Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018)

 The most recent release in the Assassin's Creed series before Valhalla is released this week was Assassin's Creed Odyssey. It was released for Windows, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on October 5th, 2018. 

Plot

Odyssey is set against the backdrop of the Peloponnesian War, where the player experiences the war as either Kassandra or Alexios, a brother and sister who are grandchildren of King Leonidas of Sparta. The misthios, as they are known, lives on Kefalonia away from the brewing war and dealing with a local warlord. They are approached by a wealthy man, Elpenor, who tasks the misthios with assassinating a Spartan general known as the Wolf. 

The misthios recalls that the Wolf was their father. They had an infant sibling that was ordered to be sacrificed by the Oracle and the misthios had killed a man by trying to stop their sibling from being killed. The Wolf, who's real name is Nikolaos, had thrown the misthios off of a cliff for the crime. The misthios goes to confront Nikolaos, who reveals that he is not their father and that their mother is still alive. 

The misthios goes after Elpenor, who flees. They track him down and kill him, taking a disguise he had to infiltrate a meeting Elpenor was going to. There, the misthios discovers the Cult of Kosmos (a stand in for the Templars as the Order of the Ancients was in Origins) and that their sibling is still alive, having been taken in by the Cult and conditioned into serving them as the "demigod" Deimos. 

The misthios works to eradicate the Cult, enlisting allies such as the historian Herodotus and Pericles. They also search for their mother and find her in command of an island out in the Aegean Sea. Myrinne tells them that their real father is Pythagoras and invites them to try to find him. The misthios finds Pythagoras in holed up in Atlantis, kept alive well past his normal lifespan by a Precursor artifact known as the Staff of Hermes. 

Pythagoras sends the misthios to gather several Precursor artifacts so he could seal Atlantis once and for all. They oblige him and convince him to give up the Staff so Atlantis can stay sealed forever. Pythagoras dies as a result and the misthios seals Atlantis. 

Back in the war, the misthios is unable to stop Deimos from killing the Athenian leader Pericles, and his rival Cleon takes power in Athens. Cleon is a ranking member of the Cult, however, and the misthios kills him in retaliation. 

With the Cult largely broken, the misthios and Myrinne go to confront Deimos, where they can either fight him or get them to stand down. Afterwards, the misthios can return to the meeting place of the Cult and interact with a Precursor artifact there to show visions of the future. The leader of the Cult is revealed as well as Pericles' wife, Aspasia, who thanks the misthios for destroying the Cult as it had gone far beyond what she envisioned. The player can either kill or let Aspasia live. 

In the modern story, Layla Hassan is looking for the Staff of Hermes and using the information gathered from reliving the misthios' memories, gains access to Atlantis. There she finds the misthios, who had been kept alive by the Staff of Hermes over the past 2400 years. They give Layla the Staff, saying that the world needs both order and chaos and that she is prophesied to maintain that balance. 

Gameplay

This game is undeniably massive. Where Origins game map was roughly 80 square kilometers, Odyssey is 256 square kilometers, roughly half of which is open sea. The player can explore the Greek mainland all the way up to Macedonia and the islands that make up the Aegean Sea as far south as Crete. 

Naval combat returns as an integral part of the game for the first time since Rogue (it was present in Origins, but only as part of certain quests). The player can use the ship to fight in naval battles between Athens and Sparta, along with exploring the various islands of the Greek world. 

Each region is either under Athenian or Spartan control and the player and aid or hinder either side by attacking enemy camps, assassinating regional commanders, and fighting in conquest battles. Several of these battles are tied into the main storyline as well. 

Where Origins improved armor through crafting upgrades and the player could change weapons freely, in Odyssey the player can freely exchange both weapons and armor. The best weapons and armor can be obtained by killing Cult members. Weapons and armor can be upgraded with the player's level, though it can be expensive as they require materials such as iron and cedarwood. Eagle Vision again returns in the form of an actual eagle, this time named Ikaros. 

The wanted system makes a return in this game for the first time since Rogue. A ladder of sorts exists with other mercenaries in the Greek world and committing illegal actions will draw in attacks from other mercenaries. However, killing these mercenaries will advance the player up the rankings, which unlocks bonuses like discounts in item shops. 

Hunting Cult members is a massive undertaking on its own. There are 43 Cult members across the Greek world, all of which are revealed by discovering clues in the world. The Cult is divided up into several categories, all of which is headed by a high level leader. 

