And so we reach the third game that came out
on Let's All Piss In Each Other's Mouths Day,
the one that I was hotly anticipating with
very familiar feelings of exhausted dread.
Yes, it's the new Sasso Creedo, Sasso Creedo
Ridgey Rodgey.
Assassin's Creed is a once interesting historical
adventure series that became part of the collective
Ubisoft sandbox, a sort of amorphous blob
of mediocrity that comes around to haunt us
every year or so like a monster from a lower-rent
Stephen King book.
It went on a bit of a hiatus to see if it
could find a way to recapture the magic and
after two years of thinking very hard, this
is what they've come up with: a prequel with
the subtitle 'Origins.'
Whoever's job it is to prevent the Ubisoft
creative team from committing mass suicide,
they cannot possibly be getting paid enough.
I was about to make some joke along the lines
of when can we expect Assassin's Creed Reloaded
and Assassin's Creed Revelations, because
I genuinely forgot they'd already done that
one.
No hiatus was going to be long enough because
even without Sasso Creedo the Ubisoft Sandbox
has continued to come around continually larger
and more betentacled than before to steal
our cattle and cause our pregnant women to
miscarry, and of course triple-A gaming as
a whole has long been firing off miscarriages
like a nightmarish 21-gun salute.
Triple-A games are now merely platforms for
blatant attempts to fleece money from colossal
dimwits that somehow have financial independence
despite not being able to open a tin of beans
without losing an eye, and then the publishers
will say "Hey, just because we erected a giant
sign saying 'Please jump off this cliff and
dash yourselves to death on the jagged rocks
below' doesn't mean you HAVE to do that.'
Granted, but I object to the way most of the
game takes place in the shadow of the giant
sign, and the rest of it is spent perched
astride the giant sign.
What I mean is, Assassin's Creed Origins is
one of those triple-A terminal cases where
everything seems to have been built around
the giant cliff jumping sign as an afterthought.
Firstly, it's got all the usual variables
- character levels and XP, in-game currency,
weapon upgrades, crafting items - because
of course the more things you can quantify
the more imaginary prizes you can put in a
loot box, the more you can base the gameplay
around making numbers bigger and hypnotize
the players into wanting a weapon identical
to their current weapon except with a whole
two numbers bigger, more than they want their
next fucking meal.
I can't think of what other purpose giving
every character a level could possibly have.
It's certainly catastrophic for immersion
when anything more than two levels higher
than you will just mash you into a fine paste
even if you do get a stealth attack on them.
One would think a hidden blade to the windpipe
would be a pretty decisive argument ender
no matter how many press-ups they did that
morning.
Also, it means that you can't just stick to
story missions because they don't provide
nearly enough XP bran flakes to keep you regular,
so you've gotta sidequest a bit but are restricted
to a tiny pool of sidequests for your current
level as lower level ones don't provide enough
XP to be worth the effort and higher level
ones are like trying to trim your pubes with
an angle grinder.
So much for the fucking go-anywhere sandbox.
But then these haven't been sandbox games
in a long time, have they.
Minecraft is a sandbox; what Ubisoft calls
a sandbox these days is an unholy mashup of
open world, RPG, MMO and side activity amounting
to 'go to icon on map and press contextual
button' closer in spirit to data entry than
action adventure, and they make the games
like that because the accounting department
says they have to.
As I say, the plot almost feels like an afterthought.
We are Bayek of Siwa, an ancient Egyptian
policeman type thing who's very cross because
his - spin the wheel of motivation - SON was
killed by proto-Templars, and also because
his people are being oppressed, but which
one he's the most cross about varies depending
on what the current mission needs him to do.
We don't know his backstory at first because
the game starts mid-assassination and Bayek
has a great big "fill in backstory later"
note pinned to his head because I guess the
accounting department said the action had
to kick in straight away.
From there it's a fairly typical Assassin's
Creed plot progression - travel the world
map stabbing anyone who openly sneers at a
member of the working class, participate in
a dramatization of some historical events
that the average shithead could be trusted
to know about with some kind of ridiculous
action sequence contrived into it, in this
case the seduction of Julius Caesar by Cleopatra
which at one point features Bayek and Caesar
in a high-speed car chase like it's a fucking
mismatched buddy cop drama by way of a Bill
and Ted film.
Don't expect this being ostensibly the origin
story of the Assassin Order to mix up the
formula much.
I remember feeling profoundly disappointed
at the scene when Bayek's missus gives him
a hidden blade and says "This is a weapon
from ancient times!"
BITCH we're in ancient times.
I wanted to know who built these fucking things.
And why they didn't fall apart the instant
an Italian teenager got his greasy hands on
them 1400 years from now.
Standard combat in Sasso Creedy Ridgy is definitely
tacking to the RPG side of things, it's now
a sort of very watery version of Dark Souls
combat where enemies glide around the arena
like they've got paint rollers for feet and
the charged strong attack beats basically
everything, gone is the Arkham Asylum style
counter combat - you remember counter combat,
it's that thing that requires a certain amount
of skill.
You remember skill, it's that thing that mattered
before the main deciding factor was who's
got the highest number.
And speaking of tacking, every now and again
you get to play as Bayek's missus doing ship
combat missions, which I find mystifying.
Does Ubisoft think we now expect Assassin's
Creed to have ship combat just because Black
Flag had it and it was a little beacon of
joy and light glimmering all too-briefly from
inside Ubisoft's churning mass?
Because I don't want your ship combat if you're
just cynically crowbarring it in like a nice
ball of glittery tinfoil to look at while
we're getting sodomised over the recycle bin.
And now, a list of things I liked about Sack
of Greasy Oranges.
Don't worry, it's brief.
Scenery's nice.
Erm.
Removing the minimap and getting by on scouting
with the eagle works pretty well.
Although it does make it way too easy to mark
targets, and even without the minimap the
quantifying of everything means the screen's
still sprinkled in bullshit - oh how embarrassing
this list of things I like has somehow turned
into more gripes.
Look, I'm not mad at you, Assassin's Creed
Origins, I'm just disappointed.
And bored.
Mostly bored.
I might have had a better time if the game
had let me speed through the story campaign
instead of forcing me to grind up dull, repetitive
sidequests to reach the minimum level for
the next main mission.
I don't like the feeling that the game is
fighting with me to stop me getting what I
want out of it.
Actually, maybe I am mad at you, Assassin's
Creed Origins.
I'm so sick of all this.
I'm sick of playing triple-A games that feel
like they exist, not because a creator had
a vision and an idea that excited them, but
because quarterly income projections needed
to be met.
It's like Blackbeard going into stock market
fraud - yeah, it's more lucrative but there's
no freedom or adventure and they won't let
you carve tits on the figurehead.
