Marco Chiacchiera, June 11th, 2018
Translated by: Stefania
It is true and it is official! A new Assassin’s Creed game has been announced and it will be called Assassin’s Creed Odyssey! Slated to release on October 5th, 2018 on PC, PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox One, Xbox One X and XboxOne S and developed by Ubisoft Quebec along with several other studios, the game will be set in Ancient Greece 400 years prior to Origins, the last chapter of the franchise.
After the announcement at the Ubisoft conference at E3 2018 we got all the general information about the game and even got to see videos and pictures about the game. What about the game itself and its inner workings, though? How much do we know about them?
That’s where this article comes into play! Thanks to Ubisoft we recently had the chance to fly to Quebec City, Canada, to try a build of the game which featured an early version of the E3 demo and we can’t wait to share all the details that we gleaned from it so, without further ado, let’s get into the juicy stuff!
As we know, the game will start in Ancient Greece in 431 BCE, 400 years before Origins. Now, we don’t know when exactly the game ends, obviously, but we do know a lot about the historical period. We’re talking about the so called Classical Period of Ancient Greece (5th and 4th centuries BCE), placed between the Archaic Period (8th – 6th century BCE) which saw the development of the poleis (the Ancient Greek city-states) and specifically Athens and Sparta, and the Hellenistic Period (3rd – 1st century BCE) which covers the history between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire and the subsequent conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt.
The Classical Period, to give a bit of context to the game and to what we might be seeing in the game world, was very important because it saw major contributions in philosophy, mathematics / geometry, theatre / dramatic works, architecture, medicine, history writing and, of course, the development of democracy. At the same time, though, the everyday life of that period was studded with mythological stories about gods, goddesses, heroes and monsters, which coexisted in a stark contrast with all the progress mentioned above.
Red vs Blue, Sparta vs Athens
More specifically, though, the game is set during the Peloponnesian War, which was fought by the Delian League led by Athens against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta and actually started in 431 and ended in 404 BCE with (uhhh… History spoilers?) a victory by the latter.
This aspect will be heavily shown in the game, with the world map featuring all of its areas / regions colored in red, representing Sparta and the Peloponnesian League, or blue, representing Athens and the Delian League, which will shift from one league to the other in a dynamic way (more on that later). The map itself will be huge, with the developers saying that its land areas combined will be approximately of the same size of Origins and they will be obviously connected by big sea areas where players will be able to enjoy (or dislike?) a comeback of naval gameplay.
As such, the map will contain both main land areas and islands, with regions like Attika (where Athens will be located), Lakonia (where players will be able to find Sparta), Makedonia and Messara. Among the islands, at least for what we were able to see, the game will feature Delos, Mykonos and Lesbos. Along with these, we can also mention another specific location, Mount Taygetos, which will be key to the story as we’ll mention further along the article.
The setting will also be very diversified environment-wise. In fact, the game will contain a variety of biomes and landscapes such as mountains with snowy crests, obviously the Aegean Sea, forests, beaches, volcanic islands, caves, urban environments etc… And statues. Huge statues. Lots of them. The team even mentioned that the world of Ancient Greece in Odyssey will have much more diversity than Origins’ Egypt. A bold statement, we’ll see how that pans out.
At the center of all of this lies our hero. Or to be more specific, one of our two heroes. As you certainly saw from the announcement, the game for the first time will allow the player to choose the main character between Alexios and Kassandra, even though the gameplay, mechanics, story and dialogues will be the same for both of them.
The choice of the main character, though, is just the tip of the iceberg of the substance of the game, as the player’s choice will actually be the core of the experience. In fact, building on the elements that Assassin’s Creed Origins introduced last year, this year Odyssey will try and go “full RPG” with elements such as customizable gear, upgrades, skills and more, each designed to have the player’s choice at its heart.