There are over a hundred side quests unrelated to the main campaign, that range from carrying out local contracts to hunting down boss animals all over Greece. Mythological aspects make their way into the game as well, as part of the Atlantis storyline sees the player fighting the Cyclops, the Minotaur, Medusa, and getting challenged to a battle of riddles with the Sphinx. 

As mentioned before, levelling returns in this game, though the skill tree is not as expansive as it was in Origins. The abilities, however, take on a more mythological bend, in that the player can avoid all fall damage (which is something I did not mind after all the times I fell to my death in the last ten games), along with being able to use overpowered attacks and gaining the ability to have a permanent flaming sword. 

Thoughts

I'm an overall fan of bigger, more epic experiences. Avengers: Endgame is three hours long? Sign me up. I own all of the extended Lord of the Rings movies, the last of which is four hours and twenty minutes long. The first time I played through Origins, I spent 66 hours on it. Odyssey was at least a hundred. One of the general criticism was how massive the game was, but that was not a concern for me. 

I liked the return to full naval gameplay as well. Naturally triremes were a bit more unwieldy to sail as opposed to the eighteenth century vessels of III, Black Flag, and Rogue, but it was endearing to be able to split a ship in half after crippling it by throwing javelins and firing arrows at it. 

This game was largely predicated on player choice, something that was not present in any game before. I could choose to kill or spare certain adversaries, pursue any relationship I pleased, or simply get into philosophical debates with Sophocles any time I wanted. 

Still though, it did not really feel like an Assassin's Creed game, even more so than Black Flag, mainly because the setting was so far back in time it preceded everything familiar about the Assassin's Brotherhood, including the Hidden Blade. With Valhalla being set in the 800s, I don't expect this to be that much of an issue the next time around. 

Assassin' Creed Origins (2017)

 Following a year off from releasing a new game in the series, Ubisoft released Assassin's Creed Origins on October 27, 2017 for PS4, Xbox One, and Windows. 

Plot

Layla Hassan is working in Egypt at the behest of Abstergo to locate an artifact in the desert. Instead, Hassan finds the mummified remains of Bayek and Aya, two members of a precursor group to the Assassins known as the Hidden Ones. Despite not having clearance, Layla uses the DNA from the mummies to look into their lives with an Animus she modified herself. 

In Ptolemaic Egypt, Bayek is the last Medjay, a person who was traditionally charged with the protection of the Pharaoh, but in Bayek's time had been extended to protecting all of Egypt. Bayek resides in Siwa, which houses a Precursor vault. Bayek and his son Khemu are abducted by masked men only known by animal names (The Heron, the Ibis, etc). The masked men want to get into the vault, but when Bayek tries to fight back, Khemu is killed. 

A year later, Bayek has been hunting the five masked men, having first killed the one known as the Heron. He arrives back in Siwa and kills the Ibis, who had been torturing the residents of Siwa to get information on the Vault. He learns his wife, Aya, is in Alexandria hunting other masked men. Bayek learns she has killed the Vulture and the Ram, and she is currently tracking the Snake. She gives Bayek a Hidden Blade and sends him after the Snake. 

Bayek discovers that the Snake is Ptolemy's royal scribe and ambushes him with the Hidden Blade. It costs Bayek his finger to use the blade, but the scribe is killed. The scribe indicates that there is more to the masked men besides the five that Bayek and Aya killed. Bayek seeks more information and gets into contact with Cleopatra, the sister of the current Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII. She tells Bayek that there are more masked men, who are known as the Order of Ancients. The scribe Bayek killed was not known as the Snake, but rather the Hippo. 

She points Bayek in the direction of other masked men, which included the Scarab, the Hyena, the Crocodile, and the Lizard. Bayek assassinates all four of them while Aya works to secure help for Cleopatra from the Roman general Pompey. She sends a letter to Bayek to let him know there are two other members of the Order, the Jackal and the Scorpion. 

Bayek finds that the Jackal is Lucius Septimius, a Roman stationed in Alexandria charged with protecting the royal family. Septimius kills Pompey before he can aid Cleopatra. Instead, Bayek and Aya sneak Cleopatra into the royal palace in Alexandria to get her into contact with another Roman, Julius Caesar. Caesar is impressed with Cleopatra and allies with her. Bayek kills the Scorpion but is stopped from killing Septimius by Caesar, who claims he will face Roman justice for Pompey's death. Ptolemy is killed trying to flee and Cleopatra becomes Pharaoh. 

