Kept you waiting, huh?
So it's been a month and a half and that means it's time for episode 2 of Assassins Creed Odysseys Fate of Atlantis DLC: The Torment of Hades. As we last left off, Kassandra had pissed off Persephone, been kicked down a pit into Hades...realm(IIRC, Hades is the name of the god, not the realm) and faced with Cerberus. Then the story cut out, Layla beat up some Templar goons and was told to cool it for a bit while the animus got fixed, which lead to Kassandra being booted back on the world map in Greece.
Now that the 2nd DLC is out, once again Kassandra is summoned to Atlantis, asked if she's ready to go back in, which leads to Layla being told everything is fixed, with then cuts to Kassandra back at the bottom of the pit she was kicked into(well, an arena with open sky above in Hades, because the underworld be weird like that) and once again facing the big 3 headed guard dog. One rather challenging boss fight later(Cerberus does not disappoint), Hades shows up, admonishes Kassandra for killing his dog and then explaining that she owes him for this. That and apparently Cerberus was apparently the only thing guarding the gates of Hades and without him/her/it, the dead are trying to escape from not only the land of the dead, but the really crappy hell-like part known as Tartarus as well. Kassandras job is to help seal the rifts leading to Tartarus and find 4 guardians to watch the gates of Hades for eternity to make sure none of the dead try to sneak back to the land of the living, which would be bad(The exact words being something like "The walls between the worlds of the living and the dead would collapse").
How exactly the whole Cerberus thing worked is rather unclear and confusing. In Elysium, Ros was just this cute dog who hung around Persephone all the time but you'd occasionally see it wandering around on it's own. It was implied at the end of the last episode, Persephone threw one of the corrupted transformation/Olympos apples(heavily implied to work the same way the others in the game did, not just on dogs but on humans as well) into Hades, Ros followed and when Kassandra landed from her fall, Ros had become Cerberus the hell hound, who Kassandra promptly killed. And yet, Hades implied Cerberus was the one thing keeping the dead in line and with it gone, shit was breaking loose down there. Maybe time is really wonky and there was a much longer time passage between Ros going in and Kassandra following? It is the afterlife and that shit is weird anyway. However, one of the loading screen cards outright says Ros was Cerberus was the entire time, so maybe Ros follows Persephone between Hades and Elysium when they do the winter trips? Maybe Ros/Cerberus has the weird ability to Bilocate, that is, the ability to be in two places at the same time? Or maybe Cerberus was able to keep the dead in line as Ros through sheer reputation alone and word just travels incredibly fast in the underworld, so when Cerberus was killed, the dead decided to start making their break for it? I have no idea and I'm not sure I should be thinking too hard about this considering.
Moving on, Torment 's main goal tasks you with finding said 4 guardians of the underworld and convincing them to go do their duty. It turns out that said guardians are famous Greek Heros of Myth and Legend: Perseus, Heracles, Achilles and Agamemnon. It turns out none of them are interested in going with you without a fight, so it essentially ends up being 4 interesting boss battles, each of which having their particular fight mechanics, ending with said hero deciding to go on guard duty, after which your ability to interact with them ends. You can go to the gates and see them guarding them but that's it, so really it just ends up be being boss battles with famous names and some variety, so a bit of a missed potential.
With that out the way, as usual, the map for Hades looks great and manages to look like a combination of how the Greek underworld is presumed to have looked(There's a sun eternally hanging on the western horizon that gives off no heat), with some of the more stereotypical features of Hell(including lava and chains). There's also the curious feature of Tartarus, which is at one point shown to be a bottomless pit, but next to that is a walled city with a massive tower in it which is also called Tartarus(but acts as a fort with a boss arena in the tower).
There are also the Tartarus Rifts and Tartarus Veils, which act as an interesting gameplay mechanics but how they actually relate to Tartarus as a place is unclear. The Veils are basically the fog gates from the Souls series, but can only be crossed wearing a special armor set found in the DLC and essentially gate off parts of the map. The Rifts, OTOH, are glowing circles which are protected by glowing enemies, who can hurt you but you can't hurt them. If you reach and enter a rift, you can see and fight the enemies normally, but your max health is cut in half and you get to hear creepy whispering. Killing the enemies seals the rift and grants an ability point, not to mention that sealing rifts is required to complete some locations. The only time it gets tricky is when there are two rifts in the same area, since you can only activate one rift at a time and you're vulnerable to the enemies associated with the one you aren't connected to at the moment.
Being the main part of the Greek underworld where the average person was supposed to have gone to when they eventually shuffled off the mortal coil, Kassandra ends up bumping into a lot more people she met during the course of the main game. A fair number of which are people she killed, mostly from the Cult of Kosmos(and who are not happy to see her again) and being Assassins Creed, gives her the opportunity to kill them again. It's unclear what happens in the underworld if you die there. Presumably they respawn elsewhere, perhaps they go to Tartarus, but it's never addressed. These characters end up filling out a new "Mercenary menu" designed just for the underworld, and luckily only 3 tiers, including the legendary heroes. Some of these guys will actually be taken down during some of the sidequests and killing some of them will reveal where the Legendary Heros are, somewhat like the cultist system in the main game.
Probably the most notable part of the DLC from a non-gameplay perspective are some of the sidequests. Both Phiobe and Brasidas end making a reappearance again and are the stars of their own quest chains, both of which are worth playing during while in Hades. Phiobes ended up being particularly moving and probably worth the DLC right there.
When all of the gate guards have been recruited, you're given a new quest and told in no uncertain terms that going to see Hades will end the DLC. Not surprisingly, going to see him reveals he's played you(An ISU/God being a dick, imagine that) and invites Kassandra to stay in his realm forever. This kicks off a particularly tough boss battle, which is definitely one of the most difficult ones in the game, probably up there with Medusa if not harder.
