All of these systems and subsystems that'll be introduced in tutorialised missions, making me feel an obligation to engage with those parts of the game when all I want to do is stab people from the shadows. Though having said that, this one's not going to have the hidden blade in it at all, apparently, so that's a significant chunk of my interest in the game done in already…
If it's based on Origins, and made by the Syndicate team, I'm completely on board, but I've got a hell of a lot of Origins DLC to get out of the way first!
This is out this week, and getting really good reviews. Apparently it’s vast. I do love these games, and inasmuch as I’ve spent huge amounts of time this year playing the last game in the series, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hugely tempted by this too.
Despite what I just said in the PWB thread, this is actually really tempting now that I've remembered that it exists. Then again, I think back to how quickly I lost interest in Origins and my excitement is tempered somewhat.
So I'll not get it at launch, telling myself that it'll be discounted eventually or I'll be able to borrow a copy - and then months will pass and the hype will die and I'll never actually get around to playing it. I've missed out on so many games like this - Spider-Man and God of War are the two latest high-profile examples - and while I don't feel like I've missed anything (they're all basically just big-budget evolutions and cross-pollinations of existing formulas) I can't help but be a little.. disappointed? that so much of the year's big games have totally passed me by.
I'm in the same boat with God of War and Spider-Man - it's hard to justify paying full price at launch for anything these days, given the relentless nature of sales on PSN in particular, so they've become games I'll get "one day" that I probably would have enjoyed hugely on day one.
Part of me feels I should get one of those in preference to yet another Ass Creed game, but I'm pretty much guaranteed to love this, warts and all, and I'd completely forgotten it was coming out so I've got an itchy pre-order finger right now. Origins might have been the last PS4 game I actually got at launch and I never regretted it. The fact this one is developed by the Syndicate team and I absolutely loved Syndicate is the icing on the cake.
As a side note, Odyssey also has the most mental Season Pass I've ever seen, including not only a bunch of stuff for this game but also two complete remasters of earlier Assassin's Creed games, including AC3 which is a colossal game in its own right. They seem to be trying to ensure no-one ever buys any other games ever again.
OK, so on further reading this has an Exploration Mode (which may or may not be the default, but it's certainly the recommended way to play) which replaces map markers with actual hints and descriptions from the characters giving you quests, so you have to explore the world and find your objectives rather than simply running from question mark to question mark. That's me sold. Ordered.
It's not entirely the game; a lot's happened in the past year, and it's one of those enormous things that eventually gets a bit daunting when I realise just how much I have left to do. I don't have most of my PS4 games at the moment, on top of all that - the disc is in a box somewhere at my sister-in-law's house, along with most of the rest of the stuff I own, as we're currently between permanent addresses. Once we've sorted a new place, hopefully, things will settle into a bit more of a groove.
I love how everyone is instantly ripping into that headline, lol. I hope the combat for this is better than it was in Syndicate, I missed Origins (and honestly, I think Odyssey will be all the better for me having done so) so I dunno what changes that made but it was one of the worst aspects of the game for me, whereas Black Flag had that fun system of you animation kill chaining your way down the deck of the ship to shoot the Captain in the back of the head like the cheating bastard Pirate you were.
So I didn't even realise that ordering the Gold edition (including Season Pass) would get this to me three days before official release date. So it arrived yesterday and I got the chance to check out the opening section.
It's very impressive. It looks very much like Origins, which is no bad thing as that was a beautiful game, but even from the start it feels quite different. There's now a full dialogue choice system in there which gives it a strong Mass Effect kind of vibe, every conversation can now go in different directions depending on your choices and apparently a lot of this stuff has ramifications further down the line. The combat is snappier, character movement is faster and the characters are introduced far better than Origins' somewhat confusing cold open. I chose Kassandra as my main character (generic bearded guy also available) and she seems pretty great so far. All the minor side quests and character interactions are now fully directed with proper camera angles and framing which makes the whole thing feel far more polished. I ended the evening by climbing a huge statue of Zeus and taking a couple of pictures hanging off his massive ballsack. What more could you ask for?
Basically it's now gone full RPG - Origins took some steps in this direction but this feels like the real deal. It looks like this team have done what they did with Unity->Syndicate, taking the previous game and polishing it and filling out all the systems to make a properly refined experience. I think this is going to be great.
It seems like everyone's making that choice, which is kind of fascinating given the "no budget for female characters" controversy around this series a couple of years ago.
Arguments like that, I've never understood. I get I'm not exactly a normal 'bloke' but, given the choice, I always play as female characters in games. Always the same stupid name as well, one I ripped from the pages of Wheel of Time. It's not a sexy 'Ooh, I get to look at a girl' choice, it's just… well. I can be a man any time. Why do I have to be in games as well?
I guess I typically go for male characters, but in this instance apparently the voice acting for Kassandra is much better than for Alexios. Also it kind of plays up the Mass Effect vibe of the whole thing (I always played ME as Femshep) and these devs did such a great job with Evie from AC Syndicate that I kind of trusted them with this character too.
