At least they're not just calling it Assassin's Creed as a soft reboot or something.

Also if it's on Game Informer's cover, I bet it will be on Ubisoft's E3 stage.

Some more brief details from Neogaf:

Started working on game before unity •

Brand new fighting system •

New A.I. •

No minimap but a elder scrolls type compass at top •

No more sprinting button, speed depends on analog stick •

Crouching is back •

Story is being kept a secret •

Eagle vision is a subtle pulse that highlights objects not enemies •

Takes place during the ascent and reign of cleopatra •

You can climb everything in the game •

Large and small cities with many landmarks including Memphis and Alexandria •

The controllable eagle leak was true •

NPC's have a day/night cycle and includes time for them to eat, sleep, work, and "answer the call of nature" •

Attack buttons are the right shoulder and trigger •

A.I. does not take turns to attack •

New combat system is more hit-box driven •

As you fight, an adrenaline gauge fills up, and when both attack buttons are pressed powerful attacks are unleashed •

Left shoulder button is lock on •

There are treasures to find in the depths of the water (sunken ships, long-forgotten ruins) •

Stat element of customization is removed •

New gear system where players can improve specific parts of your gear by crafting materials •

Leveling system that has a level cap of 40 •

Bayek is not the only playable character in the game but that character is a secret •

There are legendary items to loot in the game •

You can add blocked arrows to your inventory •

You can no longer one hit enemies that are more powerful than you with your hidden blade •

Buttons for free-running up and down are removed •

Puzzles are back but more challenging and less switches •

Much more in depth ability graph with 3 paths (Seer, Warrior, Hunter) •

There are gladiator battles in arenas

I wouldn't be shocked if it's shown on Xbox too for Scorpio given that's mentioned in the article I guess that it is optimized for Scorpio.

So more Souls-like combat? And goddamn, before Unity? That leaked "Prince of Persia" screenshot was from around then right?

Really curious about these changes.

Sounds really refreshing, hopefully the Ubisoft conference has significant footage. This sounds so much more like the blew up the entire gameplay and story setup/feel and the only the thing left was the most basic conceit of the series, which is awesome to hear. I always thought what Assassin's Creed games "were" was just so stale and needed not just a new coat of paint, but to really burn the whole house down and rethink what really the series should be going forward. Hopefully this doesn't "feel" like an AC game the same way that well...all of them sort of have.

This is sounding really interesting and reminding me a bit of the first game for some reason, the first one is still my favorite on the franchise, so I'm getting really curious.

But, at the same time, all I can think is "alright, how is Ubisoft going to fuck this one up?"

I like the sound of it too. You can't overlook how fresh control changes like no up and down buttons will feel, or new AI (which hopefully isn't just a backdrop as much as NPCs were in old games), new combat, different movement will be for this series if they all feel quite different. Even something like how they mention they have animals with behaviors that fight each other seems routine because we have seen it in Far Cry and stuff, but that's more alive already than AC's open worlds have really ever been for me.

It's been so similar for a while, and in part that was a feel of weightlessness, auto lock on everything, auto climbing for sure. I hope it all feels more physical and like it requires more player skill. I would like if climbing and moving around was a bit more difficult and and then rewarding.

It's pretty funny when a game like this is ditching Batman style combat it's like a revelation because they've just been doing that over and over until it became stale. We will see how it plays out (maybe it is a bit Souls like with how it uses triggers) but just in description it sounds like what every action game was before Batman more or less but that sounds like refreshing to people now lol.

Yeah it appears this is the same game. Has the same look and the timeline makes sense.

I dunno, I consider myself a pretty big AC fan as I've played all of them until Syndicate where even I had enough. Strangely enough (or pretty much par for the course at this point) I'm in the minority of people that appreciated some of the changes they brought about in Unity. I guess it is exactly because I've played so many of these games before that I was able to appreciate the subtle differences in how the parkour controlled and the smaller refinements. OF course that doesn't excuse the overall poor performance of Unity, especially the input lag that made certain parts of the game pretty awful, but I enjoyed what they at least attempted to do there and the WWII sections were actually really cool - much better than going around the office setting in Black Flag in my opinion.

