Its so nice to just travel the world in this game, and enjoy the sights.
Just in time for Valhalla!
I wish all of these open world games had discrete playthroughs of around 20-30 hours each. Add enough content to make each playthrough very different, sure, but let me do a single round in that time. I always putter out around 30 hours and then find it difficult to rotate back months later.
You may have posted this elsewhere, but - why do you like this more than odyssey? I have not played odyssey.
Ancient Greece is the most boring period of time ever. :P
While Kassandra had more personality and better dialogue choices than Bayek , I enjoyed his story more in Origins.
Pyramids > Greek Temples.
That applies to Odyssey as well. As it turns out, you can have too much of a good thing.
Disagree. 120 hours into Odyssey and I was ready to keep going.
The “too much” part will vary from people to people. ;)
How’s the DLC for this game? I see everything related to AC Origins and Odyssey is on sale right now. I’m trying to decide whether I should pick up Odyssey Gold or the DLC for Origins.
I finished both and enjoyed one more than the other.
Enjoyed: The Hidden Ones , proper conclusion to Bayek’s story.
Eh-so-so too many boss fights: The Curse of the Pharaohs , dealing with the egyptian afterlife and lots of grindy boss fights.
I liked The Hidden Ones more than Curse of the Pharaohs too. Both were decent stories, but the premise of the cool Egyptian afterlife(lives) was only partially cool.
But like the main game, both were about 30% longer than they should’ve been. They are obviously much shorter than the main game itself, but still dragged on a little longer than necessary.
I am cracking up right now. When bad guys fall off a cliff they give a loud scream on their way down. I was just in a fight and shield-rammed some bad guy who happened to be standing on a small bump on the ground. He falls on his back and lays there screaming like he’s falling for 200 feet. It was like something out of an Austin Power movie.
In other news. I’m level 39 at the moment and just wandering around till I’m 40 before I do some no-turning-back quest with Aya that I suspect will end the game.
I’d like to hear what you think about that particular bit when you’ve crossed it.
I played long enough to finally reach the title screen, which, in AC: Origins, means I just finished the main story quest. My brain is tired and I’ll sum up my thoughts tonight.
Which bit were you wondering about? After taking Aya to Alexandria there was a bit more game left than I expected, so I’m not sure which section you’re interested in. I’ll be happy to share my thoughts on it tonight.
You didn’t ask me, but i just finished this recently, and i felt the ending was off-key and not at all fulfilling. Basically (imo) chucking the whole plot aside in order to work these characters into the larger “Assassin’s Creed” narrative, imo.
The Hidden Ones DLC sorta wraps up the story pretty well imho.
I was talking specifically about
That I was interested in hearing your thoughts on!
Well let me start off by saying that Ubisoft made it super duper easy to find fault with a whole number of things they did story-wise in this game. Most of the biggest offenses started the moment you begin the level 31 quest Aya: Blade of the Goddess, which is the “no turning back” quest I’d posted about last night. Given the way they presented these two (almost completely unrelated) stories, I could probably find as many bad things to say about the final few quests of the game as I could positive things to say about the prior 95% of the game that came before it. And as such, I feel like I would end up being overly harsh on the game if I were to take the Aya stuff that seriously at all.
I’ll start with the stuff l liked about the game and see if I can avoid turning this into a rant, because I don’t feel like the vast majority of the 60+ hours I spent with the game actually warrants all the ammunition for a nice big rant that Ubisoft has so generously provided here.
This is the second Assassin’s Creed game I’ve ever played, but its the first one I ever played for more than an hour or two. Ten years ago I bought Assassin’s Creed 2 when I first picked up an Xbox 360, and I hated the game so much I put it down after an hour or two and never went back. In fact I spent so little time with it back then that I don’t actually remember a single thing about it, least of the the actual reasons I hated it. But the game was so off-putting to me that I managed to avoid the series completely until 2020, when I not only kept hearing how wonderful Origins and Odyssey were at reimagining the series, but also kept hearing two of my favorite games in the entire world positively compared to the Assassin’s Creed games, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor & Shadow of War. But even thought I dabbled in Assassin’s Creed 2 back in the day, I would honestly consider Origins as my starting point with the series proper.
As for Origins, it had a lot about what I liked so much about Shadow of Mordor/War and more. I loved infiltrating bases, and just diving right into the fray, killing almost everything that moved in one giant brawl, and then moving on to the next. Unfortunately for me, Origins seems to have been designed as much more of a stealth game than either Mordor/War; so the combat and skill systems weren’t quite up to the task for giving me the ability to manage the massive, chaotic brawls I’ve become so used to generating in those other games. And that’s not a fault of Origins so much as my expectations and taste for combat. I get that this is a game about assassination, sneaking, and subterfuge; I just happen to have a certain playstyle I naturally revert to when conditions permit. If I were to give one example of the differences, it would be how many more ways there are to deal with range attackers (archers & spearmen) in Mordor/War than here. But the combat here was sufficient to quench my thirst.
Except for a few key areas (like ridiculous modern day scenes, and the annoying science fiction stuff found beneath Pyramids and such), this game did a fantastic job of creating a gorgeous, believable world to explore and get lost in. I’ve never been very interested in Egypt, its tombs, or its “secrets.” I can point directly at all the speculative bullshit peddled on radio shows like Art Bell (Coast to Coast AM), and the various conspiracy nutjobs out there that want to attribute all that stuff to aliens, and secret conspiracies, and hidden future tech and such. I hate that crap. Oh my god do I hate that crap.
