The Unicorn Scale: Assassin's Creed: Odyssey

There has been a lot of speculation about the newest installment of the Assassin’s Creed series. Although Ubisoft has yet to even confirm the existence of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, rumors suggest that the announcement is coming soon. That being said, it is the perfect time to take a look back at the most recent in the line, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (2018).

Before we go any further, fair warning of SPOILERS ahead — check out our guide if you would like a closer look at how we score these.

Odyssey takes place in Greece in 431 B.C during the events of the Peloponnesian War and follows the accomplishments and struggles of Kassandra and Alexios — a brother and sister who are separated at a young age due to troublesome Spartan traditions and spend their years attempting to live up to their grandfather’s legacy; which is hard to do when your grandfather is the most famous of all Spartans, the great Leonidas. For the first time in the game’s history, players may choose from either a male or female mercenary (Ancient Greek; misthios) and control either Alexios or Kassandra as they travel throughout Greece, fight on one or both sides of the Peloponnesian War, and struggle to overcome their troubled past to reunite their family.

What I Liked:

Before we look at Odyssey through a strictly bisexual lens, I first want to take a moment to briefly touch on a few other aspects of the game. I’ve been fascinated by Ancient Greek culture and daily life since a very young age, and while I am admittedly no expert on the subject, I do know enough to recognize how much work went into researching the minutiae of the Greek lifestyle. I appreciate the time Ubisoft puts into building a diverse, multicultural, and more importantly knowledgeable team of researchers and developers to help them bring a great deal of reality and immersion into the game regardless of the fact that you follow a fictitious storyline. 

My first playthrough was done with Kassandra, so I will be referencing her as my player character throughout, but as mentioned before, both Kassandra and Alexios are playable options. The voice acting was on point, and the animation switched so seamlessly from traditional animation to motion capture that it was strikingly hard to tell where that boundary was. There are countless instances of great research and cultural understanding, and let’s be honest, who wouldn’t enjoy a scantily clad, oiled up Kassandra holding her own against hardened (and hilariously named) Olympians in the arena?

Another aspect I liked is the finality of your choices when it comes to building relationships — both platonic and romantic. Odyssey is the first in the AC franchise to allow players full control over their romantic dialogue choices, allowing players to choose to flirt, or not flirt, with anyone that strikes your fancy as long as you have the available dialogue prompts. Much like the reality of Greek culture, no one in-game is surprised by anyone else’s sexuality, be it other NPCs, or the player character. In sticking to the source material, Odyssey provides a world where you can express your attractions in ways that, for the most part, are fairly normal. No matter how you choose to interact with these romantic options, your main quests remain unchanged by your choices. There are a few fun quests that break the monotony of flirting in Odyssey.

One of my favorite arcs was the Daughters of Artemis quest line. Kassandra meets a group of devout priestesses in service to the goddess Artemis, and their leader, Daphnae, tasks her with killing legendary beasts all over Greece. Their interactions start off fairly tense, to be honest, as Kassandra is an outsider in their lands and at their temple. As you continue to kill more of the beasts and bring trophies back to Daphnae as proof of your heroic deeds, the priestess slowly grows warmer toward you, opening up options to compliment her that eventually lead to cheeky, flirtatious comments from both parties. Killing these eight unnaturally strong animals is a huge challenge consisting of arguably some of the toughest battles in the game, so this quest is something that is spread over many levels and many different locations. 

This time and distance was a huge help in regard to the believability when it came to Kassandra and Daphnae’s budding romance. Although these relationships have no real time frame, it started to feel insincere when each romantic interest could be seduced in a matter of minutes or a single quest instead of taking the time to get to know these characters and see their relationships build from the very beginning. Kassandra and Daphnae were the complete opposite. By the time I realized what was happening, I was hooked — I made these quests my priority over the war that was happening all around, but I just could not get enough of the slow burn that turned initial enemies into lovers. 

But alas… all good things must come to an end. There are multiple different endings with Daphnae depending on the choices you make with her along the way, but after you dispatch all eight powerful animals and return to Daphnae, she gives you one final quest. As the head priestess, her life is devoted entirely to the goddess, and she is so loyal that she feels that Kassandra has fulfilled an ancient prophecy and has proven herself worthy to lead the Daughters of Artemis. Daphnae invites Kassandra to ritual combat for the mantle of leader. Based on your previous interactions, you have the choice to throw down your sword, to proclaim your love for the priestess and refuse to fight her, but that turns Daphnae against you as she believes that her way is the only way to stay true to her faith.

