Some folks are cat people, others are dog people, but the hero of Assassin’s Creed Origins (opens in new tab), Bayek? He’s a predator guy. Eagles, lions, crocodiles, he loves them all, and he can tame them to fight alongside him (or help in other ways) as he travels across ancient Egypt. You may have already seen Bayek working with Senu, his loyal Bonelli’s eagle, to scout out enemy locations, and Assassin’s Creed Origins creative director Ashraf Ismail told OPM more about Bayek’s animal buddies for its latest issue.
Senu can fly as far and wide as you please before reporting back to Bayek, making her incredibly useful for sizing up fights or exploring new locations. With a bird’s eye view so easily accessible, the Assassin’s-standard Viewpoints (you know, the towers with convenient bales of hay under them) have been reworked into training points that extend Senu’s vision. Working with other animals can have more unexpected benefits.
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“Taming animals is awesome, I’ve had some really amazing moments with it,” Ismail explained. “I’ll give you a little story: at some point when we were testing the feature out, I had tamed the crocodile, and I ran off somewhere, and the crocs are pretty slow, they are not able to stay at your pace. Lions can, leopards can, hyenas can, and so on, but the crocodiles are a bit slower. So I left and I actually thought it bugged out and that the crocodile had lost its connection to me.
“So anyway, I continued playing and I was doing a quest. I was in the middle of a camp and I was actually getting in trouble, I was dying, effectively, my health was super low, and out of nowhere this giant croc just leaps out of the grass and takes out some of the guys I was fighting with. It was a really amazing moment, it felt so cool. So he was literally travelling the whole time just trying to catch up to me and it literally took him like 15 minutes to get to where I was. The feeling was super-cool and it stayed with me the whole time. So the animal taming is a lot of fun, and you can pretty much tame every predator type of animal, it’s a cool ability. “
Our Assassin’s Creed Origins (opens in new tab) info article has more news beyond the local food chain if you want to learn more, or you could check out how Origins is bringing back tombs (opens in new tab). And make sure you pick up a subscription to OPM (opens in new tab) to stay abreast of all the PlayStation news.