I have been, since November, utterly enamoured with digital Ptolemaic Egypt. Assassin’s Creed Origins snowglobe version of the kingdom makes it excellent fodder for long, meandering walks and screenshots of tantalising vistas, but it’s the small vignettes of daily life and scenes of mundanity that make Egypt feel less like just another theme park.
Since the first Assassin s Creed, Ubisoft Montreal has used scale as its default weapon. Huge towers, massive crowds, more map icons than the eye can handle. But while, yes, Origins is still a gargantuan game, it s one that spends a lot of time zoomed in on the streets instead of hovering around the rooftops. It s inspired me to do the same, accompanied by the game’s impressive photo mode. It pauses the action and unlocks the camera at the press of a button, letting you tweak the image with filters and by changing things like contrast and depth of field. (more…)