Unfinished: Assassin's Creed Odyssey 08/22/2018

No hidden blades?! I guess it makes sense, since the story takes place well before the formation of the Assassin Brotherhood. But still! How can an AC game not have hidden blades?! It just doesn't seem right. I was encouraged when I learned about the 'Assassin' skill tree in Odyssey, which essentially allows you to play the game like an Assassin from previous AC games. Now I'm a little bit discouraged again. I think AC Odyssey will indeed be a fun game, but the more it resembles and plays like an 'open world RPG' in general and less like a traditional Assassin's Creed game, the more I think I'll pass on picking it up. There are already tons and tons of RPGs out there; I loved the AC franchise because of its unique story and gameplay conceits. Although Odyssey bears the Assassins Creed designation, it mostly just looks like an action/RPG that takes place in ancient Greece. That's fine and well, but I kind of miss the traditional Assassin's Creed gameplay.

I see Ubisoft is keeping the tradition of cluttering the screen with inconvenient and obnoxious UI garbage...

Same here. Killing only specific targets that had mysterious deaths in the real life and the whole conspiracy with connections between the real world and the past were what make the story and the series interesting for me, specially in the first AC game. The cliffhanger ending of the first game was one of those great "oh shiiiiiiiit! what's going to happen?!" moments, it's a shame that they ruined that whole concept.

I guess they realized that people who liked the old Assassin's Creed games were a minority and weren't buying the games anymore, so they decided to make something generic that everyone would buy? I don't know, but I feel the same way as you. I loved the first two games, the concepts in them were fresh and different, even though they ruined most of it's potential. I didn't like AC3, but at least that one still felt a bit different. But now Assassin's Creed looks like the most generic and boring game possible, doing pretty much everything that every other AAA game is doing.

@johnymyko: I have to agree. While flawed in execution, the first AC game was like Hitman. You stalked your prey, gathered info, checked the routes and the kill was a single strike followed by an escape. They actively discouraged you from actually fighting and encouraged fleeing, like an assassin would. Now I'm watching footage where the protagonist is hacking away at boss healthbar, of Medusa no less, and like what happened?

Well, this sucks. I'm committed to Origins right now and I'm having a good time, but the Greek mythology and setting speak to me much more than the Egyptian. I doubt I'll be wanting to play two very similar games back to back, though. Oh well, I'll buy this next year then.

I'm conflicted. A meaty AAA game where you go through mythological greece is a no-brainer of a good idea. I'm really into that. I'm really into Witcher-esque games.

That said, all traces of Assassins Creed are pretty much gone now. This is an amalgamation of all the games out there. Damage numbers, Loot, leveling, skilltrees, microtransactions, a few dialog choices, bossfights, a health button.

And while they seem to have decluttered the map a bit, now the screen is full of white outlines & markers and it pretty much looks awful. I really don't like how Ubisoft puts this ugly white outline on everything in their games lately. It ruins the look immediatly.