An example of dialogue choice
The biggest example of that is that the game will feature dialogue choices (similar to the ones appeared in RPGs like The Witcher 3) which will have a direct impact on the quest the player is playing, thus allowing for different outcomes. The way in which a quest will end based on the player’s choice might also impact other quests which, in turn, will contain choices of their own and so on. This will allow story threads to branch out to different narratives and different outcomes and, in turn, will obviously have an impact on the longevity and replayability of the game. This is such a core element of the game –which we expect will cause a lot of debate among the community – that the developers estimated a total of 30 hours of choice based dialogues within the game, corresponding to approximately 23.000 lines of text. On top of that (and if you are a hardcore fan you might need to sit down for this and breathe before reading), such choices will also happen in the main path, especially at huge turning points of the story, which will also lead to… multiple endings for the historical part of the game.
That’s right, you have read it, the game will have multiple endings which appears as much of a natural consequence of all the choices in the game as they seem to be the opposite of what Assassin’s Creed has always been with a clear, defined, and canon sequence / flow of events from start to finish. As of now we don’t have other information about how the multiple endings will be designed but we’ll make sure to report any news about them as soon as they are announced, as we expect this (and choices in general) to be one of the hot discussion topics concerning Odyssey throughout all of its campaign.
Going back to Alexios / Kassandra, they know how to be sarcastic, short tempered, and charismatic but also magnanimous (if the player wants them to be) and they are a mercenary, or “Misthios” as the other characters call them in Greek, who will act as a symbol of freedom against oppression and, get this, according to the development team will witness the beginning of the conflict between order and free will.
And yes, he / she will have an eagle this time as well (you might figure the game is heavily based off Origins gameplay-wise) and it’s aptly called Ikaros. Because of this, the hero is oftentimes called “Eagle Bearer” or “Eagle-bearing misthios”. Sometimes he / she is even thought by other characters to be a demi-god because of his / her mysterious strength and eagle companion, but on a more practical level the developers mentioned that the game will actually give details about why Ikaros is always at the side of the main character. Thus, will we have all the explanations about the connection between the protagonist and the eagle that were missing in Origins? Only time will tell…
The eagle-bearing misthios
Oh and if you are asking, you can feed and scratch your eagle in Odyssey as well.
Alexios / Kassandra was born in Sparta but for reasons concerning his / her backstory is now wandering the world not considering him/herself as a Spartan anymore.
He / she was born in a powerful Spartan family and trained as a warrior in a very happy although tough environment. At the age of 7, though, an Oracle pronounced a prophecy that Alexios’ / Kassandra’s infant sibling would bring doom to Sparta and thus, in an attempt to save his / her kin was actually thrown from the cliffs of Mount Taygetos.
Our hero survived (otherwise we would have no game…) and spent several years in misery on the island of Kephallonia where he / she worked as a mercenary. A mysterious event pushes our hero to set sail across the Aegean sea with the objective of reuniting with his / her family and finding out about the mysterious group of people behind the events of Mount Taygetos and the ruin of his / her family, the so called Cult of Kosmos.
Still, in our heroes’ past past lie two important secrets. The first is that he / she is somehow connected to none other than King Leonidas I of Sparta. Yes, the famous king that led the allied Greek forces to a last stand against the Persian forces led by Xerxes I in the Battle of Thermopylae. And again, yes, the king that was portrayed by Gerard Butler in the movie “300”.
The second “secret” about the main hero, which the hardcore fans might be interested in, is that he / she will also be connected to the First Civilization. That’s as much as we were able to get about this specific topic from Ubisoft at this point, but considering this is a piece of information that has been revealed so early during the campaign, it probably means it will have an impact on the story, hopefully an impact that will appeal to us hardcore fans.
Another element that might gain the fans’ attention and that quite surprisingly has been revealed right at the beginning of the campaign is that Kassandra / Alexios will wield, the “Broken Spear of Leonidas”, which is a First Civilization artifact / weapon which belonged to Leonidas [GIF?]. Such artifact will be tied to one of the skills in the skill system (more on this later) and will allow for different gameplay related “unearthly” abilities every time such skill is upgraded (akin to the Spear being repaired or reactivated).
