10:28 AM Friday, December 22, 2023
Started playing this game right after midnight. Looks very good. I am glad I got it on Steam. I hate the fact that it still requires the terrible ubisoft launcher. I wish ubisoft can ditch it like Bethesda did. There is no one that will miss it.
There are plenty of graphical options in the game. Controls are a little weird. Uses Alt to jump. I think this may be similar to Division 2. Not a fan of it.
Technically, the game works very well on the PC. I am finding it hard to get into this game. I recently played RDR2, and the inferior gameplay design is immediately apparent.
1:34 PM Friday, December 22, 2023
They did away with the looting animations. This is excellent.
As I play more, I am starting to like this game. Its very beautiful. I am going to make a quick video of this and tweet to UbiSoft.
8:50 PM Friday, December 22, 2023
As I was trying to finish a side quest, I somehow triggered a main quest and I ended up finishing it. Dont even know how I managed that.
This is the first main quest. A lot of the map is still not explored.
12:26 PM Saturday, December 23, 2023
Quality of the open world is very iffy. It looks good, but the quality of everything else is not very good. Bargain bin open world. Its especially apparent after playing Red Dead Redemption 2.
If you like open world games, play RDR2 first. Preferably on the PC. Once you are done with that, and you got nothing else to play, and you really want to play other open world games, play Cyberpunk 2077 and Witcher 3 and its expansions in that order. Then…and only then, pick up this game on a sale.
There is no sense of discovering the world. You know that is there is no marker on the map, there is nothing to do in that location. So it quickly becomes a race to the next question mark on the map. Yes, I know that RDR2 does this to some extent as well, but Rockstar spent a great deal of time and effort creating a world that is interesting. You discover treasures and loot chests that are not marked on the map, giving you a reason to explore the map.
In Origins, there is no reason to go to a remote corner of the map, because you know its got nothing there. Maybe a trinket or two, but if it is anything remotely important, UbiSoft will make sure there is a question mark on the map.
Treasure hunting will involve summoning the bird, and then locating targets first, which will mark the targets on your HUD (not just the map), and then you just go to the location and press E. Everything about the design of the gameplay is inferior and cheap.
I paid $8.99 for this game. I don’t know…I think its worth about $5.
I also paid $11.99 for Odysee.
3:48 PM Saturday, December 23, 2023
The awful modern day sections are back! this time you get to play some girl who is trying to be a part of Abstergo. Gosh…way to ruin the game for me.
Thankfully, the modern day section wasn’t too long. The dialogue is cringe as usual. Most video game dialogue is terrible.
How can I ever appreciate open world games after Red Dead Redemption 2?
3:48 PM Sunday, December 24, 2023
Am I slowly starting to like this game? I wasn’t quite as irrited as I was yesterday when I was playing this game. Maybe that’s the secret to ubisoft’s success. The slow drip of content, constantly unlocking things, going from one question mark to another…
Jan 01, 2024 Monday 04:13:12 PM
I played more of this over the last few days, but I neglected to update the diary.
I am starting to enjoy this game even more, but I still have mixed feelings about it. I am struggling to articulate why this game does not measure up to RDR2 or Witcher 3 in terms of quality, even though I absolutely love what they did with the open world.
Egypt is beautiful. I think this game looks better than Witcher 3. Dare I say it, it manages to achieve equivalent visual fidelity of RDR2 without taking a hit in performance. This game does not have DLSS. I am playing this at the highest possible settings. I am getting over 120 FPS in a lot of areas. This is amazing. The engine is very well optimized, much more so than RDR2, which struggles even on my 3080Ti at highest settings.
So what is it about the game that keeps it from becoming great?
I think its the ubisoft gameplay design. Everything is done by the numbers. Its all a matter of hunting question marks on the map. You very rarely orginically discover something on the map. I can recall the layout of the land near beaver hollow in RDR2 because I had to learn it, same with Shady Belle, and routes in St Denis. I had to learn the routes because its not just a matter of following question marks on the map.
In this game, everything is readily displayed on the map. If you designate a point of interest on the map, there is a floating icon on the hud. Why would you ever explore the world? Where is the adventure? Using the hawk to find targets has got to be one of the worst and obnoxious design choices I have seen in video games.
You can use the hawk to tag targets, and its like having wall hacks. If you choose not to use the hawk, the game has a message constantly showing telling you to use the damn thing. Why? Why are they so afraid that I might have to do some work to figure out where my target is? Such lazy design.
Having said that, clearing forts can be a lot of fun. There is this one particular fort with 2 captains and a commander. Killing all of them, including a ton of guards, and finding all the treasure chests inside the fort has got to be one of the most fun encounters I had in recent memory.
I think this is where AC Origins shines. When the game assumes that you are an intelligent person and lets you figure out a way to solve the problem at hand.
Also, the stationary crossbow in the forts is a very fun addition. I think I killed a level 40 captain with one of those.
AI is not very good.
Quest dialogue, especially for side quests is very poor. This is where Rockstar and CDPR really shine. Witcher 3, CP2077 and RDR2 have amazing dialogue, and interesting side questions. The side questions in AC Origins are fun, but not great. Combined wiht the bad dialogue, the game nags you to use wall hacks (hawk), and it removes any sense of adventure from the game. Where is the fun in stealth when you can literally see enemy outlines through walls? What is the point of this?
Feb 24, 2024 Saturday 01:13:10 PM
dialogue is really bad. the one mordrn day setting where the girl has to fight some assassins is particularly bad. she implies that being in the memory of an assassin somehow makes her one too.
she tries to justify her killing these assassins in a very slumsy way.
this is the first game where the dialogue is so boring that i am skipping cut scenes. its not good.
i am now going to traverse the map without using fast travel. there is a 7000m trip i have to make to speak to cleopatra for after killing the crocodile.