Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018)

The absolute low point for this series conceptually, and by far the worst of the RPG trilogy. A game absolutely embarrassed of its identity, virtually nothing in this entry has to do with anything meaningfully related to Assassin's Creed as a series.

Bland as hell dialogue, a truly dull story, lackluster stealth and arguably worse combat leaves little to be desired for anyone who actually wanted to play an Assassin's Creed game. People who laud this title as the height of AC are tourists to the series and should not be taken seriously, despite Ubisoft's complete capitulation to the lowest common denominator of consumers.

The only thing I can say it did well was its art direction; the game is jaw droppingly gorgeous, and ancient Greece has never looked this good. Too bad they couldn't put in as much effort to any other aspect of the game.

Odyssey is a huge game in a beautiful world. While so much of the world works so well the game is dragged down by a bloated main story (that contains way too many repetitive fetch quests and depressingly similar assassination and/or theft missions). The story takes a long time to get going and even longer to demonstrate its links to the broader AC narrative. Additionally, as the setting is Greek islands the setting and towns and islands are unfortunately repetitive.

But at its best AC: Odyssey is one of the best open world games I've played. The way the story fits into the broader narrative of the franchise is compelling and the impact your choices make on the story makes the world you're inhabiting feel more real.

I know that there are people who want Ubisoft to drop the sci-fi plot of Assassin's Creed and to turn the series into a purely historical game. Which I do think does make sense on some levels and seems to increasingly be where the game is going. Even so, I'd really like Ubisoft to fully commit to the plot one day and give us a game set during the Isu Civilization, one where we see the Isu, Isu architecture and humanity as it was during that period. I want to climb Isu buildings, kill Isu targets and take part in what I would expect to be humanity's rebellion against the Isu. I might be the only one who wants this, but I'd so play the hell out that game.

Incidentally, I still want a Desmond as full assassin game set in the contemporary, but guess that ship sailed.

About two thirds of the way through a fight with a mercenary (that's maybe a few too many levels too high), I somehow enraged the entire town I was fighting in. Suddenly, instead of fighting one mercenary, I'm fighting hordes of little old greek grandmas and grandpas. And they all happen to carry firebombs in their pockets. So, here I am fighting one mercenary and a geriatric legion of shot-putting arsonists. Then a second mercenary shows up, and a third. Now two of the three mercenaries lob poison bombs that have enourmous areas of effect. I'm dodging multiple overlapping AoE attacks while still trying to whittle the original mercenary's health down while also trying to take out some of the townsfolk so that I have fewer firebombs to contend with. Naturally, more townsfolk shop up to the party.

I sometimes wonder if the devs at Ubisoft start their day wondering "how can I make this game less fun to play?"

I suppose I would consider myself a fan of the Assassin's Creed series. I defeinitly likne more of hte game I dislike (I really only dislike Unity out of hte mainline games). Odyssey is more Assassin's Creed, and more of what we did in Origins, which is fun. I like hte increased gear nuance (stack all that assassin damaage for hte stealth win) and I enjoy the protagonist Kassandra quite a bit. But this wouldn't be a true AC game without the bugs.

I was on a mission to protect a man from some lions. I found him sleeping at the base of a hill. I spoke with him and informed him I would act as his protector. He warned me that the lions were approaching, and proceeded to lay down on this sleeping roll. regardless of his decision to sleep through the event, I made quick work of the lions with my dual blades (well, knife and spear head). I turned to see if I needed to speak with him to progress the mission and he was still lying in his bed. As I approached his body suddenly twisted itself up and he let out a death cry. Here was this schmuck, who I just risked my life to save from lion, up and dying in his sleep. Needless to say I failed the mission. Thank you Ubisoft, for your usual level of quality control ;-)

They eyebrow rant.

I'm playing the new AC and I'm all excited because it takes place in Greece and my father's family is from Greece. I'm wondering what words I'll recognize and what they imagine Athens and other famous historical sites look like. Was this the first thing I noticed? Nope. It was the fact that Kassandra's Greek eyebrows are GROOMED. Now, this probably doesn't matter to the average gamer. Who pays attention to eyebrows? There are other more noticeable standards of beauty that video games love to hold on a pedestal (such as body type) but to a half-Greek girl who was relentlessly made fun of for my unruly, large, and bushy Greek eyebrows, it stings a bit. First of all, it's just historically inaccurate. Her eyebrows should look like mine circa 2009. But instead, she has these perfectly shaped and sharp eyebrows. I started wondering if this was just in this game or in a bunch others.