I have to say this is an absolutely incredible game. Narratively and mechanically it's by far the best the series has ever been. It makes Origins - which was pretty great in its own right - look like a simple engine test for this game which is the full experience. The main storyline is really compelling, the side quests are consistently interesting, the characters are great and the world is just stunningly beautiful.
I think I've hit that famous "15 hour" mark where it's just introduced a whole new layer of mechanics I wasn't expecting and I'm just in awe at the scope of the thing. I'm wondering what else it can possibly add to the mix because the choice of things to do now is almost overwhelming.
I got jumped by three mercenaries at the same time while on the way from somewhere to somewhere else and proceeded to Spartan Kick all three of them off a cliff edge to their deaths. I set the last one on fire before he went over so his last words were "I'm on fucking fiiiiirre" followed by a distant crunch. Beautiful.
I got jumped by three mercenaries at the same time while on the way from somewhere to somewhere else and proceeded to Spartan Kick all three of them off a cliff edge to their deaths. I set the last one on fire before he went over so his last words were "I'm on fucking fiiiiirre" followed by a distant crunch. Beautiful.
That journey home from work sounds a bit tough. London, eh?
I know everyone's excited about the cowboy game right now but I'm still playing this. It's hard to overstate just how huge this game actually is: I've been playing for 45 hours according to my save file and I've uncovered maybe a third of the map? Perhaps a bit less. There's just so much to do - every island is stuffed full of distractions and side quests, and the game encourages you to go off the beaten track and just explore. One island that I passed had a single quest-giver in the harbour, and stopping off to check out that one quest ended up spiralling off into about two dozen linked quests and a whole mini-storyline revolving around the liberation of that island, with new characters galore and a mixture of combat and naval challenges. I've just unlocked the third of the three main branches of the main storyline, and I've got a huge list of uncompleted tasks that I need to get back to.
That makes it sound like busywork but it isn't, at all. It's consistently well-written, the landscapes are beautiful and the story is varied and interesting. It's easily the best Assassin's Creed game I've played, marrying the beautiful landscapes of Origins with the huge variety of Syndicate, with a combat system that's all its own.
In many ways it reminds me of an MMO - it's got the same sweeping scope, the same dizzying overloads of quests, and even the forests and mountains of ancient Greece remind me a lot of the landscapes of LOTRO. The way things are going, it might take me nearly as long to complete.
I picked this up today, managed three or four hours of scurrying around, burying pointy metal in soft bits. So far I've avoided a bounty hunter, killed the population of a small town, stolen some guy's fake eye and climbed Zeus' pereneum.
It's pretty good! I've clicked with it much more than I did with Origins, thankfully - I had a fear as I booted it up that I'd just dropped £55 on something I'd bounce right off - but it's not feeling as bewildering as its predecessor, somehow.
Part of it might be that I've turned off most of the HUD elements, so it feels less like a Ubisoft Open World Videogame™ - though as with Breath of the Wild of like some way of having a compass on the screen that doesn't automatically come with a load of other nonsense.
The menus are dreadful, though. Destiny has a lot to answer for, popularising this cursor-on-a-grid-based-menu bullshit when I've already got a perfectly good D-pad.
Not far enough, yet, to really judge the story, though I'm noticeably less impressed with the writing and voice performances than some reviews seemed to be. It's fine.
The real test will be tomorrow night, and whether I come back to Greece or return to my space cabbie adventures in Elite.
Good stuff! The opening's pretty good to be honest, much better than Origins which just dumped you into the story with no explanation. Kephalonia is like a little microcosm of the game that gets you up to speed quite quickly: there are two or three major mechanics that get introduced over the following ten hours but by the time you leave the first island you've got most of what you need to do sorted out. It does make for a bit of a WTF moment when the opening sequence plays after you've already sunk six hours into the game though.
A couple of quick tips that took me a while to work out as the game doesn't really explain its icons very well. Hourglass icons are filler quests - you can pretty much ignore these if you like unless you're desperate for XP - whereas the gold exclamation marks are "proper" side quests that are usually well worth doing. When you start taking quests from notice boards, make sure you take everything that's marked as a "Contract" - these are background tasks like "sink six ships" or "kill ten Spartans" that you'll be doing naturally as you play anyway, so take every Contract you can and they'll earn you XP as you go without you having to pay any attention to them. Quests on the notice board marked with a blue swirl are daily/timed quests which earn you Oricalchum, which is used to buy legendary items from a vendor you'll meet a little way into the game - again I've mostly ignored these but if you want something in particular then they might come in useful.
For what it's worth, the fuss over microtransactions seems totally overblown. I'm level 39 now (cap is 50) and I've not had to grind, at all. I've just been playing the game like I normally would, doing side quests as I go, not clearing out forts obsessively, occasionally exploring somewhere off the beaten track that looks interesting; and I've been the right level for every story quest I've done so far. Unless you're looking to blast through the main story quest exclusively (and why would you do that), there doesn't seem any problem with the game's balancing at all.