That said I'm always happy to hear that at least technically the series is moving forward because for whatever reason, even when these games were at their worse for me like AC3, I still somehow found the open world formula compelling enough to keep going. I'm of course there with everyone else hoping this new game will be a major overhaul to the formula. Also I'm hoping they move a little closer to AC1 which I thought made the most amount of sense stylistically. I've talked a length in the past how ridiculous it was that Ezio was wearing like zebra fur with metal plating while also trying to "blend in" as an inconspicuous assassin. Frankly the outfits just got a little out of hand. The hood made sense in the first game, and then absolutely made no sense going forward but they stubbornly stuck by it.

Here is hoping this is a return to form. Unless you're Dan of course, in which cause this was always a bad series and thats that.

You can climb everything in the game •

Zelda was right! These changes are all interesting to me, so I hope it's different good and not different indifferent. I'd have been more excited if they did this after the second game instead of after the ninth, handhelds and minor spinoffs not included, but better a decade late than never. I took a break after AC2 before coming back for Black Flag, and besides the boat stuff it was same shit, new wrapping.

Seems cool, i hope the lack of minimap means the side gameplay will be different than just hunting foe treasures.

The fact this is called "Origins" is interesting...and makes me not care a little bit.

I love that it's called Origins. Let the Vinny E3 hours commence!

Big Assassin's Creed fan here. This looks awesome. Can't wait to see what they have to show off on Monday.

May as well bump this hey?

What did everybody think of the gameplay\trailer? Doing the whole country of Egypt sounds like the map will be pretty huge.

I had a dream two days ago I was playing an Assassin's Creed game set in what looked like Spain during the Inquisition and you had a bow that controlled like Shadow of Mordor and could do shit to get the guards to attack other NPCs.

This game has a bow, looks super pretty, seems to move like a third-person action game, and seems to be taking its shit relatively seriously. I'm down. Watch Dogs 2 kinda did me wrong by the end with just how blandly effective and devil-may-not-quite-give-a-fuck-but-really-does-care-and-aren't-they-so-affable-and-hip-and-please-relate your characters were and how low-stakes everything in the story was.

I see a few people complaining that having a large snake is too "fantasy" for an AC game. Yeah, this is a world where you can relive the exact memory of your ancestors and play with advanced magitech created by a precursor race.

Assassin's Creed Origins – What You Need to Know About Its New Setting, New Hero, and New Action-RPG Gameplay - E3 2017 - UbiBlog - Ubisoft®

^^ Tells us everything we need to know.

@theht: Yeah, Watch Dogs 2 really rubbed me the wrong way. I actually had a better time with the first game.

I think that the stuff that they showed that was similar to the old ones still looks boring. Bayek sounds dull, too. He reminds me of the type of Native American character that's always going on about his land, his ancestors and his gods. I wished they showed some of that supposedly "climb anything" gameplay, it just looked like what it normally does.

The combat gameplay looks better! They can't possibly have had the time to take note oh Horizon's bow stuff, but they seem to have integrated it nicely. I like that there's now dashing, some sort of parry, and a guard. There was even a huge serpent in there. Between that and the setting, I was pretty into it. It looked so beautiful when the eagle scared all those seagulls at the docks.

Any game with a UAV hawk is a winner in my book.

Shame you can't launch missiles from it.

I'm with Vinny on this one. I miss when these games were just about assassinating key characters and getting short death speeches with them to progress the story. Maybe there's some of that here, but the gameplay video I saw just looked like another slaughter fest in an open world. Still probably going to play it because I really like Egyptian settings. Hopefully the gameplay holds up for the duration.

@mezza: Well, Bayek isn't an assassin so he's not going to be doing stuff like that. You will have to spec in to the sneaky stabby tree to be able to do stuff like that.

@jonny_anonymous: to be fair there is a difference between scifi and fantasy. Personally i am all for whatever makes a good game, and since i felt syndicate was a good game i am optimistic about this one.

