It is time to be honest with ourselves, Assassin's Creed Odyssey is one of the best open world games of this generation

[HussiZooT]

I played a few hours of it and got bored after.

The combat is shit, the exploration is average at best. The gameplay is so arcadey, feels horrible when the horse moves so stiff in a world that looks so beautiful.

And for some people to say it in the same sentence as Witcher 3 is the biggest hyperbole I've ever heard.

 

[Bjones]

It really is

 

[Middleman]

It's a great game, sure, but the framing of your point in the thread title is just strange.

"It's time to be honest with ourselves"

What?

 

[Eoin]

I tried a bit of Assassins Creed Origins, but it never stuck. Is it a good idea to try this one or are they pretty much the same?

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It probably depends a lot on the reason that you didn't enjoy Origins.

Odyssey and Origins are quite different in many ways, but the foundation of exploring a large world, undertaking a large series of combat/exploration/stealth quests, taking on large armed military barracks/forts/encampments and gradually upgrading your character is still the core of the game.

If your main issue with Origins was the combat mechanics or the limited equipment and skill tree or if some of the changes that it made from previous AC games felt like they hadn't been fully realised, then Odyssey is probably worth trying at some point (perhaps on sale, since it'll continue to be regularly discounted).

If your main issue with Origins was that it was too big or that it had too much to do, well, Odyssey's even bigger and has even more stuff, so probably it's still not your thing.

 

[Mik2121]

I thought it was better than Origin, but the world was less interesting for me (always liked Egyptian mythology more than Greek, and Greek architecture is more common for me so I'd rather see some more exotic stuff like old Egypt.

But otherwise, it's a really good game. And the new Story Creator seems quite fun. I tried it a bit and seemed fairly powerful, but I just don't think I'll be getting back to it for too much. I hope they release that creator tool for other of their games (at least the next AC, but would love it for WD Legion).

 

[denpanosekai]

You guys are really selling me on this. I just platinumed Days Gone so I wonder if I should hold off open-world for a bit or get it as a summer game.

Keep in mind I have never played a single AC game to completion before, I quit 2 or 3 hours into the second one, which is apparently one of the best...

 

[Fevaweva]

You guys are really selling me on this. I just platinumed Days Gone so I wonder if I should hold off open-world for a bit or get it as a summer game.

Keep in mind I have never played a single AC game to completion before, I quit 2 or 3 hours into the second one, which is apparently one of the best...

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Well this one is entirely different in just about every way it counts. So knock yourself out.

 

[Thagirion]

I shit a lot on AC games, but gotta admit Odissey got me hooked, now it's the best AC game followed by AC black flag and none after those two haha

 

[Shatty McKracken]

I agree with a lot of OP's points, but for me the game was overly long and literally wore me out. I did finish it but once I was done with it, I was done. I bought the gold edition and have all the DLC but could only finish the first episode. I just don't feel like I want any more of it.

 

[joe_zazen]

It's a great game, sure, but the framing of your point in the thread title is just strange.

"It's time to be honest with ourselves"

What?

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Lol, like they are in therapy confronting a difficult truth.

But yeah, game resonates with some while others find it an interminable grind with no payoff. There is no truth here to come to terms with, both are right.

 

[rashbeep]

It doesn't strike me as a very immersive world at all

I dropped origins rather quick due to how artificial it felt

 

[SomeoneSomewhere]

To me it represents perfectly how Ubosoft-like video game design has poisoned any potential modern open world games ever had to create an immersive and engrossing experience. AC: Oddysey is the McDonalds of video games. All the positives that OP mentioned, are things that I would name as negatives.

I don't love the notion that Ubisoft games are roasted purely because they are Ubisoft games, and I think that they have a long way to go before they can fully realise their potential. Ubisoft will never be #1 in a world where Nintendo and Rockstar exist.

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Woah, that is exactly my impression. The games they create feel dull to me.

 

[janusff]

I thought it was pretty great but what's up with that title? "It's time to be honest with ourselves" huh? Are you talking to yourself here or... Why would anyone lie to themselves on liking a game or not?

 

[Linus815]

It doesn't strike me as a very immersive world at all

I dropped origins rather quick due to how artificial it felt

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the world is incredibly well detailed and in many ways authentic but the game isn't aiming for immersion at all, you are afterall playing a "vidoegame within a videogame".

 

[joe_zazen]

Woah, that is exactly my impression. The games they create feel dull to me.

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They are more like a giant industrial factory. They are very good at making enormous amounts of cost effect product.

Where they falter in comparison to the competition is their lack of cohesive world and story, both within and between games. This makes it very hard to get invested in the worlds they build, whereas with a red dead, you really can lose yourself.

