Assassin's Creed Origins

The behemoth took a year off, but has it returned a changed series?

- Samuel Roberts

I sometimes wonder if I expect too much from Assassin’s Creed. For me, from its hold-down-a-single-button platforming, to combat that requires little more than a press of a counterattack button, to open world maps littered with empty activities, I struggle to see the positive influence it’s had on big games. It’s a series that awkwardly plays itself. But even I have exceptions. Black Flag’s intricate and skill-based sea battles seemed to have the opposite design philosophy behind it, and I think that’s why people liked it. I think the rest of the game should be that interactive, including the platforming and melee combat. Why isn’t it?

Jean Guesdon was the creative director of Black Flag, and is now helming Origins, which has been in development for three-and-a-half years. While not a reinvention of Assassin’s Creed, it’s learned lessons from a few of the grievances I listed above. Origins has a revamped combat system, narrative quests instead of an overstuffed mini map, and a gigantic landscape to explore. It’s as close to a reinvention as Assassin’s Creed has got since it began ten years ago, yet my first impression is that it still feels a bit too similar. Platforming controls the same and my first quest – retrieving something from a ship that a man is falsely accused of stealing – wouldn’t be out of place in any of the previous Assassin’s Creed entries. Then again, a game of this scale is difficult to show off properly in a 25-minute demo with a single mission.