@oursin_360: Big snakes aren't exactly fantasy tho. It's not like it's an Orc.

I said this four years ago in another thread. So I'm on board.

@jonny_anonymous: Oh that's unfortunate, but I guess I'll try to make it work if there's a tree for it. If nothing else, I can just set my past preference for the series aside and treat it like its a different game.

It seems a little nuts that they would ask you to spec into being an assassin type character, in an Assassins Creed game.

I'm honestly kind of bummed out by everything I've seen thus far. When the news dropped that they were reinventing the franchise I got excited thinking it would go more stealth. From everything I've seen thus far it's not only moving away from the highly unique Assassins Creed gamestyle, but also moving away from stealth entirely. Origins looks more like Wildlands than Splinter Cell which is a shame because at it's heart it was always a series about being a stealthy assassin and not a brawler or soldier. The addition of loot is even more puzzling as I see no reason why they thought this series would benefit from that. People wanted more refined controls, more systems, better stealth - on top of the already great framework.

For all the trash that Unity gets thrown it's way (and a lot of it is sadly deserved) that was probably a really good direction for the franchise that got unfortunately sidetracked by the awful reception due to it's poor technical state. They tightened up the parkour system letting you control how you wanted to move and added missions that incorporated big houses which allowed seamless transitions from exterior climbing to interior sleuthing. Unfortunately a host of bugs combined with the lack of depth to their sneaking mechanics prevented the game from actually appearing like it had evolved in any way. There was a ton of potential in Unity and Paris was a beautiful playground to run around in with dizzying climbs and amazing architecture to explore. There is probably a great story behind the development of that title because something obviously went sideways to the point where they just abandoned it in the long run.

Origins appears to be going in a new direction but not one that is doing this particular franchise any favors. Assassins Creed was always unique in how it moved and played. There were of course people like Dan Ryckert that didn't like it because it didn't click with them and thats fine, not every game is for every person, but I think there were tons of fans that really enjoyed the flow of movement despite it never feeling as accurate as you'd want. There was a really great power fantasy in it all. What they showed at E3 appeared to be stripped of a lot of that magic.

Who knows maybe it will be awesome, but I can't remember the last game I initially thought looked unappealing and then it somehow magically changed my mind after release.

@humanity: Totally agree. I had hoped they'd use the extra time they had to go back and realize why 2 and to an extent, brotherhood, were successful. It would have been nice to see them look at the roots of the series and deliver a tightly focused narrative driven assassination game with some open world elements and refined parkour, but it seems like they're doing the opposite.

@jonny_anonymous: I heard the hawk dual wields Apples of Eden.

@humanity:I feel pretty similar to you. It looks like a sort of interesting historically set RPG but you don't look to be doing much of anything stealthy. The combat is new too which is cool but doesn't actually look good itself. The only cool things I heard about it was some fun dynamic things arising with the wildlife.

It does seem Witcher 3 inspired in aways as reported but the funny bit about that to me is that Witcher 3, with all these elements branching off of it, was centered around you being a monster hunter and that being a job with mechanics and a number of ways that role is reinforced throughout the game. To the level where people spit at you in the street.

In this, being an assassin seems like an easy way to match that method but they seem to not be doing it. There could be a focus on information gathering, recon, and assassination jobs that were at the core of the game. That's not being shown, at least so far.

I think it's a silly thing to get hung up on, but it's not hypocritical to be completely cool with allowing a bonkers thing without wanting everything to be weird. Just about any zombie narrative or alien invasion story pretty much requires you to accept an almost fundamentally impossible premise. It doesn't mean the internal logic should now be Looney Tunes.

EDIT - In regards to Origins, I'm hoping the origins of the Assassins in Ancient Egypt specifically have something to do with the death worship they engaged in. This being a culture where one god of death wasn't enough and the god with the head of a scavenger was replaced by basically an undead god.

The large snake reminded me of Conan.

Hopefully you can also punch a camel.

