I played Assassin’s Creed Origins for an hour yesterday, with one of the game’s level designers at my side pointing out cool stuff.
Combat is now based on hitboxes, meaning you don’t automatically close the gab when attacking… you need to close in and strike accurately.
Climbing either is faster or at least feels faster. And our hero Bayek can climb anything.
Because (some) Assassin’s Creed fans demanded it and have demanded it in game after game… you can toggle your hood on and off.
You can run around on land, but you can also dive underwater for treasure, though you might get distracted by one of the game’s hippos attacking a crocodile.
There are stargazing puzzles. And they are gorgeous. Check this out:
The game is a complex simulation with tons of characters running through routines day and night. At any moment, you can hold down R3 and fast forward time, which lets you take advantage of how that moves characters through their routines. Here’s the transition, which is also just a really cool demonstration of this game’s impressive tech:
You use your eagle to fly up and survey the scene, and anything the eagle sees is tagged. That includes enemies who you can then sneak up on and kill. Apparently the eagle can be upgraded to do a finishing attack, though I didn’t see that in action.
Your eagle can fly far away from you without de-syncing. The eagle can’t fly all the way down to the surface, but it can get pretty high. The eagle mark a lot of icons of interest to the game, including supplies being carried by enemy soldiers on the game’s roads.
There’s one upgrade on the skill graph that lets you poison corpses. Do this and other guards who check out the corpse will become infected. One of the developers told me you can toss a poisoned body onto the back of a horse and then scare the horse into running into a crowd of enemies. A clever strategy!
There was more, but I’ve got E3 appointments to rush off to, folks. Expect more AC:O coverage on Kotaku in the days to come.
Comments
14 responses to “Nine Cool Things I Noticed While Playing Assassin’s Creed Origins”
Can the Eagle poop on command though?
Looks good, but like every AC game I’ll quite happily wait a few months after release to give them time to fix the majority of bugs.
Very cool. However, better run this article through the spell check one more time. Seriously.
Give em a break, it’s hard for them to keep up with writing all the E3 news *and* making sure it’s correct… That 24-hour-news cycle is at it’s worst for this lot through E3.
Thanks for the consideration. You’re right, E3 is a nightmare in that sense.
Sounds like the eagle is basically the same as the owl from Far Cry: Primal. I wonder how the game actually felt to play though – AC game got pretty stale for a while there, and while I’m happy they’re returning to the Middle East (the first AC was still my favourite), it needs to distinguish itself from the first game with more than just a few setting differences.
my main concern and what really what bores me after too long in the other games… they have these huge and interesting looking cities (even if they completely fall basic geography, like in the London one) but its all but set dressing. there is no immersion, few npc’s etc. For large cities they are completely empty of variety and interactivity.
My goodness that shot overlooking the Nile, (I’m assuming it’s the Nile) makes me want an 3rd person RPG set in ancient Egypt.
What, like Assassin’s Creed: Origins?
I’ve actually never touched an AC title before haha so I wouldn’t know if the games have enough RPG elements to pass off as one. I know there’s a lot of open world exploration so that’ll probably do but yeah, I definitely wouldn’t say no to a proper RPG set in ancient Egypt. Hell, there are a lot of historic places on this earth that I’d love to play an RPG in.
It looks very Witcher 3, if that helps? 😉
Is the combat any better and are there actual stealth mechanics yet? Haven’t played one since Black Flag but only ever liked 2 and 4.
Yes, hitbox based attacks! I saw the arena combat video too and with a bit more polish the combat could really scratch that Dark Souls itch! Did they say there’d be big boss fights?
Some videos have been teasing a giant snake fight.