So recently I played Final Fantasy VII Remake, then I played Horizon Zero Dawn because they announced the sequel, and now I am playing Assassin's Creed: Odyssey because it was 25 bucks and I havent played Assassin's Creed, and Kassandra looked interesting.
After playing all three its become perfectly clear that no one really put an effort into making AC: Odyssey feel like anything other than a video game. In FF 7 Remake, the people of Midgard are constantly talking, in particular there's a memorable scene where after attacking a Shinra base, you see this old lady wanting to get her gun to shoot up what she thinks is an attack by Wutai. Final Fantasy VII Remake is full of these types of scenes.
With Horizon Zero Dawn, you have cities of various sizes, with Meridian the capital of the Carja Sundom being by far the largest. You can understand whats going on in each city because a ton of thought went into each one. Meanwhile pretty much most cities in AC: Odyssey feel the same, and generally just functions as hubs for sidequest. Instead of civilians talking you instead get just a murmur. No matter what happens, all you get is that murmur. In fact pretty much every thing in AC: Odyssey looks the same, the same camps, the same forts, these places are full of the same enemies, who all fight in similar patterns. You can just bum rush most of these forts because unless you're fighting 10 guys capturing a camp isn't a challenge.
In Horizon Zero Dawn, you clear out a bandit camp, and then the bandit camp becomes a small town. Your character is clearly effecting the world, meanwhile in AC: Odyssey, you clear out a bandit camp, then you wait an hour and the bandits are back, because bandit camps exist to give you lieutenants for your ship (got a Legendary pathfinder called Rhea).
In Final Fantasy VII Remake the sidequest while few, make sense where they are placed, and all of them feel like they make sense for Cloud to do, You get that sidequest to find a bunch of cats, it makes sense because while Cloud pretends his some hardcore badass, his actually really nice, and stuff like that highlights it.
In my entire playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn, I really only questioned why Aloy was doing a sidequest once, where Aloy was killing machines so some Banuk shaman could get high. Every other sidequest in Horizon Zero Dawn makes sense, Aloy is curious about the world so any sidequest that involves finding certain artifacts matches up with that. She wants to know about the Old Ones so any quest that involves going into their ruins make sense. There's a fantastic sidequest in The Frozen Wild, where you go into a dam, learn about the workers who worked in that dam, and then the Oseram you meet mentions that the important thing is the delve itself. It fits perfectly with Aloy as.a character. She's kind so the vast majority of the sidequest are about Aloy helping people.
In comparison I just got a sidequest (one of those timed ones) where some guy wants me to murder his daughter's lover because they were a writer. I then killed the guy to fail the quest, and then I went to the next timed quest and this time some guy wants me to kill an irate customer. In the first twenty hours Kassandra has never come off as so greedy she would actually take these quest. I understand that time quest are all crap, but at least try to make the timed quest make sense, or dont have them be in the game. You shouldn't make characters some blank slate so you can make any quest you want because you need the game to be over a hundred hours long, and have this huge map full of sidequest.
Assassin's Creed: Odyssey is a pretty fun game, but at the end of the day unlike Final Fantasy VII Remake, or Horizon Zero Dawn, it has no ambition to be more than just a fun game, that you play for a hundred hours, and then pick up the next one in a year or two. I am really excited to play the next part of Final Fantasy VII, and Horizon Forbidden West, but I have no interest in playing AC: Valhalla until its like 75 percent off despite the fact that I love Vikings.
After playing all three its become perfectly clear that no one really put an effort into making AC: Odyssey feel like anything other than a video game. In FF 7 Remake, the people of Midgard are constantly talking, in particular there's a memorable scene where after attacking a Shinra base, you see this old lady wanting to get her gun to shoot up what she thinks is an attack by Wutai. Final Fantasy VII Remake is full of these types of scenes.
With Horizon Zero Dawn, you have cities of various sizes, with Meridian the capital of the Carja Sundom being by far the largest. You can understand whats going on in each city because a ton of thought went into each one. Meanwhile pretty much most cities in AC: Odyssey feel the same, and generally just functions as hubs for sidequest. Instead of civilians talking you instead get just a murmur. No matter what happens, all you get is that murmur. In fact pretty much every thing in AC: Odyssey looks the same, the same camps, the same forts, these places are full of the same enemies, who all fight in similar patterns. You can just bum rush most of these forts because unless you're fighting 10 guys capturing a camp isn't a challenge.
In Horizon Zero Dawn, you clear out a bandit camp, and then the bandit camp becomes a small town. Your character is clearly effecting the world, meanwhile in AC: Odyssey, you clear out a bandit camp, then you wait an hour and the bandits are back, because bandit camps exist to give you lieutenants for your ship (got a Legendary pathfinder called Rhea).
In Final Fantasy VII Remake the sidequest while few, make sense where they are placed, and all of them feel like they make sense for Cloud to do, You get that sidequest to find a bunch of cats, it makes sense because while Cloud pretends his some hardcore badass, his actually really nice, and stuff like that highlights it.
In my entire playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn, I really only questioned why Aloy was doing a sidequest once, where Aloy was killing machines so some Banuk shaman could get high. Every other sidequest in Horizon Zero Dawn makes sense, Aloy is curious about the world so any sidequest that involves finding certain artifacts matches up with that. She wants to know about the Old Ones so any quest that involves going into their ruins make sense. There's a fantastic sidequest in The Frozen Wild, where you go into a dam, learn about the workers who worked in that dam, and then the Oseram you meet mentions that the important thing is the delve itself. It fits perfectly with Aloy as.a character. She's kind so the vast majority of the sidequest are about Aloy helping people.
In comparison I just got a sidequest (one of those timed ones) where some guy wants me to murder his daughter's lover because they were a writer. I then killed the guy to fail the quest, and then I went to the next timed quest and this time some guy wants me to kill an irate customer. In the first twenty hours Kassandra has never come off as so greedy she would actually take these quest. I understand that time quest are all crap, but at least try to make the timed quest make sense, or dont have them be in the game. You shouldn't make characters some blank slate so you can make any quest you want because you need the game to be over a hundred hours long, and have this huge map full of sidequest.
Assassin's Creed: Odyssey is a pretty fun game, but at the end of the day unlike Final Fantasy VII Remake, or Horizon Zero Dawn, it has no ambition to be more than just a fun game, that you play for a hundred hours, and then pick up the next one in a year or two. I am really excited to play the next part of Final Fantasy VII, and Horizon Forbidden West, but I have no interest in playing AC: Valhalla until its like 75 percent off despite the fact that I love Vikings.
