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Sonia's Sassy Game Reviews: Assassin's Creed Origins

3/5/2018

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A game review from the perspective of a total newbie gamer whose only just started to indulge a life long love of video games, who also happens to be an adult(ish) woman.
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Warning: Spoilers (duh).

Hot Take

Holy shit this game is looooooooooooooooooooooong!  I mean, I really liked it, but this review is tempered by Assassin's Creed Origins fatigue.  That said, the game play itself was fun, and it was really clear that the designers have done their research. I'm enthralled by the world they recreated in this game.

But Christ it was long.

Character Design

It seems flippant, given this age of unimaginable computer graphics, to say that I really liked the character design.  The game follows two characters... though it's mostly one.... and they're both awesome to look at, and their personalities as written are really interesting.
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PictureI mean... Come on. The dude is handsome.
This is the main protagonist of the game, Bayek of Siwa.  He is, we're given to understand, the last Medjay.  I'm not sure what a Medjay is precisely, but I think the position is something like a peace-keeper or protector.

He's an Egyptian native, married to a Greek woman, to whom he is utterly devoted.  He is also some sort of warg.  No, seriously, you get to become his eagle, Senu, to scout the surrounds and tag enemies. That's actually a really cool game mechanic.

He looks good, and I don't just mean he's handsome.

His proportions are believable.  He looks like a real man, not some cartoonish idea of what a man is supposed to look like (you know, shoulders that could carry a mountain and a waist that would utterly fail to support those shoulders let alone the mountain they're probably carrying).

As to his personality, I loved that Bayek was not just a collection of toxic masculine tropes.  He was a devoted husband and father, and responded to the children in the game with humour, warmth and generosity.  His deadly ability to kill was tempered by a kind heart and a strong sense of duty.

Aya is Bayek's wife and, in the beginning, is as devoted to him as he is to her.  She is fierce and driven, and best of all, isn't built like a weird barbie who might blow away in the wind.  That was nice.

I also really like the way she moved.  She moves like a person who has strength.  There isn't any pretence of  the strange femininity that a lot of designers insist on giving their female characters.

And can we all just admire that woman's thighs?  THEY'RE NOT HOT DOG SLENDER!  Their thicker than I'm used to seeing on female game characters.  Which makes sense. A woman able to do what she does would be muscular.

She runs like a person, climbs like a person, and fights like a person.  She looks capable when she moves.

​I guess it's not that hard to animate women after all, Ubisoft.

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And she's fucking beautiful on top of it all. Bayek is one lucky SOB.
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I loved how fierce and capable she proved to be.  I also hated (which means loved) how her quest to avenge her son's death transforms her into the badass assassin she became at poor Bayek's expense.

Story

I really did love the premise of this game.  Set during the civil war between Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIII in Egypt.  I think it was Ptolemy XIII.  The two protagonists Aya and Bayek are out for revenge.  Mysterious men in masks killed their son, Khemu, and they're going to get their own before the world crumbles to dust.

​One of the things I adore most is how utterly into each other these two are.  Until the end.  Ahem.  More on that later.
Image result for aya assassin's creed full body
The entire goal of the game is to assassinate one by one those fuckers in the masks who killed Khemu.  To that end, you're sent on missions to acquire intelligence to discover the identities and locations of these masked men.  In doing so, you're swept up in a fight that is bigger than just vengeance for one little boy.

Those masked men belonged to a sinister group called The Order, whose sole goal is peace by control. Basically tyrannical control of absolutely everything and everyone.  True, that would stop the wars, but the enslavement of the entire human race is a bit much to bear.

Bayek's goal remains the same always.  Avenge Khemu so that the child's spirit can at last venture into the land of reeds.  Aya's goals change.  She sees the long game; the threat of The Order will not end with Khemu walking into the land of the dead, and more children will be murdered if they don't do something.

That's not explicitly said by the character, but it is heavily implied.  It's also something I might have made up to try and justify to myself why someone who loved her husband so damned much would so readily and easily break his heart as she did.

And that's my big beef with the story.  Aya walks away from her husband, claiming that she has killed all love she once had.

Yo, that's no way to live, Aya.  The absence of love feels evil to me, and the creed seems so otherwise righteous.

