Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Origins is doing a lot of new things for the franchise, from the changes in the combat to the revamped quest structure. It will even have a new Discovery Tour mode that has no combat and allows players to just explore the story without any pressure.
However, the game will also have difficulty settings for the first time in the series. Director Ashraf Ismail told Assassin’s Central that the difficulty settings are meant to cater to a wider audience. Furthermore, upping the difficulty will actually change enemies in certain ways rather than increasing their health. Difficulty can be changed at any point during the game as well.
“Some people play for the historic context, some people for the narrative, some for the gameplay, and what we felt was by going deeper into the gameplay challenge of the game we’re feeding one part of the audience, but not others so it was a natural step for us to think ‘well, let’s give difficulty settings.’”
It’s an interesting new addition, though it remains to be seen how players are expected to tackle it. Will this encourage optimizing builds more, thus emphasizing the game’s loot aspects? Or will enemies be more tactical, thus encouraging players to know their abilities all the better? We’ll find out when Assassin’s Creed Origins arrives on October 27th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.