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  1. #1
    LoyalACFan's Avatar Senior Member
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    Have we talked about the lack of actual assassinations in this game?

    Up until now, we've had threads arguing the merits of the individual targets in each game, which title had the best assassination mission design, and so on, but one of the things that really disappointed me about Origins was that there are barely any assassination missions at all, and the ones we got were severely underwhelming. I mean, look at the rundown of each target;

    Spoiler:  Show
    Rudjek- just a cutscene.

    Medunamun- I literally killed him by accident while doing a side quest.

    Eudoros- okay for the first target, but pretty bare-bones TBH, just climb into the rafters and air assassinate.

    Taharqa- the best one, but still no better than any number of the random forts you take over.

    Khaliset- annoying boss fight with zero visibility.

    Hetepi- was this a joke? Just run up the coughing guy, which you're specifically told to do, and stab him. You don't even have to be stealthy.

    Berenike- she's right out in the open with Kensa...

    Flavius- forced boss fight.

    Septimius- forced boss fight.

    Caesar- glorified QTE.


    It didn't help, either, that aside from Taharqa and maybe Khaliset, all of the targets were extremely underdeveloped, even with the side quests.
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  2. #2
    ModernWaffle's Avatar Member
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    Ehm... might as well replace 'lack of assassinations' with logic.

    But yes the target list was certainly underwhelming and the absence of Blackbox missions was in way understandable though equally quite disappointing / unexpected. Also, whilst I appreciate the effort they put in the side quests I think they made too many and as a result they didn't have as much story context put in the campaign missions.
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  3. #3
    SixKeys's Avatar Senior Member
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    I loved many things about this game, but the assassinations sadly weren't among them. They were all very barebones and unmemorable, the only standout one was the Hyena. I didn't even understand what happened with Bayek's friend who fought with him in the arena. I air-assassinated the Crocodile, get the memory corridor scene, then out of nowhere I get attacked by this lady who starts to go into a big speech but then she one-shot-K.O.'s me and I'm back with Leyla. When I re-enter the Animus, Bayek is alive and his friend is gone. I didn't kill her, it looked like she killed me, but apparently she didn't and now she's either dead or buggered off somewhere. Mission accomplished. What the hell happened here? It honestly felt like the game glitched out, but I talked to someone else who assured me that was how the mission went for them too. This was designed by someone.

    Say what you want about Unity and Syndicate, but the blackbox assassinations were some of the best in the series. Origins, by contrast, has the weakest.
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  4. #4
    ModernWaffle's Avatar Member
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    Originally Posted by SixKeys Go to original post
    What the hell happened here? It honestly felt like the game glitched out, but I talked to someone else who assured me that was how the mission went for them too. This was designed by someone.
    Kensa was working with the Crocodile and is guarding the target in the mission. Problem is, as you already implied, the mission sequence is structured awkwardly since you don't find out Kensa is a traitor unless you confront and fight her. If you just assassinate the Crocodile stealthily the white room scene plays automatically and then the game immediately takes you out of the Animus once the scene finishes into the Layla MD segment.

    Once you go back in the Animus the mission is longer active so you have no chance to find out what happened to Kensa. This happened exactly to me so seeing as you and the person you asked also encountered it, it's clearly just poor mission design. On that note, I didn't see a need to make Kensa bad she was a very cool character and I think they should have done something more interesting with her instead.
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  5. #5
    LoyalACFan's Avatar Senior Member
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    WTF, I had no idea that could happen with Kensa. I was just sitting on a rooftop overlooking the spot where she and Berenike were standing, and overheard some of the dialogue between them (revealing that Kensa had been working for the Crocodile) so I hopped down and chain-assassinated the both of them in one move. Can't remember if I got Berenike or Kensa with the initial strike, but either way, Bayek just said something about how sad he was that things worked out this way between them and that was that. No weird knockout move and hard-cut to Layla.

    Although I guess that kind of explains why there's a note about Kensa in the Hidden Ones Bureau...? If you don't kill her during the Crocodile assassination, does she come back in a side quest or something? I wondered why that note was there... Of course, there was a note about the Phylakes too, all of whom were dead by the time I finished the main story, but I assumed Kensa's death was a canon part of the main story, meaning she must have been long dead before the bureau was even a thing. Curious if anyone had different outcomes with her...? But yeah, that whole side-arc with her in the gladiator arena was confusing AF to begin with.
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  6. #6
    SixKeys's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by ModernWaffle Go to original post
    Kensa was working with the Crocodile and is guarding the target in the mission. Problem is, as you already implied, the mission sequence is structured awkwardly since you don't find out Kensa is a traitor unless you confront and fight her. If you just assassinate the Crocodile stealthily the white room scene plays automatically and then the game immediately takes you out of the Animus once the scene finishes into the Layla MD segment.

    Once you go back in the Animus the mission is longer active so you have no chance to find out what happened to Kensa. This happened exactly to me so seeing as you and the person you asked also encountered it, it's clearly just poor mission design. On that note, I didn't see a need to make Kensa bad she was a very cool character and I think they should have done something more interesting with her instead.
    I figured it was something like that. What annoys me is that it makes it even more obvious how little regard the devs have for stealth players. The mission was obviously designed with combat in mind, since you literally can't see the Kensa reveal unless you approach and fight her head-on. Mission design should always either account for both stealth and combat approach, or make the mission linear so there's no possibility for blunders like this.

    Now I wish I could replay the mission so I could test what happens if you e.g. poison a body and leave it on the Crocodile's path. Will she and her bodyguard be infected? Can they both die of poisoning? Or what if you send a tamed animal to kill them? Set them on fire with an arrow? Sleepdart them and assassinate them in their sleep? Will you ever get the Kensa reveal then? I imagine many players were very confused if they opted for an indirect approach.
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  7. #7
    Joshua0892's Avatar Senior Member
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    Wait what Kensa was evil 0_0... Ooh yeah back in the early days they atleast tried you to see through the Templar view -_- ooh well back to the topic on hand.
    I was wondering what happened to Kensa the hole stroyline because she seemed so freaking random and what is the point of making her the targets body guard anyway if it doesn't change anything in the storyline even worse is that people don't even know what happened to her because of the bad writing, Ubisoft I accept half of what you pay the writers (I am not saying my story will be good... But atleast you have a clear objective and better ideas and better character endings).

    The lack of Assassinations were slowly really bothering the last few days and I was calling the game Medjays Day Job Origins a few times to because there were no real Assassin stuff in it. I was thinking at the end of the game when the words Assassin's Creed Origins appeared on screen ''I got nothing out of this''. I mean it I got nothing new out of the story in this game except the same story we got over a hundred times.
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  8. #8
    SixKeys's Avatar Senior Member
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    The other problem with Kensa, and a few other side characters, was that she meant nothing to us. There were several moments in the game where Bayek would meet someone from an earlier point in his life and greeted them like an old friend, but we don't know their history.

    Contrast Kensa with someone like Leonardo da Vinci in the Ezio games where our hero first greeted him with indifference because Leo was only his mother's acquaintance. But we got to spend more time with him, saw their friendship deepen as he helped Ezio in his time of need, and we rejoiced at their reunion in ACB because of this bond.

    Kensa gets introduced as someone who was apparently a dear friend, and I guess we're supposed to feel sad when he's forced to kill her, but we don't know who she really was. If the rumors are true and Ubi are planning for more games with Bayek, it would have had so much more impact if the first game had her fighting on our side and in the second game she turns out to be a traitor. The same thing happened with
    Spoiler:  Show
    Pierre Bellec in Unity
    . A few sequences is not enough to make them endearing to us, so it's hard to care when they die. The reason the Lucy reveal was so shocking to fans was because we had several games where she was a friend and we thought she and Desmond were destined to be together.

    Kensa wasn't the only character to be introduced in this way, they even did it with Senu. Bayek arrives in Siwa and sounds overjoyed at hearing that Senu is alive. But what kind of bond does he have with Senu? If she just a pet or does she have a deeper connection with his past? We grow fond of her over the course of the game because she's literally with us the entire time, we get to interact with her in small ways and darn it, she's just cute. But most people are still confused how Bayek can see what she sees and the game never explains their connection. It would have been more impactful if we had a flashback where the two first get to know each other, maybe a bit of clumsy training to get her to do what Bayek says, or maybe Bayek saving her from an abusive merchant or something. Anything.
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  9. #9
    LoyalACFan's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by SixKeys Go to original post
    The other problem with Kensa, and a few other side characters, was that she meant nothing to us. There were several moments in the game where Bayek would meet someone from an earlier point in his life and greeted them like an old friend, but we don't know their history.

    Contrast Kensa with someone like Leonardo da Vinci in the Ezio games where our hero first greeted him with indifference because Leo was only his mother's acquaintance. But we got to spend more time with him, saw their friendship deepen as he helped Ezio in his time of need, and we rejoiced at their reunion in ACB because of this bond.

    Kensa gets introduced as someone who was apparently a dear friend, and I guess we're supposed to feel sad when he's forced to kill her, but we don't know who she really was. If the rumors are true and Ubi are planning for more games with Bayek, it would have had so much more impact if the first game had her fighting on our side and in the second game she turns out to be a traitor. The same thing happened with
    Spoiler:  Show
    Pierre Bellec in Unity
    . A few sequences is not enough to make them endearing to us, so it's hard to care when they die. The reason the Lucy reveal was so shocking to fans was because we had several games where she was a friend and we thought she and Desmond were destined to be together.

    Kensa wasn't the only character to be introduced in this way, they even did it with Senu. Bayek arrives in Siwa and sounds overjoyed at hearing that Senu is alive. But what kind of bond does he have with Senu? If she just a pet or does she have a deeper connection with his past? We grow fond of her over the course of the game because she's literally with us the entire time, we get to interact with her in small ways and darn it, she's just cute. But most people are still confused how Bayek can see what she sees and the game never explains their connection. It would have been more impactful if we had a flashback where the two first get to know each other, maybe a bit of clumsy training to get her to do what Bayek says, or maybe Bayek saving her from an abusive merchant or something. Anything.
    Agree with everything here, but I'd also like to add that I did like running into some of Bayek's old friends in the side quests; it made it seem like he had a life prior to the game, and consequently makes him feel more genuine as a character. They used that trick a few too many times (i.e. the hippodrome racer, the priest at the Sekhmet festival, the lady who healed you at the natron mine) and it didn't land when they tried it within the main quests with characters who were supposed to hold up whole story arcs, as you've noted, but it was a nice change of pace from the traditional "hey, hero whom I've never seen before in my life, can you help me find my friends?"
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  10. #10
    Originally Posted by LoyalACFan Go to original post
    Agree with everything here, but I'd also like to add that I did like running into some of Bayek's old friends in the side quests; it made it seem like he had a life prior to the game, and consequently makes him feel more genuine as a character. They used that trick a few too many times (i.e. the hippodrome racer, the priest at the Sekhmet festival, the lady who healed you at the natron mine) and it didn't land when they tried it within the main quests with characters who were supposed to hold up whole story arcs, as you've noted, but it was a nice change of pace from the traditional "hey, hero whom I've never seen before in my life, can you help me find my friends?"
    I particularly like how you can talk to characters later in the game that you had quest with or for, earlier in the game. It kind of adds a bit of friendships or a personal edge to the game.
    I particularly liked running into that warrior chick that kept flirting with me in one quest although I was married. Later, I was no longer married, and she continued to flirt. I'm thinking,
    Let's get it on. But, she just stood on the balcony. lol.
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