After dozens of hours in Shadow of War, I find the open world lacking. Will AC: Origins be my jam?

I'm really enjoying some aspects of Middle-earth: Shadow of War. The combat is really satisfying, the loot treadmill is mostly engaging, and the Nemesis System continues to mix things up for me. But running around each of the small territories gets stale. The main story missions are mediocre at best, and the side content is even worse.

Assassin's Creed: Origins looks like it has some of the same trappings as Shadow of War, especially with the loot treadmill. The open world seems more vast and varied in AC: Origins than it is in Shadow of War.

People who have played both, is Origins a step up for open world third person action with RPG and looting, over Shadow of War? Should I pick up Origins and ditch Shadow of War?

Unlike other AC games, I liked the actual openworld setting more then any other AC game I've played to date.

One of the things that really stood out to me in this AC, is the livelyhood Ubi put into its depiction of Egypt. I found myself looking at the hieroglyphs, the process of drying coffee in farms, the methods used to create cloth/blacksmithing. I really liked the amount of attention poured into the setting and the attention to historic detail here was quite impressive.

Also it hasn't been hard to stay motivated to keep playing, because I vastly prefer the characters and the stories within the Egypt setting, over any other AC, to give some extra motivation to do the (sub)missions.

However if you mean, how much "stuff" can I do per checklist basis, I'm not sure that its that much more impressive then most high budget open world games. The Loot system is good, the enviroments are quite varied for a "desert" setting especially, but how long that will stay fresh for you is hard to say.

I’ve dropped off Shadow of War. That happened fairly quickly and I don’t really feel compelled to go back to it. AC: Origins is looking alright, my only concern is the Pc performance stuff I’ve heard about

Well there are similarities between the games like you said and there are differences. While i think that the world is better in AC i think the combat suits me much more in SoW. So i would say that while you will enjoy the world more in AC be ready to feel like the combat might be a bit of a let down. You are not the superhero orcslayer of SoW.

SoW doesn't have an open-world just a murder sandbox, AC Origins has a world you'll want to explore and Witcher 3 light side quests with there own little stories that often stack multiple times. However I went straight from SoW into Origins and definitely felt open-world fatigue towards the end of Origins I'd recommend playing something else before dividing into Origins.

I don't wanna hijack this thread, but if there's one thing that really bothered me about of AC Origins it's how it completely deceives players into thinking it has a massive open-world. I remember seeing the same exact scenario from a bunch of different (p)review content, someone opens the map, makes a note of how big the zone they are in is, and then pans around showing how massive the map is. I had the same reaction myself when I opened the map for the first time.

Now, as it turns out, you're only gonna visit about half of the zones when you play through the game. The rest are completely optional, and you're never ever encouraged to go there beyond pure curiosity. Also, quite a few of these extra zones are almost nothing but endless sand dunes.

That's not to say the game doesn't have a fairly large open-world though, and it's definitely more interesting than Shadow of War (although still not amazing), but it's far from as overwhelming as you might've gotten the impression it would be.

Damn I got AC:O lined up right after I finish SoW. Dang

AC Origins is a vastly, vastly superior game to SoW. I think it's probably my favorite AC game since AC2 and Brotherhood. Given that I'm typically pretty cold on "sword and sandals" settings, I was surprised by how much I liked the ancient-Egyptian aspect of it, to the extent that I wish the game had included a codex so you could know a little bit more about it. I enjoyed having that in AC2 with the Renaissance and I'm betting that if anything, people are probably less familiar with Ptolemiac Egypt.

What I will say is if you're looking for a true stealth based game, this probably isn't for you. Stealth is still there, but in most cases it's just as easy to rush in and stab dudes in the face.

I don't think that's deceptive at all. It's still a huge world even if you don't actually "need" to go to ever zone. And as far as big empty zone with nothing to do, while there are a couple of desert zones with no actual quests, they do contain hidden dungeons and the like to explore, so it isn't like they're totally empty.

I actually think it's very well done in this respect. The game would have felt very bloated if the plot required you to travel through each area and I don't see how they could have done it without the plot beats feeling contrived. On the other hand, I think the game would have felt too small if they'd just stuck to the main plot areas. This way, things are there if a player wants to put more time in, but they don't need to engage if they just want to finish. I've got 60+ hours in at this point, but you could easily finish in 20-25 hours if you just stuck to the main plot.

Thanks all for reaffirming my hunches about AC Origins. I'll be playing that soon and dropping SoW for now. Maybe the all the DLC in the future will bring me back to SoW, if that stuff fixes the lack of variety in SoW.

To me, that doesn't seem deceptive at all. It still has a massive open world, regardless if it all gets used in the main story or not. In fact, I'd prefer if a lot of the optional zones and side content be just that: completely optional. After almost 100%-ing Ghost Recon: Wildlands, that game felt super padded-out to me. Because it required me to go through almost all the zones and taking out the leader of those zones. It forced me to go through almost the entire map, which I would've done anyway, but at my own leisure and pace. I would've liked it if going to almost all of the zones wasn't mandatory to finishing the campaign.

AC Origins seems to use some design from Witcher 3. A lot of areas are completely optional, and they reward you for being curious and exploring off the beaten path. It's a nice palette cleanser for when I need to take a break from the main story, just to do other things in the world and flesh out the lore in other ways.

I thought the AC open world was pretty good, so maybe you'll like the game better than Shadow of War, but the combat experience was much worse than Shadow of War for me.

@zaapp1: That was my fear too when I was contemplating on switching to AC Origins. The combat in SoW was one of the major reasons I was sticking with that game for as long as I did. Hopefully the open world and side activities makes up for some of the shallow combat in AC relative to SoW.

Although, it seems like the combat in AC Origins might be better compared to past AC games?

Origins is hands down the better game. But it may not be a great choice if you've just put a few dozen hours into a different open world rpg.

I've just started AC: Origins. I dropped off Shadow of War after reaching the third location area.

I'm enjoying AC Origins so far (admittedly only 2 hours in) and already finding the world far more interesting and the game more enjoyable.

I love LOTR, but Shadow of War really didn't grab me and the nemesis system almost seems too overblown to me. There are too many Orc Captains now, I don't really care about any of them.

@tuxedocruise: Wonderful question, you're asking about something that I really care about and pay attention to.

And the answer is yes. AC: Origins appears to have lifted itself from the "Sleeping Dogs / Shadow of Mordor / Just Cause league of open world" where the world looks nice but the AI all seem like bland, blank and dead units walking around, to a world where you're actually interacting with real human beings and feel like the game was filmed in a human area, like Red Dead Redemption's and The Witcher 3's superior open worlds.

I'm only 4 hours into it, haven't seen enough, but from the interactions I've had with the AI and the world, it seems way superior to the Shadow/JustCause/etc games.