Assassin's Creed Origins brings back tombs and they're based on the real thing

Grave robbing is bad. But tomb raiding in Assassin's Creed Origins? That sounds very good. Creative director Ashraf Ismail confirmed in an interview in the latest issue of OPM that Origins will bring Assassin's Creed back to the cornucopias of puzzles and platforming that last appeared in Assassin's Creed 2, with a variety of styles to explore inspired by real-life history.

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"We have quite a few tombs in the game, and they range from being classical puzzles to navigation puzzles and navigation challenges,” says Ismail. “A lot of them are actually built off of the actual true tombs that we’ve researched."

Many of the tombs in Assassin's Creed 2 were set in real-life locations like the Duomo in Florence and St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, combining navigation challenges and puzzles with the tourist-y thrill of discovering off-limits parts of famous places. The Assassin's Creed Origins team consulted with historians about how ancient Egyptian tombs were constructed to reach a similarly authentic feeling for a more ancient world, according to Ismail.

“So we put a lot of effort into recreating these tombs. Everything that is actually known we’ve mapped it out, we have images, we have research that’s been done on tombs, we actually try to replicate it as close as possible. So for example, the Greek pyramid, all the chambers, all the corridors are an authentic representation. Now, of course, we have a bit of fun and go a bit further, like, what are the secret chambers that have not been discovered yet?” 

And when you're not desecrating graves for fun and profit, you'll likely run into some impromptu GTA-style faction battles in Assassin's Creed Origins. Make sure you subscribe to OPM for more PlayStation goodness!

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.