I have chosen this game as I have watched some content on it before and wanted to deep-dive into it. Assassin's Creed Origins is a 2017 action role-playing video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It is the tenth major installment in the Assassin's Creed series, following 2015's Assassin's Creed Syndicate.
Release Date:
The game was released on the 27th of October 2017. To find relevant contexts, I remember the game of the year that year was Breath of the wild. We can dig context out of this by seeing how it compares. Both games are open world showing a liking for that genre in the year but also both games have a over 90% liked rating and rate highly on ratings such as IGN. Talking about the game awards that year, Origins was nominated for 22 and even won an award. They were the Winner of the VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Real-Time Project. Well it was a four-year development process since the last game in 2013.
Story:
Origins is principally set in Egypt, near the end of the Ptolemaic period from 49 to 43 BC, the story follows a Medjay named Bayek of Siwa and his wife Aya as they seek revenge for the murder of their son, and explores the origins (clever) of the millennia-long conflict between the Hidden Ones forerunners to the Assassin Brotherhood.
Unique/Different?:
Assassin's Creed as a franchise will always get criticism for being similar to the other games, it comes with the territory of being a franchise but does Origins fall into this or is it unique and if so is it even good? I looked through reviews and found one that goes "This was a much needed change to the series." most reviews say that the past games were on a decline until Origins swooped in with unique qualities that made it better. This video is an excellent demonstration of how Origins changed the game franchise for the better. But Ill go through some of the reasons why in case you are lazy. The new combat system feels much more fluid and natural, previous titles in the Assassin's Creed series used a "paired animation system" whereby the player character would engage with an enemy and combat would be dictated by a series of predetermined animations based on player inputs and scripted AI movements. Origins moved to a "hit-box system". When the player wields a weapon, they strike at whatever is in range, allowing them to hit and injure enemies directly, and creating the possibility of missing an enemy entirely. Another surprise that we come across is the Eagle Vision in this game which is unique to this title as we have access to the cute Senu. Now who doesn't want a little bird friend to help them spot murder victims? However the sense aspect of this to me is similar to one of my favourite stealth franchises Hitman.
Budget:
Reports suggest that the game had a $200m development budget
Development:
Ubisoft Montreal led the game's development, with assistance provided by other Ubisoft studios in different parts of the world. Ubisoft is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, For Honour, Just Dance, Prince of Persia, Rabbids, Rayman, Tom Clancy's, and Watch Dogs. Nearly 1,000 people worked on the game; only 300 came from the Montreal studio. Ubisoft described this model of development as "co-development" where, unlike previous installments in the series, the support studios had more freedom and their work was more integral to the whole. Ubisoft Montreal continue to develop games.
Applying Theory:
Origins would be criticised by Albert Bandura as he states that transgressive behaviours would be picked up and mimicked/imitated by younger audiences. Origins shows a lot of violence and deviant acts. Albert Bandura also showed in studies such as the bobo doll study that children are more likely to be violent if they witness it leading to copy negative acts even criminality. Bandura's theory speaks about how the media embeds ideas into the consumers brain. From this the audience may acquire attitudes or create themselves on what they see. In Assassin's Creed Origins, the protagonist Bayek seeks vengence and takes revenge on the people responcible for killing his child. This implants the negative attitude that families of victims should seek revenge through murdering people. The video game may lead to children who play it to copy the behaviour of sneaking up on another and hurting them like shown through Bayek. Conversely, it is possible to get positive ideas, attitudes and behaviour from Origins. Although this protagonist uses violence, he is a strong ethnic warrior that people from ethnic backgrounds can aspire to.
Curran and Seaton's power and media industries theory states that the media (such as newspapers) are owned by large conglomerates, resulting in lack of creativity and thought. They say they will produce repetitive media that they know will sell because it will make a profit and gain the owners of these companies power. In this case, Origins is published and managed by Ubisoft, who also own, develop and publish more than one franchise. They have created 20 different types of AC so far. Curran and Seaton also suggest that big companies lack creativity and aren't risk takers, the game is part of an established franchise with a larger fan/player-base leading to similarities. They also suggest that small companies can take more risks and be creative. Origins took a few risks as the protagonist and setting are ethnic which non culturally diverse people may reject.
Stuart Hall suggested that media texts contain a variety of messages that are encoded (made/inserted) by producers and then decoded (understood) by audiences. Therefore what we see is simply a 're-presentation' of what producers want us to see. According to hall, the dominant-hegemonic position is that the encoder's intended meaning (the preffered reading) is fully understood and accepted. An example of this in Origins is that the Egyptian setting is really positive and good for the game I can tell from pleforas of comments from JackSepticEye's videos on this saying "this games atmosphere is its best part" and even Jack himself saying his favourite part is the map and exploring it. There is also the negotiated reading such as fan animation. There are also people who take a oppositional reading, they may take one in this case as the protagonist is from a non-white country so people may not understand the culture and therefore reject it.
Kommentare