To Bayek's credit, despite his broken heart, he co-founds what will become the Brotherhood with her, running the Egyptian branch while she runs her side from Rome.

It would be entirely possible for these two to separate and run this new organisation with the noble goal of keeping the world free from enslavement, without them having to renounce their love.  They could meet once a year or so for a short tryst or something.  God knows Bayek would be ever devoted to her.

For fuck's sake, writers.  WHO HURT YOU?

Anyway, the story was good.  I liked it... Right up until the end when Aya renounces her love.  I wasn't fond of that.

Also, I have an unanswered question caused by the game's end. If Bayek's son is dead, and Bayek has the eagle-warg thing from which the assassin's gain their eagle sight powers, how exactly is that power transferred along? Did Bayek have more children? With whom? I HAVE QUESTIONS, GAME!

Women

There are two prominent women in the game - Aya and Cleopatra.  The rest is pretty much a sausage fest, though there were a plethora of smaller female characters all of whom were varied and interesting.

I really liked that women were not a monolith in this game.  Cleopatra is as history remembers her (which, I might add, is not all that accurately as it turns out. This is why you don't rely solely on classical sources for character descriptions. The Romans especially were fabulous at propaganda); a sex-ed up femme whose ambitions far outstripped her abilities to rule.  She's also quite tiny.

Aya is fierce, capable and deadly.  She's driven, and, unlike Cleopatra, is able.

Both are really common tropes in fiction - the ambitious woman using sex to get ahead, and the strong woman whose strength is her only defining feature.  Still, they're both well-written and believable as complete people.

The various women in the game are also varied; there is a huntress, a gladiator, a woman grieving her husband, a woman cheating her husband...  They come with various goals, and histories.

It was nice not seeing women played just one way, no matter how tropey Cleopatra and Aya actually are.

Game Play

This game was a vast improvement of Assassin's Creed Unity.  There were fewer glitches, and I was swearing at Bayek far less that I was Arno.  The parkour element was much smoother, and the fighting was fun (and often frustrating... because I'm so damned bad at it), and I loved, loved, loved the new (old?) eagle vision. The inclusion of Senu was a stroke of brilliance.  Sometimes I would get lost just in the act of flying around.

I also had a lot of fun with the triremes.  Ramming other ships at sea is too much fun, as it turns out.  It's also an appropriate way to conduct naval battles in this time. Triremes were specifically designed to ram other ships.  That's how the Greek's did battle back in the day.

Finally

Honestly, this game is good.  It is still very much Assassin's Creed, so if you're expecting a huge departure from the main mechanics of the game, you're going to be disappointed.

The only gripe I have is the length of the game.  I played for three hours a week for 24 weeks, and I still haven't finished all the little things.  I've done all the missions, all the stone circles, a couple of tombs and some papyri.  That's it.  There's still places left to find, locations left to complete, tombs left to plunder (ahem), and papyri left to solve.  It's a little too much, to be honest, and I find myself suffering from Assassin's Creed Origins fatigue.  That's never a good thing for a game.

That's said, I will be revisiting this game to complete the stuff that needs completing.

It is a beautifully complete world, with fun, sometimes heartbreaking (I'm still sad about Shadya), sometimes hilarious quests.

It is worth picking up.

​Maybe, when I'm less sick of it, I might pick up the DLC and play that.
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I Know The Best People!

2/9/2014

5 Comments

 
Good morning, Readers!

How is everyone doing today?  So sorry I didn't post yesterday!  It was Labour Day here in Canada, and I slept in late and, being in holiday mode, completely forgot about writing a blog post.  I also forgot to schedule one before the weekend hit... because I was apparently in holiday mode Friday as well.

Nevertheless, I have now retroactively posted a blog entry for yesterday.  Even though I technically posted it this morning, it is dated for yesterday, which means most people will be none the wiser about my oversight.

<maniacal laugh>

Don't worry readers, Karma has you covered.  I got very sunburnt yesterday playing cracked court tennis.  I should have known better than to go outside at midday without sunscreen.  Alas, I've lost my sunscreen.  I packed it to bring with me to Australia.  I boarded the plane and never saw it again.

