As someone that had to read all of Socrates (Plato’s) bullshit in college it is not far from the actual text.
No, you are not going to make me buy this game
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It’s me, Darryl, here to tell you that Socrates will fuck you up
I believe the first third of one of the dialogs with nihilists is plato and company trying to convince Socrates it ain’t worth it.
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If I’m going to meet the complete threemteam (trireme team?) of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle I swear I’m going to scream 'n cream. Especially if I can knock them out. And then recruit them for my ship. (real mechanic in this game) I don’t think they’re going to be hostiles though, so that dream just imploded
Truth be told I’m trying to imagine what you’d think of this game at every turn. You’re obviously never going to let’s play it, so I won’t know. You could just play it though… It’s just sitting there, simmering in its greco-greatness, waiting…
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Even if I still did Let’s Plays I couldn’t LP a game like this. I mean who would watch it. Hours of autoclimbing towers and buying armor upgrades or whatever the fuck.
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I wouldn’t watch it but I would definitely listen to it in the background while doing other things (assuming you were constantly commentating it and not just silently playing).
That’s how I watch these things too, nowadays. I just put them on another screen and work or play next to the let’s play. It’s pretty fun and I don’t even mind longer stretches of no commentary
This game is gorgeous and about equal parts MGSV and Witcher 3 as far as I can tell. I get the benefit of watching someone with more enthusiasm play it, too! 
She’s jazzed to have a AAA open world freelancing game where she is a lady and she is in Greece.
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Now I don’t know what that means but Lesbos is seemingly the last place to go to, it’s up to level 50. Is Kassandra going to find true same-sex love there, finally??
I never ever thought I’d say it but now I’m interested in picking up Origins if it ever goes on sale.
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I guess what I’d say is that these openworld fuckfests are more streaming games than LP games. That “live-in” possibility space is made more enjoyable by occasional fucking around and goofing off as a pacing break, which is more fun if done by engagement with viewers.
Recorded LPs are I think best for focused games, be they action games or fairly linear story based action/adventure type things.
And I think asynchronous, heavily mechanical games, like strategy or citybuilding or 4X, work well in either format.
For what it’s worth, I feel like the world of Origins had a bit more thought put into it. You could walk down a dirt road and see some guy pulling a cart, a family working a field, guards harassing people for money, or in the weirdest case - a guy who reaches into a giant bird house, pulls out a bird, wrings its neck, drops it into a basket, and repeats.
Dropping into Discovery Mode, you can tell they consulted a lot of Egyptologists about how work was done, how people lived, things like that. A lot of the quests heavily involve Egyptian faith and politics, too.
In contrast, Odyssey like they took that idea and just said “eh, we’ll wing it.” There are some people farming here and there, but a lot of citizens just mill around aimlessly, or (hilariously) just stand with the arms raised in front of statues of gods. Where Origins had you doing things like retrieving a Book of the Dead from some bandits for an old guy who needs it so he can be with his wife in the afterlife (who dies while you fulfill the quest, to Bayek’s lament), Odyssey settles for “Ah these bandits pissed me off, but you’re here, uh, praise Poseidon!”
For a game where you stabbed dudes in the neck and pinged a radar to highlight every pot and pan you could pinch some gold pieces out of (and to sound cliche as hell), Origins felt like a living breathing world. This time around, there’s something missing, and I just can’t put my finger on it.
I mean! I’m still having some fun with it. Trying to figure out how best to spec Kassandra for varying combat situations means putting more thought into the combat than I have with any of these games. The armor combinations you can slap together can look incredibly organic or super tacky. There is loot, and by that nature, the raw dopamine rush of Seeing The Numbers Go Up.
I just hope there’s a bit more meat on these colossal bones next time around. Or just smaller bones, that’d be nice, too.
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Yeah I’m still picking away at Origins after picking it back up and it is really good about not just having a whole bunch of random side quests but having the side quests all be sort of related to the overall story going on in whatever particular area they’re in. Kind of like how every town in Dragon Quest has the little side story vignettes but in this case they also usually indirectly relate back to whatever main quest story beat you’re on in that that area as well, and they’re all bite sized enough in length that you can do a few at a time and get to see a more overarching story unravel and develop. Really makes you want to go hit up all the question marks in each town/location just to see what the deal is in that part of the world and what mystery you have to solve or what conflict needs resolution.
That kind of sucks that Odyssey apparently isn’t so hot in that regard!
Odyssey definitely has some like that (usually the individual islands will have their own entire plot lines for you to do, like one involving a slave trying to clear his brother’s name), and they’re good! They just don’t feel as, uh, integrated into the world? Or at least as common.
