Living NPCs
Speaking of the world, the player won’t be the only one consciously living in it this time around. The NPCs in Origins are programed to live their own lives. They’ll wake up with the rising sun and go to bed when the sky darkens. They’ll go to work, buy food from the market, and even get into arguments. This means the player will never have the same experience no matter how many times they run up and down the same street.
Although the social aspect of this will help the world feel more alive, the truly intriguing takeaway is how this might affect Bayek’s missions throughout the game. For the first time in any Assassin’s Creed game, players will have to actually hunt their prey. Players will have to learn routines and track their targets, as well as consider possible NPC interference, before tackling each mission. This adds a level of strategy to Assassin’s Creed that the franchise’s formula desperately needed. It promotes stealth to as equally an appealing approach to tackling a problem as open combat – something previous games have fallen short on.
Of course, this means hiding in plain sight will require more effort than wandering into a mindless crowd of people, but being able to incorporate human behavior into an assassination means the player won’t automatically fail if they’re spotted. It will probably also lead to some more exciting chase scenes and infiltration missions as well.