Originally Posted by
BananaBlighter
Go to original post
Ok here are some of my thoughts:
Picture 1: Ok so this skill tree has a lot going on. Overall I think it looks much better than Origins'. The first thing I'm happy with, is that the 'assassin' tree has been separated from the 'hunter' tree (I really hated that in Origins, 90% of the hunter skills were bow related). Also it now appears that skills can be upgraded to different levels and they can be unassigned (it seems you can also reset the entire skill tree). It also looks like you can now can 'equip' up to 4 abilities for 'ranged' and 'melee'. I kind of like that you have to choose which abilities you want, rather than being able to have them all. Underneath we can also see a row of skills which seem to be unrelated to the 'hunter', 'warrior' or 'assassin' categories. Now comes the big one (I don't know how I feel about this TBH); it seems to me that instead of a hidden blade, we now have a sort of spear, referred to as the 'Spear of Leonidas' in the skill description (which can apparently be thrown now). In top left of the skill tree section we see it has a level too.
Picture 2: Not much here. The HUD is identical to Origins, which might change, but I won't be surprised if it doesn't. There are a few new things though. In the botton right of the screen, we see what seems to be a sort of notoriety meter. Above it, there is also something about an undiscovered leader (and a bar which in later images is shown to be 'Nation Power'). I think we're going to have 'leaders' in each region that we have to eliminate in order to 'capture' the region.
Picture 3: This is just a screenshot from a cutscene. We get to see a very clear shot of our protagonist (although the leaks - which now seem to have been very accurate - pointed at there being another female protagonist too). Also, I could be imagining it, but the faces do look a bit better than Origins (maybe). Still now way near as good as Unity though.
Picture 4: First thing to notice here is that we have a pet eagle again. In the mission log, we can see that we have to 'destroy Athenian war supplies', but underneath there is a mention of something called 'Nation Power' which will have to 'lower'.
Picture 5: Here we have an image of the map of Greece, though it seems to me that this isn't the entire thing. The east edge of the map has a sort of border, symbolising this is the eastern boundary, but the western, northern and southern edges of the map do not have this. Also, Sparta and Athens would be further west if I'm looking at the maps on google correctly. The Mediterranean sea is clearly a large part of the map, so expect a lot of open world sailing like AC4.
Picture 6: Combat looks very similar to Origins except for one thing; there is no shield. TBH I'm really happy about this, because it definitely made Bayek feel very bulky and un-assassiny. It might mean that they've redone the combat animations too, which would be nice since they were awful in Origins. In the bottom left of the green we can now see the selected 'ranged' skills from the skill tree. At the bottom there are two bars. I believe the top one is the health bar, but the bottom one seems to be similar to the adrenaline meter in Origins. However I think that instead of allowing you to use an overpower attack, it will instead be used for your selected skills (the skills in the bottom left and the adrenaline bar are the same yellowish colour). You can use it a total of five times before having to recharge it, and in the image we can see the last one is about finish recharging. There are also some weird bars at the top (replacing the compass during combat) which we didn't have in Origins, and I don't know what they are.
Picture 7: Gear customisation is clearly quite different from Origins, but on the whole I think that it looks much better, especially because we can now equip individual gear pieces. Hopefully you will be able to go for a full stealth build, even though your character is some sort of Spartan warrior. One thing I find interesting, is that in picture 3 you can clearly see that both of his bracers are very different, but there is only one gear slot for them here. It seems we can still carry two weapons, but instead of two bows, we have a bow and a quiver. Also there's some weird pouch with an exclamation mark (maybe it's your automatic income that you can collect through the menu). At the top we can see what appear to be crafting materials, but since there are no visible crafting upgrades (i.e. Origins' Jackdaw style upgrades) I'm assuming you can use them to upgrade the gear and weapon piece themselves (raising the level). TBH I would definitely prefer this to what we had in Origins.
Picture 8: Here's another cutscene screenshot, this time on what appears to be a ship. The important thing in this image is that we clearly can see dialogue options, but they also don't seem like they impact the story much, so I think they could be alright.
Picture 9: Another screenshot from the same mission as before (seems like this will be the one we see at E3). Here we see some sailing on a small boat like the ones in Origins. Looking towards the right side of the image, you can really see that there is a lot of water in this game.
Picture 10: Same mission again, but this time it appears to be some on-the-ground stealth action. It looks as though the player has just carried out an assassination using the 'Spear of Leonidas'. You can also see in the bottom right that this seems to have caused a reduction of the 'Nation Power'. Also, we can quite clearly see now that melee skills are accessed by holding LB, and ranged skills with LT. The guard on the extreme left also shows us that the marking looks exactly the same as Origins' (which I really didn't like the look of).
Picture 11: This shot shows us the spartan kick, which is one of the four melee skills you can equip. I find it interesting that the two bars at the top from the previous combat scene aren't here. We also get a very clear shot of the landscape, which looks very beautiful.
Picture 12: More combat, this time against an opponent with a shield. It look slick the protagonist is holding something in his hand we he is using in combat alongside his sword. I think it's the 'Spear of Leonidas', which would be cool if it means we can dual wield a regular weapon and porto-hidden-blade during combat (could make for some interesting combos). I've always wanted a combat system focusing on the hidden blade, an while this isn't exactly that, it looks interesting nonetheless (better than Origins' combat at least). Again, of some reason the two bars from before aren't at the to, and this time the compass bar is actually yellow (it was red in the previous image, white in stealth sections, and grey when neutral). I don't know what is going on with all these bars TBH.
Picture 13: Another cutscene screenshot, once again showing that maybe the dialogue options won't have so much of an impact on the story after all (which I'm relieved about).
Picture 14: Here we see some naval combat. The ships look similar to Origins, using archers to damage other ships. At the bottom, we have the same combat bars as before (health and 'adrenaline' bar). However, on either side of these bars there are also two other circles showing images of what appear to be archers and spear-throwers (I assume arrows are more long range while spears do more damage). The circles also have 4 increments, so I believe the way it will work is that each time you fire either spears or arrows, it uses one bar, and then slowly the bars will recharge with time.
Picture 15: Here we see a nice shot of a town/village area. I Origins, I felt that the urban areas were very poorly designed for parkour, making parkour very impractical and boring (it also didn't help that the parkour system itself was awful). Unfortunately, I expect Odyssey to be using the same system, and if that is the case, this picture doesn't give me much hope that the cities will be any better for parkour. However the tall building on the left looks like something that would work well with Unity's controlled descent (I pray that they've brought it back in this game).
Picture 16: Here we can see the player docking the ship. This image confirms that using the ships will be part of the open world (like AC4), so we will be able to travel between islands seamlessly. Sea shanties anyone?
Picture 17: A close-up shot of the eagle, which definitely looks like something taken with a photomode rather than in gameplay (could also be part of a cutscene though). I've got to say that the landscape of Greece in this game looks very beautiful.
Overall it seems like Odyssey could be very good (the world so far looks great). I'm not a fan of the RPG-direction AC has decided to go in, but I think that RPG elements are being handled better in this game than in Origins (excluding dialogue options, which I don't like the sound of at all). The combat also looks to be getting minor changes, which overall look good to me. I feel weird not having a hidden blade, but we'll se what the stealth is like at E3. My biggest disappointment with Origins was the parkour, so hopefully they've made some improvements to it in this game, although honestly I doubt it.