About five years ago I took a vacation to London and made it a point to visit the British Museum. I knew it was huge and budgeted a full day for it. By the end of the day, I was exhausted from fatigue of seeing so much in so short a time. It was worth it and I'm glad I went but the sense of being overwhelmed by the scale and amount of stuff there(much of it truly cool to behold) was amazing. That's kind of Assassins Creed Odyssey in a nutshell. It's Gigantic, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and am glad I did it but it's just a lot. Probably too much.
Since there's enough to discuss on its on, I'm gonna talk about Legacy of the first blade once I go over my thoughts for the base game. Especially since there's a rather big elephant in the room that I'm sure will spark a fair bit of conversation and I don't want that part getting buried in me whining about proper trireme combat and such.
First off, Greece is amazing. The way it feels both huge and accessible is a testament to how well the guys who make the world maps do their job It was one of the big joys in the game and was even more fun to wander around then Egypt in Origins. I'm going to admit straight out that I was probably willing to overlook quite a bit due to the game being set in Ancient Greece. The Ancient world is fairly underrepresented by video gaming and I've wanted something that allowed me to explore the Ancient World pretty much forever. Origins hit pretty hard because of that and Odyssey continues to keep my attention long past the point it might have otherwise because of this. Interestingly, the world depicted in Odyssey has more of a sense of myth and legend to it then other games. Aside from the well known aspect of the legendary beasts and the mythical monsters, there are examples scattered across the game world that hint at a wild, magical past. Massive statues of the gods, ruins of temples in the woods and under the waves, weapons and armor that claim to be those of famous Greek heroes, running across stone statues of centaurs in the woods in action pose and with no explanation whatsoever. Hell, the word Demi-god is thrown about at times to describe Kassandra and some of the dialogue choices have her embrace it. It all has a certain charm about it.
That being said, The world feels too big sometimes. While some of the stuff is amazing, there's about a million forts, outposts, bandit camps, caves, ruins, etc, etc. There's 12 legendary animals to slay(who are essentially optional boss fights), there's an Arena to fight through, there's a bunch of epic ships to fight and destroy on the seas, there's a bunch of islands and regions you probably will never see if you only play the family quest(though you will see them if you do the cult/Atlantis story-lines), there's 2 cyclopes which have no reason to exist other then to be extra boss fights and a bunch of tombs. It's kinda exhausting after a while, especially if you're trying to see everything. There's also the issue, for me anyway, that while I dug the grecian open world a lot, it didn't feel quite as amazing as Origins did. Maybe it's because Origins already did something similar, maybe it's because we already saw a fair bit of Greek culture/buildings in Origins so it doesn't feel as unique as it did before. Though I can see that the shared art assets and mechanics were how Odysseus was able to drop a year after Origins and feel a lot smoother around the edges(taking the Trireme missions from Origins and tweaking them a bit for Odyssey for example). Along similar lines, I liked the Tombs in Origins a lot, despite the flimsy justification for having so many just available to visit and Bayek being so cool with robbing them despite his strong religious views. Here they fixed some of those problems since it's implied Kassandra doesn't particularly care about violating tombs because money and a lot of them have walls you need to break first to reach the actual tomb part. That being said, while they're pretty, a lot of them aren't particularly interesting and it feels like a waster opportunity. Maybe it was because they were new in Origins it didn't bug me so much but I swear it felt like they were better designed there. Also a number of them had creepy ass looking ISU ruins below them hiding an ISU tape recording which helped add to the exotic feel. None of the Odyssey tombs had anything that interesting deep within them.
Kassandra(I played her and I'm gonna stick with that from here on out) unlike most of the other AC protagonists is notably a Mercenary, which gives you a degree of flexibility in her morals and help justify the new for this series dialogue choices, as well as being asked to do any number of errands and tasks for anyone and everyone(which kinda makes you feel like a handyman but anything for coin I guess). It's also supposed to allow you to fight for both sides in the war without getting called out for being a traitor(I'd imagine at least one side would get salty with you for fighting for them one day and against them the next after a while). Interestingly, this dynamic of Kassandra the Mithos/Mercenary who is based on a ship(a Trireme called the Andrestria) in that it essentially makes Kassandra a Classical era Pirate using a ship combat system fairly similar to that the Jackdaw used. In this light, Odyssey feels somewhat like a successor to Black Flag though admittedly with a fair bit of black flags elements cut down or stripped out(no fortress assaults or decision making when a ship is captured). OTOH, the game also doesn't have any insta-fail tailing or eavesdropping missions, thank god.
It's peculiarly interesting when remembering that Edward was a Pirate for 90% of black flag and only joins the Assassins formally near the end. Until that point he just happens to share some of the same goals(and notably disliking the Templars due to their authoritarian attitudes) but his big goal is to get paid, not unlike Kassandra. While Both Origins and this game take place before the Foundation of the Brotherhood(Bayek and Aya found the brotherhood pretty much at the end of Origins so Bayek technically isn't an assassin either), it doesn't change the fact that Bayek and whichever Spartan version of Big Boss you choose to play as are assassins in everything but name, though with a little more emphasis on mixed combat and a little less on sneaky murder because ancient times and warrior training.
The plot is generally good to decent for this type of game and while it rarely reaches any great highs, it holds together fairly well throughout. AC games tend to run into "cosmic deadline" syndrome a lot where the end tends to feel very rushed. Origins had a couple notable parts I've harped on where the game tended to constrict into plot tunnels(particularly near the end) which funneled the player from setpiece to boss fight(sometimes to another boss fight)without much ability to bypass enemies or use creative measures(especially the end of Origins, where you're stuck using Aya, who you can't develop her skills or upgrade her weapons, you're just dropped in a pit with the boss and told to go at it). Origins also did that weird thing near the end where 3 in-game years just kinda vanished in the last 20 or so minutes of the game whereas Odyssey seems to flow at a fairly steady pace(some rushing near the end is still noted, but not nearly as bad).
Odyssey is unique in the series in the fact that it broke the plot into 3 separate branches or pillars. The main Family plot, Kassandras Journey from Childhood and the loss of her Family to tracking their diaspora and ideally reuniting all of them, the Cult plot and the Atlantis Plot, which involves Mythological beasts and Atlantis. All of them have key pieces of the plot and there's a bit of interaction between the 3 but otherwise are more or less separate. Which feels like both an asset and a detriment as you can more or less jump back and forth between them as you want assuming you're strong(properly leveled) enough but it also means that all 3 plots more or less can't connect to each other most of the time. Ideally it would be better if all of these were better integrated together but you'd still have to have some kind of gating requirements and there'd still be the problem of the main plotline being very long. The Family plotline can be finished around level 35 or so(which in Origins was the level for the first DLC) but the Cultist Storyline is level gated all over the place(with the last few cultist being level 50) and while the Atlantis Storyline is a bit shorter, you're still restricted to level 40's and 50's to actually finish it(particularly with the last fight, who is damn tough even if you're at her level).
The Cultist story-line, while not terribly tight, was a nice way to keep those Assassination Skills sharp and it was kinda cool to have to find clues to find them out so I could hunt and kill them, not to mention it was a nice call back to AC2's Conspiracy Web(which had the FUCKING POPE at the center) and getting to the center does get you some kind of closure, even if it isn't great closure(The answer for why the Cult does what it does seems to be that somewhere along the way their little scheme to control Greece via the War turned into a giant clusterfuck that nobody was really controlling, that they went "Full Chaos"). The downside is that it does take a very LONG time to get there and some of them require some special triggers(completing certain quest chains, fighting in the arena, starting conquest battles, etc), though a couple I literally killed without realizing their cultist status and then got the "Confirm kill" prompt. The Atlantis Storyline is a bit more interesting and shorter, but it's also heavily level gated as endgame content and is really the only way to get some conclusion to Both Kassandra and Laylas story. Otherwise you basically "Discover Atlantis, go to Atlantis, Layla jumps back in the animus again" and unlike in Origins, she won't jump back out until the story dictates(yeah, Origins didn't have much to do in that cave of hers but at least you weren't constrained by the story).
