egypt, and whilst Bayek's story is ultimately one driven by revenge, the bigger picture is about preventing Egyptian rule falling into the wrong hands.
It's a solid instalment to the series. The Ancient Egyptian era always had great potential for an Assassin's Creed game, which is fully realised here. Vast deserts, deep tombs and towering Pyramids all capture the authenticity of the era perfectly. If you had to guess where you were, you'd be able to tell straight away. Chariot racing at the Hippodrome, Crocodiles submerged in the Nile and Gladiatorial fights to the death at the Krokodilopolis all add further to the credibility. A shoe-in for one of my favourite Assassin's Creed eras in history.
The trophy list is large in size, containing 51 trophies, including the Platinum trophy. Despite the build of this game being drastically different to previous titles, there isn't much variance to the trophy list.
The "The End" trophy, awarded for Completing the last Main Quest, caps off the Origins experience as you kill numerous targets of the Ancient Order and finish off Bayek's story of revenge. If you think it's odd seeing the word "Quest" in an Assassin's Creed game, then you would be right to have that inkling, and this is where the big change in direction comes in.
The game is now a fully-fledged RPG. You earn experience to level up Bayek, which in turn will grant you ability points you can spend on a plethora of options via a brand new skill tree. Looting tombs and hideouts will grant you weaponry and shields that can strengthen your armoury, as well as finding valuable trinkets you can sell to raise money to pay for upgrades and the purchase of new gear. Enemies also have a level applied to them, which is an indication of where the more challenging areas of the game lie, and anything above your character level may require some additional work before revisiting at a later time. Weapons even have traits and abilities too. It acts, smells and looks like an RPG in every sense.
The combat system has also been overhauled. The previous system of simply holding down a button to automatically block attacks, and pressing another to counter, was overly simplistic, and felt dumbed down. You'll now have to block, dodge, counter and strike your opponents, and mistiming any of the above will leave you open to death. You may be more inclined to stick to some classic Assassin's Creed stealth, as there's much more risk involved engaging in fights in comparison to the previously safer system, but this is definitely still an upgrade.
Do such drastic changes pay off? Yes. The RPG spin is much better suited to an open world game like Assassin's Creed, and whilst it doesn't exactly make the game overly challenging, there is an initial learning curve to get used to the new concept. There's just way more depth compared to before, which is naturally more engaging and makes progression feel more rewarding where it didn't previously exist. It works though, and that's the most important thing when you gamble on reinventing the wheel.
The story itself is solid, and you'll run into alot of familiar historical figures if you're clued up on your Ancient Egyptian history. The premise of stabbing your way through to the end goal is unchanged over the course of 23 main story quests leading up to the end. My total playtime up to the point I'd unlocked the final story trophy, with a little bit of distraction accounted for, was 37 hours. You'll unlock an additional 10 progression-based trophies for beating other quests along the way, and there is no requirement to beat it on any specific difficulty level.
The replay value for any main story in Assassin's Creed has mainly come through 100% synchronisation trophies. Previously, the story was broken down into chapters (which were referred to in-game as memories), and these contained a number of missions within.
Outside the main objective of just simply beating the mission, there used to be a series of secondary objectives which contributed to a synchronisation percentage for that memory. It has been historically common place to include a trophy for reaching 100% synchronisation for every memory in the game, and this is where you'd usually have a reason to go back through the story and replay any missions where you'd missed some of the secondary objectives.
This is completely absent from Origins, and once you've beaten the main questline, there is little reason to go back through any of the quests, unless you just wanted to for your own cathartic benefits. This means you can jump straight into the post-game content, and the rest of the trophy list.
The "Old Habits" trophy, awarded for Completing all locations, is where the bulk of your extra-curricular time will be spent with this game, as you go around the huge map ticking off a bunch of different tasks in order to "complete" locations.
The greater map is divided into regions. There are 34 of these in total, and they all contain various activities for you to finish which lead towards obtaining this trophy. Some of these regions contain busy, congested cities with loads going on and others are baron desert with not much going on at all.
This part is my where my biggest criticism of the game comes in, and Origins isn't the first open world game to be guilty of this, but there are a very limited number of activities that just end up being copy and pasted across the entire map to exaggerate the illusion of depth. Previous Assassin's Creed titles were exactly the same. You'd have the same series of tasks to complete in order to liberate a certain area, and these would be the same group of activities duplicated multiple times to pad content.