@mezza: @humanity: Given how unpopular stealth is especially recently with Hitman, Mankind Divided and Dishonord 2 all unperforming I can't imagine stealth ever being core tenet again, Origins leaning into the crazy Far Cry sandbox environment with loot and RPG elements ticks alot of mass market boxes.

I just kinda feel like the series is in a rut at this point. They can change the combat and climbing mechanics all they want to, but unless they lean into the concept of being an assassin, it'll still just be some version of a generic action game. These games should be about planning and stealth as opposed to "run in and stab everything because I'm Actiony McActionhero."

Personally I'd like to see them move away from the linear mission structure a little bit and make the game a little more free-form.

For example, what if, instead of having your assassinations just doled out one at a time in linear fashion, you were just given the list of targets at the start of the game and then allowed to do them in any order and at any time? I'd then make the targets' homes/fortresses/etc. be pretty elaborate and intricate. You can either go in blind and just go for it, or you could perform some side-tasks in the open world to make things easier on yourself (i.e. destroy a barracks so there are fewer guards, bribe someone to make a map for you, etc.).

I might try to layer a simple nemesis system on top of things to. In other words, maybe make it possible to fail an assassination by having the target escape and you have to hunt them down again. Or if you kill a target but cause a big ruckus doing it the other targets beef up their security and get more alert. Something to shake things up.

I had this thought myself because I was looking into the new Crackdown and it totally has that set up still and has advanced it. For example, in that game if you gain attention by taking down a higher ups men he will hack into all the screens around you in the city and taunt you while he sends in a unit of mechs to try to take you down. It still has the stuff where certain enemies provide security for the gang, others weapons, other vehicles and that changes things. You could totally do that for an AC game. You could do a number of different set ups.

In a lot of ways that would be building off the first game but trying to do it in a more cohesive, organic, and larger way.

I think the "clear outposts" thing is the worst way it could go.

i haven't played an AC game since brotherhood but i will get this one because i like the setting :)

I think the idea is you CAN be a stealthy assassin guy, you just need to build your character in that direction. They said AssCreed 1 was their biggest inspiration. Of course, they are going to be showing all the combat heavy stuff now because that's what's new.

@lawgamer: It just annoys me that over the years they have improved literally everything about this series from the first game EXCEPT the actual assassinating.

The wash, rinse repeat structure of that first game grated for sure, but the feeling once you got to the actual assassinations, where you had maps of guard patrols to be able to sneak in, find the coolest viewpoint, then the cut scene plays introducing you to the environment, etc. was all so god damn cool compared to the newer games where you just find the gold guy and try to shank him from above.

But I'm also a hypocrite and play and love every game (other than 3 and Revelations) so I give Ubisoft no reason to actually listen.

@thepanzini: What is downright devastating is that all those games you mentioned were awesome if you like the genre.

This is why I've always preferred that first game to all the rest, though I admittedly have skipped a number of the games.

Sure some things about the combat improved, but I felt the actual assassinating part surprisingly became more and more linear as time when on. Shadow of Mordor is probably the game that really feels like it improves upon the Assassin's Creed formula.

Also Assassin's Creed 1 was back when their character design wasn't so excessive and it actually fit the time period slightly better, but that's another story for another day. This new one seems to similarly reign in their obsession with "iconic" head wear. I just hope they have a good hard look at those combat animations. Ubisoft can do better.

That's exactly what my favorites in the series have in common: setting I'm most into. Rome, pirates and Victorian London. I just don't know what there is going to be to climb in (semi) ancient Egypt other than some temples. For some reason though, I has expected this to be ANCIENT Egypt, not Roman Egypt.

This is just me arm-chair developing here but I don't even think they need to lean super hard into the stealth bit, they just need to refine it in a way that makes the game clear in what it is that you're doing.

