Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has been teased for weeks leading into Ubisoft’s E3 2018 conference, but the company took time today to detail the upcoming game in full — and according to its own agenda.
That means we saw plenty of gameplay for the first time. Ubisoft will again take the stealth-action series to ancient times: ancient Greece, to be precise. Just as early leaks and hints suggested, Ubisoft will send players to the Greco-Roman era.
Players will be able to choose their protagonist, whom they’ll play as for the whole game. They’ll play as either Alexios or Kassandra, two warriors traversing a picturesque, if war-torn, country.
Alexios and Kassandra “share the bloodline of a legendary Spartan hero,” Ubisoft said during the conference. We then saw another trailer that introduced us to the characters’ backstories. Both Alexios and Kassandra are bequeathed the broken sphere of Leonides, a legendary weapon that makes them especially powerful. From then on, each character makes choices that define their adventure going forward.
Much of that adventure will involve sailing, something players of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag may appreciate. There are grandiose ship battles, including the ability to destroy other ships with your own.
Just as much of the game will include donning armor, shields and swords to take on enemy armies on land. These are large forces that players use traditional Assassin’s Creed abilities to help defeat, like scaling tall buildings for surprise attacks from on high and calling on the history of other assassins to draw strength.
There’s also horseback riding and swimming, as well as partying and seemingly some romance. (This is ancient Greece, after all.) But for the most part, Ubisoft is presenting Assassin’s Creed Odyssey as a dramatic tale of love and loss, war and peace ... and at least one fight against a bear.
At the tail-end of the conference, Ubisoft showed an extended gameplay sequence that featured ship-based combat. Kassandra walks through Mykonos City, where she’s sent to go kill a rogue Spartan. The mission is called “Trouble in Paradise,” and Kassandra wields a sword to take down another soldier named Mateos the Invincible. Check out the demo below.
This is Ubisoft’s second swing at transporting Assassin’s Creed to the truly old world. Assassin’s Creed Origins, which launched last November, took place in Egypt. Just like that game, Odyssey includes three skill trees where players can unblock new abilities once they level up.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey will launch Oct. 5, 2018.
You can watch 40 minutes of gameplay from Assassins’ Creed Odyssey on our YouTube channel.
