Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Assassin's Creed Odyssey deepened the RPG direction the series took with the previous entry, Origins, and transported the player to ancient Greece against the backdrop of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. For the first time in the series, the game offered a full choice between two main protagonists, the mercenary Kassandra or the mercenary Alexios, whose fate as descendants of King Leonidas gradually reveals both a tangled family tragedy and a conspiracy by the mysterious Cult of Kosmos manipulating the entire war from behind the scenes. Both versions of the main character are fully voiced, and Kassandra earned notably stronger acclaim among players for her performance.

The scale of the open world grew dramatically to encompass dozens of islands across the Aegean Sea connected by a ship, on which the player can recruit a crew and fight naval battles similar to earlier pirate-themed entries in the series. Combat abandoned the classic hidden blade as a guaranteed one-hit kill tool, replacing it with a set of active abilities, from 300-style kicks to rain-like arrow volleys that charge up through successful attacks. The mercenary system also means that after a committed crime, the player is hunted by increasingly powerful opponents with their own weaknesses and rewards.

A dialogue system with branching choices and several distinct endings represented a major novelty for the series toward full-fledged RPG storytelling, where the player's decisions genuinely affect the fates of side characters and the story's ultimate direction. The Battle of Thermopylae and a massive faction-war system, in which the player influences which side controls a given region by recruiting mercenaries and taking part in battles, ranked among the most ambitious systems in the entire series. Subsequent expansions about family legacy and about Atlantis added mythological, supernatural elements, pitting the player against beings from Greek myth. Critical reception was very favorable, though some criticized the need to grind experience between main missions at length. Thanks to its scale and length, Assassin's Creed Odyssey is considered one of the most expansive titles of the entire Xbox One generation.