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Assassins Creed Odyssey is a gigantic, bloated, mtx ridden, beautiful mess…and i absolutely love it

Fess

Member
if I remember correctly, they stated female Eivor is canon, and male Eivor was created just so the player could choose for themselves how they wanted to play.
Yeah I understand their reason but for people living up here in viking land it’s like saying ”male Elizabeth” or ”male Victoria” etc, it’s instantly something you laugh at if you’ve ever met anyone called Eivor.
I’m not an expert or anything but ending the name with -vor means it’s a lady, Eivor, Gunvor, Majvor, etc. Add an -a after my name and I’d be a lady. The northern languages are highly gendered tbh.
But whatever, fast-forward 20 years and I’m sure we’ll have male Elizabeths and female Arthurs walking among us, but we’re not there yet.
 

Smiggs

Member
Yeah I understand their reason but for people living up here in viking land it’s like saying ”male Elizabeth” or ”male Victoria” etc, it’s instantly something you laugh at if you’ve ever met anyone called Eivor.
I’m not an expert or anything but ending the name with -vor means it’s a lady, Eivor, Gunvor, Majvor, etc. Add an -a after my name and I’d be a lady. The northern languages are highly gendered tbh.
But whatever, fast-forward 20 years and I’m sure we’ll have male Elizabeths and female Arthurs walking among us, but we’re not there yet.
You'll have to excuse my ignorance of the word then, I am American and it comes naturally to a lot of us 🤣
 
Agree!!

I’m such an old school AC gamer. I didn’t touch anything post-AC3.

Decided to play Odyssey (as Kasssandra of course) and I fucking love it!!

Tried giving Valhalla and the others a go but just….no.

EDIT: I recommend playing the DLC’s as well, especially the fate of Atlantis. Some of the level design, especially in places like Elysium is breathtakingly beautiful.
 
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Agree!!

I’m such an old school AC gamer. I didn’t touch anything post-AC3.

Decided to play Odyssey (as Kasssandra of course) and I fucking love it!!

Tried giving Valhalla and the others a go but just….no.

EDIT: I recommend playing the DLC’s as well, especially the fate of Atlantis. Some of the level design, especially in places like Elysium is breathtakingly beautiful.

Black Flag was really good. I'd recommend checking it out at some point.
 

danklord

Gold Member
This and Black Flag are the only AC games I've ever finished. Something about Odyssey makes it particularly good over Valhalla and Origins, but I've never been able to put my finger on it. It could be Kassandra, how the other characters are written, or just the appealing setting -- I'm not sure, but they nailed it. Unfortunately, my favorite questline, Myths and Minotaurs, happens too late in the game. I bet most gamers never reach it.
 