The ability to romance numerous people from across the world feels shallow. While a couple people it feels like there's some chemistry going on there, a lot of them it feels like they boil down to "Pick the dialogue option with the little heart" and the person will practically jump into bed with the mithios. The fact that it's so easy to do this an nobody so much as mentions it(even if they join your crew) makes the miithos come across as a pick up artist, at least to me. The fact that you'll pretty much never interact with most of these people after that only reinforces this perception.
The Peloponnesian war makes a decent backdrop though beyond that seems to exist mostly for game-play purposes. Both the Spartans and Athenians(and their allies, who are just represented as being Spartans and Athenians respectively) are presented in game as being equally matched both on land and sea, in contrast to their historical disparity of Sparta having the superior Army and Athenians having an unmatched Navy, which is one of the reasons the war dragged on for 30 years, because the Spartans couldn't hit the Athenians at sea and the Athenians rather tried to face Sparta head on in a land battle(and Spartan Siege craft was apparently crap, so breaching the walls around Athens wasn't particularly viable for them). In game, the war ties together a number of mechanics, particularly the conquest battles which can be triggered when a province has been weakened enough(killing leaders, breaking into forts and stealing all their monies, burning war supplies, killing national leaders), but the conquest battles feel mostly unnecessary and kinda phoned in. They took the gang wars from syndicate and made them far less interesting and a hell of a lot longer. It's painfully clear Ubisoft doesn't know how to make land-based battles look remotely realistic which is why they always turn into giant melees. I think the last time I saw this series try to do land combat was in AC3 and it looked incredibly scripted, particularly during the bunker hill sequence.
Odyssey lets you fight for either side as a mercenary, but it effectively makes no difference. You can turn the entire map Red(Sparta) or Blue(Athens) and the war will rage on. The guards will be just as hostile if you piss them off. Even if you fought for the other side nine times out of ten, nobody will hold it against you when you decide to fight for them. It just changes the color of the uniforms of the soldiers(Granted, AC3 did something similar, where the American troops were just as likely to try to murder your ass as the British or French ones). Ironically, the plot missions will almost always have you siding with Sparta against Athens but you'll still be able to hang out with your Athenian friends without issue.
The game does feel a lot more open, For the most part, you're not locked into missions once you start them, proceed to objectives as you want and sometimes even accomplish multiple objectives at the same location(clearing a fort, killing a cultist and finishing a mission on the same trip). The fact Kassandra can climb almost ANYTHING helps this, even if it make some of the fortresses seem trival. Sure, you could try to sneak around the massive fort, or you could find the unguarded wall closest to the objective and climb over it(or jump from the nearby cliff). This openness works both for and against it, as noted above how there's less structure beyond the level gating aspect and some parts(such as the war) end up feeling less compelling as a result. Odyssey really seems to love it's rule of three. Namely, for any given quest, there will likely be 3 tasks or side quests required to be accomplished to proceed further. Even the main quests will on numerous occasions tell you to go to one of 3 different regions(and then the other two) and do the quest string there before proceeding. While it does offer a sense of choice, it's still essentially taking a linear narrative and just letting you mix up which objective you want to do first and while it's not a bad thing, it's relied up so often as to be predictable.
The game does have some noticeable improvements over Origins. The Phylakes(the roaming mini-bosses from Origins) were replaced with Mercenaries, which are generated(likely randomly) by the game as you explore and assigned to 9 tiers, of which you start at the bottom. Killing Mercs above you moves you up a spot while killing Mercs below you get you their gear and any experience but doesn't affect your rating. Moving up the tiers unlocks better rewards, often upgrade related. Like the Phylakes, they act as mini-bosses, but unlike the Phylakes, they aren't restricted to a specific area and aren't inherently hostile on sight. Rather, instead of desyncing you when you kill innocents, you get a bounty put on your head from committing crimes(killing guards, innocents, stealing, sinking ships, etc) which will eventually give you a wanted level(1 to 5), each of which will put a mercenary on your trail until the bounty is paid, the sponsor is killed or the wanted level just recedes on it's own. I was worried when I heard about this system prior to playing it, thinking it would be obnoxious. Rather, I ended up kinda having fun with it, since killing mercs moves you up the tiers faster and sometimes they could just be avoided. Other times it was annoying because it's clear they teleport to near your location when they're pull on the trail and they somehow know more or less where you're hiding at any given time. It's not so bad when you're moving around the countryside(especially when you can hide in the woods or summon a horse to get you away) but when you're infiltrating a fortress and a mercenary decides to keep patrolling in the same area you happen to be in(and they generally can't be stealth killed, unlike the guards), it's incredibly frustrating.
I also appreciated how Odyssey did a much better job of boss encounters. Origins had a bad habit of locking you in a room with a boss without warning and making you fight it out(especially with high ranking Order members) and having a number of optional fights which were basically war elephants in an arena(scattered over the map because reasons). Odyssey gives you the Legendary Animals in the "Daughters of Artemis" quest-line, which are bigger, tougher versions of regular animals and completely optional(and you can run away if you feel like it's not worth it) and the Mythological creatures from the Atlantis storyline(which are quasi optional) which are all tough(except for the Sphinx, because you don't fight her) Dark Soul-ish boss encounters with heavy damage and long health bars.
Despite the level gating in game, I didn't see it as being particularly grindy. There's more then enough activities and side quests in the game to easily keep pace with the required levels for the next region and the main quest. You just can't rely on only doing the main quests to get enough XP to reach the next main quest, though that's been standard for RPGs pretty much forever and Odyssey, like Origins before it, is very much an RPG rather then a pure stealth oriented game(which is probably why they've made these characters more warrior oriented then before). I suspect it's also to force you to explore and engage with the content beyond the main story-line(though the cultist quest will make you visit pretty much everywhere and do a number of side quests regardless to complete it). I mostly forgot there was even a store to buy XP boosters and resource packs because I was almost always on track through exploring and regular questing that I rarely had to worry about not hitting the level needed for the next main story quest, occasionally reminded by the occasional loading screen message. I'm not convinced that the progression was hobbled to push people to buy micro-transactions, at least not anymore then Origins or Syndicate(and neither of those games were accused of such things to the same degree).Odyssey is certainly longer(It took me longer to finish the main 3 quests in Odyssey then it did to finish the main game and both DLCs in Origins) and objectively bigger(even if the odyssey map is like 50% water) and maybe that's where people like Jim Sterling were getting this impression from. Maybe because the new take on the series(Witcher 3 like RPG with Soulsy-lite combat and looter elements) isn't as fresh as it was in origins so the flaws are more apparent.
I'm honestly not sure how to make it work better, other then removing the level gating but then you'd have to rework the entire leveling system and it's rather integral to the core gameplay much like it was in Origins. It's clear(to me anyway) that the game is level gated to control what parts of the world you explore in a certain order(notice how the levels scale up roughly in the same path as the plot takes you through the world) and also force you to engage with the side quests rather then just rushing the main story. That and the fact Ubisoft has been going down this road for quite a while with this series. I can remember the ships being leveled as far back as Black Flag and Syndicate was level gating the main missions and regions(though that was 10 levels rather then 50). Aside from the fact this is what ubisoft does now, where all the UBISOFT GAMEs now have leveled enemies and regions to control progress(based on the new Far Cry and Division 2). I honestly didn't mind the leveling so much because there was more then enough to do to keep the levels paced with the main missions(and by the end I was overleveled a bit with quite a lot left unfinished). It was honestly a little bit wierder how the scaling follows you up once you reach it and pass it, meaning that on the upside, enemies never become boring one hit kills(which happened if/when you went back to earlier parts of Origins) but it also means you have to keep upgrading or finding new gear(and while you practically trip over new gear everywhere, upgrading, especially the legendary equipment, is fucking expensive) to keep pace.