In a heartbreaking cutscene, the two struggle to avoid the inevitable, but an emotional Daphnae eventually convinced me to defer to her wishes and face her in a duel — which, to no one’s surprise, the player character is pretty much rigged to win. In the end, as Kassandra holds her dying lover, Daphnae finally returns Kassandra’s admission of love, though it ends tragically. This last quest comes completely out of nowhere, and I was just as shocked and caught off-guard as my Kassandra was, and likewise, it took me a while to finally get over the consequences of these choices.

The relationship between Kassandra and Daphnae — if you choose to pursue it— is perhaps the only mention of a real, meaningful relationship in the game, instead of just a quick fling that is forgotten as soon as the cutscene is over.

And… I mean… just look at how Kassandra looks at her blades.

‘Nuff said.

What I Didn't Like:

First off — the usual — they didn’t ever say “bisexual”, or define Kassandra’s sexuality one way or the other, she just shows no preference when interacting with those around her. I realize that this has something to do with how open the Ancient Greek culture (or our imagined version of it) was about sexuality, so perhaps nothing needs to be said… but I still want to hear it, regardless.

Even though you have the freedom to form bonds however you like, I found that all of the NPCs that have romantic or sexual dialogue options are only doing so because you’re the player character. In this regard, it breaks away from the immersive experience and, at times, it feels almost robotic and static when there should be so much life in these interactions— even for us awkward bisexuals, which Kassandra definitely qualifies as. I've seen these types of systems labeled as almost “player-sexual”, with no real choice or depth even though that was precisely what the developers touted when marketing the game. 

The NPCs that do have romantic options will sleep with you as either Kassandra or Alexios with no notion of preferences or restrictions based on who you play as. While there is always a possibility that the NPCs you encounter fall squarely in the middle of the Kinsey Scale, it’s just not realistic to cover such a limited view of bisexuality in a game that promised the ultimate freedom in choosing how you built lasting, meaningful relationships throughout. This could be fixed by just a few NPCs having different dialogue, or not having the option to take those physical or romantic steps with certain individuals if you choose to play one sibling over the other. Instead, we find the same exact interactions regardless of who you play as. The game also focuses almost exclusively on flings over lasting relationships, and while I have no problem with Kassandra being open in that regard, I would have loved to see more options for longer interactions with some of the more complete NPCs.

On that note, the script is identical for both playable characters, with “the misthios” being how the game refers to either Alexios or Kassandra, instead of him/her pronouns respectively. While the script doesn’t change, the delivery certainly does. I have to preface this by saying that both voice actors for our protagonists do a phenomenal job, but personally I do feel that Alexios’ interactions feel more forced in terms of dialogue, whereas Kassandra’s feel more natural. This could be because I chose Kassandra on my first play  through, and Alexios on my second, but it just didn’t feel as genuine to me — and paired with romantic choices that already felt robotic and dull, I finished the game feeling that the player character’s sexuality was something that Ubisoft looked at more as a “game feature”, something that could be marketed, but something that wasn’t fully fleshed out and left me unsatisfied with the depth of these characters.

The biggest issue I had with this game was in the DLC. The episode titled Shadow Heritage forces players into a heterosexual relationship that’s seen from a plot standpoint as “growing up”. Now, that’s a big problem, considering that Kassandra is very much an adult and more than capable of making her own choices, as apparent throughout the game. After putting so much effort into building MY Kassandra how I want her to be played, with a set of morals and a code of ethics that I stayed true to throughout, it felt like a slap in the face to suddenly be ripped from those choices that I’ve invested so much time in to force my baby into a marriage. 

After backlash regarding the lack of choice for this section of the game, the developers have explained that they imagined our protagonist would support this pairing in a strictly authoritarian way so that the bloodline of the assassins would go on as it had done for centuries. While I do understand why they thought that would be a good choice, I feel as though it could have been executed in a way that didn’t force us to give up the character we’ve grown to love. If we even had a choice in the matter, as we did with so many mundane details, perhaps I could look upon this mishap a little lighter. While Ubisoft has since come out and apologized for the forced interactions, admitting that while they simply had story-related reasons in mind, that it had been “poorly executed” and would work hard for any future releases to make sure that players felt as though their choices mattered in regards to their identity. 

We'll work to do better and make sure the element of player choice in Assassin's Creed Odyssey carries through our DLC content so you can stay true to the character you have embodied throughout.

The Rating:

It seems that Ubisoft plans to include such romantic and sexual freedoms in any upcoming games, and while technically none has been announced just yet, the Assassin’s Creed franchise isn’t going anywhere, so we can all expect to see some more armor-clad shenanigans (and hopefully more badass babes with swords – Shieldmaidens, anyone?) in the near future.

Overall, I approve of the steps toward freedom and inclusivity… but there’s a LOT of work to be done in order to make these interactions feel more real, and not just as though they were being used to market to a larger audience.