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Calvarok

Assassin's Creed Origins

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started playing this the other day and was surprised to find a lot of the qualities Thumbs folk usually bring up when talking about a Far Cry 2-like.  Yes, it has hunting and crafting, but it's fairly simple and mostly just encouragement to stalk new kinds of prey through the dunes/savannas .  It's heavily inspired by The Witcher 3, though its rpg elements fall more on the action/stealth side, (numbers shoot out of people when you hit them) though there are also similarities to what MGSV was doing.

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Here's a story about the attached image.  I was hunting some lions and hyenas for their pelts to craft better armor. near one of the lions i killed i found a cave, in this cave was some money and a shrine, alone with a note about how some dude wanted to start a new life living with lions on the hill west of there. ( i should point out a previous quest established that this region worships a lion-god)

 

I made my way up the hill, found and fought the pride of lions, and found the poor dude and this note.

 

on my way back to the city I was scanning the area with my pet eagle, Senu (she's basically a drone and can mark targets) and noticed an armed convoy of gold heading into town.  I decided to attack it.  just as i started shooting arrows and swinging my sword on horseback, a lion also attacked the convoy and split their attention.  I hacked up two guys, and the final one had gotten knocked off his horse somehow and was cornered by the lion.  He was the one carrying the gold.  The lion finally noticed me, and turned on me instead as the soldier watched on, occasionally firing an arrow at me. I'd already built up my adrenaline gauge from fighting the other two guys, and while slicing at the lion it finally got high enough for me to trigger it.  for the weapon i was using, that basically meant i started flailing wildly and hacked the lion to death in seconds, then as my character literally roared, i rushed at the final man.  he was a level below me (the lion was my level) and didn't stand a chance.

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the game controls a lot better than some previous ones, and stealth is pretty fun too. you can light things on fire (if you want to light your arrow on fire you literally stand in front of fire and nock an arrow, it's great) which works as a great distraction, and do typical stealth stuff like whistle or hide in tall grass and bushes.  But I personally think the types of readers on this forum will be most interested in the kinds of things that can happen when stuff doesnt go according to plan or weird systems collide, like a rival group of bandits raiding the bandit camp you're trying to sneakily steal something from, or a sandstorm rolls in when you're in an isolated area. (you can't use your scouting eagle in a sandstorm)

 

Uh, also, if you play this game at all, play it on the hardest difficulty.  anything below that really won't challenge you to use everything you have access to.

 

 

fa3757bd-6b51-480f-8a4b-a3bf4bf6c06b (1).PNG

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I jumped into this, I enjoy it. I was trying to find reasons not to jump into it, but then I saw camel riding.

 

I really dig the Senu eagle / drone / bird eye view. The eagle can basically fly over the whole world map, it's impressive. Also photo mode is fun.

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Kirk Hamilton had a spot-on bit on Kotaku yesterday (https://kotaku.com/video-game-mini-maps-might-finally-be-going-away-1820011897) where he notices that Origins is among the recent spate of game to not feature a minimap, and how this is a grand improvement.

 

I couldn't agree more. The wait is on for all but the most sprawling of games to do away with maps altogether and force people to actually live and breath and visualize the landscape for themselves again.

 

(For reference: one of the first things I try to do in almost any immersive game is to switch off most if not all of the interface, I try to minimize looking at the map for navigation and the greatest sin of all is teleportation, which I sometimes succumb to because my flesh is weak.)

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Interesring about the lack of minimap. I definitely have not missed it. I do miss the traditional eagle vision to spot people through walls.

 

Senu the eagle works as a combination of a minimap and eagle vision, but does not work to see who is indoors. I have taken to using camera mode to spot who is inside a building or in the next room. I don't consider this cheese because the camera is leashed to a few meters from Bayek.

 

 

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I lit a boat on fire while two lions were loose on it, was a bit of a mess.

Also blew myself up in the lighthouse of Alexandria with an accidental sword swing.

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I am bummed that I'm not level 40 yet and the Anubis event is going away soon. I might go find him and get horribly murdered so that I can at least see the fight.

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13 hours ago, Cordeos said:

I lit a boat on fire while two lions were loose on it, was a bit of a mess.

 

That's beautiful.

 

9 hours ago, Gwardinen said:

I am bummed that I'm not level 40 yet and the Anubis event is going away soon. 

 

That's infuriating. 

I harbor a resentment towards timed events in games. I want to play games on my own time. See also: Hitman elusive targets.

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On 11/13/2017 at 1:00 AM, Gwardinen said:

I am bummed that I'm not level 40 yet and the Anubis event is going away soon. I might go find him and get horribly murdered so that I can at least see the fight.

 

They've said they will bring it back later so that people who aren't that far along won't miss out. Whether you'll still be playing the game at that point ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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On 11/13/2017 at 1:00 AM, Gwardinen said:

I am bummed that I'm not level 40 yet and the Anubis event is going away soon. I might go find him and get horribly murdered so that I can at least see the fight.

I assumed it was DLC and was surprised that i even got to play it on a timed schedule.

 

I was like level 38 and I turned the difficulty down to normal and got through it.  (did it again on hard when i hit 40, for fun)

It's a pretty fun fight, it introduces mechanics that seem simple at first but get harrowing as they are combined and intensified.

