It’s one of the biggest video games coming out this year, but it’s likely fans are wondering whether Assassin’s Creed Odyssey can repeat the success of Assassin’s Creed Origins and be another jolly good entry in Ubisoft’s long-running series when it launches this fall.
One thing will be different this time though, and this is the fact that the team at Ubisoft Quebec will be sacrificing historical accuracy in an effort to prevent the series from going stale.
After all, Assassin’s Creed now appears to be going back to a yearly release cycle after the franchise took a break in 2016, and needs to keep evolving in the same way other top video game franchises such as Call of Duty or even Ubisoft’s Far Cry have, with the latest game in that series bringing some innovations to the table this year.
Also, since Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is set in ancient Greece, hundreds of years before last year’s Origins, these are less detailed day to day records of what historical personalities like King Leonidas or Socrates (whom you get to meet in the game) were up to.
This means Assassin’s Creed Odyssey can take a little license with history and not be as accurate as earlier games such as Assassin’s Creed Unity, as Ubisoft producer Marc-Alexis Côté told gaming website VG24/7.
“I remember working on Syndicate and you almost have a day-by-day account of what everybody did”, said Côté, adding that “obviously you don’t have that in 400BC”.
And it’s also clear that part of the reason Ubisoft chose to deviate from history here (aside from the fact that this period of history is not as well documented as others seen in recent Assassin’s Creeds) is to feature more mythological creatures in the game, something which the French company began doing in Assassin’s Creed Origins’ great Curse of the Pharaohs expansion this year.
“One of the cool things about Assassin’s Creed that I think our fans love is [that] we can explain history a different way. The Apple of Eden sums up this kind of reasoning very, very well – that’s why we are embracing the mythological creatures. Because they’re so much a part of this setting”, said the Ubisoft man.
So, it looks like players can look forward to battling the likes of Medusa or the Minotaur in the next Assassin’s Creed game, but this isn’t the only innovation Odyssey will be featuring this year.
As it surfaced earlier this year, this will also be the first Assassin’s Creed game to include dialogue choices. This will not only affect your relationships with other characters (several romance options are possible here too), but will also open up new branches of the story for you to pursue.
This is part of Assassin’s Creed transition to becoming a full-blown RPG, as Côté himself admitted.
“It feels like the true 2.0 version of Assassin’s Creed. We always planned this to be a two-step transformation and this one takes the final step. I feel like it can now truly be called an RPG”, the Ubisoft producer said.
So, will Assassin’s Creed Odyssey triumph this year and convince people the series is back in force after Assassin’s Creed Origins’ success last year? This remains to be seen, but judging by the previews we’ve seen so far this looks like it could be another excellent entry in the series, something we’ll find out for sure when Assassin’s Creed Odyssey comes out next month.
Note: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey will be released on October 5, 2018. Available on PS4, Xbox One and PC.