Assassin’s Creed Origins looks to be a much needed reinvention for the long-running series, and in addition to things like combat, it’s also going to have renewed mechanics for something else that has served as one of the pillars for the series since its inception- stealth.
We recently conducted an interview with Origins’ game director, Ashraf Ismail, during which he went into great detail to explain just how the stealth mechanics have been revamped in the upcoming game. “We talk about combat a lot, but stealth has gone through a lot as well,” Ismail said while discussing the facelifts the series is receiving through the latest entry. “First, one of the major ones I think will surprise people is that we’ve added a big action-RPG element to the game. The reason we did this is that we wanted to support the different play styles that we know people like to play in Assassin’s Creed.”
“We now have a progression system that supports [it all],” Ismail continued. “If you want to be a warrior, great. You have abilities, you have equipment,, you have crafting. If you want to be a stealthy assassin you have abilities, you have equipment, you have crafting. If you want to be a ranger with a bow, all of that is still good for you.You can mix and match, you can make the kind of hero you want. It’s really the players’ choice.”
“In terms of style, what that means is if you want to be that assassin, that’s able to get a one-hit kill, you have to dedicate yourself to it,” Ismail elaborated. “You have to craft it on ways. You have to get abilities that support you to do that. It’s not just sneak up behind the person. That’s in terms of damage.”
He then went on to talk about the mechanics for stealth as well, and how the development team working on Origins has made it possible for players to be able to use things in the environment to help them. “In terms of the actual mechanism of stealth, we’ve change the whole detection system, how it works,” Ismail said. “We wanted players to be able to cat and mouse with the AI much more. As an example you have a torch. You can take out your torch, throw it, a guard will investigate. You can throw it into a haystack and create a big bonfire which will attract a lot of guards. The idea is that there is an organic blend to the environment, you can mess with the guards and allow the player to sneak in. We played around with all of that stuff.”
We’ll be posting our full interview with Ashraf Ismail soon, so stay tuned to GamingBolt to read all of it. There’s a lot of interesting information in there. Assassin’s Creed Origins launches this November for the PS4, Xbox One and PC.