 

speaking of levels, i've spotted at least one level 41 enemy. (higher than the player's level cap) anyone else seen this? it might have been because it was a generic grunt class

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On 11/1/2017 at 1:16 AM, Roderick said:

Chris Plante had a spot-on bit on Polygon the other day (https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/27/16554856/assassins-creed-origins-games-ranked) where he ranked the Assassin's Creed games and he is 100% correct. Brotherhood #1.

wow, just saw this now.

 

Brotherhood is actually my number 1 least favorite assassins creed ever.  Ezio loses pretty much anything resembling a personality during that installment and just becomes The Guy Who Shows Up And Is Right About Everything, the plot is a messy generic open world bread-crumb trail (think GTA) the combat is extremely easy and stealth/any type of creative approach to missions is less often an option than in pretty much any other game in the series.

 

There is not a single aspect of that game where a direct comparison with any other entry would hold up except perhaps the modern/sci fi intrigue, which introduces some new ideas and has some good writing (and also is not what most of the game is about)

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Now mind you, I haven't played anything after Revelations, so I am by no means up to date with what AC has become since 2011(!). But I distinctly remember what I loved about Brotherhood: it's a tighter package and Rome is an amazing place to discover and traverse. It was the first time I felt that the series had nailed what it was trying to do. The first game was glorious in all its clunky ambition. The second game was so sprawling and disjointed that it barely held itself together. Then came Brotherhood, with its slightly decreased scale, and it simply clicked. There's an elegance and density to it that felt refined. Revelations built on that, without doing anything altogether surprising, so it was a bit of a letdown.

 

And I just totally loved running around in Renaissance-era Rome.

 

But of course, YMMV! I was just happy to see my opinion echoed in that Polygon bit.

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17 hours ago, Roderick said:

Now mind you, I haven't played anything after Revelations, so I am by no means up to date with what AC has become since 2011(!). But I distinctly remember what I loved about Brotherhood: it's a tighter package and Rome is an amazing place to discover and traverse. It was the first time I felt that the series had nailed what it was trying to do. The first game was glorious in all its clunky ambition. The second game was so sprawling and disjointed that it barely held itself together. Then came Brotherhood, with its slightly decreased scale, and it simply clicked. There's an elegance and density to it that felt refined. Revelations built on that, without doing anything altogether surprising, so it was a bit of a letdown.

 

And I just totally loved running around in Renaissance-era Rome.

 

But of course, YMMV! I was just happy to see my opinion echoed in that Polygon bit.

I mean, it's a perfectly playable game, I understand that. It definitely condensed and simplified and sanded down rough edges.  And like, that's the problem. It's just a watered down version of something more interesting and ambitious, which makes far less use of the idea of an "open world". It's fine to kind of absently make your way through it, but if you ever try to return to it there's really nothing for you any more.

 

The best AC games in my opinion are those where you can come back to them and learn and discover new things about them, and where you can attempt to solve problems differently than you did before. (or maybe some historical analogue for a grenade rolls down a hill)  Even if you never return to a game, there's a sense of satisfaction that comes with executing a plan and knowing you could have done something completely different; that what happened is something that you have personal ownership over.

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It's amazing how what started from this little game grew into such a huge franchise. I think I might mostly agree with the Polygon raking, except I stopped playing after Black Flag.

 

To me that game was really a pinnacle of what this series could reach after Brotherhood. I rank both Brotherhood and Black Flag very highly, but they are very different games.

 

Black Flag is actually held back by being an Assasin's Creed game, most of the missions resembling the other games felt like an obstacle on the way of this amazing pirate game, as did the modern day episodes. But I guess there's no way this game could have happened if it were not part of the series.

 

And then Brotherhood to me is the best example of what the original Assasin's Creed idea could be. Yes, maybe Ezio wasn't that great of a character in it, but this game was more about the gameplay than the narrative.

 

But seeing that the Origins, while considered somewhat of a reboot, is still ranked lower than what I consider the two high points of the series, I think I will give it a pass since I would really have to drop some other things to play such a huge game nowadays.

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Well to be fair i mentioned my complaints about brotherhood's gameplay as well as its narrative. (and I don't agree that it's mostly gameplay-focused considering how many heavily scripted events it has.) I've found that lists, popular opinion, and the majority of reviews are a very bad way of determining whether i'll like a video game, but that's just me of course.

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2 hours ago, Erkki said:

It's amazing how what started from this little game grew into such a huge franchise.

The original didn't really seem like a little game. They went all out on it from day 1. It couldn't have been cheap to make the original - it's been an AAA franchise the whole time.

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Agreed, AC1 was huge and already insanely ambitious. And I remember there being a few years between the first and second game, without all too much in the way of announcements and fanfare (they were probably quietly slaving away at the Ezio spectacle) where I was really hoping there'd be more. Well, that wish certainly came true.

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Didn't the team make Prince of Persia 2008 between AC1 and 2? I remember thinking at the time that they may alternate years and being really excited at that prospect...

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That might be true! I got around to playing PoP2008 a few years ago and it was just such a nice experience.

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Quick Question:

Does Oranges do the thing at the end of a mission, where if you fail an optional objective it honks at you and flashes a red X in the corner of the screen?

 

First time I noticed that was AC3. It was awful.

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