Games are all wanting to jump on the Sandbox bandwagon.
Some, Like Grand Theft Auto and Elder Scrolls, took to it early, and very naturally.
Others, like Ghost Recon, I feel are still struggling to adapt.
But Assassin’s Creed Origins finally gets it right and I feel it’s become the game
it always wanted to be.
I’ll admit, I don’t religiously follow this series.
I occasionally pick up the latest game, play it for a few hours, get bored and forget about
it again for a while.
So maybe it’s been good for a few games, who knows.
But Origins is the first to have held my interest for the duration of the storyline!
This won’t be a review, only a look at Origin’s sandbox and 5 reasons why I enjoy it.
NUMBER 1 – LEVELLED AREAS.
Although not even the same genre, while exploring Ancient Egypt, I kept being reminded of the
Elder Scrolls.
In Morrowind you start in a low level zone, and as you explore you find that different
parts of the world have differently levelled enemies.
The series then moved away from that with Oblivion and Skyrim, instead having the entire
world match your level so that everywhere’s a challenge, but not too much of one.
As much as I love Skyrim, I’ve always felt that something’s missing from this approach,
and playing Origins I realise what that thing was.
The world of Assassins Creed is split into well-labelled, differently levelled areas.
And although early on you won’t stand a chance against enemies in the higher zones,
you’re still free to explore them.
This works because there’s still value to be had from exploring these zones.
Provided you remain on your mount and keep moving, you’re fairly safe.
You can climb the towers, hunt most animals, and wait ‘til nightfall and you can even
loot the outposts.
The only thing you can’t do is to defeat the enemies.
I mean, if you had any hope of doing that then there wouldn’t be much point in levelled
areas, would there.
I love this approach.
If your goal is to beat the game as soon as possible then of course you stick to doing
quests in your current levelled area.
But for those who simply want to explore, it gives you a great reason to do so.
My first few hours with a game tend to be when the memories are formed.
Everything’s new and exciting, then after a while you feel more at home and begin to
know what to expect.
You stop struggling and experimenting with stuff because you’ve found the ‘right’
way of doing things.
But Levelled areas delay that feeling a bit.
Nothing’s necessarily DIFFERENT about these parts; you’ll be facing the same kinds of
enemies and so on, but it still FEELS different.
Kind of ominous.
Like an adventure!
Also, there are terrifying high-levelled assassins who roam about the world looking for you to
keep you on your toes even in low level locations.
There is something a bit scary about these…
certainly more so than the dragons in Skyrim!
NUMBER 2 – LARGE EXPANSES OF NOTHING.
Although this would typically be frowned upon in most games, I think they added to the experience
in Origins!
You can’t go 10 seconds in Skyrim without falling into a cave or bandit hideout of sorts.
And this approach has its appeal.
But by hiding things beyond large expanses of nothing, travelling on Assassins Creed
feels like an adventure.
You only have to do it once and then you can quick travel there from then on, so it’s
not some major inconvenience.
But the first time I trekked across a new and unfamiliar landscape really felt special
and is something I remember fondly.
Finally reaching a distant pyramid that you’ve seen on the horizon for hours already is an
achievement in its self!
There were times I intentionally ventured into unknown, high-level zones and I got a
real sense of adventure.
In being very small in the grand scale of things.
This is all helped by the game being BEAUTIFUL.
It’s more than just detailed- it’s a work of art, doing to Egypt what Skyrim did to
mountains.
Sand rolls down hills.
Water ripples convincingly!
Cloth flops about as you run through it.
There’s something about this combination of graphics and adventure that tickles my
adventuring gspot.
Ew.
NUMBER 3 – OPTIONAL GRIND ‘Grind’ is a dirty word but zoom out far
enough and everything in a computer game IS a grind.
I think what matters is how fun an activity is, and whether you’re forced to do it.
I won’t class Assassins Creed’s main story and missions as grinds, cos that’s kind
of the reason for playing it.
But its side activities are definitely ‘grinds’.
But how can I put it… rather than them coming to you, you come to them?
Which makes them okay, since I only discovered them because I saw value in doing them and
how they’d help the remainder of my playthrough.
Unlocking all of the quick-travel towers, for instance.
My exploring I talked about earlier was in part driven by these.
I could just wait until I needed to go there in the storyline to unlock them, but I quite
enjoyed making a daytrip out of it, into a dangerous area and in unlocking a handful
of these at a time- often getting sidetracked on my way to a monument by other activities
I’d uncover along the way.
This unlocking doesn’t make much of a difference in the grand scale of things, but it’s still
rewarding when, later on, I can save time thanks to my earlier adventures.
