Assassin’s Creed underwent a big evolution last year with Origins which celebrated the 10 year anniversary of the series by showing fans how the Assassin’s Brotherhood was created by telling the story of Bayek and his wife Aya. But it was the change up in gameplay that really surprised fans with the game taking the first steps into a vast open world with a more grounded foundation in the RPG world. It was hugely impressive both in moving the modern-day story further by introducing us to new character Layla Hassan but also in just how new yet familiar the change in gameplay was. A year later and we have Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and the series makes another huge evolution yet again which initially had me worried about certain story aspects but after 110 hours at time of completion completely blew me away with what it achieves.
I am not kidding when I say at the point of completing the story I had a save file at just over 110 hours and even then, there are areas of the world map I have yet to visit and side quests still left to do, which is staggering to me and refreshing. My play style particularly in Assassin’s Creed games is to do everything you can do story wise, which usually left not much left to do which meant waiting for DLC content to land to extend the games. Origins stepped this up by having a huge world to explore which alone gave me a playthrough of around 75 hours before completing the story but this was just a practice run for the massive open world in Odyssey. I will talk more about the size of this game but I just wanted to paint that picture before going forward.
Odyssey takes players back earlier than any previous Assassin’s Creed title in a historical setting by taking us to Ancient Greece in 431 BCE which is even earlier than the events in Origins and for the first time, allow players to choose the hero they want to play as with the choice of playing as either Alexios or Kassandra through the story which in itself is a decision that has divided die hard fans of the series and another thing that I will come back to later. The opening to the game is definitely something special as it begins by putting players in control of King Leonidas of Sparta as he bravely battles the Persian at Thermopylae and serves as a brilliant first look at the new refined combat system from Origins which still using right bumper and right trigger (or R1 and R2 on PS4) for light and heavy attacks but now also has special moves that use up an adrenalin bar to activate. As a fan of the film 300, this opening had an immediate impact into what it would feel like to be a powerful Spartan soldier in battle and who better then the most famous Spartan of all, well there is the Master Chief but he never used a spear!
Both Alexios and Kassandra are the grandchildren of Leonidas and have his spear although now broken as a weapon and raised by their mother Myrrine and Nikalaos to be strong Spartan warriors until one night as children, when the local priest demands that a sacrifice is made forcing Nikalaos to throw the baby (depending on if player chooses either Alexios or Kassandra the other will be the baby). With Myrrine being held back by temple guards, you then make the choice to try and save the baby but end up pushing the priest instead off the cliff. Retribution is swiftly ordered and Nikalaos then drops Alexios/Kassandra off as well. This will see the players chosen hero, washed up on the beach of Kephallonia and discovered by Markos. Now all grown up, our hero is now a Misthios which is basically a working mercenary willing to do any job for money whilst the Greek world is now firmly in the grip of the Peloponnesian War which has placed Sparta and Athens are war with each other. When a wealthy stranger offers our hero a huge prize in Drachma (gold) for finding and killing the Spartan General known as the Wolf of Sparta, which means our hero must earn their trust by fighting for Spartan forces in order to be granted an audience.
Odyssey really takes all the things that Origins did so well and brings it to a whole new level and with both games having been developed at the same time, with Odyssey having a three-year development plan I did feel that many of the rough edges in Origins are a result of testing so many of the systems used for Odyssey. This is why so many things feel so familiar to origins with the way the upgrading of armour and weapons work which still rely on finding crafting materials such as rocks, wood and animal skins to keep weapons and armour in line with the player’s own level which I will say is vital to succeed as for example if you are say level 15 but are still using level 10 armour and weapons, the enemies you face will match your player level or be higher so taking the time to keep everything at the same level is crucial.
The open world has evolved into something mind-blowing with all of the Greek islands now fully explorable with most regions being part of main story quests which will send you there but there are areas which are there just to go and have and explore at your leisure. A new feature for Origins comes in the form of choosing when you start a new game, whether to select a Guided or Exploration mode style of playing. Exploration mode basically means story and side quests will not provide you with a direct location marker to go do the quest but instead will give you clues in order to locate where you need to go with guided mode simply giving you that marker. Exploration really is the best way to play this game and experience its world and it works amazing well and clearly took inspiration from how Witcher 3 handled its open world in terms of the size and scope of the world.
The freedom to just be in the world and to do what you want to do is definitely something that I appreciated in Origins and now even more so in Odyssey as there is an abundance in activities to do in and around the main story quest lines. As a Misthios you are able to use the message boards in every town and city to collect side quests which can range from taking on bounties on targets to investigating the disappearance of people. Alongside message boards you can find people all over the world to give a side quest which can have a mini story to them and can then lead to follow up side quests. Completing all these will reward in XP, money and new armour and weapons so they are all worth doing as you try to become stronger. My biggest fear was that these could become repetitive after a while, and towards the 100 hr mark and near story completion I did leave many of them alone as I had already hit the maximum player level of 50 so did not need the XP, but with the story completed and still being able to go back and do some clean up, they will no doubt give me plenty more hours of content to enjoy before any DLC becomes available.
