Assassin's Creed Origins: 14 Most Promising New Features

11. A Full NPC Day/Night Cycle With Dynamic Mission Design

Returning to the idea of a full day-night cycle being prevalent in gameplay, Kotaku reports - courtesy of an interview with lead designer Ashraf Ismail - that Ubisoft wanted NPCs that "have a life, have a persistency, that have schedules, that have places to go to sleep, places to go eat, go to the bathroom, work”.

An example Ishmail gives of how this constantly moving world of characters and motivations factors into gameplay came from trying to track down a specific target:

"During the day he’s out scouring the land on his chariot. At night, he goes home to his fort and sleeps in his cabin. The idea is: ‘There you go: you have that info, he’s your target. Do what you want.’ Do you want to go in through the stealth approach to fight him? Do you want to go out in the open world where he is on a chariot and is an awesome vehicle combat situation? But it’s a completely different situation. We play around with this a lot.”

Besides drawing some comparisons to the freeform feel of 2015's MGS V: The Phantom Pain in terms of bending the world to your whim, this - if done well - sounds like enough of a departure from the standard Assassin's Creed faire.