I still have mixed feelings about the looter direction the new games have taken. Origins wasn't too bad in this regard, where you got new weapons and resources to either upgrade those weapons or a small category of armor/pouches but here you have armor but now there's armor sets that come in 5 different pieces, all of which have different damage values and bonuses associated with different types of play(Assassin,Warrior or Hunter) and you practically trip over the damn stuff all over the place but it does add the feeling of being at the mercy of numbers a lot. I found an option in the game menu that turns off the little numbers in combat and it helped immersion a fair bit but I still have to pay attention to them a little when looking a new gear. If anything, I'd prefer assassination kills be instant kills 100% of the time like they used to be(without specializing gear and the assassin tree), but I do appreciate the ability to build around the play-style you want to play(and unlike in Origins, playing full assassin is viable this time around)
So the progression/looter aspect of the game isn't really my favorite thing in the world along with the level gating, I have to remind myself of the previous AC games and the notorious amount of padding that has existed in this series over the years. The City Conquests, the Collect-a-thons that do nothing useful, the tailing missions, the eavesdropping missions, tower defense games, etc. I playing Origins/Odyssey, I'd forgotten about instant fail states in various missions and the "full sync" objectives, and honestly, I can't say I miss them either. I was shocked in one mission where I failed it where my escorted target got himself killed, because it just hadn't happened so far. For every thing the old games did better, I can think of at least one thing they did worse as well and ways all of them could be improved. The fact I'm still interested 110 hours later means something, because most games I start really petering out around the 40 hour mark and by the 50 hour mark, if I'm not done, I'm usually looking for the endgame. So I have to admit, despite how I would have done things differently, it's still a worthy entry to me. Odyssey feels like it reinforces a lot of the good parts about Origins while adding some new stuff to the mix, though despite it's world it feels like it loses something as well. While the writing is generally good most of the time, it felt like the side quests in Origins felt more interesting then the average side quest in Odyssey ,or maybe had more unique flavor. That might have been because Egypt isn't as well known to us as Greece is so everything in Origins felt more like part of another world in comparison. Still a number of the quest chains are worth following to see where they go.
Meta/Modern plot theorizing ahead
So as far as the Modern Day story/metaplot is concerned, we're apparently going somewhere but it's almost as vague as it was in Origins. By the end, Kassandra and Layla have found Atlantis(2500 years apart) and both taken possession of the Staff of Hermes after activating a machine at the gates(the purpose of which is still vague, but apparently locks the gate). Apparently Atlantis was the ISU Doomsday Archive/Library, meant to be stored/passed down forever, but one of the ISU(Aletheia). decided to hijack the system and leave a bunch of messages for whoever might find their way down there(including Kassandra, Layla and possibly the player). Notable things we've learned between Origins and Odyssey:
-Pyramids are somehow connected to all this bigtime, and the Abstergo logo apparently is a pyramid broken down and re-arraigned and this means something but what that is is a mystery.
-Layla or somebody else needs to figure out the true nature of reality and "WAKE UP" before it's too late, because another Apocalypse is coming and apparently coming soon. Desmond stopped the 2012 event(which apparently nobody still acknowledges ever happened so sure, why not?). Odyssey suggests this might have to do with simulation theory
-Aletheia makes some interesting comments in the Atlantis ending. One is that the ISU were obsessed with finding a vision of the future where nothing changes and another implies that somehow the ISU created the Catastrophe that destroyed themselves through their technology, like somehow the universe is reacting to their magical POE tech. Like the ISU were trying to use the POE to lock the universe into some kind of stasis, at least as far as their dominance is concerned and the universe apparently pushed back hard.
-For that matter, what did the ISU use the POE for? We know what humans ended up using them for but aside from using the apples to control humans(by showing them powerful illusions) most of them seem to exist so humans can fuck around with them long after they're dead.
-When Kassandra touches to pyramid at the end of the cult storyline, she gets a vision that says "It was never supposed to be like this", "Fix the mistakes of the past. Heal the Rift in the universe".
-Somehow the Staff of Hermes factors into all of this due to somehow allowing one to alter reality itself in some way.
So it's something, but I do find some of those quotes interesting, like there's something wrong with the universe and somehow the ISU are responsible. Their magic-like tech or their attempts to change the laws of the universe somehow succeeded in the worst possible way, bringing the catastrophe down on their heads(and almost again in 2012) and of course leads to the eternal assassin/templar war with created/fucked with history, which means that the universe either needs to be stablized somehow or there's gonna be some kind of Time Travel involved. I don't know and I doubt anyone does.
The other thing I've been tossing around in my mind is that they're gonna eventually reveal that the world of AC isn't real, but yet another simulation run by the ISU or by an unknown entity and the POE are basically cheats to break the laws of the simulation, and of course, the simulation is.....AC GAMES.Layla eventually realizes this truth, that "Nothing is true(because it's not real). Everything is Permitted(because you have the cheat codes via the ISU artifacts)" I really hope they don't go down this road but I wouldn't put it past ubisoft.It might also be one of those other myriad pieces of information or plot threads(like the EVE or JUNO thing) that never really gets resolved because it would endanger the possibilities for endless sequels.
Ok, I got that out of my system......I'm finally gonna talk about the First Blade DLC(you can all stop holding your breath)
Overall, the DLC is fairly good. The chance to meet Darius, the first assassin(that we know about anyway) and user of the hidden blade is pretty cool and he makes the appropriate impact. His story worked for me, between being an opposer of Tyrants betrayed to the Order of the Ancient(Yep, those guys again) by a friend and having to spend the rest of his life hiding and on the run was something that none of these games have really dealt with much. Normally the Assassins might be Hunted and "underground" but it never seems to be much of a detriment for very long, but rather a prelude to building themselves back up. In Darius's case, there was nothing to fall back on and unlike Connor and Ezio it became less "Build up the power base where the Templars weren't looking" and more "Stay the fuck out of sight and hope you're never noticed", and it's clearly been wearing on him.
On the opposite side, the Huntsman is an imposing villain and the Tempest cuts a notable presence when they do show up on screen. I also rather appreciate the fact that the Order of the Ancients/Templars finally has a decent justification for their actions. In this case, it's twofold: The Chaos and violence from the Peloponnesean war that the Cult has stoked has begun spilling over into Persia and the Order(who apparently controls the place) is not terribly happy about it and has decided to take matters into their own hands. It's also mentioned a couple time the Cult of Kosmos and the Order of the Ancients aren't on the best of terms with each other.
The justification is that the Order regard those with ISU blood and superhuman abilities(such as the Assassins) as being inherently dangerous, too dangerous to just run around unchecked doing their own thing(often killing people and breaking things). It's hard to argue that they're inherently wrong about this considering Kassandra and Alexios are both essentially people of mass destruction, able to best small armies by themselves and by the end of the game, likely the best Mercenary in Greece, the deadliest fighter in the arena, captain of one of the most dangerous ships in the Aegean and probably carrying around every piece of legendary armor and weaponry in the Ancient World(and leaving none for anyone else). And that's the one who wasn't highly placed in the Cult of Kosmos and was known as Deimos, the Greek word for Terror. Don't get me wrong, the Order are still a notable force of assholes who do awful things(send a bunch of people to kill you and then treat you like the jerk when you kill them in self defense), but for the first time since probably AC3, the Assholes actually have a point. It's just too bad that the (Proto)Templars having anything meaningful to say happens so rarely.
