While games like Forza Motorsport 7 and Shadow of War have gone hard on loot boxes and microtransactions, it looks like Assassin's Creed Origins will only dip its toe in this increasingly controversial area of game design, offering blind loot boxes that bestow unique weapons and shields, but not letting you buy them with real money.
That's according to a report from Eurogamer (sounds familiar), who went hands-on with the game recently and got to speak to game director Ashraf Ismail about the new feature.
Apparently there's an in-game merchant who runs a Nomad's Bazarr shop that sells "Heka Chests" for 3000 Drachma, the in-game currency. Each chests contains one random weapon or shield. Inevitably when people saw this, they suspected the worst.
Ismail denied it was a paid loot chest system, however, and said it was merely put in place in response to the way players played previous games in the series.
"It's a way for people who hoard lots of money, if you min-max the economy system, to gamble the money and get really unique stuff," he told Eurogamer.
"There was a smaller set of people who would focus almost entirely on the economy, buying and selling stuff to gain as much money as they can. And we felt like, okay, that's a valid way to play the game - it's a part of the RPG [aspect], so we'll let them play the economy. So, it's one way to be able to purchase or get some of the unique items in the game."
That sounds alright then. When asked about items found in the game's e-store, Ismail also confirmed that nothing you can buy there is locked away from people who buy the game.
"Everything that's in the e-store you can get from playing the game. It's just an accelerated way of playing the game," he said.
Assassin's Creed Origins is due out October 27.
