ASSASSIN'S CREED ODYSSEY REVIEW
Ubisoft's newest Assassin's Creed is the stuff of legends.
Game Framework and Ancient Backgrounds
Ironically for a game set in ancient Greece, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is anything but Spartan. This epic-scale action-roleplaying game shines as a grand adventure through a magnificent and beautiful open world on a scale we’ve rarely seen. With so few compromises between quantity and quality, Odyssey vaults over its predecessors to become the most impressive game in the history of the series.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey begins more than 2,400 years ago at the onset of the Peloponnesian war: a decades-long struggle between Athens and Sparta for dominion over the ancient Greek world. It’s a fitting period to explore that’s rife with social and political intrigue, full-scale warfare on land and sea, and a tangible air of myth and legend. And after an astonishing 60-plus hours of galloping, sailing, and slicing through that historical-fiction sandbox, it’s easy to see why it was worth fighting so hard over.
A still From a combat sequence in AC Odyssey
Odyssey’s world is the biggest and most vibrantly colorful of the series. Even though much of its playground is blanketed in the fickle blue waters of the Aegean sea, its playable acreage is immense and rivaled only by its sheer jaw-dropping beauty. Greece is a stunning series of picturesque locales: white-stone isles, eternally autumnal forests, sun-blasted desert islands, an endless expanse of beach, alabaster cities defended by titanic statues of bronze and stone, and the inviting, rolling waves of the open sea. These beautiful scenes explode into life thanks to a lighting system that still causes me to stop and snap a picture even all these hours later.
Of course, as with virtually all grand-scale game worlds, flaws lurk just under the surface. They range from minor immersion-breaking hiccups like draw distance that never seems to be quite far enough to capture the view, textures that arrive moments too late, or slightly off-sync audio, to the more severe: getting terminally stuck on geometry, finding an unlootable lootable item, or having your tamed beast become untamed when you die and reload – which may very well cause you to die and reload again if you happen to have had a tamed bear. Bugs like these were annoying, sure, but not quite frequent enough to sour me on exploring what has become one of my favorite open-world maps ever.
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| Will you play as Kassandra Or Alexios? |
History/Herstory
For the first time in an Assassin’s Creed game we get a choice of whether to play exclusively as a man or a woman: siblings Alexios and Kassandra. True, as far as the story’s concerned they’re effectively the same character, but even though they’re superficial there are some meaningful differences. Namely, Kassandra’s voice acting is generally more consistently well done than that of her brother.
For that matter, accents and voice delivery throughout Odyssey are hit or miss, usually falling somewhere between good and outright scenery-chewing, especially when it comes to no-name NPCs who sound like someone who’d watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding once before being asked to do an impersonation. But the facial animation of the marquee characters is superb, and you can sense the subtle disgust or confusion on the face of Alexios or Kassandra without them having to say a word.
"These protagonists are easily the most flexible characters in any Assassin's Creed game to date."
These protagonists are easily the most flexible characters in any Assassin’s Creed game to date when it comes to their personalities. As a mercenary, my Alexios was free to be whoever I decided he should be. A merc with a conscious, a one-track-mind horn dog, or a ruthless murdering psychopath – there are no wrong answers, but there were definitely consequences to the decisions I chose.
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Most dialogue decisions usually don’t carry much meaning outside of whether your character is an upstanding person or a total dick. For example, a desperate fisherwoman pleads to find her husband she fears was overtaken by pirates: I could agree to help find him for the sake of love and reconciliation and all the brownie points, or tell her I don’t work for free and watch her hopes dashed to pieces like the body of her former spouse upon the rocks. But some of those choices do affect the greater world around you: varied side missions become available according to your deeds, and certain characters could live or die – all the way through to the multiple possible endings. I never felt like I screwed myself out of something I wanted to do, but I had the freedom to be who I wanted to be.
"I had the freedom to be who I wanted to be."
Who I wanted to be was someone who’s often too lazy or self-assured to hide his murderous ways, which put me in conflict with Odyssey’s new notoriety system. It’s a simple, common-sense approach: the more crimes you commit, the more likely it is that someone in the world puts a bounty on your head, and then a relentless cadre of procedurally named mercenaries begin to hunt and track you down.
While I initially found the mercs who were sicced on me to be little more than loot pinatas, as I leveled up the generic names and descriptors – like Ilona the Agile (who was admittedly quite agile until I sunk her vessel and she drown in the Aegean) – began to get more bombastic and threatening. For example, Mariah the Glimmering dogged me throughout my level-30s and her flaming spear and voracious pet lion worked in tandem to skewer or maul me into sweet oblivion on multiple occasions. I eventually just started running away when she had tracked me down, before finally ending her reign of terror some ten levels later. Sure, the loot wasn’t great, but it was worth it.
"The mercenaries sent to kill me eventually earned my respect."
With a high enough bounty, this endless procession of relentless pursuers began to show up in force to complicate matters while I was in the middle of sieging a fort – and before I could finish fighting one another would join, eager to hunt my head for coin. Then another, then another, and soon I had to choose between battling five headhunters while I tried to complete my objective in a defended fort, or turn tail and run. They eventually earned my respect, and I appreciate the chaotic X-factor they bring to Odyssey. Rising through their ranks to gain the attention of their legendary warriors is a fun meta-game in and of itself.
Similarly, the nation struggle system allows you to help the war effort for either Sparta or Athens in each region. By destroying supplies, pillaging war chests, or deposing a national leader, you’ll trigger a conquest battle. While these huge melee or naval battles are thoroughly excellent combat scenarios and reward you with some good loot, they mean disappointingly little to the story. Regardless of whether you’re attacking or defending, which side you join, or who ultimately wins, the war machine keeps turning. Eventually, I got to a point where I was able to weaken a region and trigger a conquest battle rather quickly, which made these mini-wars effectively farmable. That sucks some of the grandeur out of them, but seeing a hundred soldiers, captains, and mercenaries locked in combat is always a sight to behold.
Family Matters
"Its straightforward family drama is unhindered by the tired Assassins versus Templars soap opera."
While side missions and combat are abundant and fun, eventually you’ve got to move Odyssey’s main story forward. It’s enjoyable, with genuine moments of bare emotion that made me feel for those involved. Its straightforward family drama is unhindered by the tired Assassins versus Templars soap opera, which is thankfully all but entirely kicked to the curb this time. Instead, it comes up with enough twists and memorable side characters of its own to keep me invested.
At the same time, Odyssey’s main story is padded with mission after mission of meaningless errands that make getting to those strong character moments a painstaking gauntlet of splintered tasks. Oftentimes the payoff of a major character reveal was dulled because I had to spend six hours chasing my tail through half the Greek world to reach it. Which is a shame, since those moments really solidify your mercenary character as a person, rather than a means to an end.
THE VERDICT
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a resounding achievement in world building, environment, and engaging gameplay with occasional problems throughout. Its incredible recreation of ancient Greece is something I’ll want to go back to long after I’ve finished its main story, and its excellent systems mesh together in a way that’s hard to beat. While there are definite rough edges, Odyssey sets a new bar for Assassin’s Creed games and holds its own in the eternal debate over the best open-world roleplaying games ever.