Hm, the Spear's blade sure looks similar to a certain first Hidden Blade we have seen before. (although obviously there’s no confirmation about it)
Opposed to our main character we’ll see a new group of villains called “The Cult of Kosmos”, where Kosmos in Greek means cosmos / universe as our Hephaestus points out. This is a secret group of masked individuals infiltrated in several areas of society that live in different areas of the map, have different jobs in the world and have an inherent interest in the hero (that’s where his / her First Civilization connection might come into play, we daresay, although this has not been confirmed by Ubisoft).
Along with that, the organization aims at taking control of Greece via the manipulation of its people and their leaders (and that scheme might have >been one of the causes behind what happened to Alexios’ / Kassandra’s family when he / she was young). Thus, finding the people who are part of the Cult
and opposing them will be one of the side narratives of the game.
Now we know what you may think, the concept of this group of villains does resemble that of the Order of Ancients from Assassin’s Creed Origins but there is no confirmation of any ties between the two groups at the moment so we are going to have to wait and see about that specific piece of information.
That is more or less a brief introduction to the game and some of its main elements but what about the demo that we actually tried? Sit tight, we have a lot to talk about…
The demo was set in Mykonos and its close island Delos in an unspecified midgame where the character (Alexios or Kassandra) started at level 18 (yes, keeping in line with the RPG approach, levels will be back) . The area was a mini open world similar to the Faiyum or Memphis demos from last year and according to the developers all the quests and stories that could be found in it were not part of the main path (we suggest you to keep that in mind as you read to have an idea of the scope of the game). The area was dominated by an Athenian leader called Podarkes (who happened to belong to the group who is after the hero and his / her family) and the several choices during the several quests we encountered in our 4-hour session could lead to different endings of this chunk of the story.
This leader was like a tyrant of the area and the story made it so that there was a group of rebels trying to take him down but were not able to do it because
Kyra and Thaletas (with Alexios)
badly organized and almost always drunk. In contrast to that, their leader was an intelligent lady called Kyra, who worked with a belligerent local general called Thaletas (the kind of guy who wants to jump into battle instead of planning a strategy first).
As the game goes, when there is a “leader” of one of the two factions in one area and he is in full control, such as Podarkes, he will be available to be assassinated at all times but he will also be highly protected by several guards.
Leaders are considered to be the rulers of the city-states . They are powerful men defended by bodyguards with their own agenda in the world. Plus, apart from those involved in specific quests, they will be randomly generated and thus will have their own specific story that will be unique for the player to know about.
This allowed the demo to have a story that could showcase some of the main mechanics of the game. For example, when one of the two leagues (Athens or Sparta) is in control of an area, every military unit, every garrison and the local leader will belong to that faction and will wear its colors. Being the hero a mercenary, he / she can decide to keep that league in control or to work against it to shift the balance of power. That’s where the Nation Power system comes into play.
In the world each area / city-state will be controlled by one of the two powers / leagues and that will be reflected on the map. In each of these areas the player will be able to weaken the power of the controlling league on that area through a few actions (that we tested) like attacking the leader’s fleet or stealing his nation treasure.
These are nice actions that reminded us a bit of how the assassination missions were structured in the first Assassin’s Creed chapter… but at the same time they might tend to become repetitive after liberating a few areas.
In the demo all these actions were part of specific quests through which the main character could get closer to Kyra to the point where he / she could romance her through specific options in the dialogue highlighted with a heart symbol. Thus, yes, there are several characters (like Kyra and Thaletas) that can be romanced in the game and having the chance to choose your own main character and which man or woman you might want to romance naturally allows for same gender relationships as well.
Killing the leader is the final and most important action of the Nation Power system. In fact, as mentioned, he will be heavily guarded but as the nation power is decreased, his defenses will be lowered as well (for example the number of guards around him will be reduced). When the player kills him, he will gain a big reward, especially if killing him was part of a contract. Speaking of contracts, as a side note, they are created by leaders and are available on quest boards all around the world and can target a state or have a general object like “Kill an Athenian soldier”.