It is too bad that, as a company, they don't value story or world building or lore. I mean, the AC series could have have their own Endgame, a la the MCU, if they didn't fire the AC visionary. Wouldn't it have been amazing to have had a 12 year, multigame story arc that wasn't shit?

 

[PlanetSmasher]

They are more like a giant industrial factory. They are very good at making enormous amounts of cost effect product.

Where they falter in comparison to the competition is their lack of cohesive world and story, both within and between games. This makes it very hard to get invested in the worlds they build, whereas with a red dead, you really can lose yourself.

It is too bad that, as a company, they don't value story or world building or lore. I mean, the AC series could have have their own Endgame, a la the MCU, if they didn't fire the AC visionary. Wouldn't it have been amazing to have had a 12 year, multigame story arc that wasn't shit?

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I still remember when their idea of being clever was to make an AC game whose frame narrative was making fun of the exact kinds of shallow, half-thought games Ubisoft themselves are known for.

 

[Kaswa101]

Odyssey is fantastic, easily one of my favourite games. It's so easy to pick up and play a few missions whenever I miss it too much, haha

 

[pheobo]

It probably depends a lot on the reason that you didn't enjoy Origins.

Odyssey and Origins are quite different in many ways, but the foundation of exploring a large world, undertaking a large series of combat/exploration/stealth quests, taking on large armed military barracks/forts/encampments and gradually upgrading your character is still the core of the game.

If your main issue with Origins was the combat mechanics or the limited equipment and skill tree or if some of the changes that it made from previous AC games felt like they hadn't been fully realised, then Odyssey is probably worth trying at some point (perhaps on sale, since it'll continue to be regularly discounted).

If your main issue with Origins was that it was too big or that it had too much to do, well, Odyssey's even bigger and has even more stuff, so probably it's still not your thing.

Click to shrink...

Thanks for the input! From what you wrote I think I'll try it out once it goes on sale for a decent price. Just really hope it clicks as I've hear such good things about the game.

 

[AyaisMUsikWhore]

Yes, agreed. After slogging through RDR2, coming back to AC Ody was so refreshing, and made me like video games again. IMO, that's how you do open world, even if its too much.

 

[joe_zazen]

I still remember when their idea of being clever was to make an AC game whose frame narrative was making fun of the exact kinds of shallow, half-thought games Ubisoft themselves are known for.

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Lol, yeah.

I forget which game it was, but their was some in-game emails you could access that basically roasted Altair and Conner for not being the right kind of lead characters for the mass market and should be rejected ( my two fav ac protags). Very meta.

 

[PenultimateFantasy]

Yup, i said this when it came out. And I've beem impressed with the constant updates and additons to the game

its only problem, i would say, ia the map is too large. I'm hoping the next one is about . 1/3 smaller

 

[Silent Disco]

They are more like a giant industrial factory. They are very good at making enormous amounts of cost effect product.

Where they falter in comparison to the competition is their lack of cohesive world and story, both within and between games. This makes it very hard to get invested in the worlds they build, whereas with a red dead, you really can lose yourself.

It is too bad that, as a company, they don't value story or world building or lore. I mean, the AC series could have have their own Endgame, a la the MCU, if they didn't fire the AC visionary. Wouldn't it have been amazing to have had a 12 year, multigame story arc that wasn't shit?

Click to shrink...

+1
series is really different without patrice desilets. i prefer desilets versions/vision.

 

[aSqueakyLime]

I just wish the loading times were at least 3x faster. They genuinely drained my enthusiasm.

 

[Flipyap]

the world is incredibly well detailed and in many ways authentic but the game isn't aiming for immersion at all, you are afterall playing a "vidoegame within a videogame".

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That's a very bad excuse. That was always the premise of the series, sometimes literally, yet the games didn't use to feel like that. The original game used the same conceit explicitly to give you greater control over the protagonist's body for immersion and greater expression (a concept that all but disappeared from the series by now).
This idea that the Animus would be upgraded to make the experience less immersive is ridiculous. If the "game feel" was really dictated by the in-world justification, it should be going in the opposite direction.

 

[ExReey]

After playing a (smaller) open world game like Outer Wilds, I'll never be able to return to the boredom of Ubi open world games.. Outer Worlds is a hundred times more fun and contains more innovative gameplay ideas and suprises than all Ubi games of the last 2 years combined.