Now to the elephant in the room for the DLC. Early in the DLC, it's implied Kassandra is starting to look forward to a simpler life, perhaps settling down. Around the same time, you meet Darius and his Son(Daughter if you played Alexios) and before long, Kassandra and Natakas start getting friendly with each other fairly quickly and by the end of the 2nd episode, shack up in an abandoned house on a hill together, have some wine, some offscreen sex and then there's a timeskip where they have a baby boy of their own(though the game stretches this out for like 10 minutes while you run to the market for food without showing us the kid or even mentioning it because apparently it's meant to be a surprise). There was some controversy over this due to the game up to this point letting the relationships be optional and driven by player choice, especially since that meant some players had homosexual relationships only or none at all and now you were mandated by the storyline to fall in love and have a baby, which resulted in Ubisoft tweaking the storyline a bit due to the outcry.
Being aware of this going in, I can definitely see why people were upset and agree to an extent. I was annoyed by it due to it feeling very railroaded. The problem with the "This doesn't reflect how I played my character" aspect of it is a problem of the base game as well as the DLC in how shallow the romance system is. Unlike Mass Effect or other RPGs, there's very little hint of anything resembling deep relationships. Wether you were platonic with everyone, banged half the Aegean(because STDs and unwanted pregnancy won't be invented for another 2500 years) or just found that one person and brought them on your ship(such as Odessa or Roxanna), the game doesn't seem to care and barely acknowledges it. Mass effect, the closest alternative I can think of, developed the relationships over the entire game and more or less made you commit near the end to one person(if any), and even then you were constricted by the characters(Tali would never sleep with femshep, no matter how much many people would like it to be otherwise). Even Stardew Valley made you earn that progress with the romancable NPCs by appealing to their personalities and spending time with them(which, sure, still feels like you're just looking for the right combination of responses and gifts to fill hearts, but it works).
For me, it was that the game pretty much decided that Kassandra was gonna really fall for Dariuses kid and doesn't do much to earn that. Natakas comes across as being a nice guy but not much else and it's hard to see why you're supposed to care that much about him or why Kassandra likes him so much considering a lot of the other love interests are far more interesting then he is, especially considering the little amount of time you spend with him before they settle down for some wine and sexytime which leads to their baby being conceived. Maybe the female version Alexios falls for sells this better.
Eventually, Natakas gets killed, the baby is kidnapped, and after Kassandra finishes her roaring rampage of maternal revenge(because getting in between a mother and child is always a good idea), she goes into a fair bit of Mourning for Natakas. And while, as said before, I didn't really see what she sees in him, the fact she tries very hard to sell it helped salvage this somewhat, to the point I was getting feels over her loss. Admittedly, I was also affected by the fact at the end she sends Darius away with the child because to protect him from more Order coming after him in the future and as a father myself, I can only imagine having to never see my kid again in such a manner. Even the child being alive and presumably safe doesn't really change the fact they're gone forever. So to some extent the whole thing works, but only after some rough spots.
This all ends up setting up a direction connection to Origins, since it's revealed Darius ended up in Egypt with the baby, who eventually ended up being one of Aya's ancestors(and no doubt explaining how the hidden blade ended up there). And since Aya and Bayek ended up forming the Assassin Brotherhood, Kassandra and Darius end up being the distant Progenitors of the Assassins in spirit, if not in blood(though I'm pretty sure Aya wasn't a single line of descent either, so Kassandra/Darius's bloodline no doubt continues running through the Brotherhood all the way up to the present).
Still, another problem not really mentioned is the fact of how insulated the DLC is from the rest of the game from the main game. If you finished the Cult Storyline prior to starting the DLC, people refer to the Cult as if it's still active(Sure, there are a couple dudes still out there but all their important people are dead so it might as well not exist). Whatever family members you saved at the end of the family storyline won't be mentioned at all when Kassandra talks of settling down with Natakas and once the DLC is finished, neither Natakas or their son will ever be mentioned again and it feels kinda jarring. And of course, Order of the Ancients will never be mentioned outside of the DLC missions. Other games got away with this by having the DLC removed in time and/or space from the main game but in this case all the action takes place on the main map, though admittedly not in areas you did much in during the base game and it's more noticable.
Nitpicks and various thoughts
It took me a while to realize that the Death Confessions were absent this time around, especially after the big production numbers the ones in Origins were. Instead, they were replaced by the little bio screens for the varying cultists and maybe a note detailing their views found on their person.
In the First Blade DLC, Kassandra muses a few times how the Order from Persia knows about her. I'm kinda surprised by this. You need to be around level 30 to start the DLC, which is pretty close to being able to complete the family quest. By that point, you're not only a respected mercenary but half the people you talk to pretty much know who you are(or have heard of you) from the moment you meet them. Is it really so hard to believe her reputation hasn't spread as far as Persia considering how it's all over the Greek World at that point? However, on a related note, I appreciate the callbacks(Call Forwards?) to the Ezio games, which included Darius as a famous Assassin(and we finally get to meet the man) and the acknowledgement that Pythagoras was tied up in all of this somehow(In The Da Vinci DLC for brotherhood, Ezio and Da Vinci discover an ISU temple under Rome being studied by the Pythagoreans, and included a notable location coordination which would be the location of the Grand Temple from brotherhood).
There are a ton of things I could harp on it for not being true to history but I'm going to let it slide because it's hard to really hit a lot of these seriously when this is literally the same game where you can use a magic spear to kill the Minotaur in an alien ruin. That and this is going to be really long already. However, a couple things do irk me with this in mind. Notably how ISU ruins show up so often in this game it seems like it becomes more difficult to believe the Proto-Templars/Templars managed to keep all of this under wraps for the entirety of Human history. Some of those ruins are quite notable, like the ones on Lesbos and Boetia and can't easily be mistaken for anything natural and you'd think SOMEONE in history would have been writing about this stuff, perhaps drawing pictures of it. Apparently the Templars have some damn good camouflage netting at this disposal?
It's long been established that the ISU can more or less see the future, yet 2 of their ruins are in active volcanos(one of them being Atlantis). Which begs the question of WHY? Volcanoes exist on geological timescales and don't exactly need prescience to see where they are, but the ISU decided to plop their ruins down on them regardless because why the fuck not despite the inherent dangers of instabilities and eruptions. And there'e the fact the way to reach the gateway to Atlantis boggles the mind on how that's a feasible travel route or ever was one(and since we don't see an alternate route down there in the past, we have to assume the route between the surface door in the minion ruins and the huge antechamber below is how it's presumably supposed to look, plus or minus a few lava pits).
Finally,how exactly is Atlantis a myth already? To the best of my knowledge, the first mention of the idea in History was Plato, who would probably still be wearing diapers around this time(and wouldn't write his famous Atlantis as a social metaphor dialogues for quite a few decades yet) and yet, when Kassandra makes it to Atlantis halfway through the family storyline, she makes a comment about "So this is Atlantis!". I know it's a dumb thing to get worked up about but the fact it's not even mentioned before that(aside from the "Atlantaen" weapons you can find in your travels) but it's treated like it's common knowledge or something irks me. I'd be less annoyed if Barnabas or Herdotus brought it up beforehand(like, say, when they reached the island) since both are implied to have traveled a lot farther and longer then Kassandra have. Or some kind of justification how Socrates learned of it from Kassandra and presumably mentioned it to Plato years later. This shouldn't bug me, but it does, but I'll let it rest there before I lose my mind and whip out a chalkboard proving why this is incredibly wrong forever and somehow Obama is responsible.
