Since its inception in 2007, Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series has been giving players a robust open-world action-adventure experience. For players who have played the Generation, Ezio Trilogy, Generation III and Renegade, although the process feels extremely satisfied, but after playing all the way for a long time, I think I am a little tired of this set of gradually formulaic open worlds.
Ubisoft was obviously not satisfied with the results of the later "Revolution" and a series of post-listing reviews, so it intended to start again in the "Origins" game, "Origins" not only pulled back the story of the earliest Egyptian story of the founding of the Invisible (Assassin) in the series, but also further moved closer to the ARPG popular in the world today in the core system, this time we will review the pioneering work of this mythological trilogy - "Assassin's Creed: Origins".
As always, Ubisoft Open World
Ubisoft's open world is stable and has a variety of elements on the map for players to explore, but to be honest, it's a formulaic open world that is overfilled, deliberately allows you to explore the map, and has a strong sense of work. Origins also follows Ubisoft's past formula, and after the prologue, the journey begins with Siwa, and then learns about the composition of the map: bird survey points, blacksmiths/costumes/stables, military strongholds around the country, side quests, various collection elements, ten patrol officers, arenas and racecourses, and robbery resource delivery teams.
These various and appropriately arranged elements are scattered on the game's map according to provinces and regions, allowing players to have enough things to do and collect, accompanied by certain rewards and rewards. For example, the more Bird Survey points you open, the more the Eagle's exploration range will increase, side quests or strongholds will give you experience points and money or even good equipment, and the robbery resource delivery team will allow you to get the resources needed to upgrade several major abilities. Although the side parts are not as good as the critically acclaimed "The Witcher 3", they will not feel very canned all the way through the level. Some of the side lines are decent and continuous, such as the first stage of talking and then investigating, and finally setting off to other places to save people or find things, and some tasks are even saved after a plot, which can also be regarded as a small surprise.
Overall, the scope of these elements is not out of the core of the Assassin series: stealth/combat and collection, I don't know if it is affected by the trend of works such as "The Witcher 3", many branches from receiving tasks to listening to NPC narration, to Conan-style investigation scenes, and then moving to the target stronghold or scene rescue/assassination target, the overall immersion and logic is not too abrupt. The hard point is that because the laying out can only start after receiving the task, it is still a bit lacking in strength on most of the one-time completion branches.
This kind of open world with a huge map and elements to match the main line has always been Ubisoft's fixed design, and the overall collocation of "Origins" does give people the motivation to complete these elements. Because of the import of RPG design, it is almost difficult to go straight to the main line, and players need to collect resources and equipment to carry out the main line. And this game also breaks up the main line part, abandons the traditional linearity, and is a bit like a phased taste, such as the first stage you need to kill several sequencers to advance to the next stage, and the order of these sequencers is not certain, the player can freely choose the order, which provides a good motivation, so that the main branch line and the map elements are better matched.
Catch up with the trend of ARPG
Since 2010, the gaming world has been moving towards the fusion of open worlds and ARPG, so you can see works like the Soul series and The Witcher 3 sweeping in, and Ubisoft is obviously aware of this, so it introduced the level, equipment and attribute system that only RPGs have in Origins. In the world of Origins, level is a major strength indicator, directly related to whether the player can cope with the current enemies and missions, and the level difference above 3 levels will start to become difficult or even impossible to carry out.
At this point, depending on the player's mentality, if you like the previous pure action adventure experience, you will feel that it is not a taste, as if it is restricted by levels and upgrades. For example, whether the previous one-hit must kill, now it becomes through the player level and whether the Hidden Blade upgrade is enough to decide, the introduction of this type of RPG design is the manifestation and trend so far, look at the soul series to grasp the right to speak to become a party manifestation, and the new God of War is also gorgeous rebirth ARPG, it can be seen that this is a trend that is difficult to violate, compared to the ACT to carry out a lot of practice and eat reaction and talent, players prefer to have a variety of collocation in equipment and human logistics.
The advantage of level system and equipment and attribute import is that compared with the limited upgrades and enhancements of traditional pure ACT, actual combat depends entirely on the player's reaction and technology, and this type of RPG design not only retains the excitement and excitement of real-time ACT battles, but also provides options in addition to hard work and talent - to upgrade and strengthen by playing various tasks and elements, and accumulate equipment and adjust attributes. Maybe in the DMC, it is impossible to do a variety of handsome combos or unlimited air to take away the boss like high play, and the technology is limited to experience the full pleasure of this pure ACT, but in "Origin", players can solve tasks or collect, and strengthen the level and ability, and then turn to fight against the strongholds and enemies that could not be beaten to ensure a certain degree of fun.
