Assassin’s Creed Odyssey looks like it will be one of the biggest and possibly best games to release this year. I waited with bated breath a few days ago while watching the Ubisoft E3 conference on Twitch, waiting for the moment that officially unveiled Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to the world.
I was not disappointed, the fairly short 8 minute gameplay trailer was enough to get me salivating at the mouth for some more Assassin’s Creed action.
Since the E3 2018 reveal their has been numerous articles and youtube videos posted by various gaming outlets and youtubers, all detailing and showcasing some amazing new stuff coming with Odyssey.
I’ve been researching some of the coolest and most pertinent pieces of info, which I’ll set out in this post. There’s definatley been a ton of new information revealed so far, everything from new abilities to important points about the gameplay. So, let’s take a look at some of the new features as well as some things that are returning from Origins.
Game Setting
We already new from previous leaks that Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was going to be set in Ancient Greece but it wasn’t until the E3 premier and the torrent of information revealed afterwards that we got to know more about this Greek setting.
Odyssey is set in Ancient Greece in the year 431 BCE, which makes it set hundreds of years before Origins, so it’s more like a prequel to Origins I guess rather than a sequel, although I suppose you could call it a kind of sequel as well.
The game is set during the time of the Peloponnesian War, an anicent Greek war fought by the Delian League led by Athens against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta, essentially a war between two, great ancient Greek city states.
We also got our first glimpse of the ancient Greek game world via the world premiere trailer, and it looks absolutely stunning. It looks very similar to the world we know from Origins, so that’s good, but apparently it will be much larger than the Egyptian world of Origins.
A choice of 2 characters
For the first time ever in an Assassin’s Creed game, Odyssey let’s you choose between two main characters to play through the game with. In Assassin’s Creed Odyssey you can choose to be either Kassandra or Alexios.
No matter what character you choose, the story will still folow the same path, with the each character having the same missions and choices of dialogue but Ubisoft has mentioned that their will be certain things that will be unique to each character.
We also know from information that has came out that each character is a decendents of Leonidas, a warrior king of Sparta.
Choices, choices, choices
Whereas Assassin’s Creed Origins had some RPG elements, it looks like Odyssey is going full blow RPG, with new features added that transforms Assassin’s Creed from an action-adventure game to an all out Role Playing Game.
One of these new features is dialogue choices, choices you can make during the story which can effect the story in certain ways, similar to Fallout 4.
The dialogue choices coupled with the choice of two characters to play as adds a ton of replayability to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
Love is in the air
With the new dialogue choices brings the opportunity to flirt and chat-up some characters in the game. Yes, romance will play a part in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, with your character able to flirt with other characters and strike up a relationship.
From what I gather, Kyra, pictured above, is one of the characters who you can have some romantic encounters with, if you so wish.
Mercenaries
From the offical E3 gameplay trailer, we saw that there are mercenaries in Assassin;s Creed Odyssey. The two main characters, whoever you choose to play as are actually Spartan mercenaries as well, but there is also other NPC mercenaries that seem to be roaming around the world and if you happen to have a price on your head, you can be certain that you’ll bump in to them as some point.
In the E3 gameplay demo footage, we saw Kassandra fighting and defeating one of these mercenaries called Maleos the Invincible.
From what I can gather, the choices you make in game will determine whether you have a bounty on your head. From the official Ubisoft website, which details the mercenary system in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, if you do something illegal, you can end up with a bounty and that means mercenaries won’t be too far behind.
As soon as you encounter a mercenary, whether they are hunting you or not, you’ll be able to find out critical information about them, like their location, there strengths, there weaknesses and the gear they carry. With this information at hand, you can then decide to fight and kill the mercenary, pay the bounty on your head or run for the hills.
The Broken Spear of Leonidas
Gone is the hidden blade of previous Assassin’s Creed games, now, as a descendant of Leonidas, you carry his spear, or rather a broken part of it. The broken spear of Leonidas can be used as a secondary weapon during combat or for assinations inplace of the hidden blade.
The broken spear of Leonidas can be upgraded and will lead you to more powerful abilities.
New Abilities
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey expands on the abilities and skills of Origins in a big way.
Abilities are grouped in to Hunter, Warrior and Assassin skill trees which represent, ranged which represent ranged, melee and steal combat. The new skill tree is similar to the one in Origins but more seperated in to the three main abilities instead of the criss crossing and overlapping of the Origins abilites.
There is also a group of abilities called Baseline Abilities, shown at the bottom of the skill tree screenshot above. Baseline abilties seem to be basic abilities that you learn and include things like Assassination, Leap of Faith and meditation. There’s also a baseline ability called Knockout and Recruiting, which allows you to knockout and recruit an enemy to serve on the crew of your ship.
The really cool new thing about abilities in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is that you can now assign them to certain controller buttons.
For more info on the abilites, I recommend the youtube video by JorRaptor, who details pretty much all the abilities in the game.
That’s pretty much all the main pieces of information that you should know about Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, but theres so much more than that and I could literally be here for hours writing about all the awesome infomation about the game, so heres some more things in brief.
- Naval combat and ships will play a big part in the game
- There will be all new animals to hunt, including Bears, Sharks and even cute Dolphins
- There will be a skill for taming animals, much like you could tame Lions in Origins
- There will be a modern day plot to the game and Layla Hassan will make an appearance.
- There will be some huge battles.
- Game world is about 1.6 times the size of Origins and half of it is water
- You will be able to dive under water and explore and there will be sunken ships and cities to find.
- You will have an eagle called Ikaros which will act similar to Senu
Of course I can’t forget to mention the most important piece of information regarding Assassin’s Creed Odyssey – the release date. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey will be released on October 5th.
Sources used in this post and more Odyssey Information
https://gamerant.com/assassins-creed-odyssey-tame-animal-beast-master/
https://www.techradar.com/news/10-big-things-you-need-to-know-about-assassins-creed-odyssey
https://assassinscreed.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/odyssey/rpg/mercenary-system
https://www.polygon.com/e3/2018/6/11/17443272/assassins-creed-odyssey-combat-dialog-character-choice
https://assassinscreed.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/news-updates/328396/ac-odyssey-what-you-need-to-know-about-living-a-mercenarys-life-in-ancient-greece-e3-2018
