So previews for Assassin's Creed Odyssey are going up.
Journos got to play the first eight hours of the title. Impressions are quite positive overall
The Introduction of the game:
The First 20 Minutes After The Introduction:
WARNING, IF YOU AVOIDED THE SPOILERS ABOVE PREVIEWS SPOIL THE INTRODUCTION OF THE GAME:
VG27
Polygon
Eurogamer:
Venturebeat:
PCGamer:
GamingTrend
Journos got to play the first eight hours of the title. Impressions are quite positive overall
The Introduction of the game:
The First 20 Minutes After The Introduction:
WARNING, IF YOU AVOIDED THE SPOILERS ABOVE PREVIEWS SPOIL THE INTRODUCTION OF THE GAME:
VG27
Assassin's Creed Odyssey plays like a greatest hits of the current trends in open-world gaming, with a tighter focus on story and side quests than overly-dense collectathons. A lot of games promise to offer decisions that matter, but the choices in the demo I played did seem to create demostrable differences in the game world, with certain dialogue paths leading to new questlines, fun set-pieces, and overarching changes in Odyssey's main story. For example, you can choose to kill the debt-collecting thugs or send them running with their tails between their legs. The latter choice might sit better if you're roleplaying someone that doesn't take life lightly, but it means those same goons will call some friends, lick their wounds, and ambush you when you set off down the road.
Polygon
It's a good decision to tell a personal story in a chaotic time. I'm skating around the details to leave the game as unspoiled as possible, but flow of the main narrative in these first six hours was good. There were big story hooks embedded throughout that drove me forward, and the challenges that stood between me and the next juicy reveal didn't feel arbitrary.
Eurogamer:
Odyssey delivers some of the best writing in the series by a country mile, evident from the three hours of mid-campaign missions I played just prior to E3, but noticeable too even in the brief lead-up to the Medusa boss fight on offer at gamescom. I've been impressed by the nuance and dry humour present in Odyssey's storytelling, and in particular I've been blown away by the delivery from Kassandra's voice actor Melissanthi Mahut, who puts in a passionate performance which easily rivals that of previous franchise bests.
Venturebeat:
Ubisoft has unquestionably provided a big world in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. It's full of exciting environments, big land and sea battles, compelling missions, great moments from both history and the myths, and beautiful graphics. I've enjoyed what I've seen so far. But the developers have to walk a fine line. They have to provide a hundred hours of content for the die-hard fans who want to explore every bit of the world.
But I want to follow the main story, the real Odyssey of the game, which relates to Kassandra's past and is very compelling. It's an emotional journey, and one that is so compelling that you'll want to speed through the narrative as fast as you can.
PCGamer:
The addition of dialogue choices kept my head in the scenes more effectively than passive cutscenes would, and your avatar—whether you choose Alexios or Kassandra—is a lot of fun. I can't think of many RPG heroes that would stuff an important quest item up a passing goat's arse just to spite someone, for example. In many situations you have the choice to behave like a reckless and bloodthirsty warrior or take a more measured approach. At one point Kassandra lost patience with a quest-giver's attitude and yelled "I'll kill the bandits and get your fucking wood!", and the NPC recoiled in fear.
GamingTrend
One of my favorite new additions to the Assassin's Creed playbook is a new mode. Typically, when you are given a quest objective, you are also provided a marker on the map to chase it down. Now, right after choosing between four difficulty levels, you can choose between Guided Mode (where markers are displayed at all times) and Exploration mode. Exploration mode provides general locations of things instead of specifics ("The Captain will meet you east of the city of Phokis" or "We believe he's nearby a cave at the southern edge of the island"), allowing the player to explore without so much hand-holding. This small change made the open world, which is already 2.5x larger than the massive play space of Origins, feel even larger and more mysterious.
As you explore the island, uncovering quests and opportunities, you are constantly exposed to the new approach to narrative engagement that the team has taken with Odyssey. Moving from traditional linear storytelling to, as they've phrased it, "choice driven interactive cinematic storytelling", Ubisoft Quebec is pushing engagement and player decision into every interaction. As such, there are over 30 hours of new dialogue choices in the game, pushing the play time into eye-popping "over 100 hours" territory.
To help flesh out the player-choice mechanic, the team built Alexios and Kassandra with a base personality, rather than creating an empty template. They are both short tempered, passionate, emotional, and occasionally rash people with their own innate drivers baked in. Where you take them from this point is entirely your choice — your Odyssey.
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