Assassin’s Creed Origins Preview (First Impressions)

Ubisoft flew me out to London to attend an early access capture sessions of Assassin’s Creed Origins.

I got to play the game for 3 hours total. In this preview I will share my first impressions of the game with you.

About 40 YouTubers or so from multiple countries attended the event. The part we played started at character level 12 halfway through the game. We got the play in the north-eastern corner of the map in 6 different regions and played on Xbox One X dev kits.

This preview is spoiler-free (no story details or plot info).

Graphics & Performance

The game runs exceptionally smooth compared to the last couple of Assassin’s Creeds. When I think about how laggy AC Unity was, this is a big step up. I don’t recall ever having frame drops. It was even running in 4K! This is a fantastic technological feat if you keep in mind how huge the open world is. However, it also has fewer NPCs on the screen simultaneously than Unity did. The world looks stunning and the graphics are the best in the Assassin’s Creed series to date.

Game World

It is by far the most content-rich Assassin’s Creed to date with the biggest map and most side activities. As you may already know it is set in Ancient Egypt. There are vast deserts, seas, mountains, towns, villages. Dangerous animals roam the wilds and bandits are found in certain places such as strongholds and obviously during missions. I’m not allowed to show the full map yet but the land mass is definitely much huger than anything you’ve ever seen in Assassin’s Creed. It’s all one big connected map. A true open world that you can travel entirely on foot or on a mount without ever having to use fast travel. The villages feel very much alive. People and pets are walking/running through the streets and their activities change from day to night. The desert was understandably lifeless with fewer animals and people. Fast travel is possible to settlements and viewpoints you have previously synchronized. Yes, viewpoints are still in the game and they are marked on the map as always. They were pretty easy to climb and aside from acting as fast travel points, also reveal more of the map.

Story, Side Quests, Side Activities, Gear

In the 3 hours I focused entirely on side quests and side activities. I was able to clear one region completely in that time and completed the bulk of side quests in the other 5 regions. Those were 6 of the smaller regions in the game and let me tell you 6 regions is only a very tiny fraction of the full map. I would speculate that completing the game 100% is going to take at least 50 hours, possibly more.

Also, the DNA Sequences for main missions are completely gone. You now have a quest log where you can see available main missions with their recommended level. The leveling system is also new. The game has a lot more RPG elements now. If you are too many levels below the requirement it will show the mission levels in red color. This means they are very hard to complete. If you are underleveled you will deal little damage to enemies and they kill you in 2-3 hits. All your gear also has a level attached to it. The gear has 3 different rarity levels. Blue (normal), purple (rare), yellow (best/legendary).

Blue and purple gear is pretty common. Enemies have a good chance of dropping loot. You get a gear piece for pretty much every side activity and for completing quests. I wasn’t able to find any yellow gear during my session. Presumably, they are fixed rewards for certain tasks. Most of the gear drops appear to be randomized, as was confirmed to me by a developer. What I was told is that quests tend to give a reward of a certain rarity but it’s not necessarily set in stone. Just some quests give fixed rewards that will be the same for every player. Gear drops from enemies and exploration-based side activities are entirely randomized. Interestingly, things you buy from blacksmiths can be upgraded to your own level at any time. They also sell purple (rare) items. Say you buy a rare spear from the blacksmith, you can come back after leveling up and upgrade the spear to your character level. You can also sell equipment that you don’t need.

Doing side activities plays a more essential role than ever before because you have to level up to play the next main mission. For example, our demo started on level 12. But the next main mission was level 15. So we needed to level up first and get better gear to stand a chance. The side activities also vary a lot and I didn’t encounter the same type of task twice. Sure, some are relatively short fetch quests, but they all have their own little story and NPC conversations to them. Very much like a classic RPG would. Most quests transition into longer quest lines with several objectives.

What I liked most is that some side quests and papyrus puzzles only give you a riddle to go on. They don’t always show markers or waypoints. Instead, one quest gave me a riddle “If your feet are firm in Letopolis, look west to the Pyramids. Within the golden dunes lies the Temple of a Million Years, guarded by stone lionesses”. So what I ended up doing was going to the highest viewpoint in the town of Letopolis and looked for Pyramids in the distance. There was a stone structure near the town and as I approached, saw the two lioness statues. Exploring the ruins finished the quest. I absolutely love this type of gameplay. It feels so much more rewarding to complete a quest like this and you’re not just following waypoints all the time. It’s what made old Assassin’s Creeds grow stale. They were just “go here, go there, kill this person, repeat”. Basically, running from waypoint to waypoint is just a simple matter of completion. But in AC Origins you have to use your brain and look around carefully to complete these quests. It really pushes you towards exploration and this kind of treasure hunting feels fitting for a game based in ancient Egypt.

Combat, Hunting & Skills

The combat has gotten a complete overhaul, so have the controls. In preparation for the gameplay event I replayed some old Assassin’s Creed games. In Origins I initially felt dumbstruck by the new controls, they changed pretty much everything. And that’s a great thing! The Assassin’s Creed series needed some fresh wind and Origins delivers just that. It took me about 2 hours to get used to everything. The demo didn’t have any tutorials because it took place halfway through the game. I imagine the main game will explain things more thoroughly at the beginning. In my case, though, I kept finding new control mechanics even after 3 hours, such as charging up power moves by holding R2/RT or that you can have your mount ride along the road automatically while you scout ahead with Xenu – your eagle companion. You can control the eagle to mark enemies and find mission objectives. He’s great for marking enemies in camps before engaging them. The enemies stay highlighted permanently after spotting them with the eagle.