When the leader is killed and so the balance of power in that area is shifted, there will be a chance for the other league to take control of the area. That’s where a “Conquest Battle” between the two factions might break out.
That’s where the main character, being he / she a mercenary, will have to choose whether to go to the general of one of the two factions or the other to start the battle siding with that faction.
These battles will feature up to 300 warriors (150 vs 150) and will have two bars at the top of the screen representing the “life” of the Athenian and Spartan armies. During the battle the player will fight against normal and brute guards, trying to lower the enemy army’s life as fast as possible. After some time and to create some variation during the battle, the player will receive sub-objectives that might require him / her to kill the enemy commander and / or to kill the enemy “hero” , who are basically mini bosses.
Winning the battles will grant items, weapons and / or pieces of equipment and what is interesting is that If the player sided with the faction that was not in control of the area and won the battle, all the guards in the area, all the military outposts, and everything concerning the local power will shift to the new faction and turn from red to blue and viceversa , depending on which league won the battle. On top of that, a new leader, new soldiers, new war supplies etc… will arise, which will allow the player to start the nation power loop again, if they’d like to. If the conquest battle is not triggered or is won by the league that was already in power, a new leader will arise at some point and the loop will start again.
Another element that the demo showed through the help of the narrative is how intertwined can the quests be and how the player choices can actually
change the outcome of a story. For example, in the demo some quests have the player interact with Socrates (or Sokrates), the first historical character confirmed for the game (there will be more in the game, like Hippocrates, one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine) . He is a very interesting character because he’s a philosopher (among other things) and likes to talk a lot. Thus he always questions what people do around him and what you as a character might want to do, which reminded us a bit of some elements from the first Assassin’s Creed, even though back then the discussion was about the Creed, the Assassins and the Templars, now it’s about philosophy in general. One of the quests had Socrates discuss with the main character about a thief that set foot on a sacred island and thus was sentenced to death. Socrates asked the main character and other NPCs around them if it was right to kill the thief for stealing on a sacred island even if he didn’t know about its laws or if he had to know in himself that he shouldn’t have stolen in the first place. Plus he was one of the rebels, so was it right to kill him or not? The player can decide whether to go and save the thief or not.
Speaking of quests, another interesting addition that felt disorienting at first but then paid off really well is that now some of the quests will not give players a marker for their destination anymore. Players will find clues about their destination in several different ways (reading documents in the world, talking to people, maybe in a specific dialogue choice, finding documents that a boss had etc…). Those clues will update the quest objective with “Go south of X statue” or “Go north of Y mountain / area”
Sokrates talking to Alexios and the nearby NPCs
and then the player will have to visit such area and look around with his / her eagle to find the right spot. Like we said, it’s disorienting at first (we initially thought that the absence of the marker was a bug) but it actually favors exploration and gets the player involved in finding his / her destination.
The interesting and compelling element about the addition of choices in the game can really be seen in the demo as the player progresses through the quests shown in this area (Mykonos and Delos). In fact, the choices made during the main quests concerning the rebels will not be the only ones having a direct impact on the attempt at liberating the area from Podarkes.Even the choices taken in quests that seem completely unrelated like the one involving Socrates may have an impact on the “main path” and when you get to see that, not only it can lead the story to some unexpected plot twists (we’ll try and avoid spoilers about the different endings of the narrative thread of the demo) but it will also push the player to spend more time weighing the alternatives before picking a choice. In fact, sometimes choices will appear clear and obvious but in other occasions they might not. For example rescuing a character that is attacked by bandits might have him offer you new quests but at the same time other bandits or enemies of that character might come for Alexios / Kassandra to exact revenge.
The game will also feature full systemic naval gameplay and combat with actual ships (not the tiny boats from Origins, which will still be in the game for short trips from island to island).
