Getting Through 130 Hours of Gameplay Is An Odyssey in Itself

My initial clear of Assassin's Creed Odyssey clocked in at around 88 hours. This is after completing the main storyline and a fair chunk of optional content, although not everything was done. This is already a lot of time to devote to a video game, but because it is a game that has so much content, I really wanted to experience what else it has to offer. Now, with a game clock of about 130 hours, I've cleared just about everything there is. There's still more, but I've done everything I consider to be "of note."

This means that in addition to the aforementioned clearing of the main storyline, I've also vanquished all of the optional Cultists and done all of the major side quest story arcs, including the Arena and all mythical beasts. After all that was done, I was sitting at well over 100 hours--but there was still DLC to be done!

In a fit of madness, I decided when I was deeply engaged in the main storyline of Odyssey that I'd purchase the season pass for the game as well as the DLC for Assassin's Creed Origins, which my girlfriend was playing at the time and I have not yet played myself. Little did I know that I wouldn't be getting to that DLC for a pretty considerable length of time.

When I finally started Legacy of the First Blade, the first set of DLC for Odyssey, I'd already played so much of the game that I was starting to approach burnout status. Still, it was fun to have a new set of pseudo-cultists to assassinate and new weapons to toy around with. Of course, the arc of that story feels a little strange to me since it casts my character of choice, Kassandra, as a mother of a child, either through a desire to continue the bloodline or out of genuine love for her partner, who the game sticks you with regardless of the choices you make.

I'm sure much has been written about how little choice you have in Legacy of the First Blade, but it is a little disgruntling, after being at the helm of this character for 100 hours and then suddenly thrust into a relationship over which the player has no agency whatsoever. Sure, you can roleplay it in your mind as a means to an end, but I'd made choices with Kassandra over the course of Odyssey that characterized her as a free-roaming mercenary with more desire for money than family or relationships. To see that same character cooing maternally to her new baby, shackled to this idyllic, monogamous life--it's more than a little disconcerting.

On the other hand, the game's second set of DLC, The Fate of Atlantis, treats choice much differently. I've only played through it once, but it does seem like my choices made a big impact on how the story progressed.

Just for context, The Fate of Atlantis is much more explicitly mythical, whereas the bulk of the base game is rooted in historical realism. As with most Assassin's Creed games, there is always that nod to an ancient alien race and to the futuristic simulation technology that allows us to assume the roles of this historical figures in the first place--but the gameplay itself is at least reasonably realistic. The Fate of Atlantis has Kassandra (or Alexios) exploring the fields of Elysium, the portion of the Greek underworld reserved for fallen champions and those otherwise deserving of acclaim that have passed on.

In The Fate of Atlantis, Kassandra will find herself playing something of a double agent between Persephone, the queen of the underworld, and Adonis, the object of Persephone's affection that wants nothing more than to escape Elysium to be reunited with his true love, Aphrodite. The motivations involved are a little complicated, but it is really interesting to see where the narrative takes them and how it ties into Greek mythology. Your choices effect the scenes you see in interesting ways. I'd be curious to see how things might progress if I were to play it again--and there's a good possibility that will happen once the second episode releases.

It's also worth noting that Elysium is ridiculously beautiful and is distinctly different from the Greek world depicted in the main game. It's clear the development team worked very hard rendering that terrain. It's also much more substantial in terms of gameplay than Legacy of the First Blade, which takes place entirely within Greece in areas underused by the main game. While each of the three episodes of that DLC only took me a couple hours, the first Atlantis DLC chapter took me about ten hours to get through, not only because it has a lot of story cutscenes, but lots of optional objectives to explore, including uncovering new ability enhancements and sprawling camps full of exotic Elysian enemies.

At the end of the day, I enjoyed Atlantis a lot more than Legacy of the First Blade, but this is only the first episode of what I believe is a two-part DLC pack. Although the ending of this episode is intriguing, it was also very abrupt and ultimately unsatisfying when you consider how long we'll be waiting for another release, which I'm hoping takes place in some of the grimmer parts of Greek mythology's underworld.