10 Ways Assassin's Creed Origins Has Saved The Franchise

3. Streamlined Gadget Use

Across all the AC games we've always had pretty varied repertoires of moves and gadgets/weapons. From throwing knives to pneumatic blades, rope darts to poison arrows, an assassin's best asset may be their hidden blade, but sometimes you need to add a bit of flair to proceedings too.

Enter Origins' overhaul of how gadgets are implemented into combat - which is something we've needed for years, if not since the very first game.

Now, you do need to hop into the skill tree to unlock these, but rather than having smoke bombs be something you'd have to swap to on a weapon wheel, you can merely tap triangle/Y after dodging or hitting with a melee attack, to drop one. These bombs can then be upgraded to deal damage, allowing you to make swift getaways very fast if need be.

Second is fire bombs, sleep and poison darts. All of these get put onto variations of "hold left/right on the D-pad", giving you quick access without pausing the action, and letting you swap back to different blades or bows with standard taps of the same directions.

Small improvements in theory, but they demonstrably change the way an Assassin's Creed game feels, giving you more options in combat and stealth.