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Assassin's Creed Odyssey, set in ancient Greece - it's definitely an RPG now

Jason Liang

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It's funny how fast Ubi fell into the very same trap.

Original AC was interesting but underdeveloped concept, so they perfected it (for wide action-adventure oriented audience) in AC 2, and started to milk living shit out of franchise. To the point ppl couldn't take it anymore. So they "reinvented" the formula, and second game in nuAC is *drums roll* uninspired sequel milking franchise... Will they ever learn? I'm taking educated guess that AC: China/Vikings/Persia/Japan or whatever they will cook up in 2020 will get player fatigue already.

That they set Odyssey, which takes place even before Origins, isn't random at all. The first four AC games established that the First Civiization characters are named after Minerva, Juno and Jupiter, Greek (well, Roman) gods. So they are still developing the pre-estblished series mythos.
 

SpoilVictor

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That they set Odyssey, which takes place even before Origins, isn't random at all. The first four AC games established that the First Civiization characters are named after Minerva, Juno and Jupiter, Greek (well, Roman) gods. So they are still developing the pre-estblished series mythos.

I'm out of the loop - it is that whole First Civ and modern plot still relevant? I thought they dropped it to some skeletal form (Blackflag was last AC I've played).
 

Atlantico

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I thought this was supposed to be a RPG with at least a little choice and consequence. So far at least it's not -- it's entirely linear, and it forces me into doing things I'd really rather not be doing, and that in an open-world game I shouldn't be forced to do. I'd refund except I've already played too much for that.

Why did you think that? It's Assassin's Creed by Ubisoft. I just don't get where you get your expectations. You claim Origins has some historical accuracy ambitions, I'm sure it did have higher than average historical aspirations for an AC game, but it's still 100% rooted in fantasy - just a different genre of fantasy, historical fantasy.

AC:Odyssey is full on fantasy, keeping a historical backdrop (to be generous) embracing what it really is - and that does actually make it less cringy than anything before it - that's not even mentioning the whole Assassins/Templars bullshit plot which is cringe on a stick.

When I was playing AC:Black Flag, I noticed there was *no* attempt at historical accuracy. None what so ever.

From the way society was described in Havana to how pirates functioned and everything in between - it was just stupid on glue-sniffing brofist level. Absolute nonsense from start to finish.

And then someone here made the claim that the first AC game was even better, historically speaking. Not to mention the nostalgia-tinted love AC2 receives for whatever reason, it's historically utter shit as well. Because they all are.

And now we are supposed to be all :obviously::obviously::obviously: because AC:Odyssey just takes the logical and long coming step of moving into complete fantasy. The setting is just a backdrop. It gives us interesting places to see, and people to meet, but it is an alternate reality to history.

Perhaps AC:Origins could be said have had historical ambitions, but it was still just nonsense, historically speaking.

Point is, people expecting historical accuracy from Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series of games are setting themselves up for either self-delusion or disappointment. That was *never* a thing.

I am not a fan of the AC series, but this game is p. much ok. Oh yes, there's a linear plot, everything is railroaded and you have to kill dear old daddy. Well, not really - you can spare him, but the game pretends he's just dead for all intents and purposes.

I would have loved to have choices, but they're not here. No more than in Mass Effect, it's just the illusion of choice.

I don't give a shit about fucking homo Assassins or the faggot Templars, they can both burn for me - that entire plot and the Abstergo bullshit is just triggering, it's so bad and so uninspired and uninteresting.

In the end, I'm just larping as a hired mercenary/adventurer in fantasy Greece and having a good time at it! Every time the asshole Assassins and their dumbass plot rears its head, I just shut off mentally and click past it. I don't care, never will. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

:killitwithfire:
 
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aweigh

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People expect biological reality from a game. A woman in fantasy greece would be treated the same as a woman from real greece, assuming that men and women in fantasy greece are comparable to men and women from real greece (such as in AC: Odyssey).

I don't think a single person, EVER, has expected "historical accuracy" from AC games. You're just trying to use the tired "it's all fiction LOLOL why should it make it sense!!!!!1" moronic argument.
 

Markman

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Historical accuracy or not, I do find it a bit odd that every second athenian soldier I kill is a chick.
You get into fight and they start moaning like you left a porn vid in the background.

About the gameplay, mercs 2 levels above are near impossible to kill, its atleast 5-10 minutes attrition war if they arent kickable. Its a go to cheese tactic, get em up high on a rooftop or a cliff and do This is Sparta! move if they are overleveled. I got a few of them this way. Lv 10 now, 7+ hours in.

Fun touch now is that quests can be failed, think I ruined about 5 of them so far.
 

hexer

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Tell me this is a joke!
 

jf8350143

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Alexios and Kassandra are not normal human, they are off-springs of the first civ people. Simply put, they have super powers.

