Assassin's Creed Odyssey

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JaySevenZero
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Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions of Assassin's Creed Odyssey for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder to all that where feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but self-editing (brevity) is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mainly reading. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
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Chaos9001
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Re: 438: Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Post by Chaos9001 »

I picked this game up on a sale recently and started it directly after finishing the main campaign of AC: Origins. The pros in my opinion are that this game took many of the systems that were introduced in Origins and expanded them, such as the mercenary system, and that I enjoyed the setting of Odyssey far more than Origins. far fewer snakes, and far less sand (it's course, it's rough, and it get's everywhere.) I'm normally not the biggest fan of nautical segments of games, but I find myself much more keen to explore the world while my crew sings a sea shanty.

The con in my mind is that Alexios is in my opinion not nearly as compelling or well rounded as Bayek is from the last title.
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Jon Cheetham
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Re: 438: Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Post by Jon Cheetham »

[ removing my contribution for this one - really hope it doesn't cause any inconvenience ]
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TheEmailer
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Re: 438: Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Post by TheEmailer »

Odyssey is a beautiful game with many interesting systems. But exploration of the expansive world is restricted the with strict level gating. For those players with lots of spare time (or a Jay type personality), I can imagine the slow methodical progress would be great. I however don't have that amount of time, so 15-20 hours into the game I have enjoyment mixed with frustration.
Cassandra is great though, protagonists in the series can be po-faced but she bucks the trend.
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Monster Mash
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Re: 438: Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Post by Monster Mash »

AC: Odyssey is by far my favourite AC game despite the story having the same sensibilities and acting as a "Carry on" film. After the initial grating of the performances wore off I found a massive, deep and compelling game world to explore. It was as if the developers had played The Witcher 3, pressed copy and paste but with an ancient Greek mythology skin in place.

I found myself playing to just switch off, wonder around the game world completing side quests, taking to the seas to hunt pirates or sunken treasure and occasionally move the main story along. The amount of content in this game is beyond absurd!
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miles381
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Re: 438: Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Post by miles381 »

I’ve been a fan of the assassins creed games since ac3. Unlike a lot of people I enjoyed the old format and it took me a little while to come around to this new rpg format, even though I enjoy rpgs. Just hesitate for change I guess. But I enjoyed ac origins and was excited for ac odyssey. I got the game a few mot ha after release due to the close proximity of release with red dead redemption 2, one of my all time favorite games. I loved ac odyssey. Kassandra was a fantastic protagonist who was funny, endearing and just a straight up badass. The graphics were emaculate, the story pulled me in, the characters came to life. Due to work and two young children I’m still working on the dlc to this day but after 100 hours I don’t mind taking a little longer to get everything done and spend more time in this beautiful world. I’m also incredibly looking forward to the educational tour as I am a big history buff. The details in the world from statues to the everyday workings of the npc’s are fantastic. Although I was not tired of the old format this game even more so than origins has rejuvenated my love for assassins creed and I’m eagerly anticipating they’re next release. Also I love the podcast and greatly appreciate all of your hard work.
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monteblanc
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Re: 438: Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Post by monteblanc »

After hearing positive things about Origins, I decided to go in on Odyssey when the setting was announced to be ancient Greece, a place and time I find fascinating. Being free to explore the islands alone was enough for me to enjoy the title - but as I learned the game's mechanics I was really impressed by the different layers of gameplay baked in. Combat, stealth, AI, climbing/ movement, naval sections - none of it is particularly outstanding but it's very technically competent and I found it really enjoyable once I settled into a rhythm. I thought the characters and interactions were entertaining.

Greece itself is gorgeous. Sailing through the rolling waves with the crew singing away and whales leaping left and right never failed to give me a sense of adventure. I was not an assassin, but a tourist. I filled my PS4 with screenshots - constantly stopping to get a screenshot of lightning illuminating a towering statue, or of shimmering waves lapping up against an old pier where NPCs cast fishing lines. The grinding and bloat of the game, and the relatively un-engaging story never bothered me since I was having such fun on my ancient Greek island holiday.
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BlueWeaselBreath
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Re: 438: Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Post by BlueWeaselBreath »

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey helped me through the early days of the lockdown. The game was given away free a week or two right near the start of the shutdown. I knew about the Discovery Mode and figured there were worse ways to keep my young daughter entertained then letting her run around a nonviolent depiction of Ancient Greece, riding horses, swimming, and touring historical sites like the Parthenon, learning about history all the while.

She became hooked on what she still calls “The Greece game” and would spend loads of time just exploring, changing character skins, and talking to characters to watch guided historical tours presented at a level that flew right over her head but which she seemed to enjoy nonetheless.

When the free trial was up, my wife and I decided it was worth it to spring for the full game at the deep discount they were offering, purely for the enjoyment my daughter was getting out of it.

I had no immediate plans to play the game myself. I’m a fan of the series, but they don’t fit easily into my schedule anymore.

