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Assassin's Creed Origins: The Hidden Ones DLC Review

I’m a tiny bit late on this, but considering that Assassin’s Creed Origins was one of my favorite games of the year and the first open world title I’ve 100%ed in eons, I certainly wasn’t going to pass up on the DLC.
This first expansion, The Hidden Ones, opens up a new part of the map you have to sail to, Sinai, and gives you a whole bunch more people to kill and question marks to explore.
Well, a “whole bunch” may be a stretch. This is a short bit of DLC. Even clearing every point of interest on the map, it only took about three hours. The main storyline is essentially six missions, and there are maybe only 3-4 more side missions besides that.
The Hidden Ones takes place four years after the events of the main game, but the only major thing that’s changed is that Bayek gets a cool, new, more Assassin’s Creed-y outfit. In Sinai, the Romans are still working with Egyptian sell-outs to oppress people and…you have to kill them. Oh and one of the rebels is bad too. The end.

I ended up being disappointed with this DLC. At launch, I talked a lot about how Assassin’s Creed Origins appeared to be heavily influenced by The Witcher in almost every way, and yet, that clearly did not extend to this DLC. CD Projekt Red makes some of the best DLC in the industry, truly interesting new stories and areas to explore that feel like entirely separate games.
The Hidden Ones feels like…8% more Assassin’s Creed Origins. And that’s it.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the game enough where more of it is still somewhat fun to play, but almost nothing at all has changed from the original. The level cap went up a tiny bit, but I used the same weapons I ended the last game with and did just fine, and didn’t really find many new interesting ones. I was clearing the same kinds of enemy bases and animal caves and hidden temples. Killing Phylakes which were now called something else. Doing a “lift the pulley” puzzle. Nothing was different.
And the story just…isn’t there. I guess it’s kind of interesting to see the burgeoning few years of the Assassins, but the plot was just so generic. Kill three guys at three bases to lure out their leader who you then have to kill on a boat. Your wife, Aya-now-Amunet, shows up but does almost nothing other than look nice in her fancy new outfit. “Have we done good?” Bayek asks her when the dust settles. “Yes,” she replies. That’s about the extent of character growth or development in this DLC.
In my title I compare The Hidden Ones unfavorably to The Witcher’s massive Blood and Wine expansion, which is probably not fair given that Origins does have a larger DLC coming later on. But even if I was being more accurate and comparing it to TW3’s Hearts of Stone, the smaller of the two expansions, it’s not even close.
I don’t understand the purpose of DLC when it only exists as “more stuff.” The Hidden Ones is exactly the same kind of content, to the letter, that we saw in the original. And without even an impactful story to bolster it, it’s just filler. Even as someone who really loved Origins, I have a hard time convincing myself that this DLC was three hours well spent. It felt like clone-stamping from start to finish.
I don’t give numbered scores to DLC, but yeah, I just can’t get all that excited about recommending The Hidden Ones, even to avid players. It’s…fine, and perhaps a necessary stepping stone to future, better DLC, but on its own, it’s definitely lacking.
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