Also it's pretty much impossible to write a female protagonist in Ancient Greece while keep it history accuracy because very other character she meet will be doubting her and judging her, and it will become repetitive and boring very quickly.
 

Urthor

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Ironically Assassin's creed can NEVER go back to the middle east because then they'd have to have unveiled women and progressive female characters who are active outdoors, which would be an interesting paradox of cultural insensitive vs feminism

Remember that Ubi never wanted to design these games with selectable gender. It's because sjw's gave them so much shit over iirc AC: Unity not having a gender option that they started adding selectable gender to these games. Kassandra is not meant to be a feature, she's only a concession. So don't blame Ubi for half-assing it.

This is also not true at all. Having a selectable gender is relatively inexpensive (remember that all the VO work for a female gender, writing etc costs ~3 million, and this is a 50-80 million dollar game with ~200 mill in revenue) way of marketing to people with vaginas. Voiceover work is expensive for Obsidian, for Ubisoft in their giga franchise they essentially do not give a damn about having to voice a second protagonist. Especially when it is something clearly linked to driving sales.

Long term people with vaginas are a GROWTH market for Ubisoft, because currently 10% of their customers have vaginas so that's a lot more people who can throw money at them.

They are making a relatively small investment of 3-5 million in voice over work etc, and the payoff is a 10-20% increase in sales as people with vaginas pick up this game because it has a female protagonist.

And they are doing it for the exact same reason I have never in my life not selected a while male protagonist in an RPG, I want to pretend to be my role playing character.
 
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RNGsus

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Assassin Screed is when a hipster saw Dan Brown's book's movie, read a wiki article on the Great Race of Yith traveling through time telepathically, and felt bad for not being a suicide bomber.
 

Delterius

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I lost it.

"A newer approach to playstyle. User must navigate environment." just fucking killed me.
You can buy child porn today despite it being illegal everywhere.

So Ancient Greek society was as degenarate as ours?
Broseph, you have no idea. The amount of stuff that 'can never be exhibited ever' crowding museum archives of ancient Rome is mindblowing. And the greeks, persians and hellenes, if anything, were out of the romans' league.
 

Paul_cz

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Simply put, I'm more irritated by this kind of thing than Vavra's 100% white and inexplicably Judenrein Bohemia. Vavra's simply being a caveman, and it would be unfair to expect anything better from an East European backwoods nationalist.

This is dumb. Vavra wasn't portraying Bohemia. He was portraying 4km squared of Bohemia around Rataje nad Sázavou - a backwater countryside. It would be idiotic to run into arabs/africans/japanese there. If he does some bigger city in the next game - ideally Prague - obviously he will have non-caucasians there.
 

Prime Junta

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I don't think a single person, EVER, has expected "historical accuracy" from AC games. You're just trying to use the tired "it's all fiction LOLOL why should it make it sense!!!!!1" moronic argument.

Warning, nuance ahead.

Expecting historical accuracy from an AC game would be ... inadvisable. It does, after all, feature a technological precursor people with still-functioning technological relics, conspiracies spanning millennia, hints of ancient astronauts, and of course ludicrous amounts stabbing.

However, historical verisimilitude is a different matter. Verisimilitude is a subtler thing than accuracy, but it is nevertheless a thing. If a work of fiction builds upon genuine understanding of a historical setting, making use of its unique and interesting events, characters, and features while bringing it to life, and departing from it only when it serves the purposes of whatever fiction it is constructing, then it can be said to have historical verisimilitude.

For example, Mika Waltari's The Egyptian is not historically accurate, but it has historical verisimilitude in spades. Frank Miller's 300 on the other hand is neither accurate, nor does it have verisimilitude.

I continue to contend that AC: Origins did remarkably well for historical verisimilitude, certainly considering what it is -- a mainstream open-world action game about stabbing and conspiracies, with a smattering of RPG-lite mechanics on top.

Why does this matter? Because of suspension of disbelief. To enjoy a work of fiction, you need to suspend disbelief – experience it as if it was real, even though you know all along that it's not. Historical fiction that lacks verisimilitude makes this difficult: I'm constantly jolted out of my pretence of being a misthios in the Peloponnesian War by being hit with ordinary everyday things that just weren't like that.

Summa summarum, good historical fiction works because of the verisimilitude. When you see or experience something that you recognise as plausibly "real" that pulls you deeper into the suspension of disbelief. Conversely, when you see or experience something that you know positively isn't real, that jolts you out of it. And as to fictional elements that are there to serve the story, it's the author's job to sell them to you, to get you to accept them without suspending your disbelief even if you "know" they're fiction.