The direction I personally think they should have taken is a metroid-vania approach. Have the open world but contain it and gate sections of it with abilities/equipment that is gained throughout main story progress. Like @artisanbreads and @mezza mentioned, make it a more focused experience keyed into the assassin part of the franchise. In the past they successfully made a "stealth" game that didn't rely on constant crouch-walking and snuffing out light sources. You hid in plain sight and engaged in some rather cool Prince of Persia acrobatics while stalking your prey. They should have built a beautiful city that has walls which can only be scaled with your patented assassin-gloves or underground sections that require some other special doo-dad which also serves as a tool for assassin-murder. Have an overarching open world but then have the actual assassination missions take place in gated and meticulously crafted palaces/dungeons etc like the Hitman games that give you several different options in how to approach your target depending on how you specced your assassin guy.

I mean sure, easier said than done, but I still think anything in that direction would have suited this series better than the Wildlands approach. But if those games sell despite middling reviews then I dunno, I guess you gotta do whats best for the company - then again if they really are selling that well I guess I'm in a minority here and really have no leg to stand on in telling Ubisoft how to make their games.

@cornfed40: well i think it's like AC3 where you can climb normal buildings and trees etc.

The reason why i want to play this is because i like stealth games and i like Egypt as a setting even in Roman times.

This exactly. I'm not actually even a big fan of stealth games. @artisanbreads hit the nail on the head with the Witcher talk. In the same way that I feel like a monster hunter doing monster contracts I want to feel like an assassin taking on targets. AC2 was the best at this from what I've played due to how it felt like you were tearing apart a hierarchy that meant something personal to your character. Every new lead that you took out got you one step closer to fully avenging your family. I want to feel like an assassin taking contracts on high ranking templar and other scum of Egypt. I want to have to think about what I take into the job based on the circumstances of the contract. I want to have to weigh the pros and cons of choosing a target at a given moment. I want to have to discover when a target is most vulnerable before running in and killing them. It doesn't even need to be a hard stealthy game. I just want to feel like an assassin instead of a warrior. The early games had a nice power trip and made me feel like a living precision weapon. After 3 it kind of just became more muddled and now it looks like they've just thrown in the towel entirely to go for mass appeal. Not that I blame them. I obviously can't expect that they make a game specifically for me. Still disappointing though.

If the game wasn't in Egypt I probably wouldn't even be bothering with it. Ancient Egypt is a weakness of mine, so this could honestly be Far Cry, Watch Dogs, The Crew, etc. in Egypt and I'd still play it. I'm open to it surprising me and I hope it does. Ubisoft open world games aren't inherently bad as long as they give me some motivation to progress through the world.

Stealth will definitely be an option you'll have plenty of outposts with assassination targets but they won't have any sort of elabrate design or fail state, incorporating metroidvania elements would certainly be a more interesting game but AC is a far bigger franchise now employing 1000+ people it would be very risky. As its NPD day today here's an interesting grab from the Gaff thread the best selling games YTD a few share quite alot in common.

@humanity: The weirdest part to me is that they took a break to reinvent the series, and then came back with a weird smush-up of Watch Dogs and Far Cry. They changed up the mechanics a little bit, but it's still just being a mostly-omniscient murderer without any substance to it. It feels less like they took a look at what made their series interesting, and more like they borrowed a bunch of tech from other properties. They looked out when they should have been looking in.

The setting is very cool. I am a bit worried in that I don't think it supports the unique climbing as much but otherwise I also love that.

Part of what I see with this game is them leaning into being a historical game and I am into that but I think they aren't going much farther to add more hooks. It's similar gameplay set there and that's about it. I like the proposed ideas in here that would make it more Hitman ish and that sort of thing. It was what was unique. They also should be making you an assassin here. I think @humanity put forth some cool ideas. They really did not use the unique parts of the series in crowds and climbing and those sorts of things it feels like.

If they were going to make it generic style it would need to do more in other areas. Something. To me there is nothing grabbing me.

It sounds cool.

Honestly as a non-switch owner. It might be my GOTY.

Combat does a while to get used to. I was about level 20 when I sussed it out. Might have been through just playing the game or cause I unlocked some combat abilities. Highly reccomended