Although the history of the Assassin's Creed DLC often tells of how Ubisoft tried to "shake" the formula of the main title, changing protagonist, setting, historical period or even mechanics, with Origins is the first downloadable content The Hidden Ones, the Canadian team has instead thought of proposing us simply a direct continuation of the main game.
Sold to € 9.99 or included in the Season Pass, The Hidden Ones again puts us in the shoes of Bayek, the Egyptian neighborhood policeman / priest-like in his fight against the evil Romans and the mysterious Order, all moving into the new Sinai region, four years later from the end of the events of Assassin's Creed: Origins.
SPQR: These Romans are Dangerous
As mentioned, The Hidden Ones is simply “more Assassin's Creed”, but given the undeniable qualities (here our review a few months ago) of Origins, this is by no means a defect. Anyhow in this DLC there is enough meat on the fire to fully satisfy us and a new storyline that will reserve more than a surprise and will unexpectedly involve some well-known characters.
It is practically above all mandatory to finish the main missions of Origins before jumping into this DLC. First, the missions will require a very high experience level, around 40 (in The Hidden Ones the level cap is raised to 45) and the events will start from the epilogue of the game, with Bayek and Aya separated from the Mediterranean, Julius Caesar in the tomb and what will become the newly founded Creed of the Assassins. Although the approximately 5/6 hours it will take you to complete everything does not reserve who knows what narrative developments - paradoxically, it is some secondary missions that steal the show - following the history of these very first years of the Assassins turns out to be interesting, with Bayek more and more at the level of the best protagonists of the series.
A whole new world. Almost.
Story that takes place in the new region of Sinai, reachable by boat from Alexandria and separated by the waters from the explorable area in the main game. Equal in size to about 3-4 regions of the original map, this new area delivers a mountainous landscape and laborious marble quarries, full of workers and tools for extraction, which offer the possibility of ambushes from above and give a fort verticality to the gameplay.
While you don't necessarily suffer from a feeling of déjà vu, we think Ubisoft could have characterized this new region in a more decisive way. Sinai seems a bit like a summary of all the areas of Origins: to the north a city - Arsinoe - with plains around it, to the south a desert and unspoiled nature and in the center the base of the Assassins and villages / farms / military installations.
Even from an architectural point of view, after having finished the downloadable content, only the beautiful sundial and its temple of Arsinoe comes to mind, or at most the most difficult and intricate Roman fort in the game. That's all: the rest flows away to the rhythm of the more than inspired missions, accompanied by some new legendary weapon, without paying attention to the landscape, in many ways "already seen".
If, like us, you enjoyed Assassin's Creed: Origins, we can only advise you to invest a few euros for The Hidden Ones, despite a certain underlying predictability. If in this case we were basically satisfied with the idea of the development team to play it safe, we expect great news and upheavals in "The Curse of the Pharaohs", the second expansion to be released on March 6, which includes supernatural elements and strong influences of the Egyptian religion, all in the much more promising area of the Valley of the Kings.
