Assassin's Creed: Odyssey - Behind the Odyssey

Gamingbolt reports on a new video series for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey called Behind the Odyssey. The first video explores RPG mechanics, multiple endings and romance.

To discuss this, a new video series “Behind the Odyssey” has been released. Starting off with the RPG mechanics, the development team also talks about the game’s romances and the potential for multiple endings. The developer doesn’t want to outright lock you out of content with choices made. The desire instead is to offer more choice in character customization, combat and how you approach the different scenarios.

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More information.

Really fancy this one, love the setting.

No matter how sophisticated it is, I won't buy a game that's centered around killing/assassinating people.

Technically they are bad people doing nasty things to nice people.

And, I will never give up a chance to wander around a serious and documented rebuilding of the V century BC Greece as I could not imagine to avoid to have a stroll through Ptolemaic Egypt. And even, if that means to terminate some pixels here I come.

ChatMiauleur said:

Technically they are bad people doing nasty things to nice people.

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Exactly. You assassinate a person who'd otherwise kill thousands. Sure, it's not "the best" solution today, but was the only available way in history.

I liked AC Origins. It was a fun action game and in some ways reminded me a little bit of Witcher 3 (the art direction, the investigations primarily). I think the engine they have would make a great starting point for Elder Scrolls games. It's got a completely seamless world, climbing and my overall impression of the engine is that it could be modified to great use for an RPG style game.

Haven't played Origins but looking forward to it at some point and am adding this to the list. Love the idea of mucking around in these ancient settings (but then I'm a bit of a history buff).

As to killing/assassinating people, I totally get where Alrik is coming from. I mean, I play games to get away from what I do in my daily life... I don't need more of that.

joxer said:

Exactly. You assassinate a person who'd otherwise kill thousands. Sure, it's not "the best" solution today, but was the only available way in history.

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Nope still the best solution nowadays.

So much easier then wasting millions in a political court trial.

TheMadGamer said:

I liked AC Origins. It was a fun action game and in some ways reminded me a little bit of Witcher 3 (the art direction, the investigations primarily). I think the engine they have would make a great starting point for Elder Scrolls games. It's got a completely seamless world, climbing and my overall impression of the engine is that it could be modified to great use for an RPG style game.

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I agree AnvilNext 2.0 would make a great RPG engine. I can already imagine the cities you could build with it, and the amount of daily citizens going around living their own life.

At least Odyssey will be more of an RPG then previous Assassin Creed games.

Couchpotato said:

At least Odyssey will be more of an RPG then precious Assassin Creed games.

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I thought Origins was their attempt to make these games a bit more RPG-like... will Odyssey be even more RPGish?

SSIGuy said:

I thought Origins was their attempt to make these games a bit more RPG-like… will Odyssey be even more RPGish?

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Origins started incorporating more RPG mechanics but Odyssey takes it further.


Seems now we have character creation, choice & consequences, Mass Effect style conversations & romance. Origin had none of these, but it was the start of a new trend.

Though reading various sites and forums old time fans don't like the change.

That's good to hear... I'm looking forward to playing both.

Oooh, dialogue choices might entice me to pick this up at some point. Probably not at release though.

I have Assassin's Creed: Origins already bought on steam and in my backlog. My friend was actually the one who turned me onto the game when he bought it for his computer, in the dvd edition, and invited me over to play it. I ended up loving it, and played it over several sessions at my friend's house.

That said, I'm kinda an "Egypt freak" in that I've always been fascinated by that historical period, and the great pyramids, and Cleopatra, all that exotic stuff. I also am a huge fan of the desert, in real life, and this transfers over to computer games, in that I love desert settings. So, in a way, this game was tailor made for me.

That said, this new one set in ancient Greece, I'm not quite as taken or enthusiastic about it. There are a few issues I have with it.