For the first time ever, I found myself actually interested in what Ancient Egypt was all about. In fact I’ve spent so much of my life actively avoiding reading or learning pretty much everything to do with this time and place, I was genuinely surprised to learn about all the political and social problems the country suffered from during one of its bigger hey days. For example, I had no idea Greece or Rome had fuck all to do with Egypt at this time, and never in my life would I have suspected Cleopatra was ever anything other than the most famous, powerful, and sexy Egyptian Pharaoh that ever lived. So in many ways the game was a genuine history lesson to me. Which is sad and unfortunate, because as far as I know there’s no evidence that Julius Ceaser was ever stabbed right in the dick by an upset woman, but now that image will be forever burned in my brain whenever I think about the guy going forward.
In addition to the political and social issues revealed to me, I was a bit of an unbeliever when it came to seeing Alexandria, or Roman Cyrene especially. I’ve just never put a whole lot of thought trying to imagine what these cities actually looked like at these times. Today’s ruins were good enough for me, and in my mind’s eye I always imagined such structures to be few and far between. So when I first showed up in an entire city where every square inch of it was carved, paved, and shaped by polished stone, I was a bit unbelieving at first. I first attributed these places as simply taking a bit of dramatic license, but nope, I was wrong. Apparently there were ancient cities around 40bc every bit as awesome looking as the typical high elf city in your average fantasy book. I mean, I knew specific structures existed, obviously, I just didn’t realize how everything else built up around them also looked. So in many ways this game actually gave me a new found appreciation for this area in this time period, and it leaves me wanting to learn more… which isn’t a feeling I get very often by playing video games.
As for the story itself, if it were up to me I would have removed Aya and her quest completely. I would have made the playable character of Bayek an interchangeable one so players to choose to play as either Bayek or Aya from the beginning. But there would have been no spouse, there would have been no marital woes, and there certainly wouldn’t have been some other story spun off from the main one that the game had been serving up the whole time.
The basic driving force behind the main story was a guy that was put in a situation where he accidentally murders his own son, and then the guy decides to go on a killing spree to avenge his son’s death. Sure, it turns out there was more to the story, such as the motivations for why Bayek was even brought into it to begin with, but that’s all this game really needed to be about. Everything Aya pursued, all the modern day stuff, the science fiction elements embedded in the old Egypt simulation, none of that mattered to the main story. Unfortunately I think Ubisoft’s idea of the “main story” and my own are two separate things.
So getting back to @Razgon’s question: Being that this isn’t a numbered entry in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, I feel like it would have been best to trim out all the (what I assume to be) connective tissues between this and the other games. And because, for all intents and purposes, this is my first entry into the series, I really didn’t care for the major derail at the very end of the game as it decided to detail exactly how some Assassin’s Guild was formed in the very last couple quests. Yea, those last ten minutes might have helped the game earn its “Origins” moniker, but shouldn’t the whole game have been about that?
I’m going to use a term that has genuinely annoyed me ever since it crossed the pond and made its way into US pop culture slang, but I can’t think of a better fit here: At the end of the day Bayek was cucked by the Assassin’s Creed guild that Aya creates, the same guild that long-time players probably know all about. He was cucked by the writers, he was cucked by Ubisoft, and he was cucked by his own small-minded naivety. After the events of the early game he was a man with a single driven purpose, but in the grand scheme of things he just didn’t matter. He wasn’t the true hero of this story, because his story isn’t the one Ubisoft wanted to tell with this game, that would be the creation of their Assassin’s Creed Guild. His entire quest for vengeance is cock-blocked by the writer’s need to tie this game into the overall series, and eventually he (and new players like myself) has to stand aside and watch helplessly while his wife hungrily rides the big stiff dick of a tentpole game franchise.
In the end I think the game was strongest when it was focused on Bayek’s quest. I think it was weakest when it tried to be the glue between all the other games in the series. As a stand alone game, too much of it left me with more questions than answers, and the game didn’t explain anything in context. But if I ignore all that stuff and just focus on the “main” story that I spent the most time pursuing: VENGEANCE, even that was sabotaged the need to give this game’s name, Assassin’s Creed Origins, some context and meaning.
But crippling story issues aside, if I just ignore the ending I had a great time.
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the word “cucked” or that sort of imagery used in a game review, but it kinda works! I’d have to agree with the general thrust (heh) of this write up. I found Origins’ core gameplay fun, and the setting very good. I found the story incomprehensible, and the way Aya was woven into the narrative as far from seamless and usually just annoying. Not because she’s Aya, who is a bad-ass, but because all that origin of the guild crap and the consequent sidelining of Bayek. Even if he is sort of a naïf, he deserved better.
oh wow - thanks! I don’t think I can do that massive reflection any justice.
I was just curious how you felt about suddenly losing acces to Bayak, and your usual tools for the ending of the game. I found that extremely jarring - especially the final battle, which gave me great consternation, I have to admit!
It reminded me greatly of the new Deus Ex, a game that prided itself on all its many paths through the game, but where the boss figths invalidated any kind of choice other than pure , stand and figth battles more or less.
This is me as well, but for different reasons that you, I can tell!