The combat and stealth aspects from Origins have been overhauled and refined for Odyssey and they work so well now. I really enjoyed the combat with the different weapon choices allowing for different combat styles when chaining light and heavy attacks with the parry move now a press of both bumper buttons (L1 and R1 on PS4) and some brutal execution final blow animations. Stealth feels far more natural and responsive than in Origins, with large forts and guarded areas to tackle. The ability tree really helps players customise their own playing style with three main areas to work on with Hunter being archery, Warrior being melee combat and Assassin for all the stealth side. Each time you level up you are granted one to use with some skills being passive ones but some will give you new special moves to equip to the left bumper dial wheel to use either in combat or if you like to use your bow like me, to do some sneaky archery at distance and some very handy Assassin abilities to help when you need to work from the shadows. Odyssey really is the final step for Assassin’s Creed to embrace the RPG genre fully and does so brilliantly for me that as much as Origins felt almost alien to me after the traditional AC playing style but now feels completely natural.
One question I was asked a lot by friends was who made a better main hero to play as, Alexios or Kassandra. I played throughout as Alexios but have played the first 12 hours or so as Kassandra and the impression I have from seeing the game as both is that this definitely feels like a game that was supposed to have Kassandra as the main choice. This is shown in the abilities tree as previews of the special moves mostly show Kassandra executing them. In terms of how each voice actor delivers the dialogue, I have to say that Kassandra is the most consistent throughout the game in terms of dialogue and cutscenes, not to say that Alexios is terrible, not by a long shot but there are moments where the emotion of a cut scene and dialogue exchange is performed better by Kassandra which makes it no surprise to see how popular a choice she is to play as. The writing for Odyssey is superb though, with a very Assassin’s Creed story for the main quest but also in all the side stories being told as you play throughout and meet different characters around the Greek world.
A big change for the story telling now comes with how players can now choose alternative dialogue options which can shape decisions in the game added a player choice and consequence element to an Assassin’s Cred game for the firs time. In fact, Odyssey has multiple endings and which one you get is determined by certain major choices you can make during the main story with either dialogue options or actions making an impact on which ending you get. Now this is rather controversial because as a fan of the series, the Animus to this point has not been a simulator which allowed you to alter the events in the genetic memories the user is experiencing but here, not only can you decide the gender of the main hero for the first time, but now your own choices determine what ending you get which does feel strange as you can have a good ending, which I managed to get or you can have a bad ending and will be interesting to see if the ending you get has any impact on the planned DLC expansion stories for Odyssey going forward.
The new Mercenary factor was a welcome surprise and works well with the bounty system in that high-level soldiers will come looking for you, once a bounty has been placed on you with the higher the bounty level is, the more Mercs will come after you. When you are on an important quest mission such as taken down a region leader by weakening the area by attacking forts and supplies, you can build up quite a bounty increasing the chance of having a Mercenary come find you and can prove very challenging to defeat until you are a high enough level to deal with them. This alongside the region conquest system for helping to decide who should control that region, Sparta or Athens, is a living system in the game which will give a constant reason to explore outside the main story missions especially in that you can actively seek out and fight the mercenaries and should you defeat them, you can earn high level armour or weapons and you can even recruit them to the crew of your ship so they will assist you in naval combat when boarding enemy ships.
The modern say side to the story is something I do feel however is very underused in Odyssey so far, with Layla Hassan from Origins now fully working with the Assassin Brotherhood to stop Abstergo and Templars from gaining the Staff of Hermes Isu artefact which is why she uses DNA found on the Spear of Leonidas to go back and find out where the Staff is. It was ten hours before I had the first modern day section and unlike Origins, the modern-day side is very much an after thought with 90% of the game keeping the player in Ancient Greece. My sense is that the future DLC will expand the modern say side far more than the main campaign itself which is a little disappointing as for me, it is a big part of any Assassin’s Creed game but will have to wait and see if my gut feeling is right.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey completes the evolution of the series from Action Adventure into a full RPG story experience that began with Origins. Content wise this is one massive game that even now without any DLC is the largest game in the series to date and I have already put more hours into it with things still to do then when I 100% the Ezio collection. It is new and at the same time keeping hold of all the familiar aspects to previous games with a full return of Navel combat first scene in Assassin’s Creed III and Black Flag and a protagonist as charismatic as Ezio himself with a far deeper look into the Isu (Ones who came before) then I had expected. For those worrying about a game not using the Assassin Brotherhood or Templar titles following Origins, please do not be concerned, this is a fully-fledged story in the vast Assassin’s Creed Universe and will satisfy newcomers to the series as well as die-hard long-term fans.
If this is the future of Assassin’s Creed in terms or how large the world in which the historical side of it can be, then fans are in for a fun future and with no new title for 2019, the DLC will need to be strong to fill in the gap until then but I do have a feeling it will be going by the strengths shown in this game already. Yet again Ubisoft has taken player feedback and made improvements whilst taken brave steps to evolve the series for the future. There are some things I did find silly such as the Unicorn skin for your horse that has glitter rainbow trails when you gallop and some of the time saving booster packs that can be bought with real money make me roll my eyes but this is a game best experience as intended and hitting level 50 at 90 hours and completing the game at 110 hours with quite a few regions and side missions still to complete. For a series now 11 years old, Odyssey has made it feel new and refreshed whilst not ignoring or forgetting its roots which makes it such a complete experience for fans that it is a no brainer to have this in your collection.
The Master Chief and Kratos himself would be honoured to serve with the new iconic Spartans Alexios and Kassandra, so all you can really do now is bring back your shield or be on it!
