With my Odyssey playthrough into the Atlantis DLC, after wiping out the Cult and the Order, I decided to dive into Origins. Man, what a good setting. Not as spiffy or as sprawlingly massive as in Odyssey, maybe, but it’s very atmospheric and evocative. The game mechanics are not quite as slick as in Odyssey, either, but despite some different (and essentially unchangeable) control key differences, I’ve adapted pretty well.
The setting is interesting, if a bit odd. I mean, if you wanted hard-core Egypt stuff, you’d go Old Kingdom or Middle Kingdom I would thing, but that would put you waaaay back and make it pretty hard to tie into more familiar stuff. As it is, the late Ptolemaic period gives us traditional Pyramids ‘n’ Stuff Egypt, albeit even then pretty well plundered, post-Hellenic era Greeks, at the tail end of their hegemony, and of course the newbies, the Romans, who are coming into their own. All in all a ton of stuff to draw on–chariot races, triremes, crocodiles, snakes!
I just read a book (Ghost on the Throne) about the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s death. I never knew that his intent was to buried in Siwa, where Origins begins. Apparently, it was there he, um, discovered that he was the son of the god Amun, and that’s where he wanted his tomb to be.
Apparently, Perdiccas had Alex’s corpse sent back to Macedonia, but it was intercepted by Ptolemy (the first one, Soter) somewhere in the Levant and hijacked to Memphis, where Ptolemy had set up his capital until Alexandria could be built. It ended up in Alexandria, supposedly. So it never made it either to Macedonia, the traditional burial place of the Argeads, or to Siwa, where Alexander wanted to be interred. But it does explain why your Bayek is from Siwa. Also, reading about how the corpse of Alexander was regarded as nearly magical if not divine by people of that time, it makes the whole bit with the Isu and the tomb of Alexander, etc. make more sense (ok, as much sense as any of the AC stuff makes, which is precious little).
Still blown away by how much stuff there is in this game, just how damned big it all is. But there’s also room for wide-open expanses, never ending deserts (ok, do they just feel never ending I guess). I’m enjoying working on crafting new gear and finding better stuff, and doing all sorts of random missions along the way.
I just arrived in Krokodilopolis (which sounded a lot cooler than it ended up looking) and like half my map is still black. The funniest thing is my Bayek just stumbled upon a storyteller who had a tale to tell about Aya, which led into one of her seafaring missions. That was pretty cool!
Yeah, the way they segued between Aya and Bayak is pretty neat. Not as extensive as Syndicate, where you play as Jacob and Evie, swapping back and forth, but still an interesting way to get her side of things and of course some naval action.
I finished up the main story content last night, and I’m really pleased with how this turned out. I had a lot of fun exploring Egypt and meeting all the characters, and the story went to some really interesting places too. Really cool seeing the actual origins of the Assassins, though we’re still left a bit clueless about the Templars, who aren’t even the Templars in this game, just the mysterious Order. I assume the order infiltrates and assumes the mantle of the actual Templars once they assume their place in history, but I guess that’s another story. It was also interesting to see the game plainly state what’s just been subtext in earlier games: that the Brotherhood came about as a counter to the Templars, and exist only to check and thwart their purposes, they are not two equal and opposing forces throughout history.
I was also interested to see how much present day content there was, not that there was all that much but going in, I kind of figured there wouldn’t really be any. But it’s still an AC game, and still carries on its meta-plot in its own small way. Kind of funny how much focus is still on Desmond at this point.
Other small touches that amused me, like the ending montage showing Bayek’s ambivalence at new recruits’ cutting off their left ring finger as a show of fealty, despite his own finger being lost while carrying out an assassination. Also, Aya’s presence during, and actually initiating, the assassination of you-know-who (I’ll spare the spoiler for those who may not have played yet). I’m going to jump into the DLC shortly, then I’ll take a break from AC for a while before getting into Odyssey. I wouldn’t want to burn out since I hear a lot of good things about that one.
And now I am done with the DLC, and consequently done with Origins. Overall, quite positive. I would have been fine if the main game had been all the content - the Hidden Blade and Curse of the Pharaohs DLCs were ok, but didn’t blow my mind. I think I liked Hidden Blade best, because it was just a short little bitesize adventure, you get in, get out, no time to get bored. I think the content of Curse of the Pharaohs was better but man, it was just too damned big. If Hidden Blade was Ubisoft saying, ‘hey did you like Origins? Well here’s a little more!’ then Curse of the Pharaohs was them going, ‘and here’s a whole hell of a lot more!’ It was cool playing detective across Thebes but I was just wearing down by the time I got to the end. So it’s fitting that with that, I close out my time in Egypt. Totally worth it, on the balance.
Yeah I was superbored with Pharaohs by the end and couldn’t wait to be done with it. Just too much repetitiveness even for Ubisoft standards.
Now I just hope the DLC for Odyssey will be more interesting/less fillery. I have 134 hours in that game and both DLCs and few Lost Tales of Greece still ahead of me.
I need to get back to it but my gaming time is limited and because I REALLY want to give Odyssey a spin, I put it aside and picked up Origins again.
I know, I should just go straight to Odyssey, but wanted to give Origins another chance after not enjoying it much last year (though, only played it for about two hours). Liking it more this time due to turning off the HUD/map pointers.
That was my main issue before - like with most of these Ubisoft games, it just feels like a checklist of stuff to do and the icons all over the HUD just further enforced that feeling. Now, I’m just walking wherever I fancy and taking quests as I come across them, rather than feeling an obligation to stop everywhere the icons pop up, Much more fun this way. Quest pointers need to go.
I liked Syndicate. More than Unity, though neither was perfect.
I sorta break AC up into generations:
The first was a beta test.
The three AC2 games were fun game iterated very slightly each time.
AC3 and Black Flag I lump together for their naval combat, even if it wasn’t that prominent in AC3. I assume Rogue would fit here as well, but it’s the only “major” AC game I haven’t played.
Unity and Syndicate were sort of technological reboots but a return to the old formula. So they represent another generation, but one that sort of obsoleted a previous generation, not one that expanded the scope of the franchise.
And then Origins and Odyssey represent another generation as they (apparently) sort of merge all of the game world styles but shift to more RPG elements.
So all of that to say, if you don’t care at all for the overall narrative, but want to get a flavor for the history of the franchise pre-Origins, you should just play Black Flag and Syndicate. I think Syndicate represents the best of the original “here’s a sprawling city with fun architecture, go nuts!” formulas. Even if your dumb base was a train that never went near the missions you wanted.
I still need to try the other generations. I made some progress in AC3, but I got stuck on the part where Haytham has to do some complicated thing at a Fort.
Origins question: any reason to keep weapons that don’t have any obvious appeal to me, and if not, should I dismantle or sell?
Should I try to at least hang onto a good option in a few different classes, or am I good to go if I get, say, a spear that I’m happy with and never want to bother with axes, or whatever?
That exact part put me off AC games all the way up to Origins, which is so different as to be virtually unrecognizable as the same series. Mind you, I think it’s great, and I frankly like it better than the old model.
I keep the ‘best’ (stats-wise) of each weapon class, just in case, and so I can experiment. But in my experience, I was usually more resource deprived than money deprived, so I usually dismantled extra weapons.
I think my top three AC games would probably have to be AC3, Brotherhood, and Unity. I can’t really rank them though because I like them for all different reasons. But I guess one common thread is that they took the series in new and different directions. I don’t really dislike any of the others, I just found it harder to maintain interest if the game felt like it was following a formula too closely. I liked Origins well enough certainly, but sometimes it feels like ten pounds of poop in a five pound bag.
