Quite a few long running series have decided to reinvent themselves as halfway RPGs over the last few years. Breath of the Wild did it for Zelda. God of War did it for, er, God of War. And Assassin’s Creed Origins did it for Assassin’s Creed, with the upcoming Odyssey looking to double down on those RPG elements even further.
This is by design, as it turns out. Apparently, the development team explicitly wanted to make the game a full blown RPG- so much so, that it was a primary priority for them during development.
“[One of our priorities was] making [Assassin’s Creed Odyssey] into full-on RPG,” game director Scott Philips told GameReactor at Gamescom. “So progression, pushing that beyond what Assassin’s Creed Origins did, giving you multiple pathways to progress. We’ve got naval as well, so you’ve got seamless open-world naval where you can progress your ship and upgrade that, you’ve got your character where you’re getting new gear, you can engrave that gear with special perks to make it your playstyle, so choice gets interwoven into that.”
“You’ve got abilities which sort of mix up the combat and give you a lot of new options within the fight,” Philips continued. “So you’ve got the same core basic fights as Assassin’s Creed Origins, but we’ve improved it an additionally added on these abilities which you have to build up adrenalin before you spend adrenalin on an ability within the combat. It’s really mixed up the combat and made it into a much stronger overall RPG experience with the choice sort of combined into it.”
On the whole, I really enjoy these hybrid RPG style games, so I have no issues with Assassin’s Creed becoming more of one, too. It seems like the development team was super committed to the whole idea of choices and consequences, and those shaping the central playing experience, which is ideally suited to an RPG- so, you know, why not double down on that?
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey launches on Xbox One, PS4, and PC on October 5.