In 2017, Ubisoft went back to the drawing board for theAssassin’s Creedfranchise after Syndicate’s middling sales. It was clear that the near-decade-old formula had grown stale, so it opened up the vast expanse of Egypt for us to explore in an RPG-ified sequel focused on the beginnings of the order, with a touch of Soulslike combat for good measure.
This risky blend of new trends helped Origin to become a huge success, reigniting a passion for the series as it sold over ten million copies and ushered inthe still-successful RPG era. At the heart of this redemption story was Bayek, played by the talentedAbubakar Salim, who was even nominated at the BAFTAs for his turn as the grief-fuelled medjay. He quickly became a fan favourite on par with Ezio Auditore, arguably the face of Assassin’s Creed. But, unfortunately, Bayek’s stint was far shorter than the Italian prodigy’s.
It’s a sticking point that, even eight years later, fans are upset by. “Wish Bayek got the same trilogy treatment as Ezio,“u/books_bliss9 posted to over 1,000 upvotes. “Easily one of AC’s best protagonist[s]”. They attached a mock-up of how it might look, with the sequels titled ‘Initiation’ and ‘Hidden Ones’, following Amun’s life as he built up the order we’re so familiar with. These games could’ve followed in Brotherhood and Revelation’s footsteps, telling smaller, more condensed stories with experimental mechanics that unravelled the legacy of a series great in more detail.
“Bayek Has Untapped Potential”
One glance at the comments and it’s easy to understand why fans feel this way, even nearly a decade later, with few characters — if any — living up to Salim’s incredible performance. “He’s the last really deep character,” u/RileyMcB said. “His personal story and depth is unparalleled in the recent releases. Sure, Kassandra’s story is rich and wide-reaching, but it’s more about Greece than her. And Eivor is sick, but he basically just boils down to ‘angry Viking who likes mead’.”
He really was the last character I liked in a[n] AC game — u/SoullessR1Creed.
“Holy cow, I wish this was real,” u/AssassiNerd said of the mock-up. “Bayek is the best protagonist in the series. I wish we got to learn more about him and his life.” Fans suggest that he could’ve raised the Hidden Ones around the world with a similar feature to Brotherhood, allowing us to send assassins on missions to open up new outposts, allowing us to see Bayek’s influence spread in real-time.
Others, however, argue that a sequel to Origins should instead focus on Aya, who was important enough to stand amidst the statues of assassin legends in the crypts beneath Vila Auditore. “It would be good to play a storyline of Aya in Roman Britannia,” u/Potential-Winner-940 said. If not a trilogy, then “at least a second game set in Rome playing as Aya,” u/Bitter_Bank_9266 likewise proposed. “With the way [Origins] ended, I thought we were gonna get a sequel playing as Aya in Rome. Still disappointed that wasn’t what happened,” u/trags88 said.
It’s unlikely we’ll see Bayek or Aya return anytime soon, with the series headed to 1600s Germany in Hexe andwherever Scarlet is set(speculation ranges from India to the Aztec Empire and the Mediterranean). But a Bayek trilogy, or at least an Aya sequel, is a novel idea that would return the series to one of its best settings and crop of characters.