1. It seems way too soon after the last game. It feels a bit like a quick grab for money to me, and that makes me wary.

2. It feels too similar to the Egyptian setting. I know this seems like an odd complaint, but to me, the screen shots and just the overall vibe feel too much like they did a re-skin of their Egyptian setting, put some Greece-like big columned buildings and architecture in, not in a fleshed out way. But done in a cheap way, and it is not resting on its own vision, in other words.

Lastly, the ancient Greece setting just does not have the same allure to me like ancient Egypt does. It just doesn't.

Maybe I am wrong, in some of my "hot takes", but these are just my impressions from what I have seen thus far.

Arkadia7 said:

That said, this new one set in ancient Greece, I'm not quite as taken or enthusiastic about it. There are a few issues I have with it.

1. It seems way too soon after the last game. It feels a bit like a quick grab for money to me, and that makes me wary.

2. It feels too similar to the Egyptian setting. I know this seems like an odd complaint, but to me, the screen shots and just the overall vibe feel too much like they did a re-skin of their Egyptian setting, put some Greece-like big columned buildings and architecture in, not in a fleshed out way. But done in a cheap way, and it is not resting on its own vision, in other words.

Lastly, the ancient Greece setting just does not have the same allure to me like ancient Egypt does. It just doesn't.

Maybe I am wrong, in some of my "hot takes", but these are just my impressions from what I have seen thus far.

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The reason they make so many games is Ubisoft has seven studios working on different parts of every game, and when they finish they move on to the next one.



So hundreds of workers working 24/7 seven days a week all year round. That's probably also why some of the work is reused in other Assassin Creed games.


Link - https://gamerant.com/assassins-creed-developer-chart/

Arkadia7 said:

1. It seems way too soon after the last game. It feels a bit like a quick grab for money to me, and that makes me wary.

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Would not comment on the rest of your post as it reflects your personal taste but regarding the first point I had the same issue than you but I read in an interview than actually they had both games in production nearly at the same time.
They also said than they had heard about that kind of complain and will slow the previous AC nearly yearly release.

Origins was a little better, I agree - but I ultimately got bored with the repetition. Still very much a traditional Ubisoft game, to my mind.

So, much room for improvement I should say - but I think their new focus on adding RPG elements might work, if they figure out how to do it properly.

The Witcher-like PoI approach to exploration, for instance - is NOT how to approach exploration.

Also, the combat was too easy and simplistic - as were the loot mechanics.

Have to agree with MadGamer - Origins really did feel like Witcher 3 in many ways - except the story wasn't as good.

Ubisoft has been doing the PoI thing in their games since long before TW3 was around. If anything, they influenced TW3 not vice versa.

It was never a big deal to me in TW3 though since it's a feature that you can toggle off.

I'm not talking about having them visible on the map. I'm talking about having a set of pre-defined things you can expect to find, denoted by specific symbols - making any and all exploration completely predictable and repetitive.

As in, you know almost exactly what you'll find because the symbol will tell you. You get the very distinct feeling that a level designer is sitting with a level editor and dragging stuff into the level, instead of creating something more bespoke and handcrafted.

But I agree that Witcher 3 is more likely to have been inspired by Ubisoft games in this particular way, than the other way around. I remember this kind of thing way back from Assassin's Creed 2.

It's just that Witcher 3 actually coined the term "Points of Interest" within the game - and, functionally, these points are more or less identical in Origins - as far as I could tell.

They even use the same nearly identical white icons and everything.

TW3 is inspired by Bioware games. Hard to believe you didn't spot points of interest in DA3.

Ubisoft… They never made save anywhere games. TW3 doesn't have map cluttered with thousands of PoIs like Ubi's games do (except AC Origins). This isn't TW3 nor will ever be:


Origins "stole" from TW3, not vice versa. Which is a good thing for us who loved TW3. People who can't appreciate TW3 because it's not tetris nor farmville, should skip AC Origins.

It's ok joxer, I think TW3 is safe from harm, even without your obsessive defense