Odyssey

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has been taking up so much of my time since it came out that it would be lying to name this post anything else and pretend like I’m not neck deep in this beautiful, legendary adventure engineered by Ubisoft. I’ve only played a little bit of Syndicate before, and was thoroughly enjoying it before Odyssey came out and made it very difficult to go back to the older games.

As gorgeous as Syndicate‘s Victorian London is, Odyssey‘s Ancient Greece, set during the Peloponnesian War, blows every RPG I’ve ever played right out of the water. That includes Breath of the Wild, and although I haven’t played as much of The Witcher 3 to compare the two, let’s just say Odyssey has set the bar very, very high. In fact I have a strong feeling that the only game that might fill the hole Odyssey will leave in my heart is The Witcher 3. The new Assassin’s Creed is so good it’s on the verge of joining Harry Potter and Game of Thrones to form the holy trinity of fantasy adventures.

I got so invested and excited that I began reading Thucydides’ account of the actual historical conflict between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies. It’s all in translation, of course- whatever little Greek and Latin I learnt whilst studying Classical literature has gone rusty- which makes it a little hard to follow. There seems to be no ‘right’ side; unlike most skirmishes of that scale in history, it’s really very difficult to say who could claim the moral high ground. It boils down to both the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League either wanting more power or wanting to prevent the other from getting too powerful. Sparta has been culturally glorified thanks to recent high budget films but the fact remains that Sparta treated its helots horribly, even by the standards of the day. Not that Athenian slaves fared that much better, but still.

Since I play as a (very attractive) female mercenary anyway, I decided not to take sides- to fulfill contracts and bounties and carve my own way. The game world is ridiculously vast, and the core gameplay is addictive. The main story is unfolding slowly but gradually, and from what I’ve seen so far, there’ll be a lot of plot twists along the way.

So no this post was all about AC Odyssey and not much to do with the sketches I’m posting here but since it’s custom to post sketches so that the blog looks filled out, visually, here goes.