Oh, and finally, that baby in the First Blade DLC is just weird looking. Not Eraserhead baby creepy but Sara Ryder from Andromeda "What's wrong with your face?" kinda creepy.
Since there's enough to discuss on its on, I'm gonna talk about Legacy of the first blade once I go over my thoughts for the base game. Especially since there's a rather big elephant in the room that I'm sure will spark a fair bit of conversation and I don't want that part getting buried in me whining about proper trireme combat and such.
First off, Greece is amazing. The way it feels both huge and accessible is a testament to how well the guys who make the world maps do their job It was one of the big joys in the game and was even more fun to wander around then Egypt in Origins. I'm going to admit straight out that I was probably willing to overlook quite a bit due to the game being set in Ancient Greece. The Ancient world is fairly underrepresented by video gaming and I've wanted something that allowed me to explore the Ancient World pretty much forever. Origins hit pretty hard because of that and Odyssey continues to keep my attention long past the point it might have otherwise because of this. Interestingly, the world depicted in Odyssey has more of a sense of myth and legend to it then other games. Aside from the well known aspect of the legendary beasts and the mythical monsters, there are examples scattered across the game world that hint at a wild, magical past. Massive statues of the gods, ruins of temples in the woods and under the waves, weapons and armor that claim to be those of famous Greek heroes, running across stone statues of centaurs in the woods in action pose and with no explanation whatsoever. Hell, the word Demi-god is thrown about at times to describe Kassandra and some of the dialogue choices have her embrace it. It all has a certain charm about it.
That being said, The world feels too big sometimes. While some of the stuff is amazing, there's about a million forts, outposts, bandit camps, caves, ruins, etc, etc. There's 12 legendary animals to slay(who are essentially optional boss fights), there's an Arena to fight through, there's a bunch of epic ships to fight and destroy on the seas, there's a bunch of islands and regions you probably will never see if you only play the family quest(though you will see them if you do the cult/Atlantis story-lines), there's 2 cyclopes which have no reason to exist other then to be extra boss fights and a bunch of tombs. It's kinda exhausting after a while, especially if you're trying to see everything. There's also the issue, for me anyway, that while I dug the grecian open world a lot, it didn't feel quite as amazing as Origins did. Maybe it's because Origins already did something similar, maybe it's because we already saw a fair bit of Greek culture/buildings in Origins so it doesn't feel as unique as it did before. Though I can see that the shared art assets and mechanics were how Odysseus was able to drop a year after Origins and feel a lot smoother around the edges(taking the Trireme missions from Origins and tweaking them a bit for Odyssey for example). Along similar lines, I liked the Tombs in Origins a lot, despite the flimsy justification for having so many just available to visit and Bayek being so cool with robbing them despite his strong religious views. Here they fixed some of those problems since it's implied Kassandra doesn't particularly care about violating tombs because money and a lot of them have walls you need to break first to reach the actual tomb part. That being said, while they're pretty, a lot of them aren't particularly interesting and it feels like a waster opportunity. Maybe it was because they were new in Origins it didn't bug me so much but I swear it felt like they were better designed there. Also a number of them had creepy ass looking ISU ruins below them hiding an ISU tape recording which helped add to the exotic feel. None of the Odyssey tombs had anything that interesting deep within them.
Kassandra(I played her and I'm gonna stick with that from here on out) unlike most of the other AC protagonists is notably a Mercenary, which gives you a degree of flexibility in her morals and help justify the new for this series dialogue choices, as well as being asked to do any number of errands and tasks for anyone and everyone(which kinda makes you feel like a handyman but anything for coin I guess). It's also supposed to allow you to fight for both sides in the war without getting called out for being a traitor(I'd imagine at least one side would get salty with you for fighting for them one day and against them the next after a while). Interestingly, this dynamic of Kassandra the Mithos/Mercenary who is based on a ship(a Trireme called the Andrestria) in that it essentially makes Kassandra a Classical era Pirate using a ship combat system fairly similar to that the Jackdaw used. In this light, Odyssey feels somewhat like a successor to Black Flag though admittedly with a fair bit of black flags elements cut down or stripped out(no fortress assaults or decision making when a ship is captured). OTOH, the game also doesn't have any insta-fail tailing or eavesdropping missions, thank god.
It's peculiarly interesting when remembering that Edward was a Pirate for 90% of black flag and only joins the Assassins formally near the end. Until that point he just happens to share some of the same goals(and notably disliking the Templars due to their authoritarian attitudes) but his big goal is to get paid, not unlike Kassandra. While Both Origins and this game take place before the Foundation of the Brotherhood(Bayek and Aya found the brotherhood pretty much at the end of Origins so Bayek technically isn't an assassin either), it doesn't change the fact that Bayek and whichever Spartan version of Big Boss you choose to play as are assassins in everything but name, though with a little more emphasis on mixed combat and a little less on sneaky murder because ancient times and warrior training.
The plot is generally good to decent for this type of game and while it rarely reaches any great highs, it holds together fairly well throughout. AC games tend to run into "cosmic deadline" syndrome a lot where the end tends to feel very rushed. Origins had a couple notable parts I've harped on where the game tended to constrict into plot tunnels(particularly near the end) which funneled the player from setpiece to boss fight(sometimes to another boss fight)without much ability to bypass enemies or use creative measures(especially the end of Origins, where you're stuck using Aya, who you can't develop her skills or upgrade her weapons, you're just dropped in a pit with the boss and told to go at it). Origins also did that weird thing near the end where 3 in-game years just kinda vanished in the last 20 or so minutes of the game whereas Odyssey seems to flow at a fairly steady pace(some rushing near the end is still noted, but not nearly as bad).
Odyssey is unique in the series in the fact that it broke the plot into 3 separate branches or pillars. The main Family plot, Kassandras Journey from Childhood and the loss of her Family to tracking their diaspora and ideally reuniting all of them, the Cult plot and the Atlantis Plot, which involves Mythological beasts and Atlantis. All of them have key pieces of the plot and there's a bit of interaction between the 3 but otherwise are more or less separate. Which feels like both an asset and a detriment as you can more or less jump back and forth between them as you want assuming you're strong(properly leveled) enough but it also means that all 3 plots more or less can't connect to each other most of the time. Ideally it would be better if all of these were better integrated together but you'd still have to have some kind of gating requirements and there'd still be the problem of the main plotline being very long. The Family plotline can be finished around level 35 or so(which in Origins was the level for the first DLC) but the Cultist Storyline is level gated all over the place(with the last few cultist being level 50) and while the Atlantis Storyline is a bit shorter, you're still restricted to level 40's and 50's to actually finish it(particularly with the last fight, who is damn tough even if you're at her level).
The Cultist story-line, while not terribly tight, was a nice way to keep those Assassination Skills sharp and it was kinda cool to have to find clues to find them out so I could hunt and kill them, not to mention it was a nice call back to AC2's Conspiracy Web(which had the FUCKING POPE at the center) and getting to the center does get you some kind of closure, even if it isn't great closure(The answer for why the Cult does what it does seems to be that somewhere along the way their little scheme to control Greece via the War turned into a giant clusterfuck that nobody was really controlling, that they went "Full Chaos"). The downside is that it does take a very LONG time to get there and some of them require some special triggers(completing certain quest chains, fighting in the arena, starting conquest battles, etc), though a couple I literally killed without realizing their cultist status and then got the "Confirm kill" prompt. The Atlantis Storyline is a bit more interesting and shorter, but it's also heavily level gated as endgame content and is really the only way to get some conclusion to Both Kassandra and Laylas story. Otherwise you basically "Discover Atlantis, go to Atlantis, Layla jumps back in the animus again" and unlike in Origins, she won't jump back out until the story dictates(yeah, Origins didn't have much to do in that cave of hers but at least you weren't constrained by the story).