Cleopatra and Caesar break from Aya and Bayek, who find that both have been seduced by the Order. They find that the Order is showing interest in Alexander the Great's tomb in Alexandria and go to investigate. They find Aya's ally Apollodorus mortally wounded there, but he manages to tell them that Septimius and the leader of the Order, Flavius (the Lion) are headed to Siwa to open the Vault. 

Bayek arrives to find the vault already opened and the town held in thrall by an Apple of Eden. Bayek kills Flavius, but Septimius had already gone to Rome. Aya and Bayek agree to separate for good, with Aya going to Rome to grow a brotherhood there while Bayek remains in Egypt. A few years later Aya tracks down Septimius and finally kills him, assassinates Caesar, and threatens Cleopatra. 

In the present, Layla is ambushed by Abstergo mercenaries for not reporting in. She is able to defeat them all and continue exploring Bayek and Aya's past. After she is done, she wakes to find William Miles, who offers to let her join the Assassins. She agrees to go with him, but stops short of joining the Assassins. 

Gameplay

Following Syndicate, Ubisoft decided to take a year off from the series to completely overhaul it. Where single cities served as the focus of previous games, with loading screen waits to travel between regions, the whole of Egypt serves as this game's map. A player could conceivably travel from one end of Egypt to the other without stopping, though it would take time due to the size of the map. 

The major cities include Alexandria, Memphis, Siwa, and Cyrene, along with smaller towns. The map is focused on the west bank of the Nile and points further west, as Cyrene and Siwa are in Libya technically. The mini map of every other game in this series is gone, replaced by a compass bar that picks up locations and quests from a certain distance out. 

Combat was overhauled as well, switching from the "locked in" format of past games and switching to a free for all combat format. The player can use knives, swords, spears, axes, and maces, all of which have their advantages and disadvantages. A bow serves as a ranged weapon and the player can use tools such as throwing fire bombs. 

The player can upgrade their armor or attack stats with upgrades. Materials for the upgrades are gathered through hunting, which returns in this game, and attacking military transports. Levelling the player continues in this game and levelling up grants ability points that can be spent on increasing player skills, such as unlocking chain assassinations. 

Locations have been overhauled in this game as well. Instead of clearing up towns district by district, picking up collectibles and completing side activities to take districts over, the whole map of Egypt is divided up by region, with each region having locations within it to explore, such as tombs and military camps. 

Collectibles are tremendously cut down in this game. There are chests, ancient tablets in tombs, papyrus scrolls in temples, and that's all. Finding these will complete a location, along with killing officers in the military camps. These collectibles are most easily discovered with the revamped Eagle Vision of this game, which utilizes a literal eagle named Senu to scout out locations. 

There are far more side quests than main mission quests, and most of them are related to Medjay duties in serving people and dispensing justice. Due to actions early in the game, special boss characters known as Phylakes hunt the player, and killing them all unlocks a reward. There are several elephants in the game as well and defeating an elephant will grant an ability point. 

Thoughts

I am probably one of the few who thought the series was not getting stale after nine games of relatively similar gameplay, but I still appreciated the changes the series made for this one. Egypt is vast and I enjoyed exploring it, even the remoteness of the desert. The level of detail of Egypt's landscape is unreal and I easily felt the harshness of the scenery. 

The new format of the game reminded me strongly of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, in that it was more of an RPG as opposed to an Assassin's Creed game. The vast number of side quests kind of buries the main storyline to the point where I don't recall much of the main story after the first playthrough. What I remembered most about my first playthrough is the great atmosphere this game built. It is not just the landscape, it's the political tension you can feel in the game as well. 

At the time, Egypt is controlled by the Greeks as the remnants of Hellenic empires struggle to remain afloat. Everywhere you can see Egyptians losing status at the expense of the ruling Greeks, with no small outbreak of violence due to it, especially in the Faiyum region. Then, on top of all that, there is the looming threat of the Roman Republic, who's presence in the game steadily increases the further into the main story the player goes. 

This game seemed much larger on the first playthrough simply because it was the biggest game that the series had released up to that point. On the second playthrough that I am going through now, it does not seem nearly as vast. That is because of the next game in the series took big to an entirely new level.