So: AC Origins works because the historical verisimilitude supports the suspension of disbelief. AC Odyssey doesn't because the lack of historical verisimilitude undermines it.
 

YldriE

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I think you are glossing over one big thing that verisimilitude needs to even work: familiarity, or rather the lack thereof.

When you talk about how you are jolted out of the illusion by out-of-place details, you have to realise that most dullskull randos won't even notice because they lack the basic knowledge that things aren't right.
 

Atlantico

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I don't think a single person, EVER, has expected "historical accuracy" from AC games. You're just trying to use the tired "it's all fiction LOLOL why should it make it sense!!!!!1" moronic argument.

No, not fiction, fantasy. These are things which have long since been established in general fantasy, but people are going: OMG I can't relate to the game it's so absurd that the female barbarian has 18/00 STR and don't laugh at hear when she pretends to swing a sword. I never heard of that in fantasy literature. Some verisimilitude please. :outrage:

Alexios and Kassandra are not normal human, they are off-springs of the first civ people. Simply put, they have super powers.

They have even more immense superpowers, they're of the ancients species of Protagonists! Truly god-like beings.

Assassin Screed is when a hipster saw Dan Brown's book's movie, read a wiki article on the Great Race of Yith traveling through time telepathically, and felt bad for not being a suicide bomber.

Very true, and it's that Dan Brown part of the game which is the most :retarded::retarded::retarded:

However, historical verisimilitude is a different matter. Verisimilitude is a subtler thing than accuracy, but it is nevertheless a thing.

Not a single AC game has historical verisimilitude. Like a dog on a bone, you're chewing on gender. Yet that's just one item on a long laundry list of batshit stupid things found in all AC games. All of them. For examples, continue on reading!

For example, Mika Waltari's The Egyptian is not historically accurate, but it has historical verisimilitude in spades. Frank Miller's 300 on the other hand is neither accurate, nor does it have verisimilitude.

I don't read pulp fiction, so I don't know anything about that book :obviously: but it's pretty obvious Frank Miller's 300 is a very important source for AC:Odyssey. Yet you expect some historical fanfiction. Why? And you mentioned a book by a guy for historical verisimilitude, not any Assassin's Creed game, I notice. Probably a good move.

And you speak of verisimilitude, but don't give a shit about interaction between people, how they speak to each other, how society reacts to crime, murder and so on and so forth. The AC world is so utterly bizarre if you entertain the idea of verisimilitude in the games.

Hell, gravity is strictly too constraining for the world of AC, but that's fine. Women being warriors?! That just breaks my immersion. :obviously::obviously::obviously:

:nocountryforshitposters:
 

Prime Junta

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Hell, gravity is strictly too constraining for the world of AC, but that's fine. Women being warriors?! That just breaks my immersion. :obviously::obviously::obviously:

Dude, I'll ignore the rest of your rant but not this bit because it's badly misinterpreting my beef with the game.

I'm not objecting to Kassandra being in the game.

I'm objecting to the fact that the game doesn't react to her gender enough. A woman warrior would be plausible if everybody believed she was marked by the gods. They would treat her with disdain if they didn't know about it, changing to fear and awe when they did.

As it is, Kassandra (and the forced gender equality that was put in to support it) is just lazy pandering. They should have made Kassandra a righteous fury, an agent of blood-drenched feminist vengeance on the stifling patriarchies of the Peloponnesos, drawing inspiration from the stories about the Furies and Circe and the Amazons, and how they're portrayed in mythology. Instead they just swapped the model and got a woman to re-read the lines. That's lazy and lame and we should expect better.
 

Serus

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Simply put, I'm more irritated by this kind of thing than Vavra's 100% white and inexplicably Judenrein Bohemia. Vavra's simply being a caveman, and it would be unfair to expect anything better from an East European backwoods nationalist.

This is dumb. Vavra wasn't portraying Bohemia. He was portraying 4km squared of Bohemia around Rataje nad Sázavou - a backwater countryside. It would be idiotic to run into arabs/africans/japanese there. If he does some bigger city in the next game - ideally Prague - obviously he will have non-caucasians there.
I doubt there was more than a handful of Blacks in the entirety of 15th century Bohemia, mostly a few imported to serve on courts of powerful landlords as curiosity and that's about it. No japanese for obvious reasons either I'm afraid. So no, if he doesn't cave to idiots and tries to remain true to history in that regard, he won't put non-caucasians in the game, unless as at most 1 or 2 exceptions. Jews on the other hand, I would assume there was a substantial Jewish community in 15th century Prague, so that should be in.
 
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RNGsus

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There was a huge population of dindu merchants in the 15c. In fact, Prague had a non-binary negress president.
 