Your ship will be called the “Adrestia” (which might be a reference to Adrestia, the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, whose name means “she who cannot be escaped”), and you will have a crew who will be able to sing songs as you wander in the Greek seas.
Naval combat feels like a middle ground between the one in Origins (in the Aya missions) and the one in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. You can ram, shoot arrows, shoot spears / javelins (the equivalent of the broadside cannons in AC4), brace from attacks and you can also have special attacks like fire arrows or javelines to set ships on fire. The AC4 fans will also be happy to know they will also be able to board enemy ships but the player will be the only one jumping on them. The crew will mostly stay on the player’s ship, while some lieutenants will join him / her in the boarding, but only if they have been previously recruited among the enemies and NPCs in the world.
These lieutenants will improve and modify some of the parameters / features of the ship (such as the number of arrows per volley or resistance of the hull) and some of them will even bring special perks to the Adrestia which, according to the developers, may drastically change the player’s approach
The Fire Brazier upgrade for the Adrestia
during naval combat. Thus, players will find another element of strategy in choosing their lieutenants for the battles that will await for them.
Fans of customization may also like to know that even the Adrestia will be customizable and upgradable. In fact, by spending in-game currency and resources, players will be able to change different parts of their ship. For example adding a fire brazier to the Adrestia will unlock fire attacks
from the ship.
During the naval sessions, players will find a variety of different ships from enemy factions, each with its own strategy. Speaking of enemy ships, the team has also mentioned that the Legendary Ships from AC4 and AC Rogue will be back in the form of the so called “Epic Ships”, which will provide very difficult challenges for expert players.
Lastly, the Adrestia will also act like a base of operation for the main character when he is away from home (similar to what the Jackdaw did in Black Flag, we would say), where he / she will be able to pick up quests and speak with the ship’s captain, Barnabas, a character that the hero gets to know early in the game who is very colorful but also a very strong believer that everyone’s destiny depends the gods’ will.
Playing the demo we also had the chance to take a look at the equipment and weapons that our hero will be able to use and his / her inventory in general. The game features a wide selection of weapons, divided in possibly the same kinds that appeared in Origins (swords, daggers, spears, heavy blunts etc…). Players will still have two slots for two melee weapons plus a torch. Differently from Origins, though, there will not be two slots for the bows anymore (more on that later). In Odyssey players will be able to craft their arrows based on the wood resources they find in the world in a similar way to what happens in Horizon Zero Dawn. At the moment they can be crafted only in the menu, though, and we only saw normal craftable arrows but in the dedicated arrow-crafting screen there were other slots so there may be other craftable kinds of arrows that might be shown in the future.
Speaking of resources, there will be six of them, ranging from pelts to metals / minerals, wood and stone. Each of those will be shown in the inventory and can be found anywhere in the world so that the player can use them in different ways throughout the game.
The inventory page in Assassin's Creed Odyssey
Another important inventory management element, that fans have been asking for quite some time is the ability of customize the hero’s equipment. In fact players will be able to customize up to five elements of their equipment: helmet / hood (which can be toggled on and off), gloves / bracers, breastplates, belts and boots. There will be several pieces of each of those (weapons / equipment parts) in the world, each with its own stats (protection / attack / DPS etc…) and its rarity and some of those will allow for “engravings” which are basically perks that you can add to your weapons and equipment (like +25% damage, cause poison etc…). To be able to add the engravings to their equipment, players will first have to obtain them by doing challenges / war contracts that are consistent to the perk itself. For example to obtain an engraving that boosts the assassination damage, the player will likely have to do a task that has to do with assassinations (like “assassinate ‘X’ enemies).
The hood / helmet selection
After obtaining the engraving, players will have to visit a blacksmith and by spending money and resources they will finally have the perk they desired.
As you can see, then, this customization system is like a middle ground between Origins and Unity (for example there doesn’t seem to be an option to select the color for your equipment, even though the customization aspect is definitely back).
