Origins is the product of what almost became a dead end series, retold stories with unfinished and unpolished engines, broken game mechanics and headline worthy mess of game launches.
Ubisoft is easily a company known best for their failures rather than their achievements, but this almost certainly turns that around.
Origins is completely redone from the ground-up, abandoning most everything that made up what the franchise was before it, embracing completely new RPG mechanics and mythological themes. Combat is about stat damage and space-boxes, rather than button mashes and sword-dancing.
While most everything redone is absolutely for the better, it is not completely without fault. The story of Origins should have been one of the most interesting, and honestly, it ranks among the series' worst. The actual story itself is interesting, but how it is told and how you as the player move it along is rarely entertaining. Thankfully, the story unravels without the franchise's tedious sequence system, and instead gives you a number of targets and quests to start your investigations on their whereabouts.
At times, the story does take you to interesting places, most notably for me, the main character, Bayek, buried to his neck in desert sand by one of his targets who had poisoned him in the cutscene before. All around him, you see skulls of the victims before you, heat waves that manipulate the environment outside of 10 feet from the camera, and it felt genuinely claustrophobic and unnerving.
These moments are rare, however. Most times, it's waypoint to waypoint, talk to someone, murder someone, quest over.
There is so much more going on in Origins outside of that though, and that's the most important part for me here. The environments of the desert, the ruins and towns you travel to are immensely detailed, and builds a world unlike most any I've played.
Trekking across the desert is a highlight for me, scouting out the area with Senu, Bayek's loyal eagle, to find the best, or most scenic route to a new province I had yet to discover was unlike most anything I've experienced in a game before. Often times, I'd be riding my horse across a vast oasis and suddenly over a hill find strange ruins, or giant mountains, or even deep structures hidden under the sand, which is one of the scariest things I've found exploring an open world, btw.
The side quests are also a highlight, a lot of them are about Bayek and the things he had done before you first take control of him, and I really enjoyed that. Coming across a character I had never seen before, and both that person and Bayek reacting to eachother and reminisce over an event I haven't seen, and what Bayek had done during said event was super interesting to me. Stories would be told over multiple side quests and built Bayek as a character in a new way, and it felt fulfilling to realize that the whole arc was completely optional.
Origins breathes life into a series I almost gave up on, and one I had previously fell in love with, and all it took was what most franchises cannot seem to do: move on. Origins moves on from it's stale combat that was once seen as enjoyable in a time before now, combat systems have changed and origins moved with it.
This is easily a must-play, it's stale story is a small hump in an otherwise perfect comeback, and it's experiences far outweigh any gripe I could've had with it.
Ubisoft is easily a company known best for their failures rather than their achievements, but this almost certainly turns that around.
Origins is completely redone from the ground-up, abandoning most everything that made up what the franchise was before it, embracing completely new RPG mechanics and mythological themes. Combat is about stat damage and space-boxes, rather than button mashes and sword-dancing.
While most everything redone is absolutely for the better, it is not completely without fault. The story of Origins should have been one of the most interesting, and honestly, it ranks among the series' worst. The actual story itself is interesting, but how it is told and how you as the player move it along is rarely entertaining. Thankfully, the story unravels without the franchise's tedious sequence system, and instead gives you a number of targets and quests to start your investigations on their whereabouts.
At times, the story does take you to interesting places, most notably for me, the main character, Bayek, buried to his neck in desert sand by one of his targets who had poisoned him in the cutscene before. All around him, you see skulls of the victims before you, heat waves that manipulate the environment outside of 10 feet from the camera, and it felt genuinely claustrophobic and unnerving.
These moments are rare, however. Most times, it's waypoint to waypoint, talk to someone, murder someone, quest over.
There is so much more going on in Origins outside of that though, and that's the most important part for me here. The environments of the desert, the ruins and towns you travel to are immensely detailed, and builds a world unlike most any I've played.
Trekking across the desert is a highlight for me, scouting out the area with Senu, Bayek's loyal eagle, to find the best, or most scenic route to a new province I had yet to discover was unlike most anything I've experienced in a game before. Often times, I'd be riding my horse across a vast oasis and suddenly over a hill find strange ruins, or giant mountains, or even deep structures hidden under the sand, which is one of the scariest things I've found exploring an open world, btw.
The side quests are also a highlight, a lot of them are about Bayek and the things he had done before you first take control of him, and I really enjoyed that. Coming across a character I had never seen before, and both that person and Bayek reacting to eachother and reminisce over an event I haven't seen, and what Bayek had done during said event was super interesting to me. Stories would be told over multiple side quests and built Bayek as a character in a new way, and it felt fulfilling to realize that the whole arc was completely optional.
Origins breathes life into a series I almost gave up on, and one I had previously fell in love with, and all it took was what most franchises cannot seem to do: move on. Origins moves on from it's stale combat that was once seen as enjoyable in a time before now, combat systems have changed and origins moved with it.
This is easily a must-play, it's stale story is a small hump in an otherwise perfect comeback, and it's experiences far outweigh any gripe I could've had with it.