Besting Hades leads to an interesting cliffhanger, mostly for the possible implications. Hades says "No matter where you go, you're a prisoner" and the sky starts flashing, briefly revealing the illusion of the simulation that is the underworld, but also flashing between Kassandra and Layla. It kicks back out to Atlantis, where Victoria pulls Layla out again, tells her that she's going too far in and tries to take the staff away from her, citing she's succumbing to the bleeding effect. After a few minutes of back and forth, Layla cold cocks Victoria with the staff, knocking her out(probably) before realizing what she'd done. Alethia shows up and starts showing her disappointment, outright saying there's been a mistake and she doesn't think Layla is ready to hold the staff and may not be the Heir of Memories after all. And then it kicks back to Kassandra in the main game again.
Before I go down the rabbit hole on the ending, the whole transition between DLC segments is confusing and annoying. I know it's part of the issue of getting what's supposed to be one story in chunks, but right now we've got this whole thing of "Kassandra/Layla go into Atlantis, go into the simulation, go through Elysium, get kicked into Hades, cut back to Atlantis, cut back to main game, continue when ready in Atlantis, which pops back to Layla, then back to Kassandra in Hades and now that Hades is done, back to Atlantis, and back to Kassandra on the world map. There's a lot of back and forth there and the fact Layla/Kassandra apparently gets to roam around again in Greece before picking up exactly where they left off in the underworld simulation is just jarring. I do have to wonder if, playing all of these episodes together skips you getting booted back to the main Greek world and just continues straight to the next part of the dlc(with the option to go back to the main game via the portal).
With that out of the way, a couple things stick out to me about the ending sequence. Much like Persephone using a corrupted Apple/POE to turn Ros into Cerberus, Hades outright seems to understand the nature of the world he's in as a simulation. Which means the ISU/Gods shown are a bit more self aware as programs or they're digitized versions of real ISU from 70,000 years prior.
There's also the fact that the underworld flickers/flashes exposing the illusion of it, but Kassandra and Layla flicker and flash between each other at the same moment.This might be just a matter of Layla sharing the memories and thus visual artistic license for the bleeding effect, or it's supposed to be a hint that Layla's world isn't real either. Hades did say "You're still a prisoner" and it wouldn't be the first time that an ISU was talking through the historical person to the person in the animus AKA he's talking to Layla through Kassandra. It's possible that he was referring to her fate as the keeper of the staff and heir of memories as well, though.
It strikes me as similar to that famous moment at the end of AC2 when Minerva was really speaking to Desmond through Ezio the whole time, and it feels like her clocking Victoria is supposed to be a call back to Desmond stabbing Lucy under the influence of the apple/Juno, so I keep getting the feeling Ubisoft is setting us up for another "mind blown" moment like those.
Origins kept hinting reality was a code that even an ISU couldn't seem to alter, but they could read it well enough with their time matrix thingamigger, at least well enough to record 2 sided conversations 70,000 years ahead of time that come across as live discussions. However, there have since been hints that the ISU were the ones who unbalanced the universes "nodes" somehow and caused their own demise, and while humanity avoided one of those, another one is incoming. Odyssey explicitly referenced simulation theory AKA we're all really in the matrix in one of the Layla Emails.
Basically, I keep thinking this is all somehow leading into the revelation that the AC Modern Day is and has always been a simulation, like a higher layer of the animus. If I really wanted to go out on a limb, I'd say they're gonna go further and say it's an ISU simulation from 70,000 years ago, somehow similar to the time matrix, because WHAT A TWIST! No, I don't know what the point of that would be, other then if you're gonna go for simulation theory, might as well tie it into something that'a already established, and that way they can handwave all the ways the Modern Day stuff and historical stuff doesn't quite sync up(beyond lazy world building) and why the POE are fucking magic.
I know I'm reaching a bit here but this series is honestly built for random theorizing, especially as many plot elements and mcguffins scattered throughout the series, not to mention just the frankly bizarre ISU stuff we still know so little about, probably because the writers are too afraid to develop it too much, but creating a minefield of inconsistencies all over the place.
Anyway, Conspiracy Crazytime aside, it's also possible they're setting up Layla to be the new threat to the series, an person who has the powers of the Staff but also has shown shes becoming unbalanced by it. Not that I really cared for Victoria(or really knew who she was, because I didn't read the comics), cold cocking her comes across as a bit nutso just because she wanted Layla to cool it in the animus for a while and stop pushing her body/mind so hard. It's clear she's going off the deep end here and it's unlikely this is going to end well. And then there's the idea that Alethia is preparing to pull a Juno and is actually responsible for all of this from the get go, which means the staff is working exactly as intended.
Ironically, the whole thing about Layla spending way too much time in the animus might be a stealth commentary on how the game is just feels way too big and long a times. Hell, the DLC alone is 15-20 hours long at this point, not counting another likely 10 hours for the last episode.
Finally, wrapping up, apparently the game now has a story creator mode so players can make their own Odyssey sidequests, at least on a limited scale. I haven't played around with it but I've seen some footage of what people have made and it looks okay I guess. I'm kinda not really caring either way, but considering how long as this game is, lack of content isn't exactly something that this game has a problem with. If people are enjoying it, great for them and Ubisoft is at least supporting the game. However, I'm coming back for the final Lost Tales of Greece episodes(I think there's 2 left) and the last Fate of Atlantis episode and then I'm out. I'll pop in for the discovery tour at some point but yeah, I'm more or less ready to check out and be done with this. The whole thing is starting to feel a bit Live Servicey and I'm not playing this forever. I have other games for that.
