2017 was a year of fighting between gods in the gaming world. That year, many masterpieces such as "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild", "Super Mario: Odyssey", "Tea Cup Head", "Memory of Eddie Finch" were born, and in the same year, "Assassin's Creed: Origin".

　This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Assassin's Creed series. Recently, the latest work in the series, "Assassin's Creed: Fantasy", has been published. It seems that this series is still full of vitality.

　　But five years ago, if there were no major changes in "Assassin's Creed", it would be a big question whether this series can maintain its current vitality and vitality.

　So, how did Assassin's Creed: Origins make this series break through the bottlenecks of the past through various innovations and changes? What inspiration does this have for Chinese game developers?

　　Assassin's Creed series that was once at a bottleneck

　　The complete popularity of "Assassin's Creed" is mainly due to the second generation released in 2009. This game has made more expansion and innovation based on the first generation. It received unanimous praise from the media and players at that time. Even today, many players still consider the game the best in the series.

　　　Perhaps because the second generation was too successful, Ubisoft continued this model and launched several sequels and external works with extremely high pipeline operations in the following years. Although these works have some minor innovations, they are still skin-replacement for the second generation as a whole.

　　For example, in "Assassin's Creed: The Hero", hook ropes are added to allow players to travel between buildings more quickly; in "Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood", a game of recruiting teammates for training is added; and a highly praised naval battle is added to "Assassin's Creed: Black Flag".

　　However, these do not deviate from the set of rules set by the second generation. Even the weird stickiness and weird attacks in melee battles have been passed down. The same question marks and strongholds, the ancestral game that opens boxes everywhere, has also been continued to the last work of this game, "Assassin's Creed: The Hero".

　　Ubisoft actually received various feedback through questionnaires and other forms. For example, after the birth of "Dark Souls" in 2011, many players complained about why they could not have similar combat experiences in the Assassin's Creed series and the Elder Scrolls series.

　　The decline in sales of "Assassin's Creed: The Hero" released in 2015 also shows to a certain extent that the past model has lasted for too many years, and many players are tired of it.

　　"Assassin's Creed: The Hero" has a low sales in the first week, with final sales of around 6 million sets, which may be the lowest among the orthodox series, so that Ubisoft rarely does not launch new works in the next 2016, but instead spends more time polishing the development of "Assassin's Creed: Origins", which has one almost every year from 2009 to 2015. Sometimes there are even two models a year. For example, "Assassin's Creed 3" published in 2012and Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation. It is also worth noting that "Assassin's Creed: Origin" was actually developed in the early stages of 2014-2016. From this perspective, Ubisoft did not realize that the series needed huge changes after the failed sales of "Assassin's Creed" and perhaps he realized the urgency of change as early as 2014.

　　This is a crucial move, because if Ubisoft had not started thinking about how to make big changes as early as 2014, then the sequel that appeared after "Assassin's Creed: The Heroes" would fall into the abyss very quickly if it was a conservative work.

　　How can all rivers enter the sea for their own use?

　　Assassin's Creed: Origins As a series that has been developing for many years, the problem faced at that time was how to maintain the original characteristics of the series and make great changes. In addition, this change must be recognized by most players. It is necessary to attract as many old and new players as possible. To put it nicely, this is a arduous "historical mission" for the members of the development team.

　　From the performance of the game, the developers played many popular games at that time, such as the Dark Souls series, "The Witcher 3", etc., and then fully absorbed and learned from it, and finally delivered a good answer.

　　First, the game's worldview is integrated into myths, making the game's atmosphere and cultural characteristics more mysterious and weird.

　　The works before Assassin's Creed were all based on realistic themes. Often, only the artifacts that appear at the end of the game and the pioneer civilization that occasionally explains during the game will have a supernatural realistic color. These colors are just a decor.

　　For example, in "Assassin's Creed: The Revolution" and "Assassin's Creed: The Heroes", the protagonist can use a gun to attack long-rangely, and the hook rope added to the latter has a certain scientific basis. Moreover, some celebrities in reality can be encountered in both works, such as in the latter, we can meet famous celebrities such as Marx, Dickens, Churchill.

　　If "Assassin's Creed: The Hero" is the ultimate development of this series of realism, then "Assassin's Creed: Origin" is the first step in its opposite direction and exploring and developing in the direction of mythology.

　　The entire "Assassin's Creed: Origin" can be said to be a textbook of ancient Egyptian mythology, showing the various phenomena of worship of gods in the late Ptolemaic dynasty in ancient Egypt. For example, the worship of the crocodile god Sobek in the Fayum area in the game is popular. In the eyes of modern people, crocodile is just a cruel animal. But the people of Fayum are very religious about Sobek worship in the game, and they really believe that this kind of god exists.

　　And there is indeed mysterious power in the game, but perhaps because this is the first time that such a huge change has occurred in the series, the ambiguous attitude of not explaining these mysterious powers has been adopted, which gives the game a rare flavor of Borges magical realism. whenHowever, perhaps after delving into Egyptian mythology, the producer believed that magical realism was the most in line with the situation at that time.

　　For example, there is a magical prophet character in the game. Bajake first saw him because a high priest's wife had a miscarriage several times in the game and held a miscarriage ceremony at the prophet's place. The high priest begged Bajake to help investigate the culprit of the abortion. When Bajake went to find the prophet, the latter said that he had foresaw his arrival and that he was the savior. After drinking the potion given by the prophet, Bajake entered the dream and killed a snake, and then saw his dead son Kam in the dream.

　　Later, in another side mission, "Dream of Ashes", Bajake meditated with the prophet to perform a mysterious ritual. After the meditation, Bajake woke up and was surprised to find the prophet disappearing from the island without a trace.

　　These tasks remind people of the unknown stories in ancient legends of various countries. There are many similar stories in ancient Chinese classics such as "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio" and "Sanyan Erpai", and there are similar elements in various folk stories passed down.