So, after two months of playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and having finished the Family arc of the main game just yesterday, I’d like to talk about where I stand on this game that I’ve waited so long to play and which was the motivating factor to start a new franchise.
So, I can conclusively say that, not only do I absolutely love this game, but I can also say that it’s my favorite game in the whole series so far. This is rather odd since it’s the game with the least amount of involvement of any actual Assassins in the whole series. Not only is the main character not an Assassin, but even their predecessor organization, the Hidden Ones, won’t even exist for another ~400 years by the events of this game. There is a single proto-Assassin in one of the DLCs, but aside from that and the Modern Day segments, that’s it. The player character is actually a mercenary, and while there are some assassination missions to be had, they are either for money or for personal and political reasons rather than the titular Creed. Despite this, the gameplay of this game is so much fun, it truly surpasses the fun I’ve had with all the other games, without question.
Now, there are a few negatives. I don’t like how, when you collect loot or destroy enemy equipment, then come back later, after a certain amount of time those things reappear to be collected again. In the previous game, Origins, once you collected loot or destroyed equipment, that was it, it was gone for the rest of the game unless you reload a save. This means I get my compulsion to recollect it when I go back to an area.
I do not like the multiple options this game has, both the choices of how the storyline turns out and the choice of dialogue. I like the linearity of previous games on how the story turns out and what the characters say. A poor decision that was made to implement in this game.
Finally, the thing I like least of all, which isn’t quite as big a deal since I began having so much fun playing the game, but is still there: you cannot exit the Animus whenever you want. I really dislike this. Going in and out of the Animus at will has been a staple of the series thus far. The Animus is my favorite thing about this series; that you’re essentially playing a video game inside a video game. I would argue that it’s the best thing about the series. Even in Unity, Syndicate, and the Chronicles games, where there’s no real playable Modern Day protagonist and you can’t actually exit the Animus, you can at least see in the pause menu that you are inside the digital framework of the Animus’s software on the Helix servers. Returning to the ancestor memory and loading screens also gives you the light room where you see the Animus code around the ancestral character. Odyssey doesn’t even have this. When the game has a preset exit/enter point for the Animus is the only time you see its code, presented here as a dark tunnel, looking kind of like the eye of a storm from directly above.
Overall, I see why it’s considered the least Assassin’s Creed game of the series. Despite that (and not because of it, I’m certain), this is definitely my favorite of the series, and there’s still so much left to do. I don’t know if I’ll be done by the time we enter 2025, but I’m going to guess not.