The menu will also feature a general item page organized in objects / resources, quest items and documents. Moreover, like for Origins, the menu will feature a slot for the horse selection (strangely enough, the horse was called Phobos in the game dialogues, so we are not quite sure how that can be reconciled with having different horses).
Speaking of menus the game will feature a skill tree as it happened in the last few chapters of the franchise, but this time the concept of skills has been completely overhauled in terms of direct gameplay.
The skills are still divided, as in Origins, in the three main areas (Warrior, Hunter and Assassin – yeah, considering the setting that last one is pretty poorly named) but this time the player will be able to map them to a “wheel” matching the four buttons on the pad so that he / she can use them at any given time while playing. To use them, players will need to build their adrenaline bar, which means some of the skills will not be available for an unlimited number of times during combat (unless the adrenaline gauge is filled during the combat phase). This allows for even more intense fights with bosses (at least from our experience).
The skill wheel mapping screen
On top of that there will be a bow wheel. In fact, instead of equipping different bows from the menu and changing them constantly as it happened in Origins, players will be able to map them to the bow wheel and use them immediately during the gameplay phases (which, in some occasions, will consume adrenaline). Overall, then, players will be able to select up to 12 abilities from a total of 25 to be able to use them during the combat phase.
Odyssey will also introduce nine base skills, so be prepared to learn the basics, if you need it. Among the other standard skills, the one that will stand out immediately will be “Sparta Kick”, which is exactly what you think, if you have watched the movie 300. Players will be able to Sparta Kick everyone, even animals (we must say it feels pretty good and never gets old – although we haven’t tried it on animals :P). That is only one of the melee, ranged and stealth abilities which are made possible, within the story, by the Broken Spear of Leonidas. Among other skills caused by the Spear we can mention “Rush Assassinate” which allows our hero to do a melee attack from a short distance from the enemy, and “Rain of Arrows”, which causes several arrows to be unleashed on a specific area, and an unnamed skill that allows the hero to jump from an elevated position and plant the Spear in the ground to create a shockwave that makes all the surrounding enemies fall on the ground.
Other skills allow to remove shields from enemies and throw them towards them or “conjure the fires of Hephaistos” which will make normal melee weapons and arrows into fire weapons which deal fire damage. All of the skills, even the basic ones, can be upgraded, leading to different and bettered versions of the skills themselves like, for example, a stronger Sparta Kick.
Another important element introduced in Odyssey and shown in the demo is its notoriety system. In Odyssey you can do several kinds of negative actions tied to a notoriety bar in the lower right of the screen: stealing, killing domestic animals, killing civilians (the idea is that “there’s no Creed yet”), killing militaries / guards, sinking ships, destroying silos, killing leaders etc... If you perform one of such actions and you are spotted doing them, for example, by civilians, the notoriety / bounty bar will rise.
The notoriety / bounty bar (lower right)
If the civilians themselves who spotted you won’t get their tools and directly attack you (which is a thing that can actually happen in the game), the witnesses will tell a sponsor about your deeds and this sponsor will put a bounty on your head which will cause mercenaries / bounty hunters (which are basically wandering bosses) to hunt you. The cool thing is that they will go where you committed your last crime and then go around that area to find you. They will even have ships if needed so you don’t feel safe at sea.
The higher the bounty, the stronger the mercenaries that will hunt you but also the bigger the loot if you kill them.
The stealth approach
At the same time, though, considering they are very difficult bosses, this system kind of incentivizes stealth because sometimes you really don’t want the mercenaries bosses on top of several guards all around you while you’re trying to reach your objective. Depending on the player’s style, this may also incentivize hiding the bodies of the killed guards to avoid one’s actions becoming “public”. Speaking of stealth, when approaching an enemy stealthily the hero will also have the chance to choose whether to knock him out or assassinate him.
There are ways to decrease the notoriety bar as well, obviously. First the player can just stop doing illegal actions and it will slowly go down; you can also bribe the sponsors, who are NPCs wandering the world protected by a few guards around them; finally, you can kill the actual mercenaries when they’re hunting you.
