From the outset, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a polished beast. It sits in a similar level of polish as its older sibling in Assassin’s Creed Origins, but there’s plenty here to differentiate the two games, despite running off a shared engine and featuring Layla Hassan as Animus driver extraordinaire. How they’ll tie together is still to be seen, but given the Ancient Greek setting and Aya’s own Greek heritage, it’s not a stretch right now to assume her lineage will date back to Leonidas himself. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

I was handed a PlayStation 4 Pro, sat in front of a giant screen and given free reign with the opening four hours of the game. Choosing Kassandra for her feisty attitude, skilfully handled in the voice-actor department by Melissanthi Mahut, the game begins confidently enough and early on gives you an idea of how choice can affect the gameplay and story. Largely, it appears this is going to be more moment-to-moment and region-specific, though there is a tease that broader decisions and actions will have a longer lasting effect on the greater narrative. But having sunk over 100 hours into Origins I can see that four hours simply isn’t remotely enough to highlight how anything like that will play out.



What’s great about just having a four-hour opening stint with a game that promises to be as big as the last one is that you can have a look at the deeper, smaller stuff going on. RPGs, especially in the open-world space, tend to be fetch-questy early on to both level the player and to promote exploration of the game-space. And while that does appear to be the case here, to a degree, there’s a greater sense of actual growth beyond numerical levels, and the requisite skill points that come with those dings. For example, Kassandra (or Alexios, depending on who you decide to play as), is already an established person in the game, but she’s seemingly lost; emotionally indebted to Markos, a shifty character who took her in as a child after she washed ashore. But he has his own problems, and while it’s in her honourable self to help him, her need to move on from that debt; that emotional ball and chain, proves greater and the story -- your actions one and all early on-- reflects this. It’s not entirely new, but it’s handled wonderfully in the opening hour or so of gameplay.



Still, staples remain. You have a pet eagle you use to synchronise the map (ie, reveal points of interest) as well as to tactically scope out strongholds and find treasures. You have parkour skills, a bow, bladed weapons (as well as spears and other two-handed weapons), armour and more. You gain bounties this time around, too. Which is something you’ll encounter early. However, this isn’t nearly as binary as the Phylakes bounties of Origins, and the game even features a menu dedicated to “Mercenaries”. In here you can learn information about any bounties you have, and the mercenaries that have taken up the job. Some of these bounties can be paid off by you, which is another great use of in-game currency, however, some won’t be able to be paid leaving you with a choice to essentially avoid that mercenary as much as possible, or take them on. Some mercenaries will be a higher level than you, which is also another great way of promoting character growth, while also pulling the game-world in more closely around you.



The marketing tag line at the moment is about decision-making and creating your own history as an Assassin, but it’s actually deeper than that. I can’t spoil for you what the studio has done here, but legacy plays a major role and it’s not at all binary. The theme I gained most from my extended time with it was that the studio’s goal with Odyssey was just that: to create an odyssey for the player; a journey that is more than the sum of its otherwise checklist-heavy parts. This is handled through the talked about decisions left up to the player, but also in how you compose yourself in conversation and progress your character overall. This is easily the most dynamic Assassin’s Creed yet, and that’s just on the surface of what it’s presenting overall, excluding how much more complicated and challenging combat is, or how you manipulate and work with the game’s myriad factions, or take on the high seas. Or how there’s an even deeper level to custimsation through weapon engravings, or even the treasure hunts I discovered while deep-diving in a lagoon in a cave.



What emerges from all of this is a game built around a whole experience, not a modular one. It takes itself into account in all of this, too, which might sound odd but will make sense once you jump on in. How you play the game will be up to you, and how much of the decision-making side of the game is smoke and mirrors or actually impactful won’t be fully revealed until it’s out in the wild, but right now it’s very promising. Add to this an equally gorgeous game-world, though this time littered with unique biomes to go alongside the aforementioned “myriad factions” thusly promoting exploration even more, and you have a game that ultimately wants a player to live in it. And that might sound like an odd thing to say, but some games want you to finish them, others want you to thrive in them and get all you can out of them.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, right now, leans in the latter, more than the former.

This is a Golden Age we’re in right now as far as open-world gaming goes, and we couldn’t be happier to be in it. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, right now, is a confident addition to a lineage of games that is boldly taking that lineage in new, uncharted directions. A lot was clearly learnt from the brilliant Origins, but as I’ve mentioned above, this is a new odyssey, one that Ubisoft Quebec has clearly been driven to build from the ground up, while leaning on familiar and tested foundations. What we get in the end remains to be seen, but right now I’m Sparta kicking myself every day until I can get fully into that inviting, entangled and mystery-addled game-space. Medusa be damned.