Assassin's Creed And Its Origins Story

When I was done with Assassin's Creed: Origins I realised I was also done with the series overall. Rather than the considered and thoughtful revitalisation I had hoped for AC:O ended up feeling just as slapdash as prior titles that were rushed out in Ubisoft's ill-devised annualisation attempts.

Not at first it should be noted. Bayek is a simple but effective protagonist and his story is decently set up. More surprisingly, the themes of parenthood and children are frequently reinforced in a lot of the game's side missions. His motivation is relateable and straightforward and while perhaps a little too cheery for a man whose son was killed before his eyes, he's certainly human and likeable enough for us to become invested in his story.

Unfortunately the writers of Origins were not so invested and a little way into act two we find the plot's focus wavering. The backdrop of Egyptian, Greek and Roman political tension serves for the game's necessary conflicts and opposing territories that require stealth and espionage.

As the plot branches out however, we find ourselves increasingly entangled in the political affairs of others, to the point where Bayek himself expresses frustration at dutifully helping citizens but craving vengeance against his son's masked murderer.

A character and therefore the writers being aware of such an issue muddies the waters of their actual intentions for the plot. Nevertheless being aware of a story problem doesn't negate it and when this tangent is not only continued but exacerbated well into the third act, the initial plot has wandered off into the desert, taking our emotional investment with it.

At the climax of the story you could be forgiven for not knowing who the main character is. The series continues its ever less subtle and smooth "celebrity cameos" with historical figures Cleopatra and Julius Caesar taking over the spotlight. In addition however Bayek's wife Aya also receives increasing focus.

It at first appeared that the game switched to playing as Aya for its naval sections as she pursued potential culprits overseas. Unfortunately this then gave way to standard gameplay sections and not only that but pivotal moments in the story that we should have been experiencing through Bayek.

This baffling and easily avoided pitfall strikes me as the trepidation of the dual protagonist set up in Origins' following game AC: Odyssey. Why there needed to be any fear around this hardly revolutionary concept is beyond me but its half-arsed and non-committal implementation in Origins weighs it down like an anchor.

Being Bayak's wife and mother of their murdered child, Aya has the same motivations as our protagonist and is just as capable, having already scratched off two names in the suspect hitlist when you first meet her. A dual protagonist story could have easily worked here and yet the cognitive dissonance at play is that Aya's gameplay is an afterthought but her presence in the story only grows as time goes on.

The aforementioned political maneuvering becomes the story's and Aya's main focus. While not impossible to have made this interesting we're still playing as Bayek for the majority of the time, even if we're reluctantly pursuing Aya's goals.

Perhaps it was the writer's intention that we empathise with Bayek's frustration at the distractions and impediments blocking his path to revenge but this goes on for two thirds of the entire game. When the masked murderer is finally revealed as Ceasar's right hand man with no prior connection to Bayek or Aya, nor substantial interaction with either of them, it's not a bombshell or even a relief but a unexpected reminder of a plot that was all but forgotten up until this point.

So rather than a fitting elaborate infiltration of a fortress to sleuth your way to the final target, you just have a face to face, annoyingly elongated sword fight with the guy. He teleports around with the infamous "Apple of Eden" artifact which whilst not a relic in this time setting is certainly a fossil from an age back when this series appeared to have any idea where its overall plot was going.

Bayek gets his revenge on the man and the central quest seems complete. The story however, continues with Aya chasing down another of Caesar's subordinates and eventually the roman dictator himself. Not because they had a hand in the murder of her child but just because they're pricks and the game can't create an impressive finale of its own so it has to score more history channel points re-enacting the death of Caesar.

What follows are the actual origins of the titular cult of Assassins and its centred around a jaded Bayek and Aya miserably ending their relationship for not entirely clear reasons. Bayek seemed willing to keep trying but Aya is apparently now more invested in all the political movements of the region...At least someone is I suppose.

Bayek denounces his title, his marriage and his fatherhood before leaving Aya to look at the series logo created in the sand. Our broken husk of a main character is then superceded by footage of Aya's creed of assassins parkouring about and slitting throats.

I certainly didn't expect an order of assassins to be built on a fluffy foundation of bunnies and birthday cakes but after the meandering sidetracked plot finally reaches this conclusion i can't help but again  empathise with an exhausted Bayek. What was the point in it all? When did it stop being about good, pure eye for an eye revenge murder and get embroiled in crowns, thrones, betrayals and politics? Did this game's plot unknowingly mirror the over-complication and desaturation of the series' progression as a whole?

All I know is finishing AC: Origins was a chore and without a memorable or satisfying story to look back on, looking forward just shows a tedious list of side quests, unnoticeable incremental upgrade bars and a beautiful but shallow world map to fill out. Origins is by no means a train wreck but weirdly I almost wish it was, just so there'd be more of an impact.

ABC Review Round-up: August 2018-

Mission Impossible: Fallout Utterly ridiculous but very entertaining. Suspension of disbelief is required, following the many plot twists that probably don't logically add up thankfully isn't. It's a good way to avoid the predictability of action films by treating the plot more like heist thrillers.

