Ubisoft brought way more than an Assassin's Creed Odyssey keychain to its E3 2018 press conference. The studio dedicated a huge chunk of its show to Odyssey's ancient Greek setting, both of its main characters, its RPG systems, and perhaps most importantly, its release date.
Here's everything we know about Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
What is Assassin's Creed Odyssey's release date?
Assassin's Creed Odyssey is out on October 5th, 2018. We're unsure whether this means the series is going back to yearly updates, but Ubisoft Quebec has been working on it for three years, since development of Assassin's Creed Syndicate ended.
What is Assassin's Creed Odyssey' setting?
Ancient Greece. The game is set in 431 BC, the furthest back a game in the series has been set so far. It takes place during the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens. Ubisoft describes it as a founding period for art, science and politics, and calls it the birth of Western Civilisation. Socrates is your buddy, and will set you side quests, and you can even argue with him.
Who is the main character in Assassin's Creed Odyssey?
You have a pick of two: Alexios, a man, and Kassandra, a woman. Whoever you pick, their story plays out similarly. It's described by Ubisoft Quebec as an epic Greek tragedy. You play the descendant of Leonidas, and after defying a prophecy of the Delphi oracle, you bring shame to your family. You're thrown off a mountain, but you survive. The story picks up 17 years later.
In the modern day world, Layla continues her story in the Animus from Origins.
What have we seen so far?
Ubisoft dropped a meaty trailer at its E3 2018 conference:
Will there be more RPG elements?
Ubisoft is calling this a full RPG. What that means is, you get to shape the story and your character with dialogue choices. You can romance characters in the game, with no restrictions on who you can woo. You can piss people off in conversations, start fights, be nice or sarcastic. During our first hands-on with the game, we got to see this in action, and it's pretty convincing in terms of cause and effect, but that's just in one small area of the game. We're promised some dialogue choices will have a powerful effect on the larger story.
On top of that, the weapons value system from Origins now applies to armour, as well. So you'll constantly be looking for better breastplates and leg armour to stop you from taking damage during battle.
You've also got a suite of new abilities you can unlock in this game, and you can upgrade them up to two more times for further effect. Lighting your sword on fire, for example, which will then set enemies aflame, or upgrading your leap of faith so you can land and stun enemies in your radius, like in the Batman games. You can only use four melee abilities and four stealth abilities at a time, and you have to map your choices to your controller or keyboard.
When will we know more?
Ubisoft's E3 conference is Monday, June 11 at Ubisoft 1 pm Pacific (4 pm Eastern, 9 pm BST), and that's where we'll get the big reveal (see the full E3 2018 schedule here). We'll update this page with all the information from the show.