 

[Ze_Shoopuf]

I appreciated they didn't censor the wangs on all the statues. I've never seen so much dong in a major game before. Alexios even makes a comment when you hang from the balls on the big statue of the starting island! He says something like "I don't think I should be doing this" LOL

 

[impiri]

It has a vast list of all these different gameplay styles and metagame systems that theoretically should just add to the bloat and drag the game down, but which work together to retain a sense of variety in the game. So we have the war metagame, the Mercenaries metagame, the Cult of Kosmos metagame, the RPG mechanics, the naval gameplay, plus of course, the core Assassin's Creed gameplay loop as well. It's amazing how many different styles of gameplay come together so well, and keep things so varied

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Yeah, it's amazing how it manages to take so many ideas from this generation's best games and put them all together without tripping over itself. Just one example: Mercenaries manages to improve on the Nemesis system by having them track you down and crash your quests, and it works together with the rest of the game by giving you an incentive to get into trouble every now and then so you can lure bounty hunters and move up the ladder. It gives you something to aim for, too, when you a level 40+ mercenary strolls by and tells you to keep it up.

I only wish the recruitment system had been fleshed out a bit, but that might have been a bit overwhelming. Still, it's lots of fun to go around knocking people out, even if you don't get to use a Fulton balloon on them.

 

[Linus815]

Yeah, it's amazing how it manages to take so many ideas from this generation's best games and put them all together without tripping over itself. Just one example: Mercenaries manages to improve on the Nemesis system by having them track you down and crash your quests, and it works together with the rest of the game by giving you an incentive to get into trouble every now and then so you can lure bounty hunters and move up the ladder. It gives you something to aim for, too, when you a level 40+ mercenary strolls by and tells you to keep it up.

I only wish the recruitment system had been fleshed out a bit, but that might have been a bit overwhelming. Still, it's lots of fun to go around knocking people out, even if you don't get to use a Fulton balloon on them.

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The mercenary system being better than the nemesis system? No way, it hasn't got anywhere near the depth of it.

 

[SofNascimento]

I wasn't sold on the direction Ubisoft took AC with Origins and Odyssey, but they won me over. And it only make it worse that the chances of us getting an Imperial Rome game is virtually none.

 

[Prophane33]

Only two games I ever got a platinum trophy in were AC: Odyssey and AC: Origins (which was my first AC game). Origins is one of my top 5 games of all time, but damn if Odyssey isn't a fantastic game in its own right.

 

[impiri]

The mercenary system being better than the nemesis system? No way, it hasn't got anywhere near the depth of it.

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I was unclear! That much depth is perfect in Shadow of Mordor/War, where it's the focus of the entire game, but it would be too much in a game like Odyssey which has a ton of other stuff going on. The improvement in Odyssey is the way Mercenaries integrates with and complements the rest of the game.

 

[Eoin]

I just wish the loading times were at least 3x faster. They genuinely drained my enthusiasm.

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The load times are definitely a drawback. Starting up a game, waiting for all the menus, and then waiting for the initial load can be tiresome, especially when you might then want to fast travel which means another load.

This is one of the games that will benefit most from backwards compatibility next generation. The reduction of those loading times is going to make it a much more seamless experience.

 

[Catsygreen]

This last thing is also worth noting; a lot of quests, not only in Odyssey, but in general, seem to exist in a somewhat removed state from the main character. The character does something on someone else's behalf, but is not personally invested in them. He's more of a courier or hired muscle. It's really hard to care.

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Well, he's a mercenary after all: he's not really on either side. However, it's not true to say that everything is going over his head: there is a minor quest with a story of an oracle and a doctor. Unlike other quests, the hero is aggressive when confronted with an oracle who has made false prophecies... and that's good, because his personal story is linked to false prophecies.

In the same way, there are several quests where the hero meets other misthios, it gives thickness to the character: we see that he "jokes" with them, and remembers some souvenirs. It's not common either, but it works. The problem is the enormity, we do a lot of other indifferent quests on the side, but hey, you have to fill out the map!

An example that comes to my mind of something more involved would be the side quests in AC:Revelations. It's not the best game in the series, but it nailed (IMO) the emotional stuff - the whole quest chain of old Ezio finding love that late in life is charming, yet memorable for example. It informs my character, it shows me he's growing, by the end of the quest chain he's story is irreversibly changed.

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Don't forget to mention that Ezio benefited from a complete trilogy. The first one with him came out in 2009, we didn't have the same criteria for a hero. But I agree that was the most brilliant part of Revelations.

There is still a very interesting quest in Odyssey when it is quite limited: the part with Skoura, the former mercenary who runs the arena. Its story is quite minimalist but touching. In short, it's still difficult to "impress" the player, as each person will have a different vision and unforgettable memories of his or her own. So yes, Ubisoft sometimes plays too often with the same effects, I'm not going to defend them for that, but when you look closely, everything is not that bad...