Assassin's Creed Origins' Egyptian Setting Is Great Because It's Beautiful And Tragic In Equal Measure

thegamer.com:

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.

Related: I Visited Assassin's Creed Odyssey's Sanctuary Of Delphi In Real Life And I Felt Like I'd Been There Before

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