And then, one evening when I had a couple unexpected hours of free time, I decided to give it a whirl. The Assassin’s Creed games have always been a bit of a comfort food for me. Despite the series’ changes over the years, I always know basically what I’m in for, and I find the games’ core play loop relaxing overall. I began settling into this one, liking the setting and gameplay but feeling like the story was missing something somehow.

In retrospect, this, of course, was because I had put so much time into sidequests that I hadn’t let the main story properly unfold, even after a dozen hours with the game. And then, I attended the cult meeting with the sibling twist and unlocked the cultist interface, and all of a sudden, everything clicked into place—I was hooked into the narrative.

The difficulty of combat when you’re going against a significant enemy and not overleveled can be frustrating, as I’m not great at fighting in this game, but the leveling system does make sense from a game progression perspective. I‘m happy overall with the side missions, although I was a bit disappointed that the well-integrated side quests I had heard so much about appeared alongside—rather than having supplanted—a seemingly infinite number of generic, constantly repopulating sidequests with boilerplate dialogue and recurring, procedurally generated NPCs. I tend to do all sidequests in games like this, but when I realized the game was going to keep throwing an inexhaustible supply at me, they began to feel cheap, and I began letting many of them pass. I thought the kills looked hokey and oddly sanitary until I realized that every time my daughter played the Discovery Tour, it was defaulting the blood to “Off” even in the main game. I sure fixed that one right away. Also, cheers to whichever subcommittee of the development team decided to use the same button for Talk and Assassinate. So many times, I resolved a mission peacefully and then tried to talk to my erstwhile target one more time, only to impale him brutally.

My daughter eventually realized that my play mode was more fully featured than hers. She wanted to watch me find treasure and infiltrate bad guys’ hideouts. I always switched off the game when she was around, unwilling to let her watch the violence. She was insistent, and one day, I relented, vowing to play a G-rated version of the game for her benefit. I tackled exploration and treasure hunting missions only, sneaking around and not killing anyone. Then I reached a stealth section and couldn’t avoid fighting, so I put my sword away, choked the sentries out, then immediately invited them into my crew with a helping hand. “See? They’re okay, we’re friends now! We’re making friends!” That was a slippery slope to punching them out and making friends, and everything was going fine until Elpenor stepped out of a cave unexpectedly, where I didn’t even know he’d been hiding, and ran me through with a sword, scaring the crap out of my daughter. Over her protestations, I shut the game off and told her she was playing Discover Mode or nothing from now on.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: fun for the whole family.
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Doctor Raphael
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Re: Our next podcast recording (25.9.20) 438: Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Post by Doctor Raphael »

I'd never been interested enough to play an AC game before this one. I only picked Odyssey up because I find this historical period really interesting and I had heard really good things about the discovery tour mode in Origins. That mode for this game was not released until a few months after I bought Odyssey by which point I had put in over 120 hours in the game. I have since finished off the DLCs as well.

Kassandra is a top tier protagonist, all swagger and wry smiles. The supporting cast were essentially pantomime characters but they had charm. The main story was a predictable but some of the side pieces I really enjoyed, Minos and Olympia being great examples. I do not think I was missing much having not played other games in the series although being into video game culture means I do have some knowledge of the premise of past games through osmosis. The game world was so big and for the most part when you cleared one region and moved on so I couldn't keep it mapped out in my head but the mix of real locations and structures with the over the top set dressings (so many statues of Cronus eating babies) kept the exploration fun. The cult of Kosmos family tree of murder was great, I fully bought the 'WHO ARE YOU' hype for each masked face even if every reveal was of no one of any consequence.

The biggest surprise for me was how much I enjoyed the core gameplay loop of clearing out bases. I never truly mastered it, I always started stealthy but rarely ended that way, but that just made it more fun. I have very strong memories of being chased down by some mercenary target and ducking into the big Spartan camp in the Delphi region to shake him. It seemed a good time to assassinate him not realising that he was also a Spartan. I instantly aggroed 30+ Spartans and had no choice but to leg it. 5 minutes and several kilometres later and they are all still on me as I hide in a bush as a gang of boars decide they hate me and charge. It felt brilliantly absurd and that sense of things escalating quickly and me having to do some panic parkour off a cliff or getting flustered, stabbing everyone that moves and bringing more enemies down on myself followed me throughout the Greek world. By the end I was over leveled, with supernatural assassin powers and I could still get a whole town to chase me down because i'd accidentally set fire to a fishwife.


In terms of my enjoyment It probably helped that I had not played a big open world game for a while so came to Odyssey refreshed because it was long enough that I have had more than my fill of it now. I am not excited in the slightest for the next entry and I have no desire to go back and play any of the older games either. However, the combination of an interesting setting, an addictive gameplay loop and the moments of utter chaos that keep on happening mean I would definitely recommend it as great fun in its own right to any one who, like me, had never played an AC game before.
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