About the game
Assassin's Creed Odyssey is a 2018 action role-playing game developed by Ubisoft Quebec and published by Ubisoft. It is the eleventh major game in the Assassin's Creed series and the successor to Assassin's Creed Origins. It has a large open world and takes many ideas from role-playing games, with more emphasis on combat and exploration than on stealth. Naval combat from earlier games in the series is back and plays a big part.
The story is a mythologised history of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, from 431 to 422 BCE. You play a Spartan mercenary, either Alexios or Kassandra, who fights on both sides of the war while looking for their family and trying to wipe out the Cult of Kosmos. The game also carries on the story of Layla Hassan, who relives the mercenary's memories through the Animus to find a powerful artifact. Compared with other games in the series it leans more on Greek mythology and less on the conflict between Assassins and Templars.
You can fight in melee with spears, blunt weapons, daggers and swords, or use bows. Weapons and armour have their own stats and can be engraved and upgraded. You command a warship called the Adrestia, which can fire arrows and javelins, ram and board enemy ships. Stealth is still an option, and your eagle Ikaros can scout ahead. Dialogue choices shape the story, and if you cause trouble, powerful mercenaries start hunting you. Skills are split into three trees: hunter, warrior and assassin.
Development started soon after Assassin's Creed Syndicate in 2015. The team drew inspiration from The Witcher 3, Skyrim and Fallout 4, and studios across the world worked on it, including Montreal, Bucharest, Singapore and Shanghai. The Flight, the duo of Joe Henson and Alexis Smith, composed the score. The team took a ten-day field trip to Greece and used the historian Stephanie-Anne Ruatta as a guide. The game went gold on September 14, 2018.
Odyssey was announced at E3 2018 and released on PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One on October 5, 2018. It was supported with paid and free content, including two story expansions, Legacy of the First Blade and The Fate of Atlantis, and free Lost Tales of Greece stories. Critics praised the gameplay, graphics, characters, role-playing elements and world design, and criticised its size, pacing and microtransactions. Metacritic gives the Xbox One version 87 out of 100. It sold more than 10 million copies by March 2020 and was followed by Assassin's Creed Valhalla in November 2020.
The text above is adapted from Wikipedia and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
What critics said
Metacritic 87 out of 100 (Xbox One). Metacritic 86 out of 100 (PC). Metacritic 83 out of 100 (PlayStation 4). Individual reviews: IGN 9.2/10, GameSpot 8/10, Game Informer 8.3/10, GamesRadar+ 5/5, Giant Bomb 3/5, PC Gamer 90/100.
Extra content
Ubisoft released two paid story expansions, each in three episodes, and a run of free stories and modes. The Season Pass covers the two expansions.
- Legacy of the First Blade: Three episodes through March 2019 about the Eagle Bearer's fight with the Order of the Ancients and the first Hidden Blade.
- The Fate of Atlantis: Three episodes through July 2019 set in Elysium, the Underworld and Atlantis.
- The Lost Tales of Greece: A series of free story missions.
- New Game Plus: A free mode to replay the game with your progress.
- Story Creator Mode: A free tool to build and share your own quests.
- Discovery Tour: Ancient Greece: A free educational mode with guided tours made with historians.
- Those Who Are Treasured: A free epilogue to the Eagle Bearer's story.
Good to know
- The Xbox One list has 93 achievements worth 1,850 Gamerscore. The base game has 50 worth 1,000, and the rest come from the story expansions and the free Lost Tales and Mythical Creatures events.
- The cover is reversible, so either Alexios or Kassandra can face outward.
- The game leaked in May 2018 when a French site received a keychain with the name on it, before the E3 announcement.
- A Nintendo Switch version ran as a cloud title in Japan only.
- It supports UHD resolution on Xbox One X.
- You pick Alexios or Kassandra at the start. Ubisoft treats Kassandra as the canonical Eagle Bearer in the 2021 epilogue.
- Odyssey is set about 400 years before Origins, so its hero never meets the events of that game.
Made by
Director Jonathan Dumont, Director Scott Phillips, Producer Marc-Alexis Côté, Art Director Thierry Dansereau, Writer Jonathan Dumont, Writer Melissa MacCoubrey, Writer Hugo Giard, Composer The Flight.
