Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Gamescom full coverage of all the latest news and facts – EndGame, Greek lore and mythodology, gameplay and combat and more!
Note: This article is based on my own research as well as all the news and info available at Gamescom 2018.
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is the next installment in the Assassin’s Creed franchise by Ubisoft. At Gamescom 2018 the developers showed a side-quest and a boss fight. They also talked about how the EndGame functions, how much the game has evolved compared to Origins from last year and the role of the Greek mythology and lore.
As direct descendant of Leonidas, King of Sparta, your character inherits his broken spear, which grants you special powers!
As you know already, you play a direct descendant of King Leonidas. You will have to make a choice in the beginning of your playthrough – do you want to play as Alexios (male) or Kassandra (female) protagonist. The global plot of the game develops around your desire to bring your family together. Because this is a true RPG, though, you will be able to determine for yourself what kind of a story yours will be – a Greek Tragic Grama, a Happy United Family or something else.
The game is built with Greek lore in mind. It doesn’t follow 100% the real history of events, but this is something all other Assassin’s Creed games have been avoiding as well. In any case, the developers have invested a ton of time and efforts into building as accurate world of Ancient Greece as possible. They have been working with historians and have been doing a ton of research to make sure every single region you are about to explore looks realistic to the time period (431 BCE) and most of all – how the Greek people accepted and pictured the world they lived in. To them the Gods are absolutely real and their existence is a fact that has been honored in the game’s lore and story.
The world you will get to explore is above and beyond anything you may remember from Origins. Sailing and ship combat is more essential to the story and a core element of the gameplay (regardless if you like it or not… I personally was never a big fan of the naval combat in Assassin’s Creed: Origins). You will get to explore vastly different regions in terms of populations, flora and fauna. In this virtual Ancient Greece world the presence of the Gods is present and can be felt constantly anywhere your journey takes you.
A lot has been done to improve and expand the gameplay and combat of the game. If you are an Assassin’s Creed: Origins veteran, you will feel in familiar waters. The core gameplay mechanics are all present in Odyssey, but a lot of them have also been improved, apparently.
Most of the weapons and weapon fighting technology and mechanics have been transferred to Odyssey, with one exception. In order to make the gameplay more fast-paced and action-friendly, the team has decided to remove the shield as a way for you to defend yourself. Your opponents may still use shields, but in order for the gameplay to be more action oriented, you will not be able to hide yourself behind a shield. Most of the attacking styles and weapon types are still available – like heavy, but slower weapons, fast dual-wielding swords and so on.
Your actions will fill up the Adrenaline Bar, like in Origins, but in Odyssey you will have more ways to spend it on various abilities. In the Gamescom 2018 demo there were four abilities available. Each one of them purchasable and upgradable later on through the progression system. Each one of the special abilities consumes a certain amount of your Adrenaline.
The boss fight we got to see in the Gamescom 2018 demo was a level 50 Medusa (level 50 is the cap for your character too), part of a side-quest, located in a mysterious forest region filled with ruins left from an ancient civilization. This quest is available at any point, but it requires a certain gear level and skills or it may prove too hard for you. The boss mechanics we got to see were nothing innovative, but well implemented and interesting. There were adds spawning from time to time and the boss herself used a number of special abilities, which you had to either avoid or break line of sight to provent her from casting them. The way mechanics played were similar to what you might remember from the Trials of the Gods in Origins.
In terms of gear, you will once again be able to purchase, earn or craft various items from different categories and tiers. The highest – Legendary gear, is pretty much a requirement for the EndGame. More details on crafting and gear progression you can expect at a later point.
The Mercenary system is also something that is coming from Origins, but has been altered and expanded upon to make it more unique and RPG-like. Mercenaries will be in some cases hand-crafted characters with specific backstories and weapons, but the most of them are generated out of pools of names, gears and such. As it has been said several times already, the game is an RPG and is set much earlier in the time line, in a world where the Assassin’s Creed with its rules and laws don’t exist yet. In Odyssey you can even kill citizens and civilians if you like (Not cool, man! Don’t do it! :P). Your actions, though, will have real and severe consequences on the world around you. NPCs will react to you differently based on your behavior and the Mercenaries will be these tough and challenging guys that will take on contracts to kill you for you have done.
Because Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is a true RPG (according to the devs), we will have meaningful dialogues and choices to make – ones that will hunt us all the way throughout the game. Even though the setting is Ancient Greece and the Assassin’s Creed’s rules and laws do not apply, the team claims to have made a great effort to preserve the true feeling of the game as an Assassin’s Creed title. Devs claim the EndGame content will be able to keep you playing for over a hundred hours.
It seems that a Discovery Tour mode may not be available in the game at launch, but is likely to be added post-launch, based on an interview of IGN with Game Director Scott Philips.
Assassin’s Creed releases on 5th of October 2018 in several different editions. Each one of them has its own price tag and a set of bonuses and goodies included in the package. A Season pass is, of course, available as well, which means you should expect additional DLCs post-launch.
I know that there has been a lot of controversy around the genre of this game and the fact that it comes a bit too soon after Origins. From what I have seen so far, though, I can say that the core systems from Origins have both been preserved well in Odyssey, but also developed further and expanded. The new powerful abilities look and feel cool and the boredom that you start to feel after a certain amount of time spent with fighting in Origins, should not be present in Odyssey. Or at least not to the same extent. I am eager to play Odyssey and the fact that it is a more serious attempt at a true RPG (Origin placed the foundations, but was too limiting in most aspects). On several levels I attempted to compare Origins to The Witcher 3 from CD Projekt Red, but Ubisoft’s game fell short in pretty every aspect. Can’t wait to see what Odyssey has to offer!
