Assassin's Creed Origins (2017) (PC) (Ubisoft Montreal)
0After having experiencing swarms of revolutionary citizens filling the streets of Paris in the spectacularly over-ambitious Assassin's Creed Unity three years ago, I didn't think Ubisoft would dare to dream big again. The immediate follow-up Syndicate was delightful in many ways but fundamentally played it safe by returning to the less demanding urban simulations of earlier entries, and after that the series took an unprecedented year off.
The new installment Assassin's Creed Origins is awesome, in the original sense of the word. While neither the gameplay or the story represents any significant new developments as far as the time-honored AC formula is concerned, the enormous open world does ancient Egypt justice by being an achingly beautiful place with a rich history and culture just waiting to be uncovered and explored.
The developers chose to set the game in late Hellenistic times rather than during the heyday of the great Pharaohs, and that's a bit of shame - Cleopatra and Ptolemy are cool and all, but it would probably have been even more exciting to, say, meet Akhenaten and Nefertiti during the Amarna Period. That being said, there's still a strong sense of stepping into a fascinating and mysterious pre-Western world which is utterly unlike all of those European societies we see in most games with historical themes and settings. And who could really ask more than that from a series that's always been the ultimate vehicle for triple-A escapism?