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Dr. Claus

Banned
Please rewatch the video, then go read actual Greek philosophers and Greek historians. That is by no means a fact. Women did not have free reign and they were treated *very* differently in Sparta vs Athens.
  • The Aspasia was known as a "hataera", an ancient Greek courtesan or concubine, especially one of a special class of cultivated female companions. They were also a metic, a foreign resident of Athens, one who did not have citizen rights in their Greek city-state of residence.
    • Being what she was, she was free of the legal constraints that normally bound women to their homes in Ancient Athens. Therefore she was able to interact in social gatherings that were normally forbidden for most Athenian women.
  • The vast majority of women were not frontline fighters, rarely would there ever be a women in a skirmish situation. Their roles were to raise children and tend to the household.
  • The Greek World was not as "diverse" as is portrayed in the game. Indo-europeans brought in the language. The Greek people were and still are a mix of those indo-european migrations and older indigenous groups (that were still fair of skin). The Pelasgians were most likely the original indigenous group in the area. They didn't have darker skin tone like Dravidian people found in the southern and eastern ends of Africa.
    • Due to climatological sciences, we know that since the end of the ice age the Mediterraneans did not have high UV levels that would introduce evolutionary pressure to increase melanin levels within the Pelasgians. (A Eruopean Population in Minoan Bronze Age Crete, look it up via Scholar.Google).
  • Spartans were ancient Eugensists who killed any who they thought were "weak". They made clear demarcations between themselves and the other greeks. They did not give them citizenship or equal rights.
  • Ancient Greece had clear issues with race.
    • Xenophanes - "Our gods have flat noses and black skins, say the ethiopians. The Thracians say our gods have red hair and hazel eyes."
    • Aethiopia literally means "The Land of Burnt Faces"
    • Greece once had a huge Empire and ruled over multiple other groups. This lead to those groups speaking Greek - however that does not mean that they were anymore ethnically greek just as Japanese who speak English are British.
    • Hippocrates himself had believed that climate, geography, and location lead to the physical and mental characteristics of people:
      • "Concerning the listlessness and the cowardice of peoples, the seasons are especially the cause why asians are less martial than the europeans and more tame in their character, for making no dramatic shift either to the hot nor to the cold, their seasons are temperate." | "For there are no mental disturbances nor strong change of the body, from which it is more likely that the passion is roused and indulges the senseless and high-spirited rather than when it is in a steady state." | "For it is change of everything which wakes the disposition of men and does not allow it to rest." | " For these aforesaid reasons it seems to me that the asian race is weak and yet further so because of their customs. For much of asia is ruled by a king." | "And where men do not rule themselves nor are autonomous but are ruled by a despot, there is no reason for them to concern themselves over this. So when they do not practice the military disciplines, but they work to seem pacifistic."
    • Sparta had the Xenelasia - expelling foreigners who were deemed injurious to the city-state.
  • Homosexuality and Pederasty *DID* exist, but it is greatly debated by the extent of which it occured.
    • Pederasty was the relationship between an Erastes (Adult Male) and an Eromenos (Younger Male), usually in their teens. However, this was believed to be more of a Mentor/Mentee relationship, not one that was inherently sexual. It also was only allowed for Citizens as any non-citizens could not engage in pederastic relationships. All surviving artwork involving pederasty does not show any sexual relationships between the Erastes and Eromenos.
    • Aristophanes wrote the famous Greek play: Lysistrata. This involves a ploy by Athenian women to stop having sex with their men so they would stop waging war with Sparta. If most greek men could gain sexual release through other means, this ploy would not have worked, but it did.
    • Greek Homosexuality by K.J. Dover explains better than I can in his book. He notes that there are 600 "homosexual" relations depicted out of nearly 80,000 known Greek vases. That is not great evidence to show a prevalent homosexual nature within Greek culture.
    • Xenophon: "Lycurgus adopted a system opposed to all of these alike. Given that someone, himself being all that a man ought to be, should in admiration off a boy's soul endeavor to discover in him a true friend without reproach, and to consort with him - this was a relationship which Lycurgus commended, and indeed regarded as the noblest type of bringing up." | "But if, as was evident, it was not an attachment to the soul, but a yearning merely towards the body, he stamped this thing as foul and horrible; And with this result, to the credit of Lycurgus be it said, that in lacedaemon the relationship of lover and beloved is like that of parent and child or brother and brother where carnal appetite is in abeyance."
    • Sparta also had very different words for Erastes and Eromenos.
      • Eispnelas, meaning inspirer.
      • Aites, meaning listener.
    • Grown men would not have had engaged in open homosexual relationships. One character: Alkibiades is shown as an unrelenting figure in the game's homosexual relationships. While history does show he was an active bisexual, it is suggested that he suffers from psychopathy. He was a self-serving and treacherous individual.
  • Greek Men and Women (Promiscuity) is not at all as it is portrayed in the game.
    • There were laws that prevented men from seducing noble women who were under the protection of a kyrios. However, men were able to sleep with slaves and prostitutes despite being married - but noble women were not one of those. If caught, they would be executed by the Kyrios without trial.
    • Women were able to have sex with specific men as designated by the Kyrios in order to produce a stronger offspring, however they were *not* allowed to sleep with whomever they wanted.
The Greek world was consumed by gender and race. This is shown through the various accounts of ancient Greeks and the physical history we have of that ancient civilization.