The big issue with Origins is that this now takes place on a much grander scale than ever before. The post-game grind was always much less fun than the story with Assassin's Creed titles, but it was at least never too strenuous. Exact numbers vary depending on your source, but there are circa 400 activities that need to be completed in order to achieve this trophy, and this will significantly pad your completion time. There are only around 6 different activity types in total. Once you've liberated an outpost, or cleared an animal lair or looted a building for the first time, the realisation you have to do this 400 times on repeat is daunting, and it turns the game into a mundane grind to the finish.
There is little element of skill to keep you on your toes, however there are 4 activities dedicated to fighting War Elephants, which are worth mentioning separately to the rest of this catalogue of tasks. War Elephants are colossal beasts with massive health and dangerous attacks that can take you out in a few hits if you aren't careful. They're also heavily protected with armour plating and are accompanied by a rider who will attack you with arrows and fire bombs from range. You'll need to be around level 40 in order to give them a good enough fight to take them down.
Each War Elephant also has it's own fighting style, which means you'll need to master a fresh approach for each fight. Everything you did to understand the attack patterns from the last fight? Forget it, because the next one is completely different. If that wasn't enough, there's also a trophy awarded for taking down 2 of them at once in a grand finale. It's a refreshing change of pace for an exercise that has you drifting through autopilot for the most part, and it provides a welcome challenge.
With the new RPG approach, there are also a lot of side quests scattered around the map, but these do not need to be explored in any degree of detail, aside a random couple that relate to specific trophies within the list. They don't count towards completing a location though, and they're not required for any other trophies. They are a good source of experience for levelling up and can also grant some nice weaponry and equipment upon completion though, so they are at least worth taking into consideration.
Outside of this, there's actually some good creativity and thought gone into the list, with many trophies awarded for random and fun tasks, encouraging you to explore and interact with the new open world as often as possible. Taming a lion just to be able to lead it into the jaws of a Crocodile has to be up there with some of the best examples of how to inspire fun trophies.
One final thing of note - Assassin's Creed games have historically been fond of collectibles, and some previous titles in the series have overloaded in this department. These are completely dropped altogether for Origins, and there's not a single traditional collectible in sight. I've made it no secret in other reviews that I'm not a huge fan of collectible-based trophies, and this had the potential to throw up some real nightmare scenarios with the track record Assassin's Creed games hold with collectibles coupled with the vastness and depth of this big open world setting.
Moving around it is one thing, but when you add in tombs and pyramids with complex networks, big underwater environments and densely populated cities, I am at least thankful that Animus fragments are a thing of the past. At least for now, anyway.
This is also probably the longest amount of time I've invested in a Single Player only Assassin's Creed Platinum trophy. My save file clocked in at 69 hours and 52 minutes once I'd unlocked the final trophy, and that is mainly down to the high level of extra-curricular work this game makes you go through to earn every trophy on this list.
The level of time investment instantly puts it around the just below halfway mark of the difficulty scale, but this consideration also accounts for the mundaneness of the experience. The main questline makes up for around 30 hours of this total completion time, and I really enjoyed it as a gaming experience. However, the remaining 40 hours of slogging through the end-game just ticking off the same activities in some galactic-levels of content padding hurts the overall package.
Add a difficulty point for the War Elephants side quests, which are genuinely challenging, and you have a Platinum Difficulty Rating that slaps Origins bang in the middle of the scale. Fairly normal for an Assassin's Creed game.
The shift in focus to an RPG is a positive turn for the series. Some people may dislike it, but it makes you realise how dated the previous formula was, and the most important thing about change is that it's executed properly. It is for the most part here, and adapts well to the RPG makeover. It is a shame that one of the biggest things they thought they should maximise with a larger canvas was overloading on dull post-game content. There's way too much unnecessary copy and paste of the same things to do over and over. However, Ancient Egypt looks great and if you can stomach the grind, it is a manageable Platinum trophy.
Notable Trophies -
 |
| The End - Complete the last Main Quest. Old Habits - Complete all locations. |
No comments:
Post a Comment