It doesn't feel like there'll ever be a lack of stuff to do, for sure. It's a little daunting how the map screen opens zoomed all the way out - this starting island has felt pretty substantial already (although I think I've more or less dried up most of the missions in it).
Took me longer than I should admit to figure out that I could just stop driving the boat rather than having to dock it - I'm going to blame the fact that I turned off most of the AI. Still can't figure out how to use the javelin attack, though.
Found a "mythical beast" hideout island, which I'll have to go back to later - Kassandra flat-out refused to open the door that would start the fight.
Made an ill-advised turn along a cliff edge and killed my horse, but fortunately he broke my fall so I survived with a pixel's width of health.
Boat controls: Arrows are "hold down L2 to aim, press R2"; javelins are just "press R2" without aiming.
Worth noting that you can't actually die from falling. You'll always have a little health left. At level 20 you unlock the ability to fall any distance without taking any damage at all, which is more than a little silly, but speeds things up in terms of travel.
I've finished the "main story" now, as in the first of the three main story strands that eventually open up. Still got lots to do though. Contemplating the Platinum, though there's still an intimidating amount of Greece I haven't even yet been to.
BAFTA finally put this on the nomination list. Requested my copy this morning (along with Far Cry 5 and The Crew 2). So, fingers crossed, I'll be joining you in Greece at some point. :D
I had to murder about a hundred goats on Kephalonia in order to find the ONE goat up whose arse I shoved someone's fake eye in an early cutscene. GOTY.
I got the Platinum in this last night. Not a small task but I enjoyed it right up to the very end.
Nearly scuppered at the final stretch, though. This week's patch introduced a whole load of new upgrade tiers to the ship which meant I went from being right on the verge of completing it to suddenly having to find thousands upon thousands of extra resources. Quite frustrating but a couple of hours of violent naval combat resolved the problem.
Still miles away from "100%"ing the game though. They've already added three new quests and trophies to the game and there are more coming under the "Lost Stories of Greece" banner (free to all players) - the trophies are there but the content's not yet unlocked. Plus they've added what looks like the trophy set for the first major DLC expansion, all also currently unobtainable. Feels like I'll be playing this game for months yet.
New stuff next week! The first episode (of 3) of the first major DLC pack (of 2) drops on December 4th. They seem intent on keeping content rolling out constantly for this game, it’s quite impressive given the base game is already one of the biggest games I’ve played in years. The Ubisoft sweatshops must be in overdrive.
Played the DLC and it's disappointing. It's literally just more of the same. There isn't even a new area to explore - the whole thing's set in Makedonia which is already part of the existing map (admittedly without much in it). You get one new ability which is fairly pointless, a new Order of the Ancients to hunt down which is basically the Cult of Kosmos under another name, and apart from that it's all exactly like the base game. It's no better and no bigger overall than one of the more comprehensive side quest islands from the main game, like Mykonos or Euboea.
I get this is just episode 1 of 3 - and the storyline is at least passably interesting - but I was expecting more, somehow.
Jesus Christ there's a lot going on with the UI. I've turned half of it off and I still don't know where to look.
It reminds me of an N64 game, back when they hadn't really worked out what vital information the player actually needed. And it completely ignores the lesson BotW taught about sparsity being a good thing.
The game itself seems fun though. I'm shocked a studio can pump out something of this size every 12 months. Although the horse bollocks don't seem to get smaller in cold weather. 1/10.
Spoiler - click to showThe Alexios you meet while playing as Kassandra… Is that the same voice he puts on if you play him for the whole game? Because jesus christ. I definitely made the right choice picking Kassandra. I assume there was some sort of casting process, and everyone in the room thought he sounded good? Or something?
Spoiler - click to showI think he's pretty hammy anyway, but he definitely ramps up the "evil voice" when he's playing as the antagonist. From what I've seen he's not quite as bad when he's the main character. But yes, you definitely made the right choice by picking Kassandra.
Completed the second chapter of the Legacy of the First Blade (as well as all currently available Lost Tales of Greece quests) so I'm back up to date with Assassin's Creed Odyssey again, for a while.
I enjoyed the second chapter a lot more than the first. Part of this is simply the fact that I've taken a bit of a break from the game, I think, and it was a pleasure to go back to; but it's also better all round, with a more interesting area to explore, a charismatic villain and a satisfying series of quests that all overlapped rather than the more linear progression of the first chapter.
That ending, though, yeeesh.
Spoiler - click to showIt's been pretty widely discussed but the end of this chapter sees your character settling down with Darius's son/daughter (depending on who you're playing) and having a child. There is literally no way to avoid this and even if you turn it down at every opportunity the game still railroads you into it. I mean it's OK, I guess, the game has to tell a story at some point but it's pretty badly handled overall for a game that emphasises player choice. It's especially jarring if you're playing as Kassandra and doubly so if you've played your character as gay throughout - as many have. Also the character you're forced to settle down with is a total plank, if my Kassandra was going to settle down she would have had beautiful babies with Alkibiades, not this geezer she's known for ten minutes. I understand they're rewriting parts of it due to the backlash but they really have painted themselves into a hole with this one.