The ability to romance numerous people from across the world feels shallow. While a couple people it feels like there's some chemistry going on there, a lot of them it feels like they boil down to "Pick the dialogue option with the little heart" and the person will practically jump into bed with the mithios. The fact that it's so easy to do this an nobody so much as mentions it(even if they join your crew) makes the miithos come across as a pick up artist, at least to me. The fact that you'll pretty much never interact with most of these people after that only reinforces this perception.
The Peloponnesian war makes a decent backdrop though beyond that seems to exist mostly for game-play purposes. Both the Spartans and Athenians(and their allies, who are just represented as being Spartans and Athenians respectively) are presented in game as being equally matched both on land and sea, in contrast to their historical disparity of Sparta having the superior Army and Athenians having an unmatched Navy, which is one of the reasons the war dragged on for 30 years, because the Spartans couldn't hit the Athenians at sea and the Athenians rather tried to face Sparta head on in a land battle(and Spartan Siege craft was apparently crap, so breaching the walls around Athens wasn't particularly viable for them). In game, the war ties together a number of mechanics, particularly the conquest battles which can be triggered when a province has been weakened enough(killing leaders, breaking into forts and stealing all their monies, burning war supplies, killing national leaders), but the conquest battles feel mostly unnecessary and kinda phoned in. They took the gang wars from syndicate and made them far less interesting and a hell of a lot longer. It's painfully clear Ubisoft doesn't know how to make land-based battles look remotely realistic which is why they always turn into giant melees. I think the last time I saw this series try to do land combat was in AC3 and it looked incredibly scripted, particularly during the bunker hill sequence.
Odyssey lets you fight for either side as a mercenary, but it effectively makes no difference. You can turn the entire map Red(Sparta) or Blue(Athens) and the war will rage on. The guards will be just as hostile if you piss them off. Even if you fought for the other side nine times out of ten, nobody will hold it against you when you decide to fight for them. It just changes the color of the uniforms of the soldiers(Granted, AC3 did something similar, where the American troops were just as likely to try to murder your ass as the British or French ones). Ironically, the plot missions will almost always have you siding with Sparta against Athens but you'll still be able to hang out with your Athenian friends without issue.
The game does feel a lot more open, For the most part, you're not locked into missions once you start them, proceed to objectives as you want and sometimes even accomplish multiple objectives at the same location(clearing a fort, killing a cultist and finishing a mission on the same trip). The fact Kassandra can climb almost ANYTHING helps this, even if it make some of the fortresses seem trival. Sure, you could try to sneak around the massive fort, or you could find the unguarded wall closest to the objective and climb over it(or jump from the nearby cliff). This openness works both for and against it, as noted above how there's less structure beyond the level gating aspect and some parts(such as the war) end up feeling less compelling as a result. Odyssey really seems to love it's rule of three. Namely, for any given quest, there will likely be 3 tasks or side quests required to be accomplished to proceed further. Even the main quests will on numerous occasions tell you to go to one of 3 different regions(and then the other two) and do the quest string there before proceeding. While it does offer a sense of choice, it's still essentially taking a linear narrative and just letting you mix up which objective you want to do first and while it's not a bad thing, it's relied up so often as to be predictable.
The game does have some noticeable improvements over Origins. The Phylakes(the roaming mini-bosses from Origins) were replaced with Mercenaries, which are generated(likely randomly) by the game as you explore and assigned to 9 tiers, of which you start at the bottom. Killing Mercs above you moves you up a spot while killing Mercs below you get you their gear and any experience but doesn't affect your rating. Moving up the tiers unlocks better rewards, often upgrade related. Like the Phylakes, they act as mini-bosses, but unlike the Phylakes, they aren't restricted to a specific area and aren't inherently hostile on sight. Rather, instead of desyncing you when you kill innocents, you get a bounty put on your head from committing crimes(killing guards, innocents, stealing, sinking ships, etc) which will eventually give you a wanted level(1 to 5), each of which will put a mercenary on your trail until the bounty is paid, the sponsor is killed or the wanted level just recedes on it's own. I was worried when I heard about this system prior to playing it, thinking it would be obnoxious. Rather, I ended up kinda having fun with it, since killing mercs moves you up the tiers faster and sometimes they could just be avoided. Other times it was annoying because it's clear they teleport to near your location when they're pull on the trail and they somehow know more or less where you're hiding at any given time. It's not so bad when you're moving around the countryside(especially when you can hide in the woods or summon a horse to get you away) but when you're infiltrating a fortress and a mercenary decides to keep patrolling in the same area you happen to be in(and they generally can't be stealth killed, unlike the guards), it's incredibly frustrating.
I also appreciated how Odyssey did a much better job of boss encounters. Origins had a bad habit of locking you in a room with a boss without warning and making you fight it out(especially with high ranking Order members) and having a number of optional fights which were basically war elephants in an arena(scattered over the map because reasons). Odyssey gives you the Legendary Animals in the "Daughters of Artemis" quest-line, which are bigger, tougher versions of regular animals and completely optional(and you can run away if you feel like it's not worth it) and the Mythological creatures from the Atlantis storyline(which are quasi optional) which are all tough(except for the Sphinx, because you don't fight her) Dark Soul-ish boss encounters with heavy damage and long health bars.
Despite the level gating in game, I didn't see it as being particularly grindy. There's more then enough activities and side quests in the game to easily keep pace with the required levels for the next region and the main quest. You just can't rely on only doing the main quests to get enough XP to reach the next main quest, though that's been standard for RPGs pretty much forever and Odyssey, like Origins before it, is very much an RPG rather then a pure stealth oriented game(which is probably why they've made these characters more warrior oriented then before). I suspect it's also to force you to explore and engage with the content beyond the main story-line(though the cultist quest will make you visit pretty much everywhere and do a number of side quests regardless to complete it). I mostly forgot there was even a store to buy XP boosters and resource packs because I was almost always on track through exploring and regular questing that I rarely had to worry about not hitting the level needed for the next main story quest, occasionally reminded by the occasional loading screen message. I'm not convinced that the progression was hobbled to push people to buy micro-transactions, at least not anymore then Origins or Syndicate(and neither of those games were accused of such things to the same degree).Odyssey is certainly longer(It took me longer to finish the main 3 quests in Odyssey then it did to finish the main game and both DLCs in Origins) and objectively bigger(even if the odyssey map is like 50% water) and maybe that's where people like Jim Sterling were getting this impression from. Maybe because the new take on the series(Witcher 3 like RPG with Soulsy-lite combat and looter elements) isn't as fresh as it was in origins so the flaws are more apparent.
I'm honestly not sure how to make it work better, other then removing the level gating but then you'd have to rework the entire leveling system and it's rather integral to the core gameplay much like it was in Origins. It's clear(to me anyway) that the game is level gated to control what parts of the world you explore in a certain order(notice how the levels scale up roughly in the same path as the plot takes you through the world) and also force you to engage with the side quests rather then just rushing the main story. That and the fact Ubisoft has been going down this road for quite a while with this series. I can remember the ships being leveled as far back as Black Flag and Syndicate was level gating the main missions and regions(though that was 10 levels rather then 50). Aside from the fact this is what ubisoft does now, where all the UBISOFT GAMEs now have leveled enemies and regions to control progress(based on the new Far Cry and Division 2). I honestly didn't mind the leveling so much because there was more then enough to do to keep the levels paced with the main missions(and by the end I was overleveled a bit with quite a lot left unfinished). It was honestly a little bit wierder how the scaling follows you up once you reach it and pass it, meaning that on the upside, enemies never become boring one hit kills(which happened if/when you went back to earlier parts of Origins) but it also means you have to keep upgrading or finding new gear(and while you practically trip over new gear everywhere, upgrading, especially the legendary equipment, is fucking expensive) to keep pace.