I don't know if it is a coincidence or the industry's general understanding of ACT VS ARPG is like this, after ARPG, many works will be a little dissatisfied with the action weight and system, and "Origin" is also such a work. At first glance, there are six or seven kinds of melee weapons, but the button configuration adopts the mainstream L1/L2 light and heavy attack separate design, plus each weapon is strictly speaking, it is actually a light attack 1-3 times, a heavy attack 1 down, even if the player wants to double-click the collocation, but will find that in fact, it does not make much sense. Because this kind of mainstream ARPG is designed to be used to adapt the pure ACT of the traditional partial fighting design, if the import of RPG elements also provides the richness of a large number of combo moves for players, wouldn't it be a slap in the face? Players will also be confused whether I want to fight combo or follow the RPG-enhanced gameplay.
After all, "Origins" is the first attempt at ARPG transformation in the Assassin series, so the weight of action and end has shrunk significantly, but with the design of bows and arrows and explosives, it is still barely acceptable with a basic bottom line. Most of the frontal battles are position dodging, occasional blocking, charging heavy attacks to break shields or long pressure light attacks, and then watching the final performance of each weapon module roughly two sets, if you compare it with the gorgeous performances like Assassin Three, you will feel that the sacrifice of ARPG is a bit big. At this point, the sequel "Odyssey" seems to make up for the ARPG action and combat experience well through a large number of skill switches, but there will still be a little sense of constraint.
Decent plot, subtle twists
Although the plot performance of "Origins" is generally better than that of "Odyssey", in fact, like Aya and cleopatra kicked away in the later stages of the game, and even the actions and laying out behind the orderer, the couple at the end of the conversation about breaking up can only be said to be decent. The main problem is that the laying out is not enough, because this kind of open world + ARPG requires players to spend a lot of time on the map exploration, the weight and length of the main line will be relatively linear and relatively shrinking, so not only the important son killing incident at the beginning is slightly abrupt, the wife Aya wants to wait for the player to arrive at Alexandra to see her for the first time, and the next main line is intermittently installed, Alexandra meets with Yanhou after the first time, and then a Aya sea mission, and then it is until the "Gabinian style" This main line only saw Aya again, followed by the climax of the plot main line mission "Aya Goddess Sword", a series of sharp turns down the main line progress.
But apart from a few intimate performances + the death of their son as a common motivation, the couple did not feel very deep about how deep the feelings were. Coupled with the fact that the main performance of the game for the son is only the flashback at the beginning, it is really impossible for people to have too much empathy and substitution for the Baye family and the persistent revenge, and the performance of this opening task does not give Aya a shot at all, so Alexandra really has a black question mark when they first meet. I only feel that Aya has her own ambitions for Yanhou's loyalty, and there is no real sense of "we are husband and wife".
In the same way, not laying enough for the son and breaking the problem too quickly to make the plot take a sharp turn in order to bring in the main line of revenge also leads to a very general sense of substitution. The preambler and Caesar's gang are also very little, the core of the two or three almost to the beginning of the "Sword of the Goddess" mission to the player, behind what they did not have too straightforward explanation and performance, the player can only grasp the assassination of the bottom of the orderer after seeing the anger of Baye, the last two big coffee orderers are basically the player in the late stage of the main line to realize their existence. And we are abandoned by Yan Hou is also, it feels that it is too fast to see any context, only the dialogue and cutscenes of the main line on the table, so this is why the main theme of revenge in "Origins" is very clear, and it also explains why Baye will part ways with Aya, but the sense of substitution is really very general. The only thing that is more throbbing in the individual is the final real participation in the assassination of Caesar in history.
The first trilogy of works that followed the past
After experiencing the splendor of the Ezio Trilogy and three generations of the American Story Series, Assassin's Creed saw a need for new stimuli and transformations. Especially after the performance and reputation of "The Great Revolution", although "Origins" obviously refers to some mainstream market trends, the overall level and play experience are very good, the scenery on the screen is beautiful, the map scale and open elements are also typical Ubisoft mode, the core RPG elements are also stable and steady, and the weight is enough for players to spend a lot of time in the game, just to explore this Egyptian land and strengthen their roles.
The only fly in the ointment is that, after all, "Origin" is the first work after the transformation, and the action module and skill gameplay can only be said to be basic level, whether it is the light and heavy attack design that moves closer to the mainstream ARPG, or the simple slash and slash that the action is biased towards the real, and the richness of the final performance and move skills is very general. But this also provides a lot of room for the later Odyssey, so that players can experience a variety of skills and refreshing battles in the Odyssey, so "Origins" plays the role of the pioneer of the Assassin Mythical ARPG trilogy very well.