Turns out, I have never been able to find a single female video game character with un-groomed brows. The closest some on twitter helped me find was Aloy from Herizon Zero Dawn, but even her eyebrows are more groomed than the average twelve year old Greek kid. Lara Croft may be in a remote, hidden city in Latin America, but somehow she found a place to get her eyebrows cleaned up. Aya may be from New Kingdom Egypt, but some how her eyebrows are perfectly pencil thin against Bayek's great large brows.

So why do I care about this so much? I have been told by everyone except for my mother that my eyebrows were ugly. I am horrendously self conscious about the way they look and I get them waxed to perfection every month. I wasn't allowed to do this until I was an adult because my mom refused to let me get them waxed while I was still living with her (but she didn't care about other shit. Mothers are weird sometimes). I'm grateful that she didn't let me touch them because now having thick brows is "in" but seeing every female video game character even in a mostly historically accurate video game with perfect eyebrows makes me sad. Just another standard of beauty unconsciously constantly projected.

Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED talk about eyebrows. See my original rant on my twitter (shameless plug) @okayzoeyk.

This game got completely dismissed I feel like. Nobody is talking about it, everyone blew up about the incredibly minor mico-transactions and it won nothing at the game awards. Makes me sad.

I loved this game. Ubisoft is making better and better AC games it feels like. Origins was amazing and this one was even better. The next one is gonna be next level I hope.

There are some definite flaws though. Like that the love interest quests are all really cheesy and hilarious, they don't take their time in building any of the relationships so its just funny how quickly they decide to "do it". Haha.

And it can get grindy sure but thats only if you make it a grind for yourself. You don't have to do many side quests at all. Just stick to doing the gold diamond marked side quests and you will get a fully thought out side quest every time.

So yeah thats basically all the negatives. I liked the story and the many different choices you can make. The world is also beautiful as you can always expect from an AC game, not quite as polished as Origins though for some reason but that didn't hurt my enjoyment any.

Theres also a bunch of side characters that follow you on your journey that you get attached to. And then theres Kassandra. Who was the main character I decided to play as. I really like her. Shes a good protagonist.

And then theres the gameplay which is completely polished now. I love exploring the world and clearing enemy camps/forts and doing a stealthy approach to take out all the minor guards before going in for the commander and having a mini boss battle.

And then theres also the ship combat which is pretty fun too but not quite as much of a big deal as it was in Black Flag. But it is cool to upgrade it and deck it out in different designs. Its sort of your main base throughout your journey.

The gold diamond side quests are all pretty good as I mentioned before. Theres some really good ones and that hit deep.

Pros: -great main story -quality side quests and content -fun engaging combat and stealth gameplay -really good music -lots of exploration -side characters you like -good protagonist

Cons: -romance quests are hilariously bad -some grindy (optional) side quests

Overall, a great AC game. Even though theres no assassin's... Or a creed. Wait a minute. Why is this called Assassin's Creed? Well it ties into it kind of but whatever. Still great. 😊

The latest installment of Assassin's Creed is incredibly fun and absolutely lives up to the hype. In this game, Layla enters the Animus to experience the life of an ancient Greek mercenary who is a sort of precursor to the Assassins. From the get go, she is faced with a choice--to go through the simulation as Kassandra or Alexios. From then on, your choices affect the game play.

The introduction of player choices to the game is enthralling. A choice might be as insignificant as affecting the tone of dialogue to changing the outcome of the game. And while in other games the outcomes might seem obvious, that is not the case this time. A seemingly insignificant choice made early on might have large ramifications later. I found this to be refreshing compared to games where your the difference in outcomes is obvious, or worse, where they don't really matter. Obviously, the main plot points remain the same, but it's totally possible to play through this game and have different experiences and endings than other players, which I liked.

I also felt the mechanics and gameplay of this Assassin's Creed were much smoother than I experienced in the past. I will admit I was pretty terrible at earlier installments of the series. In this game, I actually felt quite competent, especially while captaining my ship. I really appreciated the cleanup here as it easier and more fun to execute abilities and maneuvers.

The biggest drawback to this game: It's too big. This starts as a quest for the player character to find their family, who they lost as a child. In doing so, they discover that a cult is secretly controlling politics in Greece, and set out an additional quest to uncover and assassinate its members. As you learn more about the Cult's goals, you also start a quest to prevent them from accessing a cache of Isu knowledge. In other words, there are 3 main quests, all of which take a considerable amount of time to beat. Compounding this is the world map, which is a beautiful open world, yes, but is also way too big. It took me 80 hours to beat this game--most of which was fun, exciting, but which eventually got overwhelming. I think the game would have been better if the world was smaller and the story more compact.

That said, it was still a ton of fun. I recommend it to old and new fans alike.