Speaking of mercenaries, Alexios / Kassandra will meet a lot of them (also because they are a mercenary themselves). Some of them will be unique to the player’s experience as they will be randomly generated based on a combination of several parameters such as their name, level, appearance, weapon set, specific abilities and even wild animals that might be following them. This will add to the variety of the enemies, but every mercenary / “combination of parameters” should always be able to bring a nice challenge to players.
Layla Hassan from Assassin's Creed Origins (Source: Youtube channel SheanWalsh)
Present Day will be back in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Layla Hassan will be its protagonist as she was in Assassin’s Creed Origins – In that regard Assassin’s Creed Odyssey will be the follow-up to Origins. The Animus will be back as well, acting again as a link between the story in the past and the one in the Present Day. And no, sadly there’s no more information about this topic.
As for the First Civilization, we already mentioned the Broken Spear of Leonidas as a confirmed First Civilization artefact along with the fact that our main character will be connected to the Precursors as well. What we haven’t mentioned yet is that, according to the developers, the game will also tell the story of the “First Civilization lineage” and will
Alexios weilding the Broken Spear of Leonidas
show how the conflict between order and free will took shape. Contrary to what happened in the previous instalments of the franchise, instead of having the meta-story developed in a “parallel” way to the plot set in the historical times, Odyssey will try and reunite both story arcs, sharing more information about the First Civilization and attempting at explaining how its legacy had an influence on mankind.
Whether that’s going to be a good or bad approach, that a completely different question and only time will tell. Still, seeing that Ubisoft is open to confirm Modern Day and First Civilization since E3 is kind of positively unexpected, so fingers crossed!
These are more or less the main news topics and mechanics we could bring to you, but before we wrap up, we still have some rapid-fire bullets about other details we could grasp during our trip and while playing the demo! Here they are:
The game developed by a multi-studio team led by Ubisoft Québec which comprises Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Montpellier, Ubisoft Kiev, Sperasoft, Ubisoft Shanghai, Ubisoft Pune, Ubisoft Singapore, and Ubisoft Bucharest.
There’s a quick save icon in the menu
There will be an activity called “Find Ainigmata Ostraka” which will be similar to the Find the Papyrus activity in Origins as the player finds some text in the form of a clue that describes a location where treasure can be found.
One of the philosophies for the game was “It’s better in the air”: according to the development team the game will feature cities which can be traversed without touching the ground
Players will be able to lie in the game, which may or may not have consequences
Players will not be able to have the entire world dominated by one faction by using the Nation Power system because the world is living and dynamic. While the player is shifting the factions in one area, in some other areas on the map the factions might shift as well.
Speaking of factions, along with Athenians and Spartans, which will be the main ones, the game will also feature other groups such as the Bandits, the Cult’s Guards and the Huntresses of Artemis
The game will feature big naval battles
There will be contracts to attack ships at sea in exchange of rewards – they could be found at the base of a statue / pillar (they seemed like the quest boards in other RPG games)
You can get weapons from the weapons stands, not just arrows as it happened in Origins. You can also pick up weapons from the ground after you killed an enemy
The compass at the top of the screen will be back with some of the icons from Origins (like question marks, the synchronization points, quest locations) but also new ones (like quest boards and other unknown ones)
The game will feature underwater swimming and sunken temples as Origins did and this time the hero can be attacked by sharks
Oh… and one more thing, if you like Greek mythology…
And that was it for our Assassin’s Creed Odyssey preview! That’s a huge load of news that we couldn’t wait to share with you. As of now we tried to keep them as clean from our opinions as possible to bring you a compact description of the most recent news from the new chapter of the franchise, but you can expect us to talk about our reactions to some of these new additions very soon!
But now we’d like to hear it from you! What do you think about the new narrative system, the setting and the new mechanics? Are you hyped about the game or are you still cautious about it?
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