I still have mixed feelings about the looter direction the new games have taken. Origins wasn't too bad in this regard, where you got new weapons and resources to either upgrade those weapons or a small category of armor/pouches but here you have armor but now there's armor sets that come in 5 different pieces, all of which have different damage values and bonuses associated with different types of play(Assassin,Warrior or Hunter) and you practically trip over the damn stuff all over the place but it does add the feeling of being at the mercy of numbers a lot. I found an option in the game menu that turns off the little numbers in combat and it helped immersion a fair bit but I still have to pay attention to them a little when looking a new gear. If anything, I'd prefer assassination kills be instant kills 100% of the time like they used to be(without specializing gear and the assassin tree), but I do appreciate the ability to build around the play-style you want to play(and unlike in Origins, playing full assassin is viable this time around)
So the progression/looter aspect of the game isn't really my favorite thing in the world along with the level gating, I have to remind myself of the previous AC games and the notorious amount of padding that has existed in this series over the years. The City Conquests, the Collect-a-thons that do nothing useful, the tailing missions, the eavesdropping missions, tower defense games, etc. I playing Origins/Odyssey, I'd forgotten about instant fail states in various missions and the "full sync" objectives, and honestly, I can't say I miss them either. I was shocked in one mission where I failed it where my escorted target got himself killed, because it just hadn't happened so far. For every thing the old games did better, I can think of at least one thing they did worse as well and ways all of them could be improved. The fact I'm still interested 110 hours later means something, because most games I start really petering out around the 40 hour mark and by the 50 hour mark, if I'm not done, I'm usually looking for the endgame. So I have to admit, despite how I would have done things differently, it's still a worthy entry to me. Odyssey feels like it reinforces a lot of the good parts about Origins while adding some new stuff to the mix, though despite it's world it feels like it loses something as well. While the writing is generally good most of the time, it felt like the side quests in Origins felt more interesting then the average side quest in Odyssey ,or maybe had more unique flavor. That might have been because Egypt isn't as well known to us as Greece is so everything in Origins felt more like part of another world in comparison. Still a number of the quest chains are worth following to see where they go.
Meta/Modern plot theorizing ahead
So as far as the Modern Day story/metaplot is concerned, we're apparently going somewhere but it's almost as vague as it was in Origins. By the end, Kassandra and Layla have found Atlantis(2500 years apart) and both taken possession of the Staff of Hermes after activating a machine at the gates(the purpose of which is still vague, but apparently locks the gate). Apparently Atlantis was the ISU Doomsday Archive/Library, meant to be stored/passed down forever, but one of the ISU(Aletheia). decided to hijack the system and leave a bunch of messages for whoever might find their way down there(including Kassandra, Layla and possibly the player). Notable things we've learned between Origins and Odyssey:
-Pyramids are somehow connected to all this bigtime, and the Abstergo logo apparently is a pyramid broken down and re-arraigned and this means something but what that is is a mystery.
-Layla or somebody else needs to figure out the true nature of reality and "WAKE UP" before it's too late, because another Apocalypse is coming and apparently coming soon. Desmond stopped the 2012 event(which apparently nobody still acknowledges ever happened so sure, why not?). Odyssey suggests this might have to do with simulation theory
-Aletheia makes some interesting comments in the Atlantis ending. One is that the ISU were obsessed with finding a vision of the future where nothing changes and another implies that somehow the ISU created the Catastrophe that destroyed themselves through their technology, like somehow the universe is reacting to their magical POE tech. Like the ISU were trying to use the POE to lock the universe into some kind of stasis, at least as far as their dominance is concerned and the universe apparently pushed back hard.
-For that matter, what did the ISU use the POE for? We know what humans ended up using them for but aside from using the apples to control humans(by showing them powerful illusions) most of them seem to exist so humans can fuck around with them long after they're dead.
-When Kassandra touches to pyramid at the end of the cult storyline, she gets a vision that says "It was never supposed to be like this", "Fix the mistakes of the past. Heal the Rift in the universe".
-Somehow the Staff of Hermes factors into all of this due to somehow allowing one to alter reality itself in some way.
So it's something, but I do find some of those quotes interesting, like there's something wrong with the universe and somehow the ISU are responsible. Their magic-like tech or their attempts to change the laws of the universe somehow succeeded in the worst possible way, bringing the catastrophe down on their heads(and almost again in 2012) and of course leads to the eternal assassin/templar war with created/fucked with history, which means that the universe either needs to be stablized somehow or there's gonna be some kind of Time Travel involved. I don't know and I doubt anyone does.
The other thing I've been tossing around in my mind is that they're gonna eventually reveal that the world of AC isn't real, but yet another simulation run by the ISU or by an unknown entity and the POE are basically cheats to break the laws of the simulation, and of course, the simulation is.....AC GAMES.Layla eventually realizes this truth, that "Nothing is true(because it's not real). Everything is Permitted(because you have the cheat codes via the ISU artifacts)" I really hope they don't go down this road but I wouldn't put it past ubisoft.It might also be one of those other myriad pieces of information or plot threads(like the EVE or JUNO thing) that never really gets resolved because it would endanger the possibilities for endless sequels.
Ok, I got that out of my system......I'm finally gonna talk about the First Blade DLC(you can all stop holding your breath)
Overall, the DLC is fairly good. The chance to meet Darius, the first assassin(that we know about anyway) and user of the hidden blade is pretty cool and he makes the appropriate impact. His story worked for me, between being an opposer of Tyrants betrayed to the Order of the Ancient(Yep, those guys again) by a friend and having to spend the rest of his life hiding and on the run was something that none of these games have really dealt with much. Normally the Assassins might be Hunted and "underground" but it never seems to be much of a detriment for very long, but rather a prelude to building themselves back up. In Darius's case, there was nothing to fall back on and unlike Connor and Ezio it became less "Build up the power base where the Templars weren't looking" and more "Stay the fuck out of sight and hope you're never noticed", and it's clearly been wearing on him.
On the opposite side, the Huntsman is an imposing villain and the Tempest cuts a notable presence when they do show up on screen. I also rather appreciate the fact that the Order of the Ancients/Templars finally has a decent justification for their actions. In this case, it's twofold: The Chaos and violence from the Peloponnesean war that the Cult has stoked has begun spilling over into Persia and the Order(who apparently controls the place) is not terribly happy about it and has decided to take matters into their own hands. It's also mentioned a couple time the Cult of Kosmos and the Order of the Ancients aren't on the best of terms with each other.
The justification is that the Order regard those with ISU blood and superhuman abilities(such as the Assassins) as being inherently dangerous, too dangerous to just run around unchecked doing their own thing(often killing people and breaking things). It's hard to argue that they're inherently wrong about this considering Kassandra and Alexios are both essentially people of mass destruction, able to best small armies by themselves and by the end of the game, likely the best Mercenary in Greece, the deadliest fighter in the arena, captain of one of the most dangerous ships in the Aegean and probably carrying around every piece of legendary armor and weaponry in the Ancient World(and leaving none for anyone else). And that's the one who wasn't highly placed in the Cult of Kosmos and was known as Deimos, the Greek word for Terror. Don't get me wrong, the Order are still a notable force of assholes who do awful things(send a bunch of people to kill you and then treat you like the jerk when you kill them in self defense), but for the first time since probably AC3, the Assholes actually have a point. It's just too bad that the (Proto)Templars having anything meaningful to say happens so rarely.
