A new 24 minute video was released featuring Bayek and his lady friend”, Aya, riding through the rivers of Egypt toward the temple, and doing a little bit of couple’s role-play. During the first few minutes, we learn that Bayek is on a mission to kill the infamous “Lizard”, all so that he and his booty call, Aya, can get back together.
The mission involves Bayek and Aya having to investigate the area, track down some poison and question some nearby priestess about their transgression against one of the gods. You can check out the GamesCom 2017 demo below, courtesy of Game Informer.
The combat is insufferably clunky.
At the 8:00 minute mark in the video above we see how Bayek has trouble smoothly getting around opponents. His dodge is jittery and the animations are stilted, thus there is zero room for stylish or graceful looking combat maneuvers.
If you were hoping to look cool during combat and see some awesome fighting moves, forget about it.
The fighting is an absolute mess, and Bayek fights like a sloppy heathen who copied his moves off a jittery 30fps PS2 game.
Don’t expect to have any “wow” moments like you did during Assassin’s Creed III or Assassin’s Creed IV while fighting multiple opponents. Instead, expect to cringe and be frustrated.
The parkour is fairly smooth, though. Bayek moves around fluidly and his transitions from climbing to jumping to rolling to running looks good. Then again, the Assassin’s Creed games have usually had fairly impressive character movements.
The latter half of the demonstration highlights more of the side missions in the game, including rescuing some kidnapped kids. Bayek has to do some investigation before finding the ship. More of the unimpressive combat is on display where you shoot guys with arrows and they barely flinch. It’s not like the other games where they stumble, trip, or at least properly react to the hits.
At the 20:00 minute mark we see where you can knock an enemy off his feet and just wail away on him with the sword and he won’t even react properly. As I mentioned, it’s like combat mechanics from Onimusha on the PS2. Actually… I take that back. If you look at the original Onimusha from 2001 on the PS2, it actually has better combat animations than Assassin’s Creed: Origins. Just check out the video below from GG Gab.
Do you see how the enemies properly react to every hit. They aren’t frame-freezing on combos or just playing looped fallen animations while being attacked. Yes, that’s what quality animation engineers will get you… 16 years ago!
Anyway, according to WCCF Tech, Assassin’s Creed: Origins will also feature some small special enhancements on the Xbox One X, including further draw distances, higher poly LOD, enhanced HDR, and checkboard 4K.
Assassin’s Creed: Origins is due for release this October for home consoles and PC.