That, however, is not what I wanted to talk about.  What I wanted to talk about was the fact that in my writing journey I have met some of the most awesome people possible.  I seriously mean that.  There is, obviously, the Amazing Flatmate (who arrived home last night and I am so happy she's back).  Technically, we didn't meet in my writing journey, but she's been with me practically the whole way and I owe her a lot.  Like, a lot.

I digress.

There are those who volunteer to be on my little Nights at the Round Table panels for Silver Stag Entertainment.  There are the fellow writers who have been so welcoming and awesome.  There are the people I met at conventions who became fans and friends simultaneously.

And then there are all the people I've met online that I met when struggling to find a way to get noticed.  They have become some of the best people I think I know.  They have been companions and cheerleaders for me, celebrating my milestones and commiserating with me on my many, many failures.  Some of them I've known since the very beginning of my writing journey.

One of them I'm in almost constancy contact with.  The fact that she also happens to be my cover designer may have something to do with it, but it's also because she has been very supportive of me and my work, and I of hers (seriously though.  I don't like romance as a genre, and I can tear through one of her books with ease and actually enjoy myself!  They're good books).  This is, of course, a wonderful lady by the name of Laura Miller.  She writes under Jaimey Grant, and you should really check out her books.

By the way, if you happen to need a cover designer, you should really check out her stuff.  She's fantastic at what she does, and I trust her always to do a great job.  She has never failed me.  Here cover design website is HERE.

As it happens, she and I love to play games - specifically Xbox.  The game that convinced me to buy an Xbox at long last was Skyrim, a fantastic game by Bethesda.  I am obsessed with Skyrim.  You have no idea.  Seriously.  None.  Her husband is exactly the same, though probably not obsessed.  He just likes to play.

However, he did buy a new Xbox when his old one died recently just so he could play Skyrim.  I laughed, because I basically did the same thing.  We got into a discussion about this obsession of mine, and I expressed jealousy that her husband had the Legendary Edition (the one with all the DLC content: Hearthfire, Dawnguard and Dragonborn).  Being poor, I would have to save up for that stuff.

Or not, as it happened.

Two days later, I got this in the mail:
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Legendary Edition, y'all!
I squealed with delight as I ran around the house.

No word of a lie.

If the cats could give testimony...

Well, it wasn't until last night that I opened it up to have a look at this most awesome very early birthday gift.  When I opened it up, I squealed with delight again.
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A map! Er my gerd! A map!
That's right.  I'm now the proud owner of a map of the Province of Skyrim.  You guys, you have no idea how happy this makes me.

I love fantasy maps.  Like, an obscene amount.  I already have a fantasy map on my wall:
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Middle Earth. I love this map so much.
I've wanted a proper map of Skyrim since I first saw a couple of Let's Plays on YouTube.  Skyrim is a world, like Middle Earth, in which I can enter in my imagination and stay for ages and ages. And ages.

Alas, I have no wall space to put up my new map.  It's now safely tucked away in the game case awaiting my dream home which, in addition to the armoury, library (where my map of Middle Earth shall go - once it's properly framed, of course) and stables it will have, it shall also have a gaming den.  There, proudly on my wall will hang this map of Skyrim, and it shall be treasured.

(The next map for my fantasy collection, which will go in the other gaming room (for non-electronic gaming) will be the map of Everealm.  Because I'm a nerd like that)

All of this, just because Laura and her husband are simply awesome folk.  I haven't even met them in person.  I only know Laura and I've never actually so much as emailed her husband.

<happy sigh>

Here's the thing, I was saving up to buy the DLCs for this game, as well as one of THESE (gaming recording device) so I could record my pathetic playing with some commentary in a Let's Play segment on my YouTube channel.  Or perhaps on the Silver Stag YouTube channel.  I have't decided yet.  It was going to be my treat for myself this Christmas.

It still is, but now I'm a little less poor for it.

Seriously, though.  Sometimes, people are awesome, and I'm so glad that I know them.

Thank you so much, Laura and... uh... Laura's hubby (what's your name?  Seriously, though.  What's your name?)!

Now please excuse me as I daydream of being a Bosmer slaying dragons and collecting their souls...

FUS RO DAH! (Ciao)
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    S.M. Carrière, a Celtic Studies enthusiast, writes fiction.  And this blog.

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