As I wrote 4 years ago, AC Odyssey is fucking trash. An insult to what we should have gotten.
 

Aesius

Member
I'll always associate AC Odyssey with the first couple of months of COVID lockdown. It was like taking a nice vacation to Ancient Greece while everything in the real world was closed.

I absolutely loved the game, even though it certainly has flaws. In a way, I think its size is actually its greatest asset. It's almost like a singleplayer MMO or something. There's just so much to do, but none of it every really feels like a chore because it's fun to play, looks great, and controls well. It's also satisfying to become an actual Greek god/goddess as the game progresses. You get so ridiculously powerful by the end, but it takes long enough that it never feels cheap.
 

EDMIX

Writes a lot, says very little
Im playing through it again on pc after playing it for 200 plus hours on xbox one x back in 2018, and despite its numerous faults…i cant put it down. The game is undoubtedly bloated, you play as a greek super hero essentially betraying everything that made the older games great, and the micro transactions are just out of control. Despite all that though, the core gameplay loop is just so much fun. Yes its cool down based combat at its finest, but it is a blast to walk into a base and kill thirty spartans with your ridiculous super powers. The world is a joy to explore as well, and the story is pretty interesting. But the glue that holds this all together for me is Kassandra.

kassandra-assassins-creed-odyssey.gif

Not only is she a grade A honey (especially with uh, certain nsfw mods…) but she is very well written and acted. Maybe the best ac protagonist since ezio. Ive never played as Alexios, but in sure he’s great too. She is a joy to play as and its fun to see her very grounded perspective in a world where everyone believes in gods.

Long story short, there is a very, very fun game burried here if you can look past all the modern ubisoft isms. Its a shame that this games sequel, valhalla, couldn't reach the same high’s.
Agreed, such a great game.

I hype for what ever they do on PS5 / Series X.
 

Larxia

Member
I had a great time on it despite its flaws too, and I usually dislike modern ubisoft stuff.

For quite a while I didn't even want to touch these modern AC games, but at some point I heard someone I know talking about Odyssey, and I didn't expect it to offer this much freedom, so it made me curious and I tried it.
I really liked the world, the amount of freedom, and the RPG aspect is actually really good, you can really build your character to your liking and do ton of stuff. The powers / abilities are really fun to use and really save the combats, because the core gameplay if you just use sword and shield is really boring.

There are some things I hated though, like how the game "punishes" you for managing to complete stuff that's over your level. If you're lvl 30 for example, and you manage to beat an ennemy base that's lvl 45, it will take a long time but on top of that, if completing that camp would have given you something like 2000 xp at lvl 45, it will give you barely anything at your current lvl 30, like, 100 xp or something like that (I'm just saying random numbers, I don't remember the amounts, but you get the idea).
This was really frustrating to me, the level system of the ennemies is already bad enough as it is, punishing you for trying to overcome it is really dumb, it should actually reward you instead.

Anyway overall despite some specific flaws I had a great time, especially on the dlc, I loved the atlantis dlc (especially the first part in the elysium), and I really loved my build after so many hours, at some point you just really felt at home and wanted to keep going kind of forever.

More recently I tried playing Origins, because plenty of people claimed it was much better than Odyssey, and I really regretted it. I found it extremely boring, none of the cool gameplay features from Odyssey are present, the combats are the bare minimum, it's like playing Odyssey in the worst possible way without using any abilities.
The progression is also awful, you need to do tons of mmo-type quests to progress. Sometimes I spent hours and hours doing side content, and when I finally did some main story, after just 2 missions I was already under leveled and it would take forever to kill any ennemies, so I had to go back grinding random mmo side quests for hours again... Hated it.
 
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