Molina

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Hell, gravity is strictly too constraining for the world of AC, but that's fine. Women being warriors?! That just breaks my immersion. :obviously::obviously::obviously:

Dude, I'll ignore the rest of your rant but not this bit because it's badly misinterpreting my beef with the game.

I'm not objecting to Kassandra being in the game.

I'm objecting to the fact that the game doesn't react to her gender enough. A woman warrior would be plausible if everybody believed she was marked by the gods. They would treat her with disdain if they didn't know about it, changing to fear and awe when they did.

As it is, Kassandra (and the forced gender equality that was put in to support it) is just lazy pandering. They should have made Kassandra a righteous fury, an agent of blood-drenched feminist vengeance on the stifling patriarchies of the Peloponnesos, drawing inspiration from the stories about the Furies and Circe and the Amazons, and how they're portrayed in mythology. Instead they just swapped the model and got a woman to re-read the lines. That's lazy and lame and we should expect better.
Ubisoft didn't want NPC to react differently to gender. Because they don't want the player to be insulted every seconds in the game.
Source : An interview from the Narrative Director.

Even in Fallout, the gender doen't make a difference most of the time. So what, Ubisoft should be more RPG-Codex compliant than Black Isle ?
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Ubisoft didn't want NPC to react differently to gender. Because they don't want the player to be insulted every seconds in the game.
Source : An interview from the Narrative Director.

Even in Fallout, the gender doen't make a difference most of the time. So what, Ubisoft should be more RPG-Codex compliant than Black Isle ?

Fallout is retro-futuristic fantasy with no pretensions of historical verisimilitude. It gets to make whatever rules it feels like.

Same diff for FemShep. Mass Effect is space opera. It can have whatever gender roles and race relations the writers want it to have.

But AC Odyssey is – or at least pretends to be – historical fiction, not pure fantasy. As such I expect more from it, especially given the effort they made with AC Origins.
 

Paul_cz

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Simply put, I'm more irritated by this kind of thing than Vavra's 100% white and inexplicably Judenrein Bohemia. Vavra's simply being a caveman, and it would be unfair to expect anything better from an East European backwoods nationalist.

This is dumb. Vavra wasn't portraying Bohemia. He was portraying 4km squared of Bohemia around Rataje nad Sázavou - a backwater countryside. It would be idiotic to run into arabs/africans/japanese there. If he does some bigger city in the next game - ideally Prague - obviously he will have non-caucasians there.
I doubt there was more than a handful of Blacks in the entirety of 15th century Bohemia, mostly a few imported to serve on courts of powerful landlords as curiosity and that's about it. No japanese for obvious reasons either I'm afraid. So no, if he doesn't cave to idiots and tries to remain true to history in that regard, he won't put non-caucasians in the game, unless as at most 1 or 2 exceptions. Jews on the other hand, I would assume there was a substantial Jewish community in 15th century Prague, so that should be in.

iirc romani gypsies arrived around 1420, so if KCD ever portrays hussite wars, they could include those as well.
 

Markman

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Ubisoft on microtransactions:
https://kotaku.com/ubisoft-explains-assassin-s-creed-odyssey-s-microtransa-1829635195

Dont see it much more of a grind compared to Origins, even there you couldnt rush through the main story. I just moved on with it when my level was fit for the area.
Same thing here in this game, now Im level 15 and got like 3 new areas that are "explorable" with enemies at my level.
Its just a design choice and how the game is padded and what way developers want to tunnel you in to keep some kind of narrative.

Area bosses that are overleveled at start get degraded when you fuck around their outposts and killing their soldiers, burning their supplies and so on. So these few I rekt start at about 4 levels above(unkillable) and ended up about 2 levels below my level when I lower their influence.
This design decision got fuckloads of complaints from the impatient that are used to breeze through their games.

For those impatient they made a fuckload of microtransaction options.

Game also forces to powergame, if you do not get better gear its gonna be way harder.

Nice touches on gfx I noticed, like how blood washes off clothes when you enter the water, killing a white bear and see it transform into a bloody mess is just amazing. That poor fur.
 

cvv

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Simply put, I'm more irritated by this kind of thing than Vavra's 100% white and inexplicably Judenrein Bohemia. Vavra's simply being a caveman, and it would be unfair to expect anything better from an East European backwoods nationalist.

That's extraordinarily dumb but I guess it would be unfair to expect anything better from a smug, know-nothing Western ignoramus mentally enslaved to a current year narrative.

Jews on the other hand, I would assume there was a substantial Jewish community in 15th century Prague, so that should be in.

There is no Prague in KCD, the entire game is set in a countryside 100 miles from any big city. At that time Jews lived only in the biggest cities, in the relative safety of the diaspora. They'd be pogromed anywhere else. KCD worked with dozens of experts and history professors and every single detail is researched with autistic obsession. Just fyi.
 
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