Revenge!
5/5
Spoilers
It may come as a surprise to you, dear reader, but I think in youthful American social circles I would be classed as a 'nerd'. Although, if that is a shock, you clearly haven't read any of my previous reviews. In British circles, being a nerd is really a term bandied about by nerds alone and few others. Why waste breath on creating school-based social hierarchies when we have a perfectly good class system in use as it is?
Alongside reading and watching 'things', I also quite enjoy playing video games. Once upon a time, gaming distinctly meant mashing your way through Mario or Sonic. It was a pop art coloured 8-bit world, following a ridiculous character eating golden coins and jumping on the heads of moles. High-brow stuff indeed! Over the past two decades, this has evolved though into something more than the public consciousness has fully realised (besides the millions who buy and play games every year). Of course, Mario is still out there but longer, more detailed, and games of greater complexity, both mentally and emotionally, have come to the fore.
One of the biggest franchises in this video game world is Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series. When I was very generously given a PS4 for my birthday, a few years ago, this was the series I was most interested in exploring. Having been out of the gaming world since our plucky PS1 fell behind the dark and brooding PS2, I had found not way of experiencing this series. But it sounded like it had key features I would enjoy. You play as a modern day assassin who is hooked up to a machine that allows them to relive the lives of their assassin ancestors. History and mindless video game murders, what could be more fun?
The franchise lived up to its promise and more so. The designers incorporate two features in any AC game: architectural/topological/cartographical accuracy and plots which weave in and out of real history. The first I played, Assassin's Creed II, follows a Renaissance assassin who wanders through Florence, Venice, and more on his quest to seek revenge on Pope Alexander and the Borgias. Assassin's Creed III charts a Native American assassin fighting his way along the American War of Independence, aiding the likes of Washington and Ben Franklin.
As the series has continued, and technology has been upgraded, maps and architectural accuracy have thus improved. The revolutionary Paris of Assassin's Creed: Unity is full of important buildings, each with a moderate database entry on its background. A friend of mine even claims to have learnt his geography of London through traipsing around 1860s London in Assassin's Creed: Syndicate. Frequently, these games are almost intoxicating to the historically minded, and viewed by archaeologists as some of the best digital recreations around. As you can tell, I'm a bit of a fan.
Lockdown, that dreaded term that has been burnt into our synapses, gave me plenty of spare time to fill. Having played all of the primary AC games a few years ago, in one run, I thought I'd left them alone for long enough (OK, I took one year off...) and returned to play again. In modern video games the main plot is only a part of what makes up the game. When I had first played these games, eager to reveal the story, see all the historical settings, and learn this universe's lore, I whizzed through them. Upon return, I discovered that most games I had less than a 60% completion rate, one was even as low as 35%. So, I aimed to complete everything meaningful that I came across, even if it meant collecting 100 feathers.
Along this lockdown journey, I have discovered much in these games that I simply had not bothered to seek out previously. Some games which I loved (Assassin's Creed II, Assassin's Creed IV: Blackflag, and Assassin's Creed: Syndicate) continued to provide a wealth of well-spent hours; some I had found clunky continued to be so but with much more to recommend them that I had initially realised (Assassin's Creed III, Assassin's Creed: Rogue, and Assassin's Creed: Unity); and then there was the one I had really not enjoyed. This had been hurtling over the horizon to me since I began my quest: Assassin's Creed: Origins.
This game marked a break in the format of the games for Ubisoft. Typically, each game had followed a straight narrative with, increasingly, some side quests you could follow. But the flow of the game was quite tightly controlled. Over the ten years Assassin's Creed had been around for, it had built up a big fan base, and, as with any large fan base, they can be quite opinionated about the product. Game designers seem to take pride in visiting fan message boards to find tips for developing their games further. It is admirable really. After several years of a minority of fans and critics moaning about a supposed lack of innovation over multiple titles (which sales and reviews seemed to cast doubt on), Ubisoft decided to change everything. This game would be an RPG, the player would have a bigger map, more side quests than main story, more choices in how to develop their character, and could opt to invest up to 100 hours of time into completing it. This felt like a moment when the developers decided they'd had enough of the moaning and sought some revenge. Obviously the reviews were ecstatic but the fans now moaned that their old AC was gone. A most successful revenge, one could argue.
On replaying this game, one I loathed originally, I discovered that the problem originally may have been me. I'm big enough to admit that. I had never played a large RPG before like this and was baffled by the amount of side quests and how to 'level up'. Coming back to it, and understanding the mentality one needs to play these sort of games, I suddenly found a very different game than the one I had slogged at for 30 hours before abandoning.
At the heart of the game is the central assassin, Bayek of Siwa, on a quest to seek revenge for the murder of his young son. This is the stuff Assassin's Creed is built of, the long chain of murders that come about following a loved one's murder. They all have it. But in this story, Bayek comes to see that vengeance is hollow, a lesson maybe Ubisoft themselves found. Seeing how much money they took on the game, probably not.
The side quests repeat this notion, time and time again. You find someone in distress and help them seek revenge on the loss of a loved one. But when the quest is complete, you leave them in the dusts of ancient Egypt. They have nothing but pain, little sated by the bloodshed. After finishing the main game, you can download two DLCs (extra content featuring whole new, smaller stories for Bayek). The second of these, a remarkable expansion that sees Bayek travelling into the Duat of Egyptian mythology, follows another revenge quest. The antagonist is going through a similar journey to Bayek's in the main game, but she does not find redemption or learn the hard truth. She continues, hurting others for the pain inflicted on her.
As well as this exploration of revenge, the game also delves into an aspect little covered by video games: spirituality. The Ancient Egypt we walk in the game, c.45 B.C., is still filled with vibrant living temples. This old Egyptian religion is threatened by the Romans. Bayek spends most of his journey trying to honour these gods. The game only lets itself down when it encourages you to kills certain animals considered sacred in other parts of the game, or go tomb robbing. Yet the general sincerity in which the worship of this mystical pantheon is approached in though provoking. The oncoming Romans, bringing a more modern era, and the colonising Greeks, bringing their own gods, aim to lessen something core to the Egyptian identity. What have we lost on the journey to modernity or taken from others in colonising them?
Beyond the story, the game is worth playing for the sheer beauty and magnificence with which ancient Egypt is rendered. You can watch YouTube videos with Egyptologists discussing the innate accuracy with which the designers have brought this long dead world back to life. It is more than just tombs and mummies - people roam, work, play, relieve themselves, get drunk, sleep, hunt hippos, fight, and die. In many ways, exploring Egypt through something as well researched and crafted as this game is much more useful than reading about it. What better way to learn of Egypt than visiting it, even if only digitally?
Comments