But, to also be fair - a lot of the side quests are some real Skyrim/Fallout as hell “I need you to kill these bandits” quests that will spawn sporadically to give you something to do. Sometimes the writing for them is surprisingly bespoke! Most of the time they end with Kassandra saying “I always finish what I start” and getting a handful of money.
I think it’s just a weird case where the highs were higher on Origins. The only quest that’s really made me go “huh!” was one involving a little girl who asks you to get some items so she can make necklaces for her friends. There’s what feels like the right answer and what feels like the wrong answer at the end of the quest, and let’s just say that if you revisit her later, what felt like a nice thing at the time has some tragic repercussions.
One thing I will say - I’m glad Odyssey carries over Origins’ whole “Oh, that thing you needed me to do? Already did it” for compulsive explorers who do all the side shit before bothering to take on quests. Only in certain cases (freeing a prisoner, getting something off a guard) will you absolutely have to go back to a fort or cave or whatever and redo them, but for the most part, if you got the thing, you’re good.
But! It’s almost to a fault. I cleared out a temple in Athens, and as I was running around hammering Triangle to get gold and fruit and whatever else to sell, I wound up assassinating a guy chilling out on a rug. “CULTIST KILLED.” I went and completed a quest not long after only for it to knock out two “quest completed” notices at once.
But! Had I not killed this random guy just eating grapes, I would have seen Socrates and Aristophanes debate the merits of free speech, and Aristophanes argue that this playwright (the cultist in question) was using his plays to spread pro-military propaganda and have his enemies jailed or exiled. Luckily every nerd on earth slams that record button and uploads their videos to YouTube, but I’m honestly kinda mad I got robbed of another circular debate with Socrates.
So I mean, it does the “you can do whatever you want!” thing, but to sometimes, uh, it’s own detriment.
Look y’all I swear I actually like this game, I just have particular beefs with it.
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Also will say, to the game’s credit - sure am glad they went and gave the player the choice of protagonist!
I, uh, may have filled out a survey for Syndicate with an upset answer, asking them why they bothered to give protagonist choice when a solid bulk of the missions and assassinations went to Jacob instead of Evie, so it’s nice to see that team make good with Odyssey.
Also (and this is pretty big early game spoiler stuff, if like 15 hours in is early) the voice actor for Alexios is so corny that he works way better as the story’s antagonist, and vice versa. I have a hard time buying Kassandra as a villain, and she makes for a more sympathetic protagonist.
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This is totally the case in Odyssey as well. There are golden exclamation point signs on the map and those signify sidequests, but sidequests related to the main quest. You basically HAVE to do those to get the best out of the game. They add so much. And I think in one case you literally HAD to do them because they unlocked a clue for the main quest.
It’s kind of cool to have a main quest that just says Person X is still in Phokis and no other hint. And then to find more hints in the sidequests. I liked that.
Now there are also I think black and white or silver(?) side quests and those are the ones that Brock mentioned that seem kinda random and are there to keep you busy if you have nothing else to do. I had a few good ones of those too, though
I don’t think I would have liked Origins as much as this because I’ve seen some let’s play footage and the Egyptian setting just did nothing for me. I just wasn’t interested. It was nice however to watch the NPCs work and go about their business, as Brock mentioned. It’s true that they put a lot of effort into making them believable.
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i’m still at revelations.
lol.
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Yeah, I’ve been kinda hard on the game, but the real-real side quests (not the silver ones, though the forked road ones are interesting commentary on past missions) are where most of the game’s best writing is.
Case in point (spoilers for one quest in particular, just a heads up): one quest starts when you happen upon a man in a cage, whose parents are pleading with him to come out. He tells you that he saw the Oracle of Delphi, who told him he would spill his mother’s blood and make his father scream in agony. He asks Kassandra to retrieve his sword and shield, so his parents can defend themselves from his rage. His shield was stolen by a female bandit in a cave nearby, so you kill her to get it. His sword is with a horny old blacksmith, who you can sleep with to get it back. Kassandra comes back and happily announces that she killed the bandit leader and did what had to be done to get the sword. His parents curse you, and announce their son was adopted, the illegitimate son of the bandit and the blacksmith. The guy runs from the cage toward the beach, screaming how you killed his mother and fucked his father.
My summary doesn’t really do it justice, and contextually it’s half fetch quest, half assassination mission, but it’s pretty damn funny.
As you said, I can’t imagine skipping all of the side content. The main stuff is fine, but the actual, y’know, character, is elsewhere.
Oh also - Revelations is rad, and probably my favorite of the old era games. Old man Ezio going around Constantinople is really nice, even if the story isn’t much to write home about. It’s pleasantly subdued.
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Ha! I expected there to be a quest/story like this because that’s hella Greek but that’s way more awesome than what I could have dreamed up!