The combat feels much more like Dark Souls now and is more challenging than any other AC game (though not as difficult as Dark Souls, just blocking with shield / dodging behind enemies feels the same). Your hidden blade stealth attacks no longer guarantee an instant-kill. I encountered elite enemies with a yellow mark above their head who would not want to die by a stab in the throat from behind. It does take a lot of their health away but the higher-level elite enemies often survive assassination attempts. All the normal enemies that were on my level or lower level died instantly from sneak attacks. The shield is a big addition. The combat revolves much more around blocking and dodging behind enemies now. You also have several types of bows. One bow lets you shoot a few arrows at once, others are good for precision shooting and let you zoom in, and some fire single arrows in quick succession which is great for hunting. There are also lots of types of primary weapons: one-handed sword, khopesh (curved sword), twin blades (two swords), mace, axe, scepter, spear, barehanded. Each weapon plays completely differently, has its own super move, charged attacks, kill animations, damage, attack speed, guard break, critical hit damage, special effects etc. For example, the Khopesh has a decent chance to make enemies bleed, twin blades give you higher adrenaline regeneration. If you fill up your adrenaline bar you can do a special super move by pressing R1+R2 (RB+RT). This is a super powerful attack that kills almost everything in one hit. Especially the Axe did a ton of damage with that move. Powering up weapons (hold R2/RT) leads to interesting moves, for example doing this with the axe will make you swing it in a circular motion around yourself for a few rotations and deals a lot of damage. You do quick attacks on R1 and strong attacks by pressing R2. Mixing quick and strong attacks leads to different combo animations. You can gain new moves through skill upgrades. For example, doing a super with R1+R2 has a skill that lets you throw an enemy’s weapon at the next enemy – which is really powerful and ‘kills two birds with one stone’. There are TONS of weapons for each type. I never found the same weapon twice in 3 hours. They all looked slightly different and can have better or worse special effects and DPS (damage per second). The damage is not shown on a per-hit basis. Instead, the weapon stats always give you a damage-per-second value. Heavy weapons (e.g. axe) obviously do more damage per hit and light weapons (e.g. twin blades) attack much quicker. I liked all of them and it was great fun to try out each weapon and switch between them. I did best with the spear and axe, yet every weapon seems to have its own advantage and none of them were completely underpowered. You may also find that certain weapons work better against certain enemies. A slow heavily armored human can easily be overwhelmed by an axe or spear. A fast feline predator requires different tactics.

Some basic moves you are used to, such as jump attacks have to be unlocked through the skill menu first! So if you played previous Assassin’s Creeds, the functions you’re used to may not be available from the start. I counted 53 skills total. In the demo the only way I obtained skill points was from leveling up. The basic stuff costs only 1 skill point and the advanced skills can cost more.

Hunting also seems to play an essential part as each type of animal drops different resources. I could not determine what all of these are used for, but it’s presumably for gear upgrades. One quest also had me deliver a bunch of resources gathered from animal hunts. I was fighting crocodiles & hippos (both of which attack boats in the water), snakes, vultures, hyenas, lions and other wildcats. The full game will have a lot more animal types yet to be revealed. Some of them are pretty hard to take down actually. Especially when you encounter them in bigger groups and run out of arrows. Fighting a group of lions with only melee weapons is quite the challenge. The same can be said for fighting big groups of human enemies. Because your health does not fully recharge in combat you must keep track of your health bar at the bottom of the screen. Outside of combat the health fully refilled automatically. During combat it recovered to 30%. Problem is that 1-2 hits take away 30% of your lifebar so you have to play carefully and avoid being hit. Enemies often have bows, too. While some fight you in melee others will hang back and try to shoot you. You can still counter melee attacks like in previous AC games but this no longer results in an instant-kill.

Collectibles & Completion

What would Assassin’s Creed be without some collectibles? The ones I found were stone circles. There are 12 of them in the game and they are marked by white question marks on the map, same as all other side activities. So going to every question mark will eventually lead to all of them. The papyrus scrolls can also be considered collectibles. They lead to miniquests that require you to solve one of the aforementioned puzzles where you don’t have a quest marker and just a cryptic clues for a location you must find by yourself in the open world. Other than that I have not encountered collectibles, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more. I didn’t get to explore any pyramids at all, though I was told there are lots of them and they contain interesting rewards.

I could not see the trophies & achievements yet. They will be largely completion based, I suppose. Probably finding all stone circles, unlocking all skills etc. If we need 100% completion it’s going to take well over 50 hours to earn the platinum. The enemy areas on the map went up to level 40 which appears to be the level cap (side note: during 3 hours I went from level 12 to level 17).

Free DLC Announced

During the capture event, a free DLC scheduled for early 2018 was announced. It will be a guided tour through ancient egypt. You’ll visit all the pyramids, can watch how mummifications were done etc.
This mode will remove all enemies and side quests from the game. Instead, you’ll go on a big exploration tour and learn more about Egypt. This mode was done in cooperation with Egyptologists for an authentic & informative experience. I quite like the idea of it because for one the huge open world is amazing for this and also it’s like an interactive documentary that lets you explore things by yourself instead of just watching them in a TV documentary.

Verdict

Origins is the first Assassin’s Creed Role-playing game. The one-year break was well worth it, the game runs much smoother than previous titles (even at 4K), has the biggest world and most side activities of the series, completely changes the controls and combat (it now takes after Dark Souls), the difficulty is higher than before, the side quests have their own little side-stories and I never got the same objective twice. There are tons of weapons, the Egyptian setting is amazing and the world looks beautiful with a lot to explore. All this is very promising so far — Origins could be the best Assassin’s Creed in years! It certainly jumped to the top of my ‘most anticipated game of the year’ list.

Want to see some gameplay? Check out my early access playlist: