Assassin's Creed: Origins - What we know so far

Assassin's Creed: Origins is most officially going to ancient Egypt. A lot of changes seem to be on the horizon - a more RPG-y look and feel in line with recent open world trends, a seemingly greater emphasis on ranged weapons, a bird's eye view, and lots of sand.

After nearly sinking the FS UbiSoft with all the leaks it was causing, Assassin's Creed: Origins is now confirmed all official like and set to release 27 October 2017. UbiSoft has allowed their development team more time to produce the current entry, and seems to have become aware of how stale the series has become over time.

Towers look like a thing of the past, and are now replaced with an eagle vision kind of mechanic for exploration purposes, and it looks similar to what Primal pulled with its feathered companions. Origins will be a bit heavier on RPG elements when compared to its predecessors, with detailed character progression systems, skill-trees, loot-drops, and a much more open world in which players can play around with those.

Wheter the new RPG stuff will alleviate the series reliance on map marker hunting for playtime padding purposes remains to be seen.

Another novelty is the increased emphasis on and introduction of proper boss fights. The death from above single stab type assassinations will probably still be around, since they are an aesthetic staple of the series The game's director Ashraf Ismail, who previously helmed one of the more innovative Assasin's Creed games - Black Flag, described the new system:

"Of course all of this wouldn't work if we didn't have proper challenge in the game...we want players to look at the loadout of an enemy. What weapons are they carrying, what shields are they using, this stuff matters. It changes the way you play against them. This allowed us to do epic boss fights. We wanted AC with boss fights, tons of boss fights."

UbiSoft Assassin's Creed: Origins

If all this shuffling around makes you think that all those leaks might have drained UbiSoft's bad blood, fear not - the usual pre-order/season pass mess is still around. Lots of different digital and physical editions with various cocktails of pre-order bait, but the one that stands out is a limited edition mega-collector legendary whatever pack that goes for $800.

Assassin's Creed: Origins will be playable on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on 27 October 2017.