Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: First Impressions

Ubisoft is preparing to distribute the hot Assassin’s Creed to the public. From Friday, players will be able to get their hands on the title. Is it worth it? Our critic.

After the amazing Origins in Egypt, Odyssey transports us to southwestern Europe.

With a strong script based in ancient Greece, the fond of the Gods will be served with a ton of reference to Greek mythology.

A triple quest as epic as the time in which it takes place Alexios, a hero of Sparta: you will have to find your mother, undo the plans of a secret society power-hungry, and discover more about what would be the ” first »civilization.

Note that you can also play a woman (her sister, presumably) rather than Alexios.

All this while sailing from island to island on board the Adrestia, a majestic customizable ship. Those who missed the Black Flag naval battles will be served.

I must confess that the history of Greece has fascinated me for many years. I was sold on this scenario from the first moments, when we see Leonidas lead the Spartan troops during the Battle of Thermopylae, a few years before the war that leads the main character.

In passing, we will meet Socrates, Herodotus, Pericles and Aspasia, who, in their own way, add a more than interesting depth to our epic.

A good – and long – challenge :

Prepare for a long adventure: after 24 hours of play, it is believed to be about half way to complete it.

It’s a rather surprising length for a franchise title, apart from Origins . With the addition of purer elements of RPGs, it’s far from painful. In fact, it makes us play Assassin’s Creed in a slightly different way.

Now, you can have almost 50 active quests at the same time. It’s easy to get lost. In addition, the side quests are cruelly lacking in variety. The programmed answers are few, and we come to know the replicas of our character, and that of citizens, by heart.

The news:

From the first moment, we are given the choice to opt for “guided” progression or the new “exploratory” mode.

Guided, it’s like most games. We select a mission, the place concerned appears on the map and we go there.

Exploratory … do we really need to explain it to you? When you have a task to do, you sometimes have to gather various information to find out where you need to go.

It works pretty well, but when you understand the principle, it loses much of its charm.

Besides this way of playing, the most important addition is undoubtedly the system of decisions.

Sometimes you will have to make difficult choices that will affect how the game unfolds and, to a greater extent, the end of the game.

There are nine different conclusions, which you are pleased to discover.

The skills tree, shown below, is also very detailed.

Origins version 2.0?

As for the environments and the visual quality, we do not really notice any progress compared to its predecessor. When compared to other “open world” games, Odyssey’s graphics are fine, nothing more.

At times, we have this strange, very disappointing feeling of déjà-vu from Origins when entering a cave or seeing a building. It is to wonder if some models were not taken again almost as they are.

In fact, it is possible that this is the case: Odyssey has been in existence for three years.

In short, we are still waiting for an Assassin’s Creed that will amaze us from a visual point of view. Because once again, it does the job, nothing more.

At the level of the grip, nothing much different to Origins . The fluidity of movement is sometimes lacking, especially when riding our horse, but we escape without much exasperation.

Bugs, bugs, and more bugs:

Although our version of the game is pre-release, an update was available when it was uploaded last Wednesday.

However, this “improvement” will probably remain to work: some technical problems and display ruin our immersion at the worst moments.

In battle, I’ve already seen a soldier turn into a kind of gelatin, until his body is stretched horizontally to the point where it becomes a puddle of pixels. He died then, for no reason. We wish him good luck alongside Hades.

Then, when I played the stealth assassin in the middle of a bandit camp, the frame rate dropped drastically for unknown reasons. So much so that I felt like I was playing GTA V with all the visual parameters in the mat with an integrated Intel graphics card.

It can take a few seconds, even a minute.

We played on PS4 Slim. Maybe the problem does not reoccur on PS4 Pro, but it does not matter: the game should be optimized for all console versions. We did not test it on Xbox.

The verdict:

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is not a turnip.

But the bugs, the repetitive aspect of the secondary missions, the impression of déjà-vu and a story that keeps pace with turtles prevent it from being a must.

Ubisoft still has crusts to eat before creating a CA that will compete for the Game of the Year title.