Unexpected surprises throughout Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

With “superb graphics” and some of the best plot writing in the entire Assassin’s Creed series so far, Odyssey will not disappoint

Screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

“TELL me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide.”

So begins Homer (the poet, not the Simpsons character)’s epic tale The Odyssey – but it is equally applicable to the latest game in Ubisoft’s historical and ambitious Asssassin’s Creed

series, which takes its cue from the Greek classic.

Available on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey transports you back to Greece in 431BC at the height of the Peloponnesian War — in the blue corner, Athens, in the red corner, Sparta, battling it out for the title of Heavyweight Champion City-State Of The Greek World.

Screengrab from Assassin's Creed Odyssey

As the game opens, you choose to play as either Alexios or Kassandra (you can’t change your

mind later, for reasons which become clear in-game), a mercenary who is living in a hovel on the impoverished island of Kephallonia and working with their likeable but extremely dodgy mentor Markos.

Suffice it to say the story soon takes you off Kephallonia and across the length and breadth of the Classical Greek world, turning your chosen character into the proverbial ingenious hero who travels far and wide indeed.

Screengrab from Assassin's Creed Odyssey

The story and writing in the game is easily the best in the series so far, with a clearly talented

team of writers deftly handling serious game moments, comedy and dark tragedy with aplomb.

Alexios and Kassandra are likeable characters to start with, and the addition of dialogue choices means you can develop them how to some extent how you like.

The voice acting is very good, but irritatingly, the developers made a choice to go with

“authentic” period-correct pronunciations of names, rather than the “modern” pronunciations that most of us would recognise – so basically, you have to play with subtitles on, otherwise you’re not going to recognise the pronunciation of a lot of well-known Classical Greek folks. I get why the developers made that choice, but instead of adding to the realism of the experience, it just made the characters sound like that annoying friend who studied overseas for a bit and insists on pronouncing everything in an “authentic” but unconventional fashion as a result.

The choices you make in the game might seem inconsequential at first, but they can have

impacts later on – for example, in one case, I beat the stuffing out of a bandit but decided to let him live as a warning to his employer not to trifle with me again. Later on, that same bandit and some of his mates ambushed me on the road to another mission. Another time, I was detected during a stealth mission and thugs were waiting at the handover point to try and recover the item I’d obtained.

Screengrab from Assassin's Creed Odyssey

The plot really engaged me too – lots of twists and turns and unexpected surprises, with a pretty significant new element not appearing until about 10 hours into the game.

There are basically three story arcs happening at once and make no mistake, this game is epic in scope and isn’t something you can slash through in a weekend. Indeed, it’s hard to say much about the story or events without spoiling things, but I was very impressed with how some events played out totally differently to what I was expecting, while elsewhere the law of unintended consequences would pop in for a cup of coffee and a biscuit.

Even the side quests were well done in most cases. Technically, many were your standard “Go

here, stab some people, loot this stuff, come back” affairs, but the stories attached to them were so well done I honestly wanted to see how they played out anyway. One of my favourites was an amorous mature woman who wanted me to find the ingredients for a libido enhancer for her hapless and exhausted husband, while another mission had me looking for ways to give a suitor an edge over her rivals in the quest to land a wealthy husband, and another had me searching for sunken treasure on behalf of a pirate with a strong dislike of sharks

Screengrab from Assassin's Creed Odyssey

The graphics are generally superb, bringing Ancient Greece to life and making it seem like a real place which you can explore – from the turquoise waters of the Aegean Sea to temples of the Greek Pantheon, to bustling markets and the lamplit mansions of the wealthy. While the

environment is outstanding, some of the NPC character models in conversation mode are a bit

clunky, sometimes appearing more like theme park animatronics.

Combat is enhanced by the addition of special abilities such as the famous “Spartan Kick” –

which yes, you can use to boot people off buildings, ships and cliffs – as well as setting fire to your weapons, healing yourself, or firing poisoned arrows, among other things.

There’s still some issues with equipment being level-gated, and sorting through all my gear to

get the right combination of defence, attack and effectiveness got tedious at times too.

Naval combat makes a welcome return too – you have your very own Trireme - but isn’t as

satisfying as Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag.

To be fair, that game is a tough act to follow on that front, and as fun as launching fire arrows from a trireme is, it’s not quite the same as unleashing a cannon broadside into the hull of an enemy ship.

Screengrab from Assassin's Creed Odyssey

You can recruit special crew for your ship by knocking out opponents on land and recruiting

them, which already sounds questionable enough, but it rides a chariot through ridiculousness

when you’re doing it in the middle of a heavily defended military base – there’s no way you

should be able to knock out random soldiers, then have them willingly join your motley crew of Aegeanauts, yet you most assuredly can and do exactly that.

The Assassin’s Creed series has lately been getting better and better with each iteration, and

Odyssey is by far the best of the series I’ve played. The transformation into a more RPG-style

experience is a welcome change of direction for the series and really helped me feel like I was living out an actual adventure, rather than merely going from point to point and getting into swordfights.

The forthcoming and hugely anticipated Red Dead Redemption 2 doesn’t have a confirmed PC

release date, so if you’re a PC gamer, there’s some great news here: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is the perfect huge open-world game for you to really get stuck into as the year winds down and we sail towards holiday time.

Overall, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is an excellent game, a lot of fun and one that you really must add to your Great Library of Games. Even if you aren’t a Classical history enthusiast, this is still one epic you’ll want to experience in all its glory.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is being generally released on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on

October 5