Shock and awe.
What exactly is the premise behind Odyssey being so divergent in formula from the previous titles, remains a mystery for now. The idea of a branching storyline was something unthinkable in Brotherhood or Origins. But this is changing now.
The historical conspiracy behind Assassin’s Creed is a staple of the series. The whole point is to, after all, uncover the real mystery of Alien interventionism here. But Odyssey is taking a drastically different route and the developers definitely seem to be devoted to that idea.
Part of it is of course subject matter, Classical Greece isn’t very well-documented as Marc-Alexis Côté (there’s TWO accents in that name, that’s how you know he’s important) explains in an interview with VG24/7.
“I remember working on Syndicate and you almost have a day-by-day account of what everybody did. And obviously you don’t have that in 400BC”—he says. And to be fair he has a point, we technically don’t event know if Socrates was like a real person that existed, or if he was just a literary creation of Plato. And his trial was definitely over-dramatized. A judge wouldn’t have let the guy make this many digressions today, much less over two thousand years ago.
But ultimately the explanation for this drastic shift is likely very benign. But you can be sure that it will be tied into the narrative. Perhaps Animus has been changed to extrapolate possible histories? That could be a nice Bioshock Infinite-esque twist. There are constants and variables in each part of the series after all. There’s always an Assassin. There’s always the Templars. But details do change.
Personally I’m excited for an Assassin’s Creed game going in that direction as it really sounds like the next logical step.