For years, Egypt was reliably at the top of people's lists of dream Assassin's Creed settings. Then, in 2017, Ubisoft finally delivered. Origins wasn't just a bold and much-needed reinvention of the series, taking inspiration from RPGs like The Witcher 3, but it also featured one of the best open worlds in the series' long history. Its vivid, lavish depiction of Egypt in the year 48 BCE is stunningly detailed, immense in scale, and drenched in atmosphere. But what I really love is how Ubisoft chose a very specific period of time for us to visit it.
Assassin's Creed settings usually focus on a period of peak prosperity—whether that's Classical Greece, Renaissance Italy, or London in the throes of the Industrial Revolution. Following this trend, you might have expected Origins to whisk us away to Ancient Egypt in the iconic golden age of the pharaohs. Instead, we visit this civilization in its twilight years. The line of the god-kings is coming to an end in the wake of Alexander the Great's conquest, and the Greeks and Romans have swept in, radically altering its culture, religion, architecture, and industry.
This so-called Ptolemaic Kingdom is an interesting and unexpected choice for an Assassin's Creed game, but a fascinating one. We get to see famous landmarks like the pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx in much better shape than they are today, and get a feel of what Egypt might have been like in the distant past. But these grand monuments are starting to crumble and fall apart as the country's new stewards spread their influence in the region. The old ways are being rapidly forgotten, which is reflected in these fading structures.
Artistically, this makes Origins' setting one of the most varied and visually exciting in the series. The stark architectural contrast of the old Egyptian buildings sitting alongside these gleaming marble temples is striking to look at—and thematically interesting too. It's a collision of cultures, and the game realises this brilliantly. It's kinda tragic seeing the distinctive, ancient culture and religion of this once great civilization being slowly dismantled around you. Origins is the most melancholy Assassin's Creed game. It's literally the end of an era.
Origins is by no means a historical text, but it's still an evocative, immersive way of experiencing the last days of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Travel through the countryside and you'll see the Romans constructing their famous aqueducts and roads, permanently scarring the landscape in a way it never has been before. But there are still remnants of the old ways of life to be found as well: like the bodies you see being mummified in the sacred city of Memphis, or the crocodile god Sobek being worshipped in Faiyum. This is very much a world in flux.
I'd still like to play an Assassin's Creed game set at the peak of Ancient Egyptian culture. Even if the map still had the same general layout as Origins, going back a few thousand years would make it feel like a completely different place. But I have a lot of respect for Ubisoft resisting the urge to do the obvious thing, and trying something a bit different. It paid off massively, and neither Odyssey nor Valhalla (as great as their respective settings are) reached the same heights in terms of world-building. I don't know what the next setting in the series will be, but Origins' vision of Ancient Egypt's sad decline set a very high bar.