I used to see a game as being something you beat 100%.
This attitude doesn’t carry over into the sandbox era too well, since they’re typically
MASSIVE and full of low-effort, repetitive content.
One of my memories of an earlier Assassins Creed game was of chasing a piece of paper
over the rooftops, asking myself ‘why am I doing this’.
So removing my OCD-like urge to 100% beat a game has certainly helped me to appreciate
this kind of game more.
The grind is there- don’t get me wrong- but if you give resource collecting a go and
decide it’s not for you then you can happily get through the rest of the game without touching
it.
I found I still accidentally made progress with it while running about the game doing
other things any way.
I recently did a video on my grinding in Final Fantasy 9 and the same applies here- doing
so helps my playthrough in some small way that I can appreciate and have pride in, but
that I never felt I HAD to do.
The resources you collect in this game can be used to level your equipment up.
I mean, you could just rely on upping your character’s level to make the game’s quests
easier but taking time to pimp out your equipment gives you a small but appreciated advantage
over people of roughly the same level as yourself.
It’s a nice way of having your grinding pay off, regardless of how long has passed
since you did it.
I have to say, I did find it funny that in my hunt for crocodile skins I encountered
a quest where you help somebody to protect these creatures against the Romans.
She’s there blabbering on about how valuable these creatures are and your character’s
nodding along and agreeing, all the while harvesting their skins to make his belt a
bit better.
The other resources are obtained by ambushing trade cards and raiding ships in-game, which
you can easily while away a few hours doing since funny stuff does happen- like THIS.
I’m amazed at the distance that supply crates are calculated from.
You use your mega-binocular-eagle (who’s super useful, by the way) to find distant
ships and carts and there’s always a moment of panic as you worry they’re going to travel
out of range and cease being rendered… but they never do.
This is the one bit of the game that eventually got too grindy for me to want to complete-
you raid the same ship over and over again and fight the same 5 or so soldier types!
I’d like more variety- though to its credit, Origins is already maxing out how many 7 foot
soldiers it can get away with.
This is one area in which Shadow of War or Skyrim has the upper hand since they can chuck
dragons and trolls your way and you don’t think twice about it, while there’s only
a finite number of drug-induced boss fights that Origins can get away with.
NUMBER 4 – SOLID CORE GAMEPLAY I said at the beginning that I haven’t played
every Assassins Creed.
It’s a bit like Far Cry or Call of Duty for me- I tend to skip a few games, so when
I do experience latest one I see the advancements of several games all at once.
But yeah, if you want to see how far we’ve come, why not compare it- once again- to Skyrim!
I think it’s fair to say that the gameplay wasn’t cutting edge even in 2011, but most
it was at least acceptable.
In comparison to modern titles, however, it’s beginning to look pretty dated.
The stealth mechanics are atrocious and could really benefit from the climbing system that
Origins has.
I don’t think this game’s combat system’s quite as robust as Shadow of War’s, but
it’s perhaps a bit more challenging.
And if I sound a little obsessed with Skyrim in this video, I guess it's because it’s
apparent that Origins has borrowed and built upon what I love about the Elder Scrolls.
And in the process, perhaps serves as a sneak-peek at some of the improvements that we’ll see
in the next Elder Scrolls game!
Also, didn’t know where else to say this but an honourable mention to this game’s
soundtrack, which is an unlikely yet completely suitable mix of old instruments… and Inception.
It’s musical, it’s memorable and ranks among my favourite game soundtracks to date.
Another similarity to Skyrim.
OKAY I’ll stop mentioning that game now.
At one point I had a long chat with my girlfriend, and now all that either of us can remembers
about it was this game’s menu music, which was playing in the background the whole time.
Dank.
NUMBER 5 – CANNON FODDER NPCS Those poor innocent people.
What did they do to deserve being placed in a world with me?
These people go about their daily business and I come along and ruin it in some way.
But they’re the real stars of the show.
They get attacked by crocodiles so that you can come along and save them.
They’ll casually steer their ships towards you if you’re swimming so you can easily
steal their vessel.
I love how Bayek promises them that he’ll return it, before capsizing it in some extravagant
way.
The game has some half-hearted ‘protection’ system in place where it’ll reload the game
if you kill too many innocents, but you can get away with a LOT.
In fact, I saw it as a challenge and quickly got into the habit of swiping at groups as
I rode past, or in setting fire to children playing in the streets.
Innocents in this game act as amusement.
And yet, despite all this, when I was being attacked by crocodiles, one still rode his
boat over to try and save me.
It made me feel terrible.
Though I still stole and capsized it.