Honourable Mention: Henry Cavill's moustache was not worth all the fuss in the end but for anyone angry at him after Justice League this provides some excellent catharsis.

Venom
Incompetent studio handling cripples what otherwise seems like a solid if forgettable core production. As expected Tom Hardy's insane alien bromance and comic acting prowess elevate this above a complete factory-line processed spam mess but for those ambivalent to Mr Hardy there's little else here to recommend.

Honourable Mention: For leaning so far into the ridiculous side of the concept that you turned a horror movie monster into a buddy cop scenario with romantic undertones.

The Favourite

Dark, sterile and uncomfortable one moment and jarringly daft the next. The cast and camera wield the tension expertly producing a morbidly humorous, curiously twisted affair.

Honourable Mention: Olivia Coleman's performance nailing both comedic and dramatic aspects plus the bridge between them, more naturally than the rest of the perhaps tonally dissonant story.

Avengers: Endgame

A grand, heartfelt send-off for fans and cast alike. Not quite as polished or perfectly balanced as Infinity War but still willing to attempt new ideas and directions even if not all of them land.

Honourable Mention: To pretty much every actor behind a major character. Some of them have inhabited these roles for over a decade now and the mastery is so solid these characters will be quite untouchable by any other actor for some time.

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum

A riotous ballet of ridiculously entertaining action. Unparalleled in the aforementioned, somewhat wonky in its slower moments and world-building.That said, it remains an intriguing, goofy underworld and one of the best action films in recent memory.

Honourable Mention: One of this series' strengths has always been its humour but with chapter three some of it almost transcends to commentary on the action film genre overall.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
More of an elongated namedrop than a movie. Wistful nostalgic meandering that has plenty of admirably authentic visuals but also forgets or seems unconcerned with implementing much in the way of plot points, stakes, engagement for the audience and an actual film to enjoy as opposed to a lounging stylised documentary.

Honourable Mention: Almost all the actors give solid to excellent performances...If only their characters got to do something.

Joker

A clumsy juggling act of themes, messages and intentions. Joaquin gives a terrific performance and some of the writing suggests the film could have said something really poignant about mental illness. Unfortunately the other half is tropey, on the nose theming and DC execs breathing down the neck of the film, trying to shoehorn in more Batman references that are irrelevant, done to death and embarrassingly forced.

Dishonourable Mention: To the degenerate, shameless murder-baiting articles written about this film when in fact all it will likely inspire is cringey memes, Halloween costumes and clueless DC execs trying to bandwagon off of it for years to come.

E3 2018 - Sony

Cocaine beard has seemingly created his own Santa's Grotto for Playstation's audience this E3. He spouts the standard platitudes inside their "church tent" before introducing a similarly low key mellow banjo player. Did Sony lose half the company gambling or something?

Nobody hold your lighters up, you'll burn the place down.

I retain my stance from Bethesda's review that non-game music always kind of misses the mark at these events. Thankfully this banjo guy segues into the soundtrack and footage of The Last Of Us: Part Two with Ellie at some kind of post-apocalypse prom dance with her girlfriend. This transitions very brutally into a gameplay demo that, as expected sees Ellie taking the lead role and much of Joel's functionality.

Stealth, gunplay and melee gameplay all seems intact as does the viciously vacant morality of the people of TLoU's world. Not much is different aside from some new stealth and dodging manoeuvres and an overall smoothness that is suspiciously impressive. If the demo was doctored in any way i certainly didn't spot it but perhaps we're just at that blurred line of cutscene and gameplay now.

Unfortunately this strong start crumbles into a shoe salesman telling us that the crowd "is currently moving on to the next part of the experience." which makes Sony's E3 sound like a theme park or one of those haunted trails where minimum wage graduates in face paint scream at you in the dark for an hour...I'm sure it's not that though #livingwage.

Shoeman and Clementine interview Shawn Layden behind what looks like a hastily assembled worktop tucked into the corner of a room somewhere. Shawn talks about letting developers reach their creative vision unimpeded which is great and all but this looks like the shit I usually skip before and at the end of the conference. Is this the first time an E3 conference has had a broadcast intermission?

Continuing with what I hesitate to even call a trailer so much as an advert ripped straight from Facebook we're shown a moving bullet in the hope it keeps our interest/arousal piqued. "Preorder CODBLOPS4 and get 4 REMASTERED CODBLOPS2 and CODBLOPS1 MAPS TO USE IN CODBLOPS3 BY WAY OF CODBLOPS9 TWINNED WITH HAUBOURDIN IN ASSOCIATION WITH PEPSI AND CODBLOPSCROPTOPS IN SHOPS NOPS...CODBLOPSPHWOAR! COMING SOON" Sadly not even the ghost of Billy Mays could convince me to care about this and it's now painfully obvious they're just stalling for time.

Soggy shoes and clementmind desperately drag some other randomers to their panel to chat shit before barricading themselves with some bewilderingly brief trailers which they themselves admit most people have apparently already seen.

Ping-ponging back and forth, the panel flounder and flail trying to fill for time. It seems even the pretence of not talking pure shite falls away into filling dead air with "we're almost ready. We're so almost ready, only a few mere seconds away at most surely before we return to the main E3 showcase just as soon as we go to see that which is very soon so stay tuned as we nearly head over to where it's almost time for more things of actual substance and importance."

The only thing more annoying than the pungent awkward video-game-less atmosphere there was realising here with a final sixth trigger pull that I forgot to load the gun before starting E3 Russian Roulette.

Guess I'll have to settle for cringing myself into lockjaw.

Evidently the barn location was just for TLoU and not worth the set up frankly. Now we find ourselves in a domed, more traditionally E3-looking place with a lone man in traditional Japanese robes playing a wind instrument on stage. I am sensing a pattern and it's a potentially drawn out and painful one as our musician repeatedly struggles with his instrument.

Finally this leads into Ghost of Tsushima, a game I knew nothing about until just now. Shawn laden with cocaiden however claims the conference is focusing more on a few games in depth rather than "big surprises" which is actually very welcome after writing the words "CG trailer" so many times this year it might as well be my signature.

Ghost appears to be an action game set in the midst of a Mongolian invasion of Japan. The gameplay seems unremarkable but certainly not bad and graphically it seems better looking than the actual setting it was based off probably did.

Thankfully without needing another musical introduction, a trailer for Control plays. A surreal third person shooter where your character can seemingly be subjected to MC-Escher level design at any moment. A handgun, powers of flight and telekinesis look like your primary skills against malformed human creatures but the actual plot is unclear at this point. I'm always down for trippy mind-bending aesthetics but the best games incorporate them into the gameplay too so worth keeping a cautiously optimistic eye on this one.

Speaking of the best games, after so long a trailer finally reveals the Resident Evil 2 remake. Not a lot of gameplay shown but just confirmation it still exists is a relief. A January 2019 release and answering the burning question of camera style, it has ultimately opted for the RE4 over-the-shoulder type. Otherwise it appears to nail the atmosphere and hit all the right beats of the original...Apart from the inclusion of better voice acting though which is a relief/shame (delete as appropriate)

Swinging all the way to the other end of the tonal scale comes a goofy sci-fi platformer called Trover Saves The Universe. It doesn't look like much right now but with the creators of Rick and Morty behind production it could be at least be an amusing affair.

Kingdom Hearts 3 continues to be the most confusing nonsensical shit I've seen since Death Stranding which then proceeds to upstage it by a degree of Whattheactualhelltillion and five. The trailer seems to show a lot of gameplay and yet I still can't say for sure what is happening.

Norman Feetus is some kind of hellscape Fed-Ex delivery man who has to traverse mountains and ravines, whilst also avoiding the semi invisible black tar ghost monsters. There is a lady with spiky shoulders who mentions something called "Timefall" and seems like an ally but in her spare time eats fleshy bug things so...yeah...That's about the best I can do to describe the now seemingly unfiltered madness of Kojima's mind.

To balance out the confusing weirdness, here is a tame shot of a lady with a Sci-Fi umbrella...Unless it's just broken.
Agh fuck! Even this just poses more questions!

Far more knowable and less challenging, at least to us but perhaps not FromSoft and their lawyers. Nioh 2 continues the Japan Souls experience, right off the back of FromSoft announcing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice at Microsoft's event. I can't say much about Nioh 2 unfortunately because my nemesis the brain-dead vision-mixer returns to implement that infuriating pointless fuckery of zooming out of the screen to show the motionless audience silently watching the screen.

Last but not least comes the Spiderman game (Is it really just called Spiderman?). The writing seems on point, the passable if now slightly overdone Arkham style combat is coupled with what looks like smooth and fun web swinging. Forever the biggest mystery and seemingly the hardest yet most essential thing for these games to get right. Lots of classic and some lesser known villains get involved and overall it's a very promising look at the game.

This weirdly structured conference kind of comes to an end with the typical summary montage but then shoeman and satsuma return to show a cryptic CG teaser of a Fromsoft VR title about fairies. Following this we see a lot more of Spiderman in its open world environment followed by an explanation of what the weird creature interludes were in between all the major game segments this conference.

Turns out they were manifestations from the seemingly limitless creation game Dreams that was hinted with an intriguing yet sceptically ambitious trailer last year. We get a brief look at some gameplay and the devs are keen to emphasise the simplicity with which you and friends can use the tools.

If you have dreams about pink trees it means you were a flamingo in a past life.

This seems like one you'll need to try yourself to really know the limits and details of what's possible and whether it satisfies what you personally want to create. These types of games aren't for everyone but myself, I'm pleased to see it at least still exists and a beta is approaching later in the year.

I don't know if I'm covering post-show content now or when this thing officially ended but all else that happened was more of the panel chatterblabbing, schedules and time-lapses of Shawn's lesbian barn so I think it's safe to call it a day there. An odd, different, patience-testing and quite clumsy conference from Sony but they did show more actual raw gameplay footage than the others and most of it was of a very high quality. Perhaps next year just do that without all the musical chairs and indeed musical non-chairs.