Rules for Assassin's Creed: Origins

Introduction

These are some rules for how you can play Assassin's Creed: Origins in an entertaining manner, based (in part) on the tenets of the titular Creed. Firstly, the three tenets are:

1. "Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent."
2. "Hide in plain sight, be one with the crowd."
3. "Never compromise the Brotherhood."

"Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent."

This rule implies that we should never kill an innocent person, and so the task is to precisely define who is innocent. To my mind, this means we shouldn't kill random NPCs (obviously; the game even scolds you if you do this, and you eventually desynchronize), guards (they are, after all, just on the clock, doing their job), and animals (unless attacked unprovoked, but even then you should try to run away). [Note: There are probably other categories of NPCs that I can't think of at the moment.]

Put more succinctly, only main targets and targets the game forces you to kill are considered fair game.

"Hide in plain sight, be one with the crowd."

The second part of this tenet is moot, since Origins doesn't have crowd mechanics like some of the other AC titles do, but the first part is clear: Move around undetected. For Origins, this means you should avoid guards, and if detected, either use sleep darts or smoke bombs to get away. Sleep darts are also a great way to be proactive in avoiding detection.

There are areas (especially in the deserts and the lush areas in Libya) where you'll get ambushed by bandits. It could be argued that bandits are fair game, especially considering NPC banter about their behavior. [Note: I personally would like to avoid killing bandits.] So you could kill them, or try to run away.

"Never compromise the Brotherhood."

Origins doesn't really have a Brotherhood until the end of the game (or one could argue even until the end of the first DLC, The Hidden Ones), so it's hard to see how this tenet applies.

Challenge run rules

With this in mind, I've made the following rules for myself, grouped into major and minor rules (perhaps arbitrarily):

Major rules

• No HUD
  • Pretty self-explanatory, but to be clear: This means no HUD at all, no quest markers, no reticle for aiming, etc. Just the pure scenery of pretty Egypt.
• No damage
  • Except for scripted fights where you can't avoid it.
• No detection
  • Detection means fully detected (red), even if in the middle of the (very slow) chain-assassinate animation.
  • There is a very small grace period between not detected (white) and fully detected (red) which is yellow. Assassinating or putting an enemy to sleep during this windows will not count towards being detected. Note that since we're playing with no HUD, there's no indication of this except for audio queues and a short slowdown of the gameplay.
  • Excepting the parts where detection is scripted, like the mandatory boat fights when playing as Aya.
• No looking at the map
• No using horse/camel GPS

Minor rules

• No using Senu
  • I.e., no tagging of enemies, no scouting the terrain for clues on where to go, etc.
• No fast travel
• No bumping into civilians

All violations of these rules will be noted with a timestamp, and tallied at the end of each segment of play.