Now to the elephant in the room for the DLC. Early in the DLC, it's implied Kassandra is starting to look forward to a simpler life, perhaps settling down. Around the same time, you meet Darius and his Son(Daughter if you played Alexios) and before long, Kassandra and Natakas start getting friendly with each other fairly quickly and by the end of the 2nd episode, shack up in an abandoned house on a hill together, have some wine, some offscreen sex and then there's a timeskip where they have a baby boy of their own(though the game stretches this out for like 10 minutes while you run to the market for food without showing us the kid or even mentioning it because apparently it's meant to be a surprise). There was some controversy over this due to the game up to this point letting the relationships be optional and driven by player choice, especially since that meant some players had homosexual relationships only or none at all and now you were mandated by the storyline to fall in love and have a baby, which resulted in Ubisoft tweaking the storyline a bit due to the outcry.
Being aware of this going in, I can definitely see why people were upset and agree to an extent. I was annoyed by it due to it feeling very railroaded. The problem with the "This doesn't reflect how I played my character" aspect of it is a problem of the base game as well as the DLC in how shallow the romance system is. Unlike Mass Effect or other RPGs, there's very little hint of anything resembling deep relationships. Wether you were platonic with everyone, banged half the Aegean(because STDs and unwanted pregnancy won't be invented for another 2500 years) or just found that one person and brought them on your ship(such as Odessa or Roxanna), the game doesn't seem to care and barely acknowledges it. Mass effect, the closest alternative I can think of, developed the relationships over the entire game and more or less made you commit near the end to one person(if any), and even then you were constricted by the characters(Tali would never sleep with femshep, no matter how much many people would like it to be otherwise). Even Stardew Valley made you earn that progress with the romancable NPCs by appealing to their personalities and spending time with them(which, sure, still feels like you're just looking for the right combination of responses and gifts to fill hearts, but it works).
For me, it was that the game pretty much decided that Kassandra was gonna really fall for Dariuses kid and doesn't do much to earn that. Natakas comes across as being a nice guy but not much else and it's hard to see why you're supposed to care that much about him or why Kassandra likes him so much considering a lot of the other love interests are far more interesting then he is, especially considering the little amount of time you spend with him before they settle down for some wine and sexytime which leads to their baby being conceived. Maybe the female version Alexios falls for sells this better.
Eventually, Natakas gets killed, the baby is kidnapped, and after Kassandra finishes her roaring rampage of maternal revenge(because getting in between a mother and child is always a good idea), she goes into a fair bit of Mourning for Natakas. And while, as said before, I didn't really see what she sees in him, the fact she tries very hard to sell it helped salvage this somewhat, to the point I was getting feels over her loss. Admittedly, I was also affected by the fact at the end she sends Darius away with the child because to protect him from more Order coming after him in the future and as a father myself, I can only imagine having to never see my kid again in such a manner. Even the child being alive and presumably safe doesn't really change the fact they're gone forever. So to some extent the whole thing works, but only after some rough spots.
This all ends up setting up a direction connection to Origins, since it's revealed Darius ended up in Egypt with the baby, who eventually ended up being one of Aya's ancestors(and no doubt explaining how the hidden blade ended up there). And since Aya and Bayek ended up forming the Assassin Brotherhood, Kassandra and Darius end up being the distant Progenitors of the Assassins in spirit, if not in blood(though I'm pretty sure Aya wasn't a single line of descent either, so Kassandra/Darius's bloodline no doubt continues running through the Brotherhood all the way up to the present).
Still, another problem not really mentioned is the fact of how insulated the DLC is from the rest of the game from the main game. If you finished the Cult Storyline prior to starting the DLC, people refer to the Cult as if it's still active(Sure, there are a couple dudes still out there but all their important people are dead so it might as well not exist). Whatever family members you saved at the end of the family storyline won't be mentioned at all when Kassandra talks of settling down with Natakas and once the DLC is finished, neither Natakas or their son will ever be mentioned again and it feels kinda jarring. And of course, Order of the Ancients will never be mentioned outside of the DLC missions. Other games got away with this by having the DLC removed in time and/or space from the main game but in this case all the action takes place on the main map, though admittedly not in areas you did much in during the base game and it's more noticable.
Nitpicks and various thoughts
It took me a while to realize that the Death Confessions were absent this time around, especially after the big production numbers the ones in Origins were. Instead, they were replaced by the little bio screens for the varying cultists and maybe a note detailing their views found on their person.
In the First Blade DLC, Kassandra muses a few times how the Order from Persia knows about her. I'm kinda surprised by this. You need to be around level 30 to start the DLC, which is pretty close to being able to complete the family quest. By that point, you're not only a respected mercenary but half the people you talk to pretty much know who you are(or have heard of you) from the moment you meet them. Is it really so hard to believe her reputation hasn't spread as far as Persia considering how it's all over the Greek World at that point? However, on a related note, I appreciate the callbacks(Call Forwards?) to the Ezio games, which included Darius as a famous Assassin(and we finally get to meet the man) and the acknowledgement that Pythagoras was tied up in all of this somehow(In The Da Vinci DLC for brotherhood, Ezio and Da Vinci discover an ISU temple under Rome being studied by the Pythagoreans, and included a notable location coordination which would be the location of the Grand Temple from brotherhood).
There are a ton of things I could harp on it for not being true to history but I'm going to let it slide because it's hard to really hit a lot of these seriously when this is literally the same game where you can use a magic spear to kill the Minotaur in an alien ruin. That and this is going to be really long already. However, a couple things do irk me with this in mind. Notably how ISU ruins show up so often in this game it seems like it becomes more difficult to believe the Proto-Templars/Templars managed to keep all of this under wraps for the entirety of Human history. Some of those ruins are quite notable, like the ones on Lesbos and Boetia and can't easily be mistaken for anything natural and you'd think SOMEONE in history would have been writing about this stuff, perhaps drawing pictures of it. Apparently the Templars have some damn good camouflage netting at this disposal?
It's long been established that the ISU can more or less see the future, yet 2 of their ruins are in active volcanos(one of them being Atlantis). Which begs the question of WHY? Volcanoes exist on geological timescales and don't exactly need prescience to see where they are, but the ISU decided to plop their ruins down on them regardless because why the fuck not despite the inherent dangers of instabilities and eruptions. And there'e the fact the way to reach the gateway to Atlantis boggles the mind on how that's a feasible travel route or ever was one(and since we don't see an alternate route down there in the past, we have to assume the route between the surface door in the minion ruins and the huge antechamber below is how it's presumably supposed to look, plus or minus a few lava pits).
Finally,how exactly is Atlantis a myth already? To the best of my knowledge, the first mention of the idea in History was Plato, who would probably still be wearing diapers around this time(and wouldn't write his famous Atlantis as a social metaphor dialogues for quite a few decades yet) and yet, when Kassandra makes it to Atlantis halfway through the family storyline, she makes a comment about "So this is Atlantis!". I know it's a dumb thing to get worked up about but the fact it's not even mentioned before that(aside from the "Atlantaen" weapons you can find in your travels) but it's treated like it's common knowledge or something irks me. I'd be less annoyed if Barnabas or Herdotus brought it up beforehand(like, say, when they reached the island) since both are implied to have traveled a lot farther and longer then Kassandra have. Or some kind of justification how Socrates learned of it from Kassandra and presumably mentioned it to Plato years later. This shouldn't bug me, but it does, but I'll let it rest there before I lose my mind and whip out a chalkboard proving why this is incredibly wrong forever and somehow Obama is responsible.
Oh, and finally, that baby in the First Blade DLC is just weird looking. Not Eraserhead baby creepy but Sara Ryder from